Upon being reprimanded about wasting food and informed woefully by yours truly about how so many people are deprived of this necessity, my five-year-old innocently inquired if they couldn’t get food, why didn’t they just eat junk food – I was aghast. The French Revolution notably started when one of the princesses gave the solution of the peasants’ starvation by saying, “Let them eat cake”. My daughter, in all her innocence, is like all other upper middle-class children, a parallel of the French princess, which draws us to the question: Do we seriously live in a bubble?   In the midst of abject poverty, overpopulation, child labour, child marriages, bomb blasts, target killings, terrorist attacks and political upheaval, I must admit we have our SOP balls, Voodoo Nights, Club Nights and not to mention, all our delightful concerts, fashion shows and elaborate weddings. Our bubble shuts off all the ills Pakistan has become notorious for, and we thrive in this bubble. And truly, if we haven’t become immune to pain and suffering, we’ve at least learnt to ignore it.

You might wonder if any of us feel even remotely saddened by the events unfolding in front of us these last few years. Yes, I feel sad, very sad when I see the images of fires on television, and charred bodies burnt to a crisp, decapitated torsos lying strewn on the dusty roads, and yes I feel pain for my wounded Pakistan. But I am ashamed to say, like most of the people I know and you know, the pain is quickly forgotten. The new day dawns and we justify to ourselves that we can’t stop living life as normal. It’s sad that amid the mounting attacks and widespread panic, we live in our little nuclear bunker, assuming we are safe.

Daily on the roads there is an increase in the number of wide-eyed, mud streaked faces of little children knocking aggressively on car windows. 40 per cent of urban and 45 per cent of the rural population is under 15 years of age. No wonder the roads are full of innocent, little children hungering for whatever can be given. I feel saintly giving money to one, leftover restaurant food to the other and advice to the third, but does this help them? Or am I merely giving them the French cake?

While the majority of our population hungers for food, we complain about the heat as the air-conditioners do not work to full-capacity due to KESC’s low voltage provision. While the majority’s young ones learn the words “food” and “water”, one of the first words my children learnt was generator. I guess I am to blame for that because as soon as the air conditioner stops running, I make frantic calls to the servant’s quarter to turn on the generator. I am completely dependent on it and I’m ashamed to admit that in case it has to be shut down, I make a trip somewhere or the other, only returning home when it’ll function again. Amidst sixteen hours of load shedding, isn’t that what we all do? Alas, turn on the generator and complain about no electricity. Those in greater distress have two generators and are usually distraught that one generator gets overloaded. The bubble is interesting; we look upon and feel saddened at the state of many deprived of electricity days on end and we share the pain of all our fellow countrymen, but through our air-conditioned glass house. We console ourselves in our nobility that those who do not have generators and live in small quarters with no ventilation in closely-packed dwellings are used to the heat and it does not affect them as much as it troubles us, alas, is anybody used to heat? And we begin again with “Let them have cake.”

Living in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, one thinks one will be treated with the greatest of respect here as Muslim men will behave well with Muslim women. But sadly, on one side we have those preaching religion and raising a fuss over a Shia-Sunni episode in the movie Bol, and on the other side the real “upholders” of our Islamic traditions are parading women naked in villages. First, Mukhtar Mai and now Shahnaz Bibi. We sigh and resume our life in the bubble.

I am not undermining the bubble, mind you. To be honest, I love my bubble, it allows me to function and gives me a security that my country has failed to provide me. But it was precisely this bubble which led to the bloody French Revolution, so dark and gory that till today tales about the guillotine and the excesses of the mob can raise anyone’s hair on end. And this is the only thing which robs me of my sleep at night, the thought that just round the corner, a large pin is waiting to burst my bubble, and it is the moment all of us fear the most, the moment of a social revolution.

When I think about the victims of  the terrorist attacks, the silent cries of those who suffer the injustices of the jirga, the hungry faces and distended bellies of the little ones on violence-plagued streets and the rage of those suffering in the heat with no one to care, I dread the revolution which is just around the corner. A revolution, I in my selfish loneliness, am powerless to stop.

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.