Gleaning Wisdom Interlude

62. "In your despairing, you are a free man (hurr); but in your coveting, you are a slave ('abd)."

70. "Infer the existence of ignorance in anyone whom you see answering all that he is asked or giving expression to all that he witnesses or mentioning all that he knows."

The Judge. - He who has beheld anyone's ideal is his inexorable judge and as it were his bad conscience.

The human lot. - He who considers more deeply knows that, whatever his acts and judgements may be, he is always wrong. 

"The scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant." - Timur Fazil

"If you want to be with the Teacher when he wants you to be apart from him, you must obey him or shun him. If you argue about it, you are worse than disobedient." - Halqavi

302. Preference for specific virtues. - We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total lack of absence in our opponent." 

444. War. - Against war it can be said: it makes the victor stupid, the defeated malicious. In favour of war: through producing these two effects it barbarizes and therefore makes natural; it is the winter or hibernation time of culture, mankind emerges from it stronger for good and evil."

459. - Full of character. - A man appears full of character much more often because he always obeys his temperament than because he always obeys his principles.

516. - No one now dies of fundamental truths: there are too many antidotes to them.

531. - The life of one's enemy. - He who lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in seeing that his enemy stays alive.

220. "Do not attest to the validity of an inspiration (warid) whose fruit you know not. The purpose of rainclouds is not to give rain; their only purpose is to bring forth fruit." 

227. "If you do not want to be dismissed, then do not take charge of a post that will not always be yours."

"A friendless man is like a left hand without a right." - Hebrew proverb

"Though I am different from you, We were born involved with one another." - Tao te Ching

"Kabeer, we are puppets of clay, but we take the name of mankind. We are guests here for only a few days, but we take up so much space."

"Kabeer, the world is a room filled with black soot; the blind fall into its trap. I am a sacrifice to those who are thrown in, and still escape."

"Kabeer, all the strings of the instrument I played are broken. What can the poor instrument do, when the player has departed as well."

"When she is a virgin, she is full of desire; but when she is married, then her troubles begin. Fareed, she has this one regret, that she cannot be a virgin again."

"First, the bride herself is weak, and then, her Husband Lord's Order is hard to bear. Milk does not return to the breast, it will not be collected again."

"Fareed, I was worried that my turban might become dirty. My thoughtless self did not realize that one day, dust will consume my head as well."

"Fareed, a stone will be your pillow, and the earth will be our bed. The worm shall eat into your flesh. Countless ages will pass, and you will still be lying on one side."

"Fareed, if on that day when my umbilical cord was cut, my throat had been cut instead, I would not have fallen into so many troubles, or undergone so many hardships."

SIFTING

O Pedant! Sift, all your life, the writings and the sayings of the Wise. But first of all learn one thing: you are using a sieve which lets through chaff and discards the nutrient, the wheat. - Shab-Parak

GIVE AND TAKE

The Chief takes less then he is given

And gives more than he has taken.

(Kitab-i-Amu Daria)

51. "No deed is more fruitful for the heart than the one you are not aware of and which is deemed paltry by you."

260. "Meditation (al-fikra) is the voyage of the heart in the domains of alterities (mayadin al-agdo naahyar)."

209. "That part of your life that has gone by is irreplaceable, and that which has arrived is priceless."

160, "Sometimes ostentation (ar-riya) penetrates you in such a way that no one notices it." 

294

Copies. - We quite often encounter copies of significant men; as, as also in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.

311

Against the trusting. - People who give us their complete trust believe they have this acquired a right to ours. This is a false conclusion; gifts procure no rights.

303

Why we contradict. - We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it was expressed.

413

The shortsighted are in love. - Sometimes it requires only a strong pair of spectacles to cure the lover, and he who had the imagination to picture a face, a figure twenty years older, would perhaps pass through life very undisturbed.

496

Privilege of greatness. - It is the privilege of greatness to give great delights with meagre gifts.

564

In danger. - One is most in danger of being run over when one has just avoided a carriage.

568

Confession. - One forgets one's sins when one confesses them to another, but the other does not usually forget them.

