We're Not Just Resilient, We're Passionate.

I just had to put this article up here, it's so brilliantly written and exactly what I've been trying to convey for so long, I just needed to share it:

I Heart Karachi- By Samia Khan

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/2357/i-heart-karachi/

I have lived in the United States on and off for almost 10 years. I have married an American man and love all the privileges, freedoms, and opportunities I enjoy in this country. Yet in all these years, I have never been able to call any place but Karachi my home.

I moved to Karachi in 1991. It was a turbulent time for my city. The MQM was at war with the powers that be and the city was constantly on fire. Our weeks were haunted by strikes and many mornings started with a look at the Death File in Newsline magazine—a summary of the killings of the week.

Yet, these facts are not what I remember about being a girl in Karachi. I remember the tight-knit community of my paros—my neighborhood. Every evening, balconies around the neighborhood would fill up with family and friends. As the matriarch of the community, my grandmother would often receive more than five visitors an evening. Some were the children to whom she gave Quran lessons, who in exchange would make phone calls for her and give her the “down low” on what went on in their homes.

My parents did not worry when I walked out of the gate and into my neighbours’ houses to play with other children. Nor would they worry when I walked around the block with my friends and cousins. Those were the days when we, three girls, could walk around the neighborhood without a worry.

Life continued like this for many years and I could fill pages with all the beautiful memories I have of Karachi. Of all the times we spent on Karachi’s favorite pastime—driving aimlessly from Clifton Beach to Mai Kolachi, around Boat Basin and maybe even all the way to Sandspit Beach. Of all the nights spent with friends talking about Karachi—plotting revolutions over a million cups of chai and Dunhill Lights. Of knowing that in Karachi, you’re never alone. Of the shared experiences and awe that bring together 20 million people from all walks of life.

We are Pakhtuns, Sindhis, Afghans, Makranis, Punjabis, Gujratis, Christians, Parsis, Hindus, and Sikhs. But above all, we are Karachiites. We are what makes this megacity, this city that never sleeps, this mammoth of human energy and potential, what it is.

Legend has it that for years, we have been protected from cyclones, tsunamis, and the likes by the spirit of Abdullah Shah Ghazi, the Sufi saint who is credited with bringing Islam to Sindh. Each Thursday night, millions of us flock to his shrine to ask for favours, to keep our loved ones healthy, to bring peace to our lives and to protect us from tragedy. We honor his spirit and the community that has grown up around it through a weekly qawaal—a musical performance dedicated to God. Its location in a wealthy part of town means that by necessity, it is one of the few places where the rich walk side by side with the poor.

The attack on the Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar was an attack on who we dare to be. An attack on our definition of Paksitani-ness: a Pakistani-ness that transcends the artificial borders of this country, of a Wahhabi/Deobandi version of Islam; a Pakistani-ness that demands the kind of love of country that will make us celebrate this state.

People have said that Karachi will survive, because its people are resilient. But we’re not just resilient, we’re passionate. We stand up for what we believe in and we believe in nothing more than the magnificence of our city and its way of life. This attack shook us to our very core. But it might have been the wake-up call we needed to realize that it’s not just what we say that counts, but what we do.

In this time of deep despair, I am hopeful. Hopeful that we will be propelled into action because we finally understand that our lives depend on it. Those of us who have been silent behind the walls of Defence, Clifton, KDA, London and New York, must wake from this slumber and take our place in the resistance.

We can’t undo what’s already been done. But we can rebuild, reframe, and re-energize our city with positivity and determination. Together, we can win this battle. We are Karachi—we don’t just survive, we thrive.

Webs Of Delusion I Weaved For Myself.

I read a lot. My only possessions of any real worth to me are the books that I own. I have spent more than half my life living in a figment of someone else's imagination, and I've loved every second of it. The worlds may not be perfect, but good triumphs over evil every time, wrongs are righted, the heroes and heroines are magnificent and noble and brave. Almost every book I have ever read speaks of eternal hope, of how things will always get better. Think about it, how many books have you read that don't end on a happier note? These books, and the web of hope and destiny and eternal goodness that they spin, are my main coping mechanism, my one way of dealing with an unjust and imperfect world. But there are days when real life just comes crashing in, when no amount of make-believe will buffer me from the realities that frighten me. And it is on these days that I wonder whether I wouldn't be better off just burning all my books, so that I may have a snowballs' chance in hell of maybe making it in the real world. But the question is, without my books, would I be able to survive the real world at all? I really don't think I could. Like I said, it's a snowballs' chance in hell; the odds don't really seem to be in my favour.

