NEW Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a blunt critic of the president and a key Romney ally, produced a glowing character reference for Obama. The praise from Christie, who is mentioned as the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate should Romney lose, represented the kind of publicity that a campaign, for all the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on it, simply cannot buy (Oct 31).

While storm Sandy is still pounding and causing destruction, all Americans are talking about rebuilding. The media is not calling their people the affected ones. Instead they are being called survivors.

If we think for a while we will realise that there is a difference between the mentality of an affected person and a survivor.

Surviving Americans are not complaining against their civic authorities and their government.

A news video clip showed people stranded on their rooftops smiling and waving at media teams. There is a positive sense all around. The people who have lost their loved ones, their businesses, their properties and their total belongings, you still don’t see them crying.

A colleague of mine commented that ‘goras’ do not cry and this is so very true.

We all saw how Pakistanis cried, wept and wailed after the earthquake and the floods. While they have learned to control their emotions, we have not done anything in this direction.

By controlling their emotions they use their brains better like naming their devastated people as survivors while we call them affected people. Survivors fight out against odds and rise while in our case we are not willing to stand up without external support.

We, the fortunate and the educated ones, have to learn to control our emotions. When we do so, we will not only become a positive bunch of people but we will also be able to help the less fortunate and the uneducated come to terms with such calamities and minor irritants alike.

S. NAYYAR IQBAL RAZA Karachi