Past few months haven’t been easy on us Pakistanis. A lot has been going on in the political as well as economic sphere, and to add to the misery, the frequently occurring terrorist activities have suffocated a common citizen like me. I am neither a political activist nor any party affiliate. I’m just an ordinary citizen who is victimized and manipulated time and again by the media, political leaders and various institutions. Well, this is not a political blog so I’m not going to worry you with the matters of the state. But point here is that living in this part of the world; every day is a struggle between life and death. I mean who’d have thought in their wildest dreams that they’ll go out for a normal day to day shopping and will end up being dead or severely injured in the Peshawar market blast. Sometimes I think if there was to be a vulnerability calculating machine, we’d have definitely achieved the highest figures. Well yes, I know we wouldn’t have. This is another problem. Considering that there are countries which are in worse situation than us; it gives us little right to complain. But there are two standards of comparison, we can either look at the developed countries and mourn at our state or look at countries like Nigeria and Somalia, and try feeling better about ourselves. For me, the standard of comparison has always been the former, so I’m always seen criticizing my country, and well, I won’t be stopping anytime soon.

Anyway, this wasn’t something I wanted to blog about. There’s an additional misery in our lives, and that’s illness and diseases. Recently one my friends died of Swine Flu. Honestly speaking, I had never taken any news about swine flu seriously. For me it had always been like, angraizoun ki bemari, and a result of their own karma. Obviously, what else am I supposed to think when I grew up listening to people say that even uttering the word PIG is considered haraam! And I guess I wasn't the only one; terming it as the disease of non –Muslims, the government officials ignored the precaution to be taken in the spread of this deadly disease. And according to an official release, 10 people including seven women died of swine flu in the country amongst which one of them was my friend.

She was my classmate, my best friend in school and a very happy-go-lucky person. She had gotten married about 10 months ago and was expecting since the last 5 months. I hear people say that pregnant women are four times more likely to be affected by this flu as compared to a normal person. I have stories to tell about this friend of mine, I’ve spent a good childhood with her, we were almost like family friends, but I’m not going to add any of this here right now; I’m just emotionally drained.
Rest in peace, my friend.