Amusing Ourselves To Death

by Neil Postman

Courtesy, BT



We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity arid history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies ([Huxley's sense stimulating movies], the orgy porgy [group sex in the novel], and the centrifugal bumblepuppy* [a child's game in the novel; see description at end of essay]. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain, In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

The Huxleyan Warning

There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first - the Orwellian - culture becomes a prison. In the second - the Huxleyan - culture becomes a burlesque. No one needs to be reminded that our world is now marred by many prison-cultures whose structure Orwell described accurately in his parables. If one were to read both 1984 and Animal Farm, and then for good measure, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, one would have a fairly precise blueprint of the machinery of thought-control as it currently operates in scores of countries and on millions of people. Of course, Orwell was not the first to teach us about the spiritual devastations of tyranny. What is irreplaceable about his work is his insistence that it makes little difference if our wardens are inspired by right- or left-wing ideologies. The gates of the prison are equally impenetrable, surveillance equally rigorous, icon worship equally pervasive.

What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

In America, Orwell's prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley's are well under way toward being realized. For America is engaged in the world's most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the technological distractions made possible by the electric plug. This is an experiment that began slowly and modestly in the mid-nineteenth century and has now, in the latter half of the twentieth, reached a perverse maturity in America's consuming love-affair with television. As nowhere else in the world, Americans have moved far and fast in bringing to a close the age of the slow-moving printed word, and have granted to television sovereignty over all of their institutions. By ushering in the Age of Television, America has given the world the clearest available glimpse of the Huxleyan future.


Those who speak about this matter must often raise their voices to a near-hysterical pitch, inviting the charge that they are everything from wimps to public nuisances to Jeremiahs. But they do so because what they want others to see appears benign, when it is not invisible altogether. An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us. We are not likely, for example, to be indifferent to the voices of the Sakharovs and the Mandelas and the Walesas. We take arms against such a sea of troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter? I fear that our philosophers have given us no guidance in this matter. Their warnings have customarily been directed against those consciously formulated ideologies that appeal to the worst tendencies in human nature. But what is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect of life in America during the past eighty years.



For example, it would have been excusable in 1905 for us to be unprepared for the cultural changes the automobile would bring. Who could have suspected then that the automobile would tell us how we were to conduct our social and sexual lives? Would reorient our ideas about what to do with our forests and cities? Would create new ways of expressing our personal identity and social standing? But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the printing press to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.

Aldous Huxley believed, with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.

The World as I see it or A Catalogue of Death

ow oortaOr the world as I want you to see it. Both statements, according to me, are the same. You might disagree. Which is important. But not to me. Or maybe it is. Or it remains to be seen, as most print/electronic reports say in conclusion.


Traversing across the world of information, news and reports, one come's across more appalling phrases than the one mentioned above, and even worse, there are details of death and destruction. Anywhere you look, there is a calamity waiting to be noticed.

Hurricane Ike, that battered Central American Countries, is now on a rampage in coastal states of America. Rescue teams had found 500 corpses, while another 1 million have been left homeless. Cuba has also been ravaged, and so are smaller Islands in the Carribean.

The mayor of Turks and Calicos island says more than 80% of the houses have been destroyed. Yes, we have never heard of the two islands, but we can still imagine how it would be like when 80% of homes in a locality are destroyed.

Feel the shiver when you are inside a multi-storey house which is shaken from its roots, knowing this isn't the end of your misery, and you can't get out unless prepared and able to raft or wade across shoulder-deep waters.

While in the U.S., evacuation saved thousands from premature death. But nature showed how little consideration it gives to differences of real-politiks. The Gulf Coast suffered equally devastating destruction; floods wiped across with as much gusto across Haiti as across Texas.

But this is just nature reminding mortals of it's powers which dwarf all else. Human follies too play their part - resulting in more death and more misery..



This picture is not from the Gulf of Mexico, but from Indonesia, where stampede during a Zakat ceremony resulted in the death of 21 people.


Soon one will be reported from your city, if not your neighbourhood.

One occurs each year, caused not by pious hunger, but by the piously hungry; at Mecca, as they run helter-skelter during the Stoning of the Devil.


Another stampede, another 13 killed, this time at a soccer match in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The goalkeeper of one of the teams tried to use Witchcraft to influence the outcome of the game.




Another 88 people perished in a Russian jet crash in the Ural mountains. Just like the Talibans are spread criss-cross across the mountainous Pak-Afghan border, the Ural mountains had Imam Shamyl and his brigade of asetic followers; fighting the mighty Russian Empire. But they, too, perished, one after the other.

