We don’t know what gratitude means anymore; we have forgotten to say ‘thank you’. Do we not need to thank the traffic policeman who, despite the polluted environment, stands in the middle of the road serving us silently?

Enter 2009: the whole world is convicting us without a trial. We have not held our heads high in recent months.

We are tired of deriving inspiration from the Quaid’s heroics or from the footage of Imran Khan holding aloft the 1992 World Cup.

This glory is so distant that it seems of someone else’s… of a different nation.

A country is not sustained by empty sloganeering. It is built with bliss and contentment its people feel for being what they are. Everything flows from there. Right now we have become faceless. We do not know if we would like to be Pakistanis.

Optimism cannot be built with money. It requires character. At times one act is enough. It is such an easy thing to give if you are a genuine leader. You lift an arm and the people will reverberate with enthusiasm. You voice a truth loudly, and the blood is purified across a populace. Such leaders can bring change and instill motivation more efficiently than others. But that can only happen if the people at the helm set immortality as their goal.

The media can also contribute. There are everyday heroes that exist around us. Our media needs to discover them and project them as our pride. Why cannot they devote a talk show to an underpaid fireman who saved lives when Ghukkar Plaza collapsed? I really want to hear what music he likes, what he eats at dinner, and what made him so selfless.

Will the media’s obsession with international movie stars ever end? You have to watch Alif Noon or Tanhaayyan to know what high quality entertainment we once produced. It has all been forgotten to accommodate Katrina Kaif’s dances. Our literature is so rich it can dazzle the whole world.

We are becoming an indifferent nation. We don’t know what gratitude means anymore; we have forgotten to say ‘thank you’. Do we not need to thank the traffic policeman who, despite the polluted environment, stands in the middle of the road serving us silently? Or the driver who smiles and lets your vehicle go past his? ‘Thank you’ just does not come out of our mouths. Try saying it and you would feel enriched.

I was in Cambodia a month ago. I was surprised to see how they have transformed their war-torn country into a tourist attraction. In the small city of Siem Reap where the biggest religious monument Angkor temple is located, there’s a chain of hotels, and tourists were freely bicycling around the town. Neat markets reminded me of what once Tollinton of Lahore used to look like.

In Thailand, hardly any local can speak proper English but they communicate through ‘tradition’. It is by taking pride in their tradition that they make the world come to them. A cruise down the Chao Phraya River is a trip through the ancient world of temples and statues on either side, lit up in surreal lights. You don’t need any language to enjoy the timeless trip.

It is all out there in our own country -- the history, the archeological sites, the everyday heroes -- but lack of national pride has made us blind. We need to think using our own minds, live our own lives, fight our own wars, wear our own clothes and value our own scenic beauty.

The other day I saw a beautiful diary containing pictures of Pakistan’s natural and historical sites. There are so many places I have not seen. I want to go there. They are essentially mine. The diary has a picture of the Saiful Maluk lake. And you immediately see the glimpse of paradise. Its magnificence is sensuous. Had it been in Thailand or in any other country, the whole economy of the country would have been built around this piece of heaven.

While the world is facing recession, our economy does not have any shop with a banner lamenting ‘going out of business’. The world’s banks have sunk; ours are resilient and inherently sturdy.

We produce course yarn-based exports and the chances are that these products will remain in demand even during global recession. Hey, the mist of bleakness is already thinning.

We just need that one act of moral courage from the top that could allow our bodies to produce optimism like antibodies and return us healthy. (Is it not true that a shoe-throwing act of defiance has woken up the whole world?)

This time round it could be selling of a piece of personal property by our leaders to rehabilitate Bajuar refugees or Balochistan earthquake victims. Even a token gesture of sacrifice from the top can work wonders.

Hope is nothing but character and courage. If you have these two traits, no country can ever be in despair.

Let us invite hope to return to our land.