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The dumb fucks of Indian television—the stark, raving-mad war mongers with a megaphone—and their puppeteers in political and “cultural” organisations have reduced Pakistan to a caricature in the eyes of Indians.

It has become the Most Favoured Nation to to be “sent to”, by idiots, ignoramuses and racist Islamophobes, almost all of whom have never entered the compound of the High Commission of Pakistan, forget the Islamic Republic bearing its name.

Rarely do they acknowledge that Pakistan is a sovereign nation like India, in fact 24 hours older than us. And rarely do they realise that it is a land much like ours, populated by men and women, boys and girls, with the same aspirations as us.

Not just Hafeez Sayeed.

It has schools, colleges, banks, business houses, companies, hospitals, automotive majors, armed forces just like us. And they too are trying to make something out of their lives, enveloped, as we are, by vile politicians and blood-sucking corporates.

Today is Pakistan’s Independence Day, and the advertisements below, published in today’s English language newspapers in that country, give a sense of the hopes and dreams of a country which, too, is 71 years old.

Happy birthday, Pakistan!

At least you have a freer media.

And a great cricket team.

(And superlative mangoes.)

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Today’s Dawn, the first-class newspaper founded by Mohammed Ali Jinnah—whose first editor Pothan Joseph was also the first editor of Deccan Herald in Bangalore—also has two pages of classified advertisements featuring ads inserted by common citizens and retailers wishing their countrymen.