Meanwhile, in good old homeland of Pakistan, hundreds are slaughtered each day. The altar differs, though. Sometimes its for national security, sometimes to establish the writ of the state, sometimes because the US-led forces want to, sometimes to establish the writ of the militants, but never in anyway to benefit the residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or the once scenic Swat valley.

While there are conflicting reports on the number of the dead, this report catalogues the number of casualties in Pakistan.

A staggering 2900 casualties since March, 2008 alone.

Another report puts the number of security personnel killed in combat since Pakistan's alliance with the U.S. in the War Against Terror at 730 - discounting the injured and the maimed.

Every day a headline stares you in the face citing a number, usually in double figures, that are killed. For an entire week, everyday 10-15 civilian casualties were reported only from U.S. airstrikes within Pakistan. Thousands others have become collateral damage in the war of attrition that rages on in Pakistan's once-scenic-now-rugged mountainous north.

Suspected Al-Qaeda militants are not confined to Pakistan, though. According to this report, Al-Qaeda suspects were behind the killing of eleven members of the Mauritanian Army. Mauritania is a small country in North Africa which had its democratically elected leader removed in a coup. One wonder's if Al-Qaeda wants to kill an African dictator, what love he had for the Pakistani one for so long. Tacit support, I reckon.

And then there's the Battle of Baghdad and the Killing in Kabul, which goes on all-year round. Also, numerous others, one-off deaths or in small groups, anonymous victims of hit-and-run, albeit on a much smallter stage, but of the same (in)consequence.

But I will come back again, cataloguing more.....lives as often as deaths.

Another start

As umpteen times before, I am once again committed to a new start. My commitment to blog regularly as fickle as God's commitment to the parched lands of Sindh....

Just like intermittent rainfalls, my thoughts rain in spurts and then dither away, as if they never were. Did not exist. And not like some God particle scientists are trying to unearth through a billions of dollars experiment, but just like the hunger of the homeless. Inconsequential.

But I will try to be consistent. Infuse discipline. Just like cricketers with a religious bent infuse discipline in their lives. I will strive.

To this new beginning, a toast.

Confessions of a Dead Soul

Under the yoke of the British as we were, we had to be smitten by all things English. Imperial traditions and courtly manners swept the Brown Saheb off his feet. The legacy of the legal system still holds supreme. The Royal family continues to be a abyss of envy. Even the accent inspired awe - whether it's Hugh Grant wooing Bridget or some cockney doggerel. But worst of all I find the devotion to our erstwhile masters literary achievements. Fair enough, Mother England had it's fair share of geniuses in the fields of poetry and prose, but it doesn't mean we neglect the corpus of literature belonging to other regions. Indeed, Dickens, Hardy and company should be held in good steed, but the fascination with Elizabethean novels is sometimes sickening. Shakespeare might not have a peer but Marlowe wasn't a queer. But let's step off the Island.

The romanticism of the French, the efficacy of the Germans, the wisdom of the Greeks, the courage of the Nordic, the Spanish armadas and the ambition of the Portuguese are oft forgotten as the miniature Island of the English becomes the barometer for all things European.

All these nations are rich in culture and traditions; literary and otherwise. Flaubert and Diderot are important figures in the evolution of the novel. Stendhal's wisdom shines through in each passage. Balzac and Maupaussant were masters of the art of the short-story. The prolific Zola was as much commercial as he was suave. And these are only just a few Frenchmen.

While German thought was less expressed in novels and more in the form of Critique (of Pure Reason etc..), it too has literary heavyweights who had far reaching impacts on literary techniques. The Divine Comedy is a timeless classic, so is Goethe's work. Thomas Mann, Gunter Grass, Bertolt Brecht and more that I need to discover.

And then there is the master of it all, Franz Kafka, whom I considered a Slav, but I've been told he wrote in German.

Which brings me to the whole body of Russian Literature, a victim of unfortunate neglect as the Czars' incompetence made Russian forays into the Caucus a failure, or else we might have had troikas and drozhnys, instead of royal carriages. It's another matter if the Russian forces would have been able to overcome the Afghans, who repelled the British when colonial expansion blanketed the entire subcontinent; and even the Russians but that was thanks to the US-Israel-SaudiArabia nexus faciliated by our very own General Zia sahab, although a conspiracy is brewed in Hollywood to have it credited to Senator Charlie Wilson. But us intelligent ones can sift fact from fiction.

