Have we Lost Everything?

We read lot of wise sayings but then forget about the wisdom behind by not relating these to our milieu. Those who said the golden phrases were men of conscious who felt things around them and had the courage to transform them into immortality by writing them down for following generations and people to read. But what do we do? Quote these to show to the world of our shallow learning and that’s all.

Out of many such good quotes, I read one yesterday by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), which says, “He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.” And I though I should try to relate it to our present environment. As a country, we are losing our wealth both in cash and kind to our extravagance living. Instead of building the nation, building infrastructure to strengthen the economy, we are importing machines since our independence and have still not been able to make a stroke motorcycle engine, which is still been imported. We import luxury items, cars (and big and bigger cars) and cosmetics in abundance and lose our hard earned wealth, which could have been used to our benefit if spent wisely. But as Miguel says, we have lost much. More is to come.

As for friends, if we look around, we are losing those who were once on our side rapidly. Our deeds and our selfish motives have drawn our friends away from us. And we are losing more.

But the worst is and which matters most is that we are also losing courage to say things we want to but don’t.  I remember in the last years of the “dictator” Ayub Khan (whose period was perhaps the most productive, stable, economically sound and prosperously peaceful till date) when the price of sugar was raised from 12 Anas to 14 Anas. And there was a big uproar and many relate his stepping down to the increase in price of sugar – something everyone needed. Now I see the prices of sugar soaring everyday – not one odd rupee but almost double of the previous price – and nobody speaks. And that’s not all. Prices of flour (which is also not available as it once used to be), petrol, gas, and all commodities are sky rocketing – but for a few weak voices and processions, there are no reverberations. Everyone seems to be engrossed into one’s own problems, that one doesn’t have time for the woes of others.

We see people in countless numbers killed by God knows who, and but for a few words of concern, we go on our own ways. The country is facing the worst of fiscal, financial crisis besides natural calamities (we didn’t have rains and are facing drought like situation). We still don’t say anything and don’t even pray for better days. There is no electricity, but instead of exploring alternative means of energy, we are relying more and more on thermal energy that drains our foresight exchange reserves drastically. We don’t have enough water but don’t resort to drip plantation and still lament that we are running dry.

To me it looks like we are finally losing our courage to say what we should be saying – but perhaps lack of everything has sapped our energies to a level that we cannot even speak. Are we finally losing everything?