So… in Pakistan people are getting
divorced because of… gas shortage?
Badar Salman prepares an order of home-cooked dishes including
dal, haleem and rice in her kitchen in Umm Al Quwain. PHOTO: SARAH DEA/ THE
NATIONAL
Whatever you say about our parliamentarians, you have to admit
they have a sense of humour. I’m referring to the recent claim by the learned MNA Tahira Aurangzeb
about how gas shortage is the reason for the increasing divorce rate in the
country – she is the mother of Ms Maryum Aurangzeb, our minister of state for
information, who said that our ministers and senators cannot survive on Rs60,000
a month.
The learned female lawmaker wasn’t sure of our divorce
statistics two or three years back, when there was no shortage of gas, compared
to how many cases there are today to prove her claim. But of course doing the
required homework is considered a great sin among those who sit in that august
house. Almost all our assembly members are prone to making wild statements
without a shred of proof. A look at what Imran Khan, Abid
Sher Ali and others say every now and then about their
opponents prove my claim.
I wonder how gas shortage can make a man lose his head and
pronounce those three wordswhich every Muslim woman dreads to hear. Why
don’t long electricity breakdowns have the same effect on him? According to
Tahira Aurangzeb, when every Pakistani man returns home every evening, he needs
to fill his stomach to the brim. But when he finds out that his wife was unable
to cook any food owing to shortage of gas, he bursts into a rage and divorces
his poor wife. I assume that he then remarries immediately or goes to his second wife (if he has one), and the whole scenario
is repeated. So the number of divorces should be astronomically high, at least
in those families the lady parliamentarian is acquainted with.
I tried to gather some information on
divorce statistics in the country over the past few years, but even though I
found many articles on
the subject, I could not find any concrete figures, as apparently the
government does not register such data. So I thought about how many divorces
have occurred in my own immediately family – paternal and maternal descendants
and ancestors.
Since
1856, there have been four divorces in my immediate family of nearly a 100
members (10 of whom are no longer alive) in a span of 80 years. The last
divorce in the family took place 11 years ago, when there was plenty of gas to
go around.
While
digging deeper, I asked other people to find out if they have observed a rise
in divorces among their communities.
“Out of the question,” said one of my
employees from the rural areas, “We’re not cowards, if my wife ever asked me to
divorce her, I would assume she has a boyfriend, and would immediately kill her.”
“Not in my family or relatives, but I have
heard that divorce is very common in those families where the women are allowed to work,” said one of the many illiterate men I
come across on a daily basis.
“Of course there have to be a lot of
broken marriages in our society. It’s caused by allowing women to watch too
many TV dramas and
going to movies. I smashed my TV set many years ago, so there have been no
divorces in my family”, said an aged neighbour.
So, despite not having observed even one
broken marriage, these men blame women for
the so-called increasing divorce rate in the country. I wonder if any of our
male parliamentarians (particularly Imran Khan) would agree.
Shakir Lakhani
Engineer, former visiting lecturer at
NED Engineering College, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical
industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those
who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/43525/so-in-pakistan-people-are-getting-divorced-because-of-gas-shortage/
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