Every year Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day with renewed sense of ‘patriotism’ and great enthusiasm and zeal. This ‘patriotism’ is limited to love of flying the National flag and decorating residences with miniature flags.
This year, a very small minority took parts in ‘Azadi[1]‘ and ‘Inqilab[2]‘ marches from Lahore to Islamabad, in an attempt to de-seat the democratically elected government.
Those few aside, the Independence Day was marked with celebrations in schools, colleges and universities in the morning, parades and flag hoisting ceremonies elsewhere in the morning. Unfortunately, these brief moments of national pride were masked on prime time television by these marches.
Here in Karachi, restaurants offering breakfast and brunch were jam packed in the morning and early afternoon, and malls, beaches and large public parks were crowded during the day and the evening. People from all over the city were enjoying the Independence Day in their own unique ways.
I went out with some friends for breakfast at around 10:30 AM – not my usual breakfast time. The place we had decided upon had more people present than the chairs they had, and unfortunately for us, we were amongst those who were without it. After some waiting, we managed to be seated along with two other strangers, had breakfast with them and split the bill. Most of this time was not spent eating or chatting, but rather calling out for the waiters to be served.
My friend had parked his car right under a “No Parking” sign. When I jokingly pointed that out, he pointed out the National Flag fixed right above the sign. “Can’t you see? This is Pakistan” he jokingly replied. There were a few dozen cars already parked in front of those three “No Parking” signs.
For breakfast we had Halwa Puri and then went to a nearby milk shop and got ourselves a tall glass of lassi. After our breakfast, my friend remarked that we were the ones actually celebrating Independence Day, since we had breakfast with two strangers – unknown Pakistanis.
Later during the day, I could see quite a lot of patriotic posts on social networking websites; the patriotic content including “Happy Independence Day” was much, much more than what could be observed on Twitter regarding these two marches.
Oh, just so you know, some PAT workers replied to my tweet regarding Qadri’s comeback, most of their messages were nonsense repetitions of a simple (false) statement, containing #hashtags which they wished to trend.
Some local malls had declared “Family Day” – a cunning expression that means females only, and males might be allowed inside if accompanied by females. One such mall was the Dolmen City Mall in Clifton where I happened to go.
The mall was decorated in Green and White, with a crescent and a star hanging high above. Some people had painted the flag on their faces. There were cutout portraits of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Fatima Jinnah around the mall. Many people were actually queuing up to take a picture of their kids with them.
The background music in the mall were patriotic songs and even the instrumental national anthem. Most of all, there were Azadi discounts, ranging from 10% to 50% on many outlets in the mall – perhaps that was the main attraction that day.
The day ended in a grand fireworks show – a rarity in our country. Well the show was privately organized and not by the Government as is the case around the world.
As the day, and its celebrations ended, and the clock struck midnight, the date changed to 15th August 2014. The real Independence Day of Pakistan. This day was only celebrated in India as their own Independence Day, which in fact was the day when Pakistan and India, both, came into existence. Here in Pakistan, things went quitter.
[1] – Azadi – آزادی – Independence: A caravan of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) workers lead by Imran Khan.
[2] – Inqilab – انقلاب – Revolution: A caravan of Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) activists lead by Tahir-ul-Qadri.
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