Ramadan - Pakistan's version of Twisted Metal

Let me start by reiterating things that I have heard from many others...Ramadan is a time of peace, tranquility and patience. A time when you slow down, reflect, make amends, and diet (or try to).

For me the purpose of Ramadan, although I am not an active participant, is to achieve a sense of calm with oneself and one's surroundings. The concept of fasting, I believe, is intended to teach those who have the fortune of having all that they have and to appreciate the pain and strife of those who don't have. This would all be in reference to the Have and Have Not theory, which is actually not just a theory but a real life epidemic. It's ironic that the Have's are associated with the benefit of money and the Have Not's are associated with not having the money. In practical life, the Have's don't have the pain and strife, which the Have Not's do, so it turns out to be a sort of oxymoron or a paradox, whichever you like more.

Getting to the point, I realize that the beauty of Islam's Pillar of fasting has sort of gone amiss to the average Pakistani. I took to the streets today, the first day of this beautiful month of restraint and detox, and found myself lost in a jungle with what appeared to be baboons driving cars. I am not generalizing, rather speaking of a specific few who find it convinient to disregard any sense of law and reason during Ramadan. The purpose of law is sort of an incumberance on the frustrated youth of our country. One cannot blame them since we have a Macleans Spokesperson as our apparent future President among the many other highly educated faction that has decided to take our country in the right direction...right into their bank accounts. Har Har Har.

We now realize that while the purpose of Ramadan is one in theory, the practical application has somehow skewed in a completely wayward direction, making them significantly disjointed from one another. Come the first of Ramadan next year, I shall purchase a cast iron Hummer H1 and riddle it with chrome protection bars all around and take to the streets as have the other bretheran of our fading cinderella of a city and turn it into yet another session of Twisted Metal, where everyone is out for themselves and the purpose is to drive irrationally and at high speeds to unknown destinations with no particular schedule but to appear as though we are late for perhaps the most important meeting of our life, while making way using highly explosive weaponry. This is because, well, to drive the way we do, it must be worth our lives since that is what is at stake each time we take to the streets.

Go be a good Pakistani and drive like a good bureaucrat's child with a free car and unlimited petrol while the others starve for lack of basic necessities. That is your duty, that is your purpose.

Ramadan Mubarak