The Pakistani exposure to Russian Literature seems to be limited to two authors and three books; Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' and 'War and Peace', and Dostoyevskey's 'Crime and Punishment'.

Impressive pieces of literature as they are, the mere size of the novel is enough to scare the novice - while the digressions, that the authors take liberties to, can make things slower than (our) Little Master's vigil against the West Indies. (A pint-sized Hanif scoring a triple hundred against the gigantic quickies from the Carribean.)

Merited as they are a place in the highest echelons of Literature, the above mentioned books are surely not the most apt choice for the representation of such a vast array of literary talent.

Even I, with my Golgothan like appetite for the written word, the legendary veracity that even devoured Gone with the Wind, not to speak of other atrocities, was left askance by Tolstoy's musings on the Russian serf and agrarian techniques. I have since been told that the man was a visionary and even came up with Non-Violence before Gandhi. Interesting snippets, but I still prefer his short stories.

Tell me, you shareef mussalmans, or even the hindoos, for your allegiance should lie with the subcontinent first than any other morsels of land, would you feel safer approaching Anna Karenina, or Haji Murad? Especially when Ms Karenina appears a blown up version of Anna Nicole, while the Haji is extremely nimble on his feet. Think, decide & act.

"Addicted to Martyrdom"

-- Excerpts from Junkie-Journal


Round 1: Yoda vs. Guilt

The moments when you let guilt get the better of you, those moment of conscientiousness, when you feel as pure as a newborn leprechaun, can sometimes have interstingly bizzare consequences, but in my case, it turns out, more often than not, to be rather taxing. And once again, that was the conclusion, inspite of my immense good fortune of being present at a performance by Kamal Sabri, the masterful Sarangi player visiting from India, primarily for his performance at the All Pakistan Music Conference - Karachi Chapter.

The term 'Sarangi', according to him, is derived from 'Sau Rangi', which translates into "100 colours", which I guess I blinked through as he performed the Ragas....and invoked tender sensations with each bandish. The sound of the Sarangi is said to be the most similar to humans, and I would be in communication with a never-known-before self everytime he strummed the instrument....with a mastery that that leaves one spell-bound. He just didn't perform, he lead us towards higher truths that lies beyond the realm of mundane comprehension. It made a smile dance on my lips, and there was agony and ecstasy. It was music that entered the body, and organs aligned to the beat, and a sense of elevation overtook, and I flew upstream. The thoughts were jumbled up, but I knew it all made sense. What did not make sense was that the use of Sarangi, as an accompanist or for solo performance, is on the decline, and Kamal Sabri is one of the very few practitioners. A worthy memory.

But otherwise, it was only the gandugiri of guilt that ruined supreme. The day started off at 8:15 as I woke up after a heavy night of love-talk with my dove, and after another night of only 3 hours and eyes swollen worse than being bloodshot, being the nice man on the surface I am, I risked being late to give a ride to a cheeky bastard from college who's becoming a pain rather than just an ordinary itch. But with my robust skills on the wheel, and the effeciency of the two-wheeler in the face of roadside conundrums, I managed. To not only make it in time, but to smoke outside, too.

It was presentation day, and I was all dressed up. The usual glances came the way, with a few chickies commenting on the tie, followed by small talk based on the assumption that dressing up is due to good mood. Maybe they are not that dumb, but they ought to prove otherwise. However, it was pure necessity. After the first two groups fucked up beautifully, conquering all and sundry was set on a plate....with a little conniving. I managed to get our group's turn down from last to third, to save us a lot of unnecessary khwari, but it turned into a spectacle, which would make a hilarious story if I ever were to pen it down. Nonetheless, we managed to present and the rest fought over the spoils. This was 9 to 12. Followed by a tedious 2 and a half hour long break for Jumma. Which was supposed to be followed by a return to presentation routine in Business Ethics, and two other extra classes, scheduled impromptu, leaving me in a tri-lemma. Found out that one teacher was AWOL and irate students had filed a complaint against him even. Such nitpicking nincompoops doobie-less chooths et al. I decided to give Calculus a shot for half an hour, then Ethics, lying to both and get out. But such was the tiredness that I fell asleep as the rest of the world creaked and by the time I woke up it was already 4. A peaceful hour long sleep while 2 groups presented. Sometimes I marvel at my ability to pass out in the most bizzare of circumstances. However, I woke up, lied to the teacher, and walked out, only to rush to work, seeing miss calls from bossie boss. She's not bossy, though. She's the most understanding, loving, caring, generous boss, whether its about work-hours, money, domestic issues or general slacking. And she loves me, too, which one can always play to his advantage, only if it were not for the gandugiri of guilt. Love is such a dilemma, too.

