Another English language channel

So I was thinking the other day, why don’t I watch Dawn News?  From Convent School where speaking in Urdu was largely forbidden except during the Urdu class to a home where my American-University-educated mother encouraged speaking and thinking in English, Urdu has been my second language despite my Pakistani nationality.  Now I am not about to take the post colonial lens on this and lament the inadequacy of my Urdu because of some latent, inbred cultural complex.  I honestly don’t think that the limitations of language have ever made me less patriotic than the next person.  What I do find curious though is that despite being a Pakistani who routinely reads an English newspaper, I am not at all drawn to a channel that spews news in English and just while I am contemplating this indifference, Express launches a competitor.

I think a good chunk of my antipathy has to do with all the pseudo British and American accents that go across the board.  If the English language channel caters to the English speaking Pakistani then why does it not talk in the native dialect of English?  If however it is operating as do outsourced call centers and requires to really communicate with the Western world then why is its programming directed at a niche Pakistani market where all the men and women pointedly exude their affluence?  For example, why is it not possible for the women anchors to be wearing shalwars instead of capris and still be talking in English?  It appears as though only the super affluent in this city prefer communicating in English when in reality there is a good section of middle class Karachiites who do too but neither are they represented and nor are they targeted.  Documentaries too take on a very sanitized, outsider look at local happenings.  This is clearly not akin to al-Jazeera’s philosophy which seeks to speak to the West in its own language and debunk its hegemony through counteractive devices.  This is more a case of ’sell to the market which will yield the more profitable returns’: use the sweatshop base and generate income in foreign currency.

So if one of these was not enough, we now have another one to grace the idiot box.

This one’s for U

It so happens that when I’m least pulled together, I run into U.  Because this is either a textual encounter via our cell phones or a virtual one, he can not sense the sadness or agitation on my end and often goes off in his usual chirpiness.  It does surprise me though that despite all these years, he still can not pick from the tenor of my replies that I’m out of sorts.   It usually takes my telling him in explicit words that I’m upset, confessing which in any case takes a lot out of me, for him to be receptive to the fact that something’s amiss.  Once he knows that though, he always wants to know what the matter is.  He has gradually learnt however to let me be sometimes.  For a good long while though, until I learnt to recognize that he is not so in sync with my insides to know my distress and to learn to accept my vulnerability to him by asking for some space, most of our bad arguments ensued in such moments.  It was largely my inability to cope with my own grief or stress and to admit my lack of composure to him that made me go on the aggressive.

After this realization there were times when I allowed myself that window of vulnerability with him and U, being wired the way he is, tried to logically reason me out of my distress which sometimes came across as him trivializing my situation or tried to distract me with other things.  All the while I have known that he was sincere in wanting to help and yet neither of the two approaches worked for me.  I ended up more irritable or sadder by the end of the conversation.  I grew to understand that U could not comfort me when I was losing it.  I accept this inadequacy in our “relationship” because he is a friend and to expect beyond his capacity is unfair in the platonic dimension.  I deal with it by way of avoiding him when I’m out of it so I do not damage my ties with him.

A couple of days ago my plans of avoidance weren’t quite so successful because when I found my way to what I thought was the quietest, loneliest corner, guess who was already there?  U.  I demanded some space but I don’t think that kind of straightforwardness is very palatable for U.  I think he construes it as a rejection of his sincerity for which he is off sulking somewhere in his closet.  I’m sorry that it is the case because I can’t help the fact that when I’m emotionally ravaged, I either need to be with someone who understands the particular wiring of my brain or be entirely alone to wait it out till the phase passes.  It’s not the kind of wiring that I can explain either.  I don’t like hurting him but I can’t help being me.  I hope he’ll come around to figuring that out and accepting that between the two of us, we are certainly more than fair weather friends but on dark, cloudy days, we are more likely to and better off spending time apart.

Blog .. Bog .. Bob .. Blob .. who? Me?

A comp. sci. friend of mine with a taste for data mining that verges on paranoia (much like my brother’s), stopped blogging about any and all personal issues because no matter how many identities he switched he claimed that people who knew him could always recognize his distinctive writing style. During the year that blogging served as the ultimate sanity-provider, I too, frantically changed URLs and blog services, sometimes working on two or three simultaneously, to preserve anonymity. About 3 years later, the possibility of being found in cyberspace is not as daunting. The Capt’s inability to recognize me has further reassured me that I have nothing to worry about. *winks* My comp.sci. friend however has hinted that he has spotted me in cyber space again but it doesn’t really matter to me as much as it would have some time ago.

I wonder, what has changed in my life or in my world view that I’m not plagued by the fear of being found out?

Control freak

I’m back on contraception and ironically it makes me feel empowered. For a sexually inactive woman the idea of preventing pregnancy as an affirmation of control over the body and self holds no currency. However, it regulates my period and clears up acne. By adding more estrogen to my system, it reduces my mood swings considerably and functionality is restored to a more predictable pattern. It is also comforting to think that because my ovaries’ performance is substantially reduced, I’m producing (and wasting) fewer eggs every month. What that means is that I am likely to be able to bear children beyond the average healthy production span of the ovaries. Hitting 30 in eight months, and still single with no chances of sex in sight, all these things need to be weighed out carefully.

