Flights of fancy

According to a report of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources, our country is rich in mineral resources. It has 188 billion tons of coal, six billion tons of copper, 1.656 million tons of gold, 618 million tons of silver, 23.72 million tons of lead and zinc and equally large reserves of manganese, chromite, iron ore and precious and semi precious stones. It sure makes you giddy just reading about it.
If we are sitting on such vast reserves of minerals and precious metals, one wonders what the rest of the world is sitting on. Never mind. We should not let the rest of the world distract us. We need to concentrate on what we have. Just fancy sitting on 1.656 million tons of gold! That would give everyone of 200 million tortured denizens of this muddled republic at least 700 ‘tolas’ of gold each. Now if that does not catapult us all into the stratosphere nothing will.
Farid Nawaz
Islamabad