It’s an encouraging uphill stride and a disgusting downward slide for the Pakistani society as it tilts it morality profile this way and that way, sixty-nine years down the line of independence. It was an independence struggle that saw the bravery of Muslim families walking barefoot with meagre belongings in the face of danger, parents being butchered before the children and girls being raped and paraded naked in public. But they did not give up and stood up for
لا إله إلا الله محمد الرسول الله !
Zooming back to the present, the dust of war flames across the border of Pakistan and India had yet not settled from just a few days ago, when suddenly who pops up on the screen of the Pakistani media, a Chai Wala.
And the media goes crazy! And the social media goes crazy! And the women go crazy! And the women across the border go crazy!
What for? What’s the hype? Never seen good looks before? Never seen blue eyes before? As an online Pathan commenter wrote, ‘Please take a trip to Pashtun tribal belt of Pakistan. You shall find all the blue-eyed beauty you want to see there…’
And this comment shamed me. It shamed me as a woman. I suddenly zoomed back again. But this time not just sixty-nine years ago but a few thousand years back to the time of Prophet Yousuf AS … when the wife of his master developed a crush on him and the matter became the talk of the town! The offended Zulaykha invited the women of the town to her place by way of a party and let them see Prophet Yousuf AS for themselves. They cut their hands with their knives as they got mesmerized by his beauty and said ‘No wonder she has fallen in love with him’. Zulaykha smirked, as she saw that the women were now in her court, understanding the reason of her lustful madness.
We are witnessing the same madness over the Chai Wala. We are seeing the same throngs of women ogling over him, ironically, from both sides of the border. As if from both sides of the kingly court walls. A female model coyly said about him, ‘He will have to change his attitude towards women if he has to move on in the Showbiz world’.
What is that supposed to mean? What is he supposed to do? Why can’t he carry his good looks with a reserved signboard?
What a sad story. A nice, neat guy earning halal earnings for his family is suddenly whisked away into the world of pomp and glamour and a lot of unethical stuff. Perhaps he had a cute little fiancée waiting to be married to him and now she will seeing him amidst girls and models and be seething.
Oh they ask him, ‘The Indian girls too are going flat over you. How do you feel about it?’
What reply do they
expect?
I guess these are
not the times when one would expect the reply that Prophet Yousuf had given,
“My Lord! Prison is dearer to me than that to which these women call me!”
[The Holy Quran, Surah Al-Yousuf, Verse 33]
For we have leftover the cries of Allah’o Akbar for war times only. While in peace times, we stoop low. No wonder Allah Almighty brings us to the brink of war again and again and yet again. Only another cross border fire and the death of an innocent life will shake us out of the Chai Wala slur ...
