A crippling start to the New Year
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It is the 1st of January, and as people are still singing and sharing their hopes and resolutions for the new year, Pakistan has registered its first polio case of the year (the number last year was 296).
Was it a coincidence? I'm not sure. I was sitting in my lounge watching 'Animal Planet' on TV when I read this news on my phone. I couldn't help my mind from drifting to all the bizarre things I used to identify with animals; things too irrational for the superior intelligence of humans; but which now didn't seem all too alien from our society at all.
Take, for instance, a guard dog that a friend of mine used to have in our early teens. The dog was, like most of its kind, the loyalest of creatures, but possessed one quirk: every time someone tried to feed it, it would bark at the feeder. Apprehension set in, and resigning to the dog's nature, my friend gradually got into the habit of throwing the dog food from a distance.
We would often laugh at this inanity; only if the dog was a little more intelligent, it would have been able to comprehend how aversive this behaviour was to its own welfare.
But that was long before I grew up and heard all the stories of my countrymen lashing out at the government for initiating schemes like polio vaccination drives, and declaring them conspiracies. Perhaps, biting the hand that feeds isn't restricted to animals, after all.
Also read: Pakistan's first polio case of 2015 reported from Balochistan
There are also other strange things that animals do (as all fans of 'Animal Planet' would know), which I used to differentiate them from human beings, like that peculiar habit of snakes eating their own babies.
As soon as the eggs hatch, the cannibalism follows, and while some baby snakes wriggle away and are spared, most get devoured their own mother, or by other snakes from within their own breed.
The commentators of documentaries dubbed it as a natural process of population control. But how, I wondered, could such cruelty be shown to newborns? And the answer was: Oh that's right, they're animals, they can't be the same as us humans of course.
This illusion, too, was shattered when it sank in that a large segment of our society did not let their own children be administered polio drops. To even fathom clipping the wings of these innocent souls, and then claim it was all predestined — what could be more cruel than that?
Then, there was the story that was hardest to digest. I read it in a children's book once. The synopsis of it was that, a worried scorpion stands at a stream with the intent to cross it, but afraid that he might drown in the cross waves. Sensing this predicament, a turtle offers the scorpion to ride upon its back, so the turtle may carry him across to the other side without so much as the scorpion's feet getting wet.
But as soon as they reach the other side, the scorpion stings the turtle. In excruciating pain, the turtle inquires from the scorpion as to why it had chosen to pay back the favour in such manner. The scorpion replies, "It was in your nature to do good, so you did that. It was in my nature to do bad, so I did that."
The moral was that expecting good from a bad person was a mistake.
This shook me up because it was against the very fundamentals of my own worldview. How could vice be done to the virtuous? Don't selfless endeavours win hearts?
Look through: Polio vaccinator shot dead in Faisalabad, Jundullah claims responsibility
And then, this worldview too, came crashing down when a cousin took me to meet his acquaintance, a doctor in Peshawar. With teary eyes, this doctor, a courageous unsung hero, related the following story.
The doctor was an active member of the polio vaccination drive in Peshawar. His team was wrapping up its work in a locality, when three cars stopped close to them. A person in an Army uniform summoned him, telling him he was needed by a certain officer and would have to go with them to see the officer.
Only when inside the car did he realise, it was the foe and not the friend.
The kidnappers had donned the shade of the Pakistan Army and snared him in. He was kidnapped for being a part of the polio vaccination campaign, and was taken to Afghanistan.
For over a year and a half, the doctor remained a hostage, eventually securing his release by paying his entire life savings as ransom money.
See: ‘Refusal major cause of Balochistan polio cases’
He was lucky, of course, to have gotten away alive. More than forty-five have already been shot down for doing the same duty. It is strange: in the times we live in, losing all your life savings to help others is considered lucky.
All those views and all those beliefs, now stand radically altered after all these years. Perhaps, I now wonder, attacking your benefactor isn't that deviant an act. Perhaps, the scorpion too, was misled by a few traders of faith. And perhaps, it is just in the intrinsic nature of some humans to keep being bad.
As 2015 begins, and the questions of 2014 go by unanswered, I have just one question this year: how much further into the abyss will we go?
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Badar Iqbal is a lawyer. He holds a law degree from BPP University, UK and an engineering degree in Electronic and Communications from Cardiff University. He writes intermittently for various national and international publications.
Find him on twitter @badarchaudhary
