The Challenge
Uploaded by javedrashid on May 15, 2012
Hasan professed to believe in no religion, he had a hazy idea that being a “good" person was more important than being a good Muslim. Muslim elite and middle class response to freedom, from colonial rule, was initially to equate “liberal” morals as a sign of modernity. Drinking, sex outside marriage, having permissible attitudes towards sex all were used as symbols of modernism. Comics were used as signs of belonging to the progressive modern group. Smoking cigarettes also came under the same iconology. All “in” people were supposed to smoke and drink and have liberal attitudes towards sex and subscribe to Archie’s life style. He did not bother to understand his religion at all.
Partition and the creation of a new country brought about the cruelest of materialist societal structure. Corruption was the norm and very soon nothing got done without graft. This seemed to be the fate of most newly independent states. The early days of independence, and for that matter the latter periods, brought about wide corruption on small and large scale, with involvement of the governing elite and the common man. Corruption therefore soon became an accepted and necessary part of the social structure, greasing of palms became essential for any thing to get moving. Hasan and his like abhorred this corrupt state of society, they did believe in ‘fair play’ and progress by hard work, these were idealistic and un pragmatic thoughts of an ineffective and powerless elite.
Hasan drifted along in his less than half baked notions, he accepted little responsibility and had little concept of money. His father, a reasonably rich man, provided a comfortable living and Hasan could maintain his detracted superior existence without doing too much.
Hasan’s serene trouble free existence underwent a serious somersault. His father fell seriously sick. He was hospitalized and after extensive tests, his ailment was diagnosed as cancer of the lungs.
Hasan loved his father and he spent most of his time in the hospital, looking after his father. This required that he spend nights and a large part of the day in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Hasan, in the six months his father lived, witnessed quite a few losing their battle and succumbing to the icy clutches of death. These deaths and the subsequent demise of his father caused a lot a grief but it also seriously disturbed Hasan’s...