The smartalecs at work made jokes, in their own tones, about my formal attire. First up was the lead-role of Khurram's magnum opus, "The UnFuckables", who asked me about where my job interview had been. I said Al Jazeera. Her laugh concealed malice, but I generally see-through facades and try to when there's black-bra under a see-through. But she's the lead from the UnFuckables, and I resisted.

Even the big boss gave me a look, while boss made jokes about my joke interview, too, only to clarify soon enough that it was a presentation. What if your boss is one of those who are easily flustered and ask the dumbest of questions; all the time expecting people to answer with a straight face and solemn gait. I'd just show my ass and laugh it off. But what if you get caught.

And then I was given the news of our new hirings tete-a-tete with the head of the business desk. It wasn't the most pleasant of exchanges but she's our terrier and we can't let her teeth go blunt. It's a fierce world out there and we require as much tenacity as we can obtain.

All this got my spirits high. I even had subway - a treat considering the humble state of my finances. Then there was Sherbano and Jay. She said she was feverish, and also exasperated. The roof is always a nice place. And we climbed clinky stairs to have our little rain-dance. It was a triangle and my favorite floozie piled up lies. Thank divinity I never cared. My irate self is quite a mess.

And then I came down and returned to the computer. The pseudo-albino cameraguy asked me to come close. My guard was high, but it was an innocent query regarding MSN. He wanted to knwo the e-mail address of this one female on his list, who, in his own words, had randomly added him. Because he's such a hottie and a pseudo-albino (I don't know the disease but his face is half white like those funny kids in school that no one wanted to talk to but everyone's mom did), and he's got a beer belly and a namazi topi, along with the penguin walk and all the works. I explained. He asked me further questions. My tone became agitated and he politely thanked. I should be more polite. But that was just my premonitionary senses getting to work.

Off I went, to haggle for tapes. Then to eat Saffo appa's cake and have it too. That's Kamal Sabri in esoteric language and nothing to do with Ayn Rand. Ever.

But what followed Mr. Sabri was pure disaster. A show that was scheduled to start at 8:00. A launching of wristwatch, Titan, if you please, and other than presentations and introductions and usual ass-kissing, it also had a fashion segment as sashaying beauties were to showcase the watches on their dainty wrists.

We got there by 9:45....and still had to wait another half an hour. It was ugly. So were the models. Only 4 chicks who kept coming back, dressed as per the theme of the segment. Some of them actually looked pretty dragging their limbs during the Semi-traditional segment, having the desi look..Rajasthani, pigeonhole if we must. But what horrors were to follow, when I sneaked backstage and asked those involved to share a few thoughts. Dolled up as they must be, they lacked all natural charm. And a lack of garrulity only added to the goryness. The designer of the clothes was also a psychotic creature who kept stealing glances as if followed by some kinky feds who molest him at frequent intervals.

The food was good, though. But so depressing were the 3 hours that I was forced to sit through, tired as fuck, that it put an end to all my hopes of every making out of this job alive. Sometimes I exaggerate. Sometimes I excessively hate. Someone needs to cure me. You can. I know. But sometimes I hate saviours, too.

But I wouldn't have been in this situation, if I had finished my degree on time. Or not chosen to take up a full-time job. The routine is a year-old now but I fail to adjust. And the restlessness won't subside.

I won't give in to guilt again. You, obviously, are an exception, not perchance.

