Irony of our current existence

The city is on high alert and we’re in the office fretting over whether or not we will be able to get our space ready for installation on time.

Azadi Mubarak

National Identity is a construct.  When I recognize that, I accept that there is nothing ontological or natural about the ties I feel to a piece of land, populated by a set of people, and given a certain name.  Even so, I must also accept that accepting its construction does not necessarily mean having to negate it the way we have had to negate gender constructs.  Negating this particular construct does not serve to set me free in the way embracing it does.  When I embrace it, I can value the carnage on BM’s last train from Amritsar, I can enjoy a Cricket Match in a way I could never enjoy American football, I can cherish the magnanimity in the philanthropic endeavours around me, I appreciate that had I not been Pakistani, I’d have been Indian and 62 years down from that particular moment, I know I don’t want to be called Indian.

And yet would I rather be called American/British/Australian/Canadian?  The transnational/immigrant reality flashes before my eyes momentarily.  I’d much rather have that life but I wouldn’t want to be any of those nationalities.  For all the dilutions in my acculturated pot of being, of all the labels I could fall under, I think I can deal with “Pakistani” most comfortably,  perhaps if for no other reason, for the fact that I was born with it, in much the same way that I was born with my name.  I’ve disliked my name for years but I can’t swap it for any other.

It is only when I embrace the construct that I take ownership and only then does the path of active citizenship open itself to me. To negate the construct is to be in transit.  In 2009 I do not celebrate freedom from the British, I celebrate the freedom to unpack my cases.

Hmm..

I never thought I’d hear myself saying this but I don’t want to work anymore.  I’m tired of working.  I don’t know how people pull through the same job for years on end.   I on the other hand have been fortunate enough to keep switching projects on a six monthly basis and yet I’m thoroughly disenchanted with the prospect of working to sustain myself.  The trouble is I’m also unhappy when I’m mooching off siblings.  Ijust don’t see why one can’t just get money without doing anything.  After all Allah miyan has promised everyone their share of food, if only He could have added clothing and shelter to it as well.  The other issue is He did promise food but He didn’t mention anything about the kind of food.  So in essence if grams and bread suffices one for the rest of one’s life, great! but if in case one craves Dominoes one fine day, no dice.  Life is complicated.  Besides with all of these travails, if perchance one is not doing Allah’s due, then too there’s no promise of any of this mess letting up in the Afterlife.  I think Allah miyan expects way too much of His people.

Reminiscence

I just read the MS Word version of my old blog which I wrote all through my last year in the US.  I miss the abilities of thinking intelligently and writing inventively.  I had made myself believe that skills of critical thought and reason when acquired could not erase themselves from one’s pallette.  I was wrong.  It is indeed possible to hold on to those skills provided they get an environment where they find room to flex their feelers.  I was wrong also to think that I could create for myself such an environment if I didn’t find it.  Many of us who returned have been smothered and stifled into silence long enough to have forgotten how to get on the way we used to, the way we enjoyed doing things, many of us have forgotten to be ourselves.

I can barely talk articulately any more and I have no more stories to write.  I am tired of pretending everything is fine and I am tired of cribbing and yet there’s no reconciliation to the status quo.  The status quo may be described as: “ungainfully” employed, social outcast, stagnant.  In less literary terms, a loser.  Loser by the definition of those around me because they have no idea of the fact that I’m running on low-oxygen and because they have no clue of the limited oxygen supply to their own brains!   Loser by the definition of those who stayed abroad because in all American-positivity, if that is not working for you, why don’t you just come back?  Now who is to explain why I can’t come back!

I wish I could just figure out how to deal with this rut.  The residues of American positivity in me say, there are solutions which I have not yet discovered and yet, I can’t seem to find them.  Resignation is too far from my leonine spirit for me to suck all this up and yet .. and yet…

I feel like myself again, thank you.

Would you doubt my sanity altogether if I said I saw a faith-healer and he cured me?

Did you know Khwaja Mohiyuddin Chishti left an entire treatise on spiritual medicine and that it is translated and published in English?

Have you ever questioned this existence’s absoluteness and found the answers to its limitations in alternate realms?

May Allah reward all three of them for having pulled me through this at each of its different stages.

blowing off steam

Black depressions will change some relationships beyond reparable recovery. Skimping out of them isn’t half as bright as walking into spring sunshine… it’s a slow trudge interspersed with weeks of consciously neglecting medication and then going back to it because the weepy spells become debilitating and losing people takes away inch by inch of my person.

There have been no emails in the Trash for a full week now and it seems like the novelty of freshness has finally overpowered and overcome the phase of mourning and re-courting. It ought to feel like the ultimate closure I have waited for, but it’s curiously unsettling.

Something about last night’s encounter was very disturbing. I was flattered and spirited and then it all fell before me. It was another instance of something that was supposed to resolve last night but neither did it sort itself out and nor did it end amicably. Piqued anticipation and associated stress and then an anti-climax with no returns. This morning has been terrible. Finally at the end of the whole ten hours the meltdown set in. Anger more than remorse.

Questioning

People in Pakistan spend most of their lives taking care of the elderly. There is no time to be young and enjoy things like marriage and children: whether it is in-laws, or parents or relatives who have no families of their own, a set of older people are allotted to each of us. Career is an indulgence at best if it does not generate enough income to meet the financial needs of the household. Culturally the first priority is family, then work and hence it has never been financial success that have been upheld for role model emulation but selfless sacrifice. Fatalism overrides all impulse because this world is temporary after all, an illusion and nothing else. I accept this latter as Truth, and yet my self can not help but rebel against it. The surest path to Allah is poverty yet the struggle to beat it is considered the accepted way of life. My wanting a PhD, to be a renowned scholar, to have a happy family — by Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani’s definition all these are nothing but conceits of my ego. I believe him. To be in Pakistan despite my ambition, is more out of my sense of responsibility to my family rather than as a service to Allah and yet, accepting that responsibility also comes from accepting the code Allah has prescribed. Being here affords the opportunity to give to people all of yourself but I don’t do it without begrudging it. Therein is my problem. I don’t accept my trials with my head down. I should accept my lot. My lot currently is to serve people at the expense of my career and what my materialistic self would like to see my life as. We’ve decided to ask our parents to bring Chacha to live with us. He doesn’t have long and I can’t help thinking that I too, will die alone, just like him. How much is this our trial and how much is this our mother’s? Are we really being unfair to her by trying to absolve ourselves of our guilt? I wonder.

Disclaimer

For those of you who only know this blog through cyber space, the next few entries may/may not be passe. Readers – perhaps only one of you – who know me in real life may react to them differently. I’d like to request you to accept these entries without judgement if possible and most certainly without any question/dialogue. I need to clear my system of a lot of this and I need to do it silently and privately. The webspace is oxymoronically more private than the My Documents folder.