⏱ Estimated reading time: 4 min read
Sigmund Freud once said, “Emotions that are not expressed never die; they are buried alive and resurface later in more tragic forms.” If you want to know about our society, take a look at the works of poets like Ghalib, Mir, Daagh, Jigar, Joon, Parveen, Wasi, and not to mention some Pashto poets. Much of their poetry delves into themes of lost love, attachment, separation, unspoken emotions, longing, and regret.
If you still have some confusion about our generation’s tendencies, check the statistics on Google, and you’ll find Pakistan at the top of the list for porn site visits, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa topping the list in Pakistan.
Travel from Khyber to Karachi, and even if a woman in a Shuttlecock burqa passes by, the men around her will stare until she disappears around the corner. Their eyes will follow her the way a lion’s eyes follow a deer.
Try talking to anyone, if you become close, they will start talking about women’s body shape and beauty. If somehow, you got into a bad situation with him, you’ll hear vulgar insults about mothers and sisters after every few sentences.
Listen to religious preachers and scholars, and you’ll hear about the moral decline of women. The discussion would revolve around the body shape of Huriss, the number of women going to hell because they did not dress in a particular way or went outside without a mahram, and the men who will have beautiful wives in Jinnat.
Watch Pakistani dramas, and read novels, digests, and movies, and you’ll find them revolving around love affairs, Talaqs, and scandals. While we ban Hollywood films, we allow stage dramas to be filled with vulgarity and more.
Read the daily newspaper, and you’ll come across stories of sexual violence—whether it’s against women, children, or even corpses. You will read stories about A being killed by B because of loving C. There’s no mention of scientific documentaries, life on Mars, or robots. Discussions on Nietzsche, Russell, or Einstein are nowhere to be found.
Imagine that after centuries of contemplation, we have built an ideal society based on our golden traditions and values, where a man is expected to gather degrees, secure a job, own a house, a car, and a bank balance before considering marriage, meaning he should remain single for most of his life. Meanwhile, girls bear the burden of dowries.
If sexual satisfaction is a fundamental human need, and if this need isn’t met, people struggle to focus on creative work and remain mentally disturbed, why do we refuse to acknowledge this reality?
How long will we continue to produce poets, lovers, and sorrowful generations instead of innovators like Newton, Einstein, and Bill Gates? How long will we force our youth to spend two days in desire and two in waiting? What science or psychology of the world will deem this society correct? Who are we trying to deceive? Whom are we lying to? What kind of life system restricts the expression and fulfillment of basic human needs, leading to nothing but suffocation?
When all doors for truth and reality are closed, everything still exists, and reality still haunts us, but we hide behind a veil of hypocrisy, where everyone claims to be angelic, and genuine humanity is nowhere to be found. We must admit that a hypocritical society only engages in self-deception and reaps its own consequences. Manto showed us that in such a society, suppressing one’s desires is considered a great virtue. Freud was right: “Emotions that are not expressed never die; they are buried alive and resurface later in more tragic forms.”
