Daily Diary (DD) - Day 259 of 2018

1924hrs:

My health has deteriorated in the past few days and yesterday it took a turn for the worse. What began as flu (from eating a peach that had spent much of its life in refrigeration) gradually became a fever and now involves a lot of coughing and phlegm. Apart from that peach, eating food every day in the bazaar of Rawalakot for the past 3 months has finally taken its toll. The weather has also shifted from mild to cold corresponding to my illness. I'm fighting it like I fight everything else that obstructs my path to re-activating human civilisation in AJK.

There are a lot of things to catch up on but here's a note written by a member of the Pakistani diaspora on Pakistan, which I found to be very honest and probing:

Read R Yousufzai (خان)'s answer to Will overseas Pakistanis begin moving back to Pakistan if living conditions improve with Imran Khan in power? on Quora

For those of you still not interested in reading the avove note, here was my response to it:

The most enlightened confirmation of Pakistani society that I’ve heard from a Pakistani, possibly ever. So much so that I’m going to share this text on my blog.

Meanwhile, Mahmood Ahmed Musafir managed to get an audience at the Islamabad Press Club yesterday, after all. At a cost of 30,000 PK rupees (almost £200) which was scrambled from the local citizens of Kotli. Nobody from the AJK diaspora contributed, as yet. Imagine if a poor person or people without any access to a potential pool of donors wanted to inform the media of something that related to genuine public interest in Pakistan. Where do they go? Isn't the criteria money after all? Not genuine public interest? How does 'Naya' (new) Pakistan differ from the old one?



Despite holding a press conference at the risk of foregoing one of his kidneys as collateral for the huge expense involved, there appears to be no Pakistani TV coverage of his issue whatsoever and little to no coverage in the press either. In some senses, I feel more sorry for the State of Pakistan than I do for Mahmood Ahmed Musafir.

The paucity of economic opportunity in Pakistan is astounding.

What a pitiable plight for a nation so keen on expansionism over the past 70 years.