"Addicted to Martyrdom"

-- 'Anonymous tidbits from a self-deluded romantic'


Chapter: Vile as Bile

.............Theatre is not only an opportunity for strugglers to showcase their star potential, but also a medium of social commentary as well as handing out educative morsels of morality and societal ethics, especially given our quasi-literate society. A prosaic corollary could be that blogs not only provide an opportunity for wannabe literati to showcase their gift of the gab, but also a medium of espousing jumbled up personal philosophies and a conduit for channeling thoughts and opinion that are lost in the din of reality that is percieved as abnormality by those who tend to resort to blogs - like myself over here. Prone to articulating emotions inadequately, incoherently and with great difficulty, I must also use this medium to compensate for all those times when the tongue fails to roll off the thoughts formulating in the head...and the heart. When bottled up emotions can no longer be stuffed in the lamp as the genie demands some space. When all I want is to drill a hole and go into permanent hibernation, will this provide solace? As likely as Disneyland at Guantanamo but Walt had a vision, Luther dreamed and we dared, too. But being a pathological failure, I had to come across the glitches within the Matrix. And things fall apart. Not least because she had run out of patience. She has more of it than Sahara has dunes. But because I am vile. As vile as bile. And she the pristine virgin. With a capacity to love greater than sun's to shine. And I, the greedy urchin stealing plumes and figs. Too stark a difference it is. And so, the days which were filled with loving confessions will now become a sallow vaccuum, with as much colour as contained in Ford's earliest slogan. And gone with all the colour is the sense of completion. Of being a whole. How odd the yin would be without the yang. And so I feel; like a broken talisman; a loose chain, a lever without its mechanism; a piece of barren land. Clawing my hair and scratching my bare legs until they bleed. Alas, only if were due to the foreboding feeling that overcomes as I fear her departure. But its the drug that makes me itch and scratch. And as I write this, in the middle of snorts, a sense of tranquility returns. I feel lighter and calmer, but also aware of the hollowness of this calm and its dependency upon the drug, which meanwhile, feeds upon my intestines and makes my stomach contract. This takes care of food and concerns of indigestion. I don't want any intake. I only want to puke. Out all the indignation brewing inside. Which is over the self. And a lump forms in my throat and I go mute at important times when a word of affection can give me another chance. But the lump stops all, and then phlegm is spitted out and then another lump and more phlegm. That's all there is inside. Phlegm and lies. And all I want to do is crawl back all over the phlegm and grovel at her feet. What she says not only pinches, but mutilates. But who cares of wounded vanity and squashed ego when greater things are on the line. While the kids from Lord of the Flies had little time to contemplate upon their accidental abandoning, all I can do is conceive myself as Tom Hanks, but not the bristling Charlie Wilson but the mute in Cast Away. And so I have been cast. Away. I hate being abandoned. But she has reasons and although I [have to] believe selfless love supercedes all logic and reason, I cannot demand her to abide by conveniently held beliefs. Especially if my inconsistent streaks are to be considered which make me more culpable than Kissinger...although I wouldn't mind if I get her as my noble prize. I am sitting here, looking at the cellular. For it is the chain that kept us together inspite of the miles. And then in a fit of rage I smashed it against the wall, laughed at the inadeuacy of my responses and consumed some more heroine. How depraved am I. Letting it all go to the dogs, as now I have the abandoning to blame. Always seeking reasons. Just smoke and snort and find myself a drain pipe to make my abonimable abode in. That will be it. I will blame her. And become a martyr for love. Maybe cut a few veins, too. Or maybe just spike them.

But then she called......

Slaughter of the Intellectuals - Fisk

Its an almia. With all the theorising, pakistan is very much following the trajectory, which is generally attributed to failed nations....or those with dictatorial regimes. sometimes it even appears that tis scripted to boot. but mostly, in repressive regimes, the (hopefully) flourishing arts are crushed...as the artist is averse to clipping of his wings. and then decadents and the bohemians revolt. In societies where religious fundamentalism is stoked, the result is tragic. Pakistan has its share of minority shia doctors who were murdered during a wave.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19950216/ai_n13966276

And now I think, whether I should be glad that our society has not deteriorated to such a level...or sad that there are no real movie-makers...and intelelctuals that the fundoos would want to kill. karachi's flagship film festival, kara, has been postponed....no because terrorism is a threat to the event....but because it is the threat to the already meagre attendance.

And a paper on Iranian cinema. Which I will read.Soon.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stephen_Nottingham/cintxtIran.htm

Return of the Native

When a swarm of black engulfs, I am reminded of Hardy. His writing also had a dark pallor. Everything was depressing. From start to finish. Unlike Chekhov, who mastered the art of short-storytelling. His adjectives were bleak. They were desolate. Hardy is plain negative. He would be for the entire breadth of the novel. And the blackness has returned. It's Ashura time and where my humble abode lies, the blackness hits the skies.

