GROWING UP IN PAKISTAN WITH AMERICAN LEGENDS
FASCINATING WORLD OF COWBOYS, INDIANS AND DETECTIVES

Nothing parochial about Pakistan with universal view sight

The One thousand and one nights is our fascination of the past story telling in full depth. Alif Laila tales are those we grew up with craze in our mothers laps. Then we graduated to comics and there were plenty to choose from at book stalls. For those of us who could not afford to buy all new stuff, there were second hand vendors to satisfy us with expenditure of few annas at one given time. And then we shifted to Western novels, and the dream of riding the sunset into a new town of bandits with our six-guns intact at all times. The yippie of the Wild Red Indian would be behind us. Not contented with that we jumped to Detective novels and there was no better spin master than Mickey Spillane himself. Yes we went further into a world of Carpetbaggers with Harold Robbins or absorb the failure the American dream with Norman Mailer. And finally could suck the world with Robert Frost and the Road not Taken. We traversed this journey with an open mind and heart. Contrary to the hulla balloo of today, we loved Americans and American outpours.

Who can fault the Idealism of the American Constitution? It moves even those who cannot be moved by mere words. Read George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln and you move into a world where human values are cherished as ends to their own self. You had thousands of people from different cultures enter the United States of America to become the melting pot of the world. And then the Neo-cons took control of the American values. Imperialism invaded America. It made Field Marshal Ayub Khan speak of the USA in terms of FRIENDS NOT MASTERS. The American people lost track and control of those who governed America, The sacredness of the American Constitution was questioned by the Neo-Cons and they tended to flout it all the time.

It is actually for the Americans to realize that vested lobbies have taken over the American dream and made it into an international inferno. Bring American values to America. Even the Americans have no control over America. The democratic process is no longer in their hands. Satan is destroying all of us from within. The Islamic Ideal of World Peace is all that is there to follow.