Sparc Event

“Taleem Child Labour kay khilaaf aik mo’ssar hathyar hai” was the theme of the city-wide speech and poster competition organized by SPARC – Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.  Perhaps because the email sent to me stated the theme as “Education is a tool to end Child Labour” and perhaps because the venue of the event was the Defence Library, I had not imagined it to be a government school event where the lingua franca was to be Urdu.  So I walked cluelessly in to the sea of blue and white uniforms with hair cut short and without a dupatta to be hit in the gut with a tidal rush of guilt.  I could see how I would be perceived: a flaky aunty who watches from a safe distance and doesn’t get her hands dirty.  Horrid!

For some reason I had not realized how many government schools there are in Karachi.  Perhaps because I’ve been so enmeshed in the upper echelon of private schools lately that in my mind, government schools had just ceased to exist.  That was when I realized why it was imperative for this event to be a government school affair.  The children who went to these schools were maids’ children, drivers’ children, gardeners’ children, watchmen’s children.  They were children who were likely to have to leave school halfway to help their parents with their financial responsibilities.  They were likely to live in neighbourhoods where they may be friends with children who go to mechanics’ workshops and bricklayers’ kilns instead of going to school.  I understood then that SPARC had it right: through this exercise, it was seeking to educate and empower the very children who were susceptible to abuse instead of going the elitist NGO route of raising awareness among the unaffected affluent circles.

The event made me think that my time spent on the other side of town is straining my ties with reality.  This may be the bane of the middle class, we apparently have no time for causes because “my first responsibility is to ensure my children get the very best in life and hence I must be consumed ensuring that is the case.  Everyone struggles; if they struggle, I do too, what’s the difference?”  How does one transcend the cycle?

I am professedly Marxist: I believe in abolishing class privilege and yet I can’t forgo the comforts of my privilege.  I hate shopping at Tariq Road and am the first to rub my status in the face of the “low life rat’s ass of an accountant” at the office who dares think he can hit on me.  Hypocritical and horrid!  I think it’s more complicated than that though.  Gender is the additional variable which prevents me from forgoing class distinction simply because as one goes lower down on the socio-economic ladder, gender imbalance increases and roles become more defined.  I could make myself live on meagre rations but I could not never stand to be reduced to the lower middle income bracket’s definition of being a woman.  What does that make me though?  Intellectually Marxist and practically elitist?

One of the most cutting things anyone has said to me in life:

“Don’t be a spinster before your time is up.”

And again..

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Retracing memory semantically requires a distance from the immediacy of events passed — their passing turns them into memories while retracing them is to experience the same events without the psychosocial framework that accompanied it. This is to acknowledge that retracing brings a new set of feelings which may not be skewed along the same axes as their precedents but may still be charged and dislocating in and of themselves.

“Today on Planet Spit Fire …”

When I am feeling insecure I often retort with greater heat on what may otherwise appear to be perfectly nonchalant, casual comments.  For instance, people really ought not to speak to me about “good jobs out there” for a while and how “being single [I] should be making lots of money and having the time of my life”.

I can also quite easily break arms and legs over “oh so-and-so has such talent for painting/writing”.  That’s like saying, “No hun, you really didn’t need to waste time at university to do what you did, because really that’s all that it was – wasting time.”

Last but not least, should anyone come up to me and say something implying, however vaguely, that my having studied abroad and having a pierced brow and nose have any correlation to my current single status, will most certainly bear the worst of my ire.

All that said, yes, I know all this intense negativity is a function of my own insecurities.  Yes, I know, I know they’re all offering friendly advice only on the basis of their own limited frames of reference and it is up to me to not make much of what they say.  Yes, I do agree with you there.  Uh-huh.  Yep. *Nods her head vehemently.*

Back in the warp as the counter-diatribe ensues.

Moment of Truth

When a man tells you “I’m an asshole”, he’s usually telling the truth.

Why’s and Why not’s

Why’s

The perpetual realization of being a financial liability; covering for people and their myriad needs without any support at hand; self-actualization needs not being met; career being thrust so far back in the background that it risks complete evaporation; social shitness flying from every which way; the uncertainty of every second of every minute of every day.

Why not’s

The unbearably everlasting guilt of not participating in this mess.

From the microwave to the rickshaw

Being a woman is a thankless job. “Being” here is not ontological being but culturally constructed being. The microwave and rickshaw represent the realms of the domestic and public spaces and also encompass the demographic range from upper to lower income brackets. Women who have the luxury to choose one of each of those binaries define their expectations within the prevalent structures and learn to glean from the loose ends in those structures. But God forbid if you happen to be a woman who is either upwardly mobile or struggling with a demotion of status in society, and must occupy the domestic and the public spheres simultaneously, be prepared to be a kick-bucket all through the day.

Miscalculation

“She’s good but she ain’t you…I’m trying to keep my mind on the physical to get my mind off you.”

On to another.

Considered, rationalized and executed.

Savoured and relished.