THIS is the title of a short poem by Faiz in which he says that in his life he did a bit of work and made some love but because his attention was split he turned out to be a failure both in work and love. Accordingly: Aakhir tang aakar, donon ko adhoora chorh diya (in the end, getting tired of it all, left both half-done).

This has been the story of my life too: a victim of dreams and vague yearnings, now trying one thing and now another and in the process piling up few successes and a string of failures. And yet, this being the important thing, not drawing any lesson from my follies. Even now as I approach my 50th year I am far from being the 'magnanimous man' of whom Aristotle says he should have "a slow step...a deep voice and a level utterance." In many things I remain a fool and even now a pretty dress or a well-turned ankle, to put it no stronger than this, is enough to ensure the crumbling of what little poise I possess.

I pen these confessions for no other reason than to make a feeble point. And it is this: that in the singular inability to draw any lessons from my past I find a remarkable affinity between myself and my country. When in a harsh mood with myself over the waste of my life, I derive perverse comfort from the knowledge that entities greater than myself have also made a bonfire of their opportunities.

What puts me in this maudlin strain this morning (the sky outside being of the same cast as my humour) is the news from Karachi where the high court judge hearing the so-called hijacking case against Nawaz Sharif and his co-accused has, in a fit of pique or a state of distress, sent the case back to the junior court where it was originally being heard.

Now there will be more lawyers' arguments and the government will be drawn further into this legal net. While this was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, it is now more than three months old already with some of the preliminary stages still to be cleared.

In some respects if not all, this case is reminiscent of Bhutto's trial more than 20 years ago. The years seem to make no difference to the set patterns of our history: the exercise of arbitrary power by one ruler followed by the vindictiveness of those who come after him. Before we talk of making Pakistan a shining model of progress we should at least learn how to manage an orderly transition of power. I deliberately did not say a 'constitutional' transition because abiding by the spirit of the Constitution somehow seems beyond our wildest capabilities.

Compounding the military government's problems is its attempt to sit on two stools at the same time. It is a military government in all but name and therefore quite capable of being ruthless when it perceives its real or imagined interests to be threatened. Yet at the same time it is fiddling with open courts and a free press. Long may this contradiction last (for if it does not I at least will be out of a job) but in the plane hijacking case this contradiction is giving the government a headache. As time passes, it might cause further problems elsewhere.

That Nawaz Sharif was a high-flying figure of limited ability who yet dreamt of being Prince Salim and the Emperor Shahjahan rolled into one is something easily granted. But he has been deposed and from the heights of power flung into the depths of Landhi prison. The Greeks, contemplating this, would say this was tragedy enough. Obviously our sense of justice is keener than that of the Greeks because time and again we have proved that driving a fox into his hole is not enough and that hunting honour is not satisfied unless the fox is torn limb from limb in an orgy of blood.

If there were corruption cases against Nawaz Sharif it would have been more worthwhile from the military's point of view to pursue them and go a bit easy on the hijacking case which, far from being a national issue, is beginning to look too much like a Musharraf vs Sharif standoff. But in its hurried wisdom the army has put everything on this case and now that it is running into difficulties the army leadership's attention is bound to be distracted from other things.

On the morning after October 12 there was a clear choice before the army: (1) to assume the burden of government and in due course sink into the mud like previous incarnations of the military spirit or (2) to perform a quick act of surgery, cut its losses and leave it to the political process to mop up the blood from the floor and get on with the business of restoring the country to the constitutional path.

The first was the easy and ready-to-hand option; the second required a keen sense of judgment. True to our collective worth, the first option was chosen and the second not even considered and this is why, instead of soaring like the eagle and seeing things in totality from a distance, the country's new rulers are stuck with their noses to the ground, involved in the nitty-gritty of everyday things. If this were a command and staff exercise those opting for this solution would have had some tough explaining to do.

But this is the real thing and not a mock exercise on a sand table and its tragedy is that any explaining will come later while the price of failure and confusion will be paid by the nation. When the Ayubs, the Zia-ul-Haqs, the Marcoses and Suhartos sit in state on their thrones they are immune from any questions. When they depart into the shades of history - with some of them as loaded with gold as the pharaohs used to be on entering their tombs - the wreckage they leave behind has to be cleared up by others. Often it is so great it has to be left where it is, poisoning both the soil and the atmosphere. Are we doomed to repeat this cycle for sins committed in an earlier life?

As an MPA in Punjab when Shahbaz Sharif was master of all he surveyed, I sometimes was invited to high-level meetings where the Punjab strongman (always very nice to me) used to ask my opinion about sundry subjects usually connected with law and order. Shahbaz was addicted to meetings and to setting up task forces for every subject under the sun. Once or twice I could not help telling him that he should take time out to sit by himself in the evening, lean his head back and try to see things in perspective. Whether he took my advice or not is beside the point. Apart from men of real worth, most of us, when caught in a rush, are unable to see the wood for the trees.

Commanding the Pakistan army, one might have supposed, was a full-time job. But from Ayub Khan onwards, a succession of army commanders have obviously thought otherwise. Which is why like Faiz's lover they have done a bit of this and a bit of that and ended by doing nothing well at all.

The situation is not much different today. General Musharraf too is in a rush: meetings, foreign visits, governance, reform, accountability, Sattar's strange obsession with the CTBT and, in the midst of this confusion, trying to set, with the assistance of an inept team, a direction for his regime.

To move beyond the sphere of municipal administration and the removal of encroachments, twin activities to which the new order has taken with great zest, the military government must have a political plan. But it has none or at least none in sync with reality. At the same time, it is afflicted with a strong sense of infallibility which prevents it from thinking in terms of an orderly withdrawal. So, despite appearances, it is stuck on the same spot with the nation too condemned to mark time as it watches with tired eyes a familiar drama being repeated one more time.

Apology: Last week I put my foot in my mouth by saying Hindus and Muslims were two distinct "races" which was a sad and inappropriate choice of words. For this very sorry.