Family members of victims comfort each other after suicide bombers attacked a Muslim shrine in Lahore on Thursday. (AP)

Something about being an Indian in Pakistan begins to nag you with reminders of the story of the man who complained about having no shoes until he came across one who had no feet.

We’ve been visited by sporadic villainy; this is a daily blood-tide so ferocious of flow it makes you marvel the endurance of those caught in it. Much of it is admittedly self-inflicted, but it can’t pain any less for that.

The year is not half gone yet and the toll on lives has already tipped over 10,000; 565 perished in the first week of 2010 and nothing has contained the haemmorhage since: explosions, shootouts, air-raids, fidayeen missions, insurgency and counter-insurgency, terror and the war on terror.

By one estimate the devil’s daily diet is 103; the newspapers are blood for breakfast. Go on, spare a thought, and don’t be too offended should someone tell you, if only as a yardstick thing, that Mumbai was minor fireworks; you ain’t seen nothin’ if you ain’t seen Pakistan.

This is such a confounding outbreak of curses, it has even left the gods confused. Jihad and the resistance to it are both invoked in the name of Allah, it is holy war against many holy wars. Which side are the heavens on?

The frontier province is a horrible deadlock between medieval and modern warriors, between the suicidal soldiery of jihad and the secure play station drone bombers in faraway Nevada; caught in its cleft the Pakistan Army takes serial blows to personnel and to prestige — death, desertion, demoralisation.

Balochistan a formidable work of long-term devastation. Karachi is a cut-throat bodybag industry fuelled by phosphorescent local alchemies — warlords, drug lords, feudal lords, and politicians who are often all of those rolled into one. Lahore lies convulsed by the surge of Punjabi Taliban hoofing across the heartland in expansionist waves.

From the state to rival sect, and even sportsmen, its bigoted sword has fallen indiscriminate along its blistered course.

What Pakistan exports is but a fraction of what it suffers; the terror complex fetches profits for some, most Pakistanis just pay a price for it. “Don’t get me wrong,” pleads Qalandar Bux, who teaches politics at Lahore’s Forman Christian College, “but we are trapped much deeper. Our power structures are unstable and oppressive to say the least, their chief opponents are violent and diabolical, the people are helpless, locked in by the excessive circumstances around them. There are more Pakistanis than the subscriber base of Hafiz Saeed or the employment registers of the ISI. They may be silent, but they make up Pakistan much more than the fringe does, and they have more to worry about than the next assault on India”.

Khalid Bashir, who earns his living clearing cafeteria tables in Anarkali Bazaar, Lahore’s teeming hub, can’t put such fine analysis on what ails his nation, but enough poetry has rubbed off on the 65-year-old from him to turn a clever phrase. “Aur bhi gham hain zamanein mein shahadat ke siwa,” he says, “baaki jeena marna Allah ke hawale.” (Life and death are in Allah’s hands, but there is more to worry about than martyrdom).

To him, it is his daily wage; to others their own in this mill of all too familiar third worldliness. Government employees agitating for pay hikes, housewives demanding water in the taps, shopkeepers moaning about peak-hour power cuts, students struggling for scholarships, young girls pushing social frontiers, urchins menaced by drugs and deprivation, farmhands yoked to feudalism, a whole long league of urban classes merely able to subsist — drivers, watchmen, bodyguards, maids. Very often, every day, the distraught crying over their suddenly dead. A blast, a stray bullet from the crossfire, a violent siege.

So too, in fair measure, those who won’t concede delight altogether to despondency. “What are people to do but become indifferent to this mayhem and carry on?” says Rashid Rehman, editor of the Lahore-based Daily Times. “Most people live in daily dread of terror and I suspect most Pakistanis despise terrorists just as Indians do. They can’t be liking this business, how can they? Life is tough but they carry on.”

These are, everywhere, vibrant constituencies that taunt terror and its protagonists. From the undying song and spirit of poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz to the newborn fancy for football. The World Cup has become a near-craze, though nowhere quite so near as cricket. But then, Shahid Afridi’s team has just about reached England and there is time yet before attention returns to the national obsession.

Meantime, live football is good reason for cheer. Cafes can often get packed in Lahore for big game nights and the attire of fans is evidence accessory sales have been up — 1 caps, T-shirts, armbands, buntings. Doesn’t matter that Pakistan, much like India, can’t even pretend to qualify. Doesn’t matter that Pakistanis, much unlike Indians, do not have adopted favourites at play in South Africa.

Doesn’t matter who wins, the game is reason enough, if only because it becomes a few hours of escape into live television each day.

Pakistan’s daily reality is worth taking a frequent break from. Being an Indian in Pakistan will often tell you just how much.

(Sankarshan Thakur was in Lahore last week)