BARREN political landscapes there have been before. But this one, more lunar than earthly, takes the cake. Nothing like it has ever been seen in Pakistan's history before.

We have had dictatorships in the past but none without a strong and lively opposition. Something strange has happened this time. The poverty of dictatorship that we are seeing is about evenly matched by a poverty of democratic inaction. If Pakistan's military saviours are in the dark, no better equipped with clarity and purpose are the putative standard-bearers of democracy.

I have yet to make up my mind what makes me reach faster for my gun: dispiriting pictures of this government at work or tired images of the Muslim League, the PPP and the Grand Democratic Alliance at democratic play. The reformers in this government are enough to make the stoutest heart quail. The politicos crying in the wilderness for some role as political extras would not be hired by a director desperate for free help.

Loonies on the internet (a virulent species which makes one rethink the advantages of progress) advise me to dispense hope, look on the brighter side of things and give this government a chance (as if this government was dependent upon my goodwill, and that of others like me, for its survival). One of my favourite journalists, the sharp-winged Masood Hasan, has also 'suggested' - his suggestion coming with all the gentleness of a mild whiplash - that I should take time out and write about Brahms, Mozart and Russian tigresses.

A sore point he touches because if I were to write of all the Tanias and Lauras I saw and missed during my time in Moscow, my tale of lamentation would be loud and long. Since he talks of Russian tigresses, has he ever encountered one? To the wise man who takes his pleasures as they come, let me say only this: he who has not experienced the bracing climate of old Muscovy has seen nothing.

But, granted, Masood has a point. One should be cheerful. If anyone can believe me, I want to be cheerful. Only for this reason do I look kindly upon the varied products meant for domestic consumption and export of that famous enterprise in northern Punjab, Murree Brewery. But, leaving my humility aside, can anyone please tell me what on the national scene is there to be so cheerful about?If anyone's idea of fun is General Aziz, Javed Jabbar, General Moinuddin Haider or the shenanigans passing for accountability under the aegis of the National Accountability Bureau, I can only say this is an acquired taste and, in the nature of things, takes time to be shared with the same avidity by everyone else. We can of course close our eyes to what is happening and hope that in the end everything turns out for the best. For such optimism there is a lot to be said. If things are not to be changed they must be endured (a piece of wisdom every girl learns as she grows older). In God's good time everything passes. The statue of every Ozymandias in the end lies in the dust. But of what consolation is this to the living?

In the whole of Faiz I have found nothing more fatuous than that refrain, to which the liberati start dancing, that a time will come when crowns will roll in the dust. That prospect of future retribution leaves me cold. If crowns in the dust will make me happy (of which I am doubtful because with my advancing years I have come to like the trappings of monarchy) I would like to see them roll before my eyes.

As for Mozart, Brahms and Russian tigresses, all these are spurs to movement and action, not quiet aids to resignation and endurance. Mozart, I concede, blows no loud trumpets. But Brahms? At his finest he is a summons to action, indeed in the same league with Beethoven and Wagner. Listen to anything stirring in the concert hall and you want to be up and about, your feet ready to stamp, your hands eager to clasp a banner. To be sure, there are quiet, meditative pieces in the best music, slow movements and funeral marches in Beethoven and Wagner that are full of introspection and sorrow. But listen carefully and you will note that even in the quietest pieces there is a hint of action, a warning of thunderbolts yet to strike.

If quiet and resignation is what one is seeking then far better to turn to the solace of our own subcontinental music. Indeed ever since being able to visit India in March whence I brought back a load of lilting stuff, I have listened to nothing but the great Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan, Malikarjun Mansur, Pandit Kumar Gandharva, and the sweet and irresistible Kishori Amonkar. This is not vain name-dropping. Only an attempt to show what in this country we miss.

If it had been always like this there would have been no regrets. But it was not. I have it on the authority of the Urdu columnist Abdul Qadir Hasan that when the great Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was still here in Pakistan, of an evening he would fortify himself with a few of the best, or what was available, and come down to the Lahore railway station where he would walk up and down the length of the platform quietly humming a tune to himself. What wouldn't it be worth to have this scene revisited? But the great Ustad did not remain for long in the cultural desert that we made of our land. When the opportunity beckoned he fled away.

Since March not once have I listened to the great western masters. Somehow they do not answer to the mood created by our present band of Kemalist reformers. After reading the morning papers, an increasingly irksome chore, and after doing this or that on my computer screen, I seek forgetfulness and oblivion, not in any wine that Ghalib would recognize but, in the instruments and voices of our own music - music once as much ours as anyone else's but now dead to us just as so much else that was fine and redeeming in our lives is also dead.

Politics does not exist in a vacuum. It is beaten into shape by a host of things, foremost among them a people's sense or experience of culture. If in the collective existence of a people there is no culture - no rhythm, no poetry, no music - how on earth can there be balance and proportion - the pre-requisites of democracy - in their political life? Right at the beginning of Plato's Republic, one of the persons taking part in the conversation says about inherited property that it is a great blessing for its possessor because it frees him from want. In Pakistan we have stood this principle upon its head. Amongst us not the poor but the most rich have been the most greedy. For someone suffering from want to be a thief is understandable - at least up to a point. But for the chosen of Mammon, which is the case with our governing class (whether dressed in khaki or mufti), to follow the same path shows nothing so much as a basic want of culture.

Why then bemoan the absence of inspiring figures in our midst? Given the climate that prevails across our land, we can only get the yahoos we see on the national stage. No point in naming names. Run a thick comb, forget about a fine one, through the serried ranks of the national leadership and what will you get? Dandruff, oily matter and other decaying stuff. We keep saying we are a nation of 140 million souls as if numbers alone can confer greatness upon a nation. We forget to add that the foremost qualities of this mass of humanity are philistinism and illiteracy and, lest our manhood be questioned, an unrivalled talent for reproduction.

Do I exaggerate? Possibly. But then, pray, point out to me the outstanding individuals who lend lustre to our fair land: the artists, musicians, men of letters, or even gymnasts or athletes, who can give company to the Immortals. Or if this be too severe a test, let us run another one. Who are the most prominent Pakistanis these days? Professor Oppenheimer aka Dr A. Q. Khan with his gift for self-promotion and publicity. His Holiness the President, Rafiq Ahmed Tarar. Certainly the Redeemer himself. At a stretch a few faceless generals and a few nondescript ministers. And, sobering thought, the traders' leader, Umar Sailya, and the most successful national politician currently on offer, Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry of Azad Kashmir, who has already seen off two prime ministers and is now into his third Pakistani government. Name me any others and I will stand educated.

We should still be cheerful. No quarrelling with this. But there is no harm in realizing at the same time that cheerfulness in these circumstances requires all the stoicism of a Roman army.