Songs Of The Earth, Not Heaven.

I had a thought once, an odd, rambling, unanchored thought that I've decided to try and convert into something slightly less ephemeral.

Have you ever noticed how a single instrument can tell us an entire story? It's one of the unique things about classical music, how you can touch souls with just one instrument and no words. The way I see it, different instruments have different characters, hence each prefers to tell a different type of story, but all the stories that a single instrument tells have a similar theme or feel to them. Now I'm going to try and explain that run-on sentence a little better.

I'll begin with the violin; for me the violin is all about passion and tragedy. Sort of what the story of two ill-fated lovers would sound like. Sometimes it's with an underlying sense of hope, other times the swells can be terrifying, talking about unspeakable devastation and sorrow, thrilling you to your core. I always seem to feel the violin in my chest, making my heart beat erratically.

Then there's the piano; Now there's an amazingly versatile instrument. A piano solo can tell almost any story you need it to tell, but all it's stories, again just in my completely non-musical opinion, are essentially soft and sweet. It's stories speak of love, of romance, sometimes of sadness, sometimes of something a little darker, but in my mind it's stories always feel like spring, like the relationship between two birds; their courtship, building a nest together, feeding chicks, weathering storms, that's the kind of story that the piano tells me.

Next there's the sitar; now to be honest the sitar is something that I've discovered only recently. It' also an instrument that I have never quite heard entirely on it's own, in fact I don't think I've ever really heard a subcontinental instrument quite alone. But the sitar is an instrument with a magnetic personality, when it does begin to tell it's story, it always takes centre stage, and all the other instruments always seem to melt away into the background. It's stories always seems to be about the past, about days gone by, about fairytales and magic, about colours and dust and myth.

Then we have the bansuri or bamboo flute; another eastern classical instrument, but one that tugs the heartstrings better than any other. The bansuri's stories are all about heartbreak, about loss, about belief and about beauty. There isn't an instrument more sincere or more moving than the bansuri.

These are just four of my favourite instruments that I've used for examples' sake. I guess my main point would be that all music, no matter what instrument makes it, what genre it belongs to, is about hope and humanity, about simply being human and all the emotions that come with it. Which is why I find people who tell me that music is wrong, or ungodly or haraam, to be so tragic and pitiable and a tad bit irrational. As if they're trying to tell me to rip the rods and cones out of my eyes, or paint over the sky and plants because God never really meant me to see in colour, because it's too distracting. Little do they know that I never remember God more than when I hear music or see art, that that is when I'm most thankful for the life that He's given me; for every human's ability to hear, see, think, feel and create... for making me ashraf-ul-makhluqaat.

Here and There.

Monsoon season is officially here. Karachi got it's first real lashing of rain today, it was amazing. One thing that I've noticed is that when it rains here, things don't really get all grey and gloomy the way rain is generally described. Far from it in fact, everything becomes more intense, as if someone switched the light settings of my brain around, all the colours become deeper, the greens are greener, the reds are redder, whites are whiter, etc. And it feels like a purely Karachi thing, because I remember my time in Kuala Lumpur; it used to rain like crazy there, all year round, and it would get really dark and grey and gloomy, because the cloud cover used to be so thick, all charcoal and menacing, complete with thunder and lightening, the works. I'm guessing Karachi rain is just brighter because we usually get the tail end of the monsoon and the showers are usually short lived , so the clouds are just thinner. But whatever the reason, rain in Karachi is a lot of fun, most of the time.

In other news, there's this french song "Alors on Danse" by Stromae, that's been all over the place; on the radio, on my facebook news feed- posted by a bunch of different friends etc. It's a good song, has an amazing beat obviously, but what I love about it are the lyrics.

So we just dance
So we just dance
So we just dance
When we say study, it means work,
When we say work, it means money,
When we say money, it means spending
When we say credit, it means debt,
When we say debt, it means bailiff,
We agree to being in deep sh*t
When we say love, it means kids,
When we say forever, it means divorce.
When we say family, we say grief, because misfortune never comes alone.
When we say crisis, we talk about the wold, famine and then third world.
When we say tiredness, we talk about waking up still deaf from sleepless night
So we just go out to forget all our problems.
So we just dance… (X9)
So you say that it’s over because the only thing worse would be death.
When you finally think you’ll make it, there’s more and more!
Ecstasy means a problem, problems or just music.
It grabs you by the guts, it takes hold of your head and then you pray for it to end.
But your body is no heaven so you block your ears even more.
And then you yell even louder and it goes on…
So we just sing
Lalalalalala, Lalalalalala,
So we just sing
Lalalalalala, Lalalalalala,
So we just sing
So we just sing
And then only when it’s over, then we dance.
So we just dance (x7)
And well, there’s still more (x5)

The beat and the lyrics, once you translate them, seem so completely disjointed but at the same time they really gel. And on their own, if the translation I found is correct, the lyrics have so many shades, like the writer couldn't make up his mind how he felt about the state of things either. He's equal parts derisive and disenchanted, overall cynical, but with an undertone that I can't seem to find a word for; Resigned? Acquiescent? Fatalistic maybe? I'm not quite sure, but that's exactly why I like it.

