It is a strange paradox that some problems that don’t affect at all the lives of a common person are so much magnified and highlighted that many other important and absolutely relevant problems settle and disappear in their background. In fact, this has also been an effective and successful political trick that whenever politicians try to divert the attention of masses from a very necessary matter, they highlight another problem in a way that all the attention of public is beamed on it and the actual matter is neglected and gradually, the dust of time settles to wipe it out of their minds and in this way, a problem is solved by wiping it instead of resolving it. These days, our poor public is taken by the fever of Loya Jirga but as they also realize this harsh reality, this game of befooling public would end with the fattened pockets of thousands a few and there would be nothing for them except the increased tension of inflation which is the result of the economy blocked for more than a week by this game of mouse and rat. One of the fevers that continuously keep rising on their heads is the exit of international forces after 2014 and in this case as well, the consequences would not bring any good or bad for them. When a common man goes to a shop to buy the commodity of necessity (thinking of luxury commodities is like a day-dreaming for a common man who tries to run his family with his income of 10000 or even less Afghanis), he is no more shocked by the revelation of the shopkeeper that the price of any edible has again increased because with repeated experiences, he is getting a bit habitual of all these. But when he sees that his salary or income is the same and expenses are increasing, he fears about the days to follow. His nerves have almost given up by continuously pondering on the means of either increasing revenue or decreasing expenses, because on both the grounds, he has almost fired his final bullet. With increased work to earn and meet the expenses, his exhausted body and mind has given the final red signal while he feels really ashamed as how to persuade the family to further decrease the already lean and almost invisible expenses. It sounds reasonable in old folklores to divide a single grape among forty sons but in practical life, how much more a mother should divide a single bread among her numerous children as they start staring the mother with the looks as if they doubt on her mental sanity.

The mind of such a father is practically crippled by the flow of similar thoughts because he cannot think of anything else. The condition is nicely described in a piece of humorous Turkish poetry written by a poet whose mind is all the time occupied by the thoughts of earning bread for his family, ‘Last night, I dreamt of a beautiful place. There was a beautiful blue sky beneath which was a heart-stealing view of a beautiful blue sea. But what did I see next? I saw a sack of flour flying in the sky and the wood for my heater floating in the sea.’

Another such tricky issue is of upcoming elections for which mass advertisement is underway so that people should be made more aware of the power of their vote. There is no doubt that this important event is going to decide upon the smooth functioning of our democratic organizations but it carries no meaning for a person who leaves to work early in morning and returns late at night to discover to his great dismay that his increased income has just been beaten by even sharply rising inflation.

But unfortunately, he is not literate enough to talk against the government or point out factors, either economic, social, and political or others, and criticize them. This helpless member of our society is like a new-natal baby who feels the pain but he cannot understand the nature of this pain and is not in position to tell others of this so he keeps crying and others presume it as something natural. But when same pain is felt by those who are in position to portray their true picture and show it to the public, the intensity of this pain is greatly reduced as the intensity of pain faced by someone directly and someone indirectly, can never be equal.

Too much has been written and too much is written about the sufferings of a common Afghan that the topic has almost lost its meaning for us, because both the writers and the readers of these are not the direct victims of these and as such, they never experienced the in-depth meaning of this suffering. This seems that some of us find no other issue to write about while majority of the readers are also tired and fed off by reading similar things. Realizing the same fact, I also hesitated as to hold up the pen for the topic or not but my emotions were moved and my pen was forced by so many grim and frustrated faces around me that are getting more and more angry of us.

Keeping aside all the emotional contents and our sentimental attachments with the topic, one wonders how our government and its organizations have also become, either intentionally or unintentionally, one of those governments that try to take away the attention of common public from necessary issues to other issues that cannot earn his empty belly a bread for a time or a pair of shoes for his bare-footed children in the freezing winter. People are jobless, people are barred of legal justice, people are not earning enough to make the ends meet, clean drinking water is not easily available, eve-teasing is on dangerous verge, highways are not secure, corruption is on its peak, roads are not paved, public transportation is invisible, house rents are high and many more. I wish a day should come when our army of ministers should stop talking of other nonsense issues and address the public about improvements on these issues which is touching their nerves and controlling their emotions and temper.

In this regard, I term the local and international NGOs more of the credit and appreciation as they at least initiate a project (no matter however corrupt it is) that is directed for the betterment of a common person like rehabilitation of a park, admitting children into schools, establishing vocational training center for women and others. In the worst case, they at least add to the betterment of common public by providing them with some jobs in form of gatekeepers, watchmen, cooks, drivers, clerks and other official staff.

We see that these problems are usually ignored as something of routine and media also ignores them because they lack the commercial charm in them but it must not be forgotten that the common public makes the majority of the country and as they are unable to understand the nature of their problems or realize the tricks of politicians, one day, they may be unable to control their anger and desire for revenge and set each and everything on fire.