Old Numaish, or the former epicentre of Karachi, the round-about which-is-no-more, adjacent the Quaid's mazaar, is where the Shias have one of their major Mosques, or Imam Bargah, if you must. The entire artery, M.A. Jinnah road that stretches from Bundar Road till Prison round-about, was sealed. Crossing to the other side is a hassle. I had to take a long detour. Travel an extra 15 kilometeres to circumvent the route of the procession.

The shias, however, cannot be blamed as the rest make an equally appalling mess come the time of Eid ul-Azha, when sacrifces are mandatory. Although no detours are required.

However, this Moharram, with the threat of suicide bombing large.....the entry exit points are heavily secured and whether convenient or otherwise, oncomers are forced to take detours.

But the news is that attendance at the Majlis and the Procession is expected to not be as high as of earlier years. The threat of suicide bombing at a public congregation has deflated religious fervour even. It was not always like this. The Karachi of the 90s, with its no-go areas, never scared us of public gathering. Safety in numbers was what we aimed for. That is no longer the case. I wonder whether this change in thinking is post-Benazir assassination or that is when it hit home. After having more blasts in the country than most war-zones, with an increasing number of suicide bombings, 2007 was always going to be the bloodiest year of our collective living memory.

The side-show of the lawyers movement, which would time and again bring life to an abdupt halt, the Lal Masjid spectacle, the musical chairs that the Chief Justice played, the returning-departing-returning political exiles, the bruwahah over the elections, the imposition of emergency rule, media related chicanery, the assassination of the Baluch separatist leader, the still ongoing battles in Waziristan and tribal areas, the never-ending War on Terror and destabilized Afghanistan and Iraq, the rhetoric based in Iran........all this took place in 2007. And for all those who gloat over the upheavels in Pakistan, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was the crowning glory. The same day, fellow exile-return and less of a darling of the West, Nawaz Sharif was also attacked. There were only four casualties at his rally, and one victim adorned the screen - thanks to the profusing media - having promotional party paraphernalia as coffin. Nawaz, to his credit, hurried to the hospital where Benazir had already breathed her last, and announced boycott of elections.

Its funny how often politicians boycott. Then they enter under protest. Sometimes under duress. My hunch was Zardari wanted participation to ride on the sympathy wave. Atleast thats less cynical than the conspiracy theory doing the rounds in coke-laced get-togethers in drawing rooms of not only the elite, but also some sensible people, that Zardari is responsible for Benazir's assassination.

My boss has a theory that its the knee-jerk Pakistani response to any unnatural death. If it's the husband, thant he wife must have done it, and vice verse. And incase both our dead, you blame the son, as was in the Ismail Gulgee's case.

Whatever be the case, the truth remains that Pakistan is still the clutches of medieval aristocrats and the noble blood is enough to lead the race. And Bilawal was crowned the heir, with a halloween face. It is another scary beginning. His mother, two maternal uncles, and grandfather have met tragic ends. His grandfather and one uncle were sacrificial lambs towards political ends. His mother, a victim of the most gruesome form of political targetting. One can only guess how he will fare. Apparently, he's a martial art expert. Only if he had popped the pill and entered the Matrix would I bet on him. To survive.

Like I would bet on my relationship to survive. The uncanny similarities are there. Like in every facet there are certain parallel developments which are scary. For instance, processions of pro-government politicians never have any suicide bombers knocking on the doors. It's only anti government politicians. The militants allegedly responsible for killing anti-government politicians are busy taking out government soldiers and official militiamen in the tribal areas. It raises the question why don't they target pro-government political rallies. Other than former interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, none of the government allied leaders have come under attack inspite of their huge congregations. The lawyers have been attacked, politicians have been attacked, and a leading political figure has even been assassinated. Inside job, they murmur. "Liaquat Ali Khan's assassin was functioning alone and so is the ISI," says the conspiracy theory floozie at work.

The young Fatima Bhutto has also been ranting in rant-able quarters about things inconsequential. She even ended up in Lyari for three hours. And writing articles that are labelled ghostwritten by editors of competing publications.


2008 has arrived and along with it more blasts. The first one...targetting public places in Urban centres was in Lahore...killing more than 23 policeman and a few civilians. After that, there have been two more in Karachi, one in Peshawar, and more expected over the next 2 days. Already more than 100 people have died and more than 500 injured.

Further casualties are on the way. Emergency time again. But in hospitals. All is the same in Pakistan.