Listening to a podcast about the cultural revolution in China, I was struck by the phrase ‘eating bitterness’. The podcast was about a book written by Tania Branigan who was being interviewed by Sam Leith.
The author described life conditions before the cultural revolution, describing them as severe and harsh. China has made monumental progress since those days. Nonetheless, some of the old guards still remember those times. The author described the condition that people were experiencing and tolerating as eating bitterness. They were, as they say, taking it all lying down. It seemed that they were getting used to their situation.
Pakistanis, it seems, are in a similar mode of national psyche. They are taking it all lying down. They are ‘eating bitterness’ day in and day out. No amount of physical difficulty and mental torture seems to wake them up from their daily routine of TV dramas, and made-to-order political bickering for television screen.
My mother used to advise us not to be so sweet that people would swallow us whole, and not to be too bitter that people would spit us out.
We Pakistanis are eating bitterness and swallowing it whole. Not only we are eating bitterness, we seem to be relishing it.
KHWAJA AHMAD ABBAS
ISLAMABAD