Since so many posts have been consistently falling in the meandering and geometry category lately, my struggle for control must be evident. I reflect on my airborne moments and hope to never be buoyant to the point of such madness and transgression again. Being airborne requires relinquishing all control and letting yourself drift with its headiness. As long as the agency of control remains, happiness is possible but not unfettered buoyancy. I felt so complete those days that I was walking on air. I had something which I had patiently and conscientiously denied myself even in all my years of living by myself without any checks. I allowed myself to be led beyond permissible boundaries and I wasn’t ridden with guilt. So overcome was I with the lightness of my being that when the cliche situation came full circle the triteness of it all was exceptionally unbearable. Having been bred on the sole principle of integrity, the loss of face and loss of self was most damaging.

Still reeling from the aftermath, I read:

“Sin has this horrible ability to chase one throughout life.” – Khaled M. Abou el Fadl.

Does el Fadl mean that having sinned once, one is likely to fall into again and again? Or does he mean that it’s repercussions follow a person throughout her/his life.  I was intimate with a man and it was as much out of my love for him as it was out of a desire to let go of all reason and logic, to soar above everything imaginable. I did not sleep with him. For a woman who had only kissed once even until she was 28, morality is sacred in each of its facets. Intercourse then is only the nth stage of intimacy. Preclusion of just that can not uphold the principle in its purity.  I have transcribed the past few months onto my slate and even if Allah forgives them, which I believe he has by bringing me back, they can never be disowned. If asked about my past again, how will I hold my head up high in a besmeared body?

Bereaved

My grief for Benazir is akin to my grief for the inmates of the Lal Masjid Madressah – I did not agree with either’s politics but it’s impossible not to feel for the way they were killed. Whether it was the bullets in her neck that ultimately proved fatal or the lever of the sun roof collapsing on her head, she is dead and the religious right was behind it. While Karachi and most of Sindh burns to mourn her, there is a fatalistic resignation among people that peace will return once wounds begin to heal. What I find most troublesome is the statement of power that the religious right has made to the US by taking down one of the West’s fair-haired girls and to Musharraf by doing it in his garrisoned city, so close to the capital. Two possibly ensuing scenarios are: 1> the religious right will take over Pakistan in due course and make life hell for a primarily culture-driven Islam-observing Pakistani people; 2> whether preemptively or to reclaim the power promised by nukes, the US will step in and Pakistani people will suffer the same fate as the ordinary Afghans and Iraqis ruled by their respectively “oppressive” governments. Like citizens of felled countries, we bide our time until fate unfolds what is in store for us.

Postscript: A few months later I reflect on how Fundophobic I have become over time. Her murder was the work of the agencies and Fundos, the convenient scapegoat.

Eid visiting

Taayi describes her daughter-in-law as the classic Akbari from Deputy Nazir Ahmed’s novel, “Ghazala defies me in everything, she goes out into the street with wide-eyed wonder like a maidservant to watch the traditional slaughter of animals for Eid-ul Azha, she’s lazy and sleeps till noon…” The list goes on for half an hour with frequent repetition. Although Ghazala’s fictive counterpart, Akbari, was married to a thorough gentleman, Ghazala’s husband has grown up on Indian films and soap operas. In his wife has found his first partner who makes a king out of him by baring her flesh and soul to him. He holds her hand in public and eats off the same plate as her at weddings without a care for culturally acceptable codes of decency.

Taayi’s world is uncomfortably fascinating from a distanced vantage and driving through very congested lanes of Azizabad lined with MQM flags and tinsel kites (the election icon for MQM), I wonder if all those couples standing at nihari and mithai vendors have similar lives. The women clad in ubayas or shalwar kameez all cover their hair with diaphonous gorgette scarves that slip off their heads at the most timely instances to denude their tantalizing golden and silver jewelry. Bright lipsticks and long slivers of jet-black eye-liner coyly speak to their husbands over their Eid outing. Most of the men sport moustaches but not beards. Their eyes scan the crowd with the license of masculinity that entrusts them to fend off any unwanted gazes at their womenfolk. The responsibility of course comes with the fringe benefit of surreptitiously surveying other desirable women in the populace.

Shielded from this reality by the rolled up car window, I reflect on how these women’s ideas of a successful relationship compare to mine. They have all made their men believe that they are priviledged to have them for their wives.  The dynamics do not lead to the man and woman growing together and becoming better people unto themselves and for each other.  They do however lead the woman to feel cherished and have her say in the things that matter most to her.

In retrospect I believe I imbibed the idealism coded into Akbari’s antithesis and younger sister, Asghari, who married an irresponsible man and transformed him through her sincerity, her education and true love into a better man.  A friend once said to me, “you like bad boys”.  I laughed it off at the time but I see the verity of his words.  The caveat is that I don’t like them for their “badness” but the possibility of them being transformed into good men.  Yet even in my messianic heroism, I want to ultimately be with a good man who feels priviledged to have me, who doesn’t hold my hand or eat off my plate in public but walks with me with an aura that binds me to him.  Another Eid without a significant other.  C’est la vie.

To be seaweed would be infinitely more liberating than being a bird. Birds, like people, have places to go and the will to get to those places. Seaweed is a wanderer and content being so, because its life does not depend on its going somewhere.

F was right

February 23rd, 2007

F always said: Home is where you live.

I always countered: Home is where your family is.

F was right. The individualist self-seeker is honest to himself and everyone else when he looks only for his own self-interest. The collective selflessness fed to us is a farce at best.

Anonymity

January 21st, 2007

If all characters were mentioned in the third person pronoun, including the author, then the virtue of cyberspace would be preserved – absolute secrecy and inconsequential interaction. The dividers between fact and fiction, fiction and fantasy, narration and commentary would all collapse. She mulls over the idea and settles on this course of action.