Spoiled for Choice

It’s tough being a moderately well-off Pakistani millennial.  Little do you know that if you’re seemingly fortunate enough to go to one of the top universities in the country – like LUMS or IBA (inserting IBA after LUMS with a benevolent smile on my obnoxious face, because if I genuinely believed both institutes to be equal, would I even be a real Luminite?) then you’re actually setting yourself up for a lifetime of excruciating decision making.  Life becomes  really hard – choices open up like randomly labelled doors in front of us with little indication about what any of them will lead to: Behind Door No. 1 is FURTHER EDUCATION, and behind Door No. 2 is a JOB YOU MAY BE HALF QUALIFIED FOR ...

Come to think of it, life after college pretty much involves a dilemma after every 1-2 years.  Do I still like this job? Am I being paid enough? Why am I still in Pakistan when half my friends and cousins are already in Dubai – or, even better, in the Western World paradises of America and Canada? The thought of permanence, of not doing better, of missing out, plagues our comfortable life, turning the pleasant present into a fitful, conflicted obsession with the future.

 

I remember thinking just a year into a very interesting job as a sub-editor – is this my life for good now? And finding the foreverness of it so terrifying I ended up studying for my GRE and going to the much coveted US for my Masters.

After the next degree, however, you still end up at ‘Go’ with the same old choice – Pakistan or anywhere else in the world that offers a non-green passport and a perfect life? 

Our generation (referring to a very small, very privileged and loud minority in the country) grew up with a helpful note in our pockets that we took out in our late teens to read the title out loud: ‘Reasons why Pakistan is not good enough’.  Pollution, traffic, crime, and how nobody ever makes a proper line for paying gas and electricity bills (which 85% of us have never actually stood in because we get the cook or the guard or the neighbour’s boy to go pay) and corruption everywhere (surprisingly the note never mentioned our own contribution to any kind of corruption – I mean, is littering, or breaking a red light or not paying your tax really such a big deal?).  P.S. Even if you eventually want to live in Pakistan, spend the better part of your 30s-40s getting citizenship elsewhere just as a Plan B you know. 

Because you’re so likely to move back after spending 15 years of your life in a different country, where you have a 30-year mortgage, children in public schools juggling two cultures and trying to shrug off your customs and beliefs which they don’t understand but which you continue to slip in quietly (in the best case scenario) onto their shoulders and around their necks every opportunity you get.

I wonder how unique this desire to escape your own country is – do people in other countries have a similar note in their pockets? Is it just the privileged classes in developing countries?

We’ve become so used to living scattered lives, sometimes I forget that there are actually people who grow up and spend their entire lives in the country – even the same city – that they were born in.  How does it feel to have your parents and all your siblings within a 200-mile radius? I bet they take it for granted.  Just like British/Australian/European people take their passports for granted.  Just like moderately well-off Pakistani millennials take their choice of Pakistan-or-Abroad for granted.

It is like the first time you go to an American supermarket and your eyes nearly pop out of your head at the sight of ALL THOSE TYPES OF BREAD! I mean in Pakistan you have like three or four, and really the fourth one is too expensive so actually just three.  Suddenly, deciding which bread to buy has become a much harder decision, and even as you pay for it at the counter, you keep thinking ... did you make the right choice? Was multigrain with pumpkin seeds better than the oat-dusted loaf you just got?

I think our generation is cursed/blessed with too many choices, which means that we are forever doubting ourselves and wondering if we’re walking down the right path and thinking, what if we had done the other thing.  Was it a better – or maybe not better, but more content life (is a more content life automatically a better life?) – for the generations that had pretty much only one path in life so they weren’t constantly looking over their shoulders?

I wonder about our generation’s state of constant confusion and worrying about ‘making the right decision for our future’.  The fear of missing out the opportunity to complete an immigration process, or more specific to our situation in the next two years – of not seizing the opportunity to spend another five years in a pleasant but quite gray country to establish a decent academic career and of course, gain the golden ‘citizenship’. 

It is hard to explain my wariness with this conviction that having another residency/passport is the ULTIMATE GOAL in life that promises happiness and a brighter future not just for us but our unborn children.  I mean, it is quite possible that is does lead to an increased amount of satisfaction.  But then it is also quite possible that you may get a significant share of happiness living in a country where you can visit your parents’ house and tell your mum that you’re really craving maash ki daal and parathas,  where your children grow up with their aunts, uncles and grand aunts and uncles around them, where the summers get really hot and your children can run shrieking in the garden as you spray water at them from a garden hose, where you’ll never be too timid to argue with someone who cuts in line or bullies someone frail in front of you (in a bank, shop or bus), where the mangoes will always be the sweetest and the rainstorms with their intoxicating earthy smells and purple lightning a source of magic.

Life isn’t perfect anywhere, and that’s so important to realise.  It might be hard to quantify the pros and cons of living (as a brown Muslim-looking individual) in, say a rural town in America with those of living in a big city like London, or a smaller one back home like Islamabad and comparing them all, but the truth of it all is, we’re a pretty privileged class.

Yes, we might miss out on a fantastic job opportunity in Manchester in the year 2025 if we end up going back to Pakistan, but we won’t be (God willing) relegated to a miserable life in a mud-shack with no access to water or electricity.  For all the Western world delights we might give up on – orderly traffic, less (or no!) paperwork for visas and better quality air – we would get a horde of other benefits, more time with parents, the deliciously calm waves of Hawk's Bay in December, chicken tikka with imli ki chutney, the comfort of knowing you are closer to elderly relatives... 

I guess that is what irks me about this present-day obsession.  The irrational fear that life in Pakistan will be so much worse than what we might have abroad – that’s not my experience in life so far and I get it that it comes from a place of extreme privilege, but that is no reason to not acknowledge it.  Life in Pakistan can be very, very satisfying, comfortable and at the same time, fulfilling – I loved working in a great non-profit that made a tangible difference to thousands of people’s lives.  I love the idea of going back to a house near my parents (or parents-in-law), of being able to drive again without having to worry about annoying driving tests that I may or may not pass, of being able to afford domestic help again, of being in neighbourhoods where I see people (I cannot get used to how eerily empty English neighbourhoods are.  So many houses and so many cars but hardly any human beings to be seen) milling around, of the incredible food, of being there for my parents and having them there for me, of meeting friends without whom we’re just parts of a puzzle rather than whole pictures.

We might not end up doing this (because while it is my Plan A, it is Fahad’s Plan B) but that’s okay.  Because in either case, life will have its gray days and wet roads and horribly bland food and chicken tikka masala that tastes very wrong, but it will also have beautifully blue skies, orange trees and scones with fresh jam and clotted cream. 

I wonder how the brain and heart will feel if we rid ourselves of this great fear of missing out and perhaps just settle down into the present, take a deep breath and just enjoy a cup of good, strong tea.