40
It’s been a tough few weeks but I am not one to complain. Or at least, I have been trying my damnedest not to.
The 100-kg bomb that took down the CID building and killed at least 15 people in Karachi on November 11 also shattered a glass door in my home. Did I wail and rant? No. Like a good sport I calmly cleared away the spiky shards while offering my sincerest thanks to the Almighty that no one in the house was hurt.
A week before that I got caught in a freak traffic jam at Do Talwaar (seriously, who ever heard of a traffic jam at Do Talwaar?). It was getting dark and the cretin driving behind me was clearly of the belief that he should not have to wait patiently like the rest of us mortals. So with horns blaring and headlights flashing, he forced his way through, inflicting injury to my poor car as he did so. Other than giving the offender a futile angry glare, what could I do? Complain to the traffic policeman on duty? Ha, ha. Good one.
But this, this grievous situation that I have recently become aware of – the details of which I am about to present before you – really beats them all. Some will say I am making a mountain out of a molehill. But say what you will, I see it as the last and final straw that will in the not-so-distant future, break the camel’s back. The camel in this case being Pakistani society as we know it. And if that isn’t an occasion to react strongly, then I don’t know what is.
The case is this: A young woman – we will call her Meena – has passed her intermediate exams and must now choose her next education/career goal. She has always wanted to become a doctor. Or if she was being completely honest, she would admit that it is her father has always wanted her to become a doctor, but since the young lady is of the same mind it counts as practically the same thing.
Thanks to her strong overall marks, Meena is able to gain admission into a prestigious, state-owned medical college in Karachi which counts the names of many capable and well-known doctors and surgeons, both men and women, among its alumni.
That’s the good news.
This very same young woman has also recently become engaged to be married in the near future.
Which, I suppose, is also good news. Some might consider her too young to marry, but among the majority in our country that really is the norm. After all, how else are we to maintain our single greatest national achievement: our spectacular birthrate?
But you see the problem with the timing of these two happy events in Meena’s life is this:
We are a poorly-run country with an even more poorly-run and badly-funded public education sector. There are only a handful of decent, state-run professional colleges to which the great majority of the population can afford to send their daughters and sons. Due to the limited number of places available in these colleges and the ever-increasing demand for them, there is more than considerable competition to gain admittance into them. So if at the time of admission you are fairly certain that you lack either the opportunity or ability to go the whole nine yards, the decent thing to do is leave the precious seat to a more committed and deserving candidate.
Fury. Protest. Mayhem. How dare I presume that Meena will not continue to attend college after she is married! Aren’t more and more Pakistani women achieving success in their careers while also raising families? This does not have to be an either or situation; she can have both.
It’s true, today it has become more common to see Pakistani women balance both career and marriage then it was even one generation ago. But the fact is that Meena is not one of them.
How can she be when her mother is notifying anyone who dares to ask that whether or not her daughter completes her education depends solely on the will of Allah (implying that the issue of her marriage depends on the will of her mother?).
Meanwhile Meena’s father, who came up with the idea of medical school in the first place, declares that although he would still like his daughter to get an MBBS, ‘I won’t allow her to hold a job. That’s not the purpose.’
Oh really? Then what, pray tell, IS the purpose of a professional degree if not to actually have a profession?
And Meena? How upset is she? She must be fighting this tooth and nail.
The truth is that right now the only nails she is concerned about are the ones for which she must choose coloured varnish to wear on the occasion of her intended’s next visit. What of her dream of becoming a doctor? ‘Haan, I will go to college for as long as I can. Mujhe shauq to hai …magar…’ Yeah, we get the picture. You go girl.
Heaven forbid, I am not arguing that women should be barred from attending professional colleges or admitted only under the strictest conditions. Because there are also a high percentage of men who have earned medical degrees for the sole purpose of obtaining a notable document to frame and hang up on their living room wall.
Dr Salman Ahmed, or SufiSal as he is also known, is a notable absconder. He graduated from King Edward Medical College only to embark on a grand project to fuse Sufi verse with modern rock and produce….errr…produce….well, you know what.
So basically the ones we have managed to save from the brain drain to North America, the UK and Australia, are jumping ship for marriage and showbiz. As a country that is so shockingly short of medical professionals – the estimated doctor-patient ratio in urban areas is1:100, in rural areas it is as high as 1:600-900, and for every specialist there are 14,000 patients – that really is the very last thing we need.
So mountain or molehill? You tell me…
*Illustration by Faraz Aamer Khan/Dawn.com
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
