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My Saturday column. In my defence, I'd like to say I had diarrhea and had to be hospitalised. But the editor insisited on my meeting the deadline
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Shot at for Free
"(Because I am) fit for nothing but to be shot at for six pence a day."
That was the explanation that Sir Richard Francis Burton, the great explorer, anthropologist and writer, gave for his joining the army of the East India Company in 1842. There is only a marginal difference between that sum and the pittance I get for writing this piece of drivel.
But write I must. Just like there were really no other options left for Burton. He was kicked out of Oxford. He reportedly challenged a fellow student to a duel right in his very first term when the latter mocked Burton’s moustache. My own falling out with Government College unfortunately, wasn’t because of something as dramatic. It appears I had ruffled some feathers by doing what university students are supposed to do. No, I hadn’t streaked naked down the Quadrangle. Or burned the flag. Or womanised (publicly). Or killed someone. I had merely asked questions. Expressed certain reservations about the way the administration was running things. Politely, at that. And insisted upon getting an education. Asking questions in class; not obscure, beyond-the-scope-of-study questions but proper, valid ones. The former act put me at odds with the GHQ and the latter didn’t endear me with the lump of incompetence my department was.
Asking questions, raising concerns can always get you into trouble with the GHQ - what is Government College, Lahore if not a microcosm of our ill-run Republic? With the way things are going in the country, the level of timidity of the questions that can get you into trouble keeps increasing. It will move from "Isn’t there something wrong with the way this mill is being privatised?" to "When are they going to go back to the barracks?" To "Why does daal cost so much these days?" To "Are you sure my gas bill is Rs. 7000?" To "Hey, how’s it going?"
Our disposition, as a species, to ask questions has lifted us out of the caves and has placed us in a position to invent the sort of velcro that doesn’t go krrrtch. We were meant to ask questions. It is what defines us. To deny anyone of this right is sinful. More sinful than stealing, or arson, or saying that Vital Signs should have broken up. By not asking questions, we let down, perhaps not ourselves, but our humanity. The dangerously curious should take solace in that fact when they are being shot at, without even the six pence a day.