Hope Springs Eternal.

A lot has happened since my last post. The Facebook ban has been lifted, as for the precedence it’s set, we’ll just have to wait and see what the long-term repercussions will be. Then there's Israel’s attack on the Gaza Flotilla; something I feel is going to be remembered as a turning point in the history of the world, whether for good or worse, who knows? Then there’s the tragic Ahmedi massacre; something that deserves an entire post on it’s own, but I won’t be writing about purely because I feel it’s been far better covered by Sami Shah and Nadeem Paracha. They’ve written exactly what I would have wanted to write, and much better than what I would’ve managed. The massacre is something that has been a topic of choice (rightly so) for many Pakistani bloggers, however I also feel it’s a topic that no matter how discussed on the blogosphere should have been more talked about through mainstream media, more condemned by the politicians and more protested by the general public. Did I say “more”? Just talking about it publically, at all, would have been a step up. The silence that the TV channels, politicians, and the majority of pakistani citizens have employed in this case sets yet another very terrifying precedence.

And then there was Phet! Yes, another discussed-to-death topic, but one that I want to talk about, simply because for me it felt like a divine sign of hope. I’ve decided to take it as one anyway. It felt like the heavens saying that yeah, things are going to get rough(er), we’ll be faced with even greater difficulties and we’ll be worried and scared, but at the end of the day, things will get better. We’ll make it through and come out the other end, smiling. It felt like Karachi was really truly happy that day. Though, to be fair, Karachiites are generally always excited by the thought of rain. The word cyclone is never really taken seriously by any of us. But I think nothing that I write about it will describe what that day was like better than the pictures below.

They have been taken by a very talented amateur-photographer friend of mine, Huda Ahmed. They are the only set of pictures I’ve seen so far that have been able to capture the emotions and the gorgeousness (is that a word?) of that day. There is heart behind these pictures, and practically the only reason I even felt the need to write this post was because of them and so I could share them here. I love Karachi, I love to write about Karachi, it was my first post, the reason I started this blog, and has been a topic of many posts since. Hence I love the way these pictures are a small symbol of every Karachiites’ eternal optimism. Thanks Huda.

If I never see you again...

Blogger is working. That's quite a shock since everything else seems to be restricted. I don't know how long this will last, so I'm posting fast. I feel like I'm writing from behind enemy lines in a WWII movie or something. Any second now, they'll find my hideout or all communication will be lost, and this might just be my last post before I'm never heard from again. If that's true and Pakistan is on-route to becoming the next China, or more accurately the next Afghanistan, I want this to be out there.

The "everyone draw the prophet" event was insensitive. Every religion in the world has some belief or the other that makes no sense to someone who doesn't belong to it, yet to purposely instigate them and taunt them over it is wrong and unfair. This goes for muslims who behave that way towards other religions as well.

Hence, I felt that the initial idea of not signing into facebook on a specific day to make your point was an intelligent manner of protesting. Yet as per usual in the case of Pakistan, it all spiralled out of control. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but suddenly our govt has banned not just facebook but every other conceivable website ( let's just ban the internet altogether while we're at it). To say that I'm angry as hell, and don't know which wall to bang my head against would be an understatement. What could have been a very valid protest has now lost all credibility and as usual we've become a standing joke.

My freedom of choice has just been taken away; I knew this would happen some day, I was just hoping I wouldn't be alive to see it. In my book this means we're now standing on the precipice of absolute talibanization, whether this ban becomes permanent or whether we see the error of our ways and drop it, will decide where we're headed as a nation. So for all I know this may just be my last post ever.

If so, I hope that over time I've been able to show, how not all pakistanis think exactly alike or are exactly what the media portrays us to be. How many of us are able to see the beauty in other people, other cultures and other worlds, while still loving our own country and religion. For me, and many people like me, it was never an either/or situation.

Life As You See It.

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/04/15/character-of-the-week-henry-miller/

I agree with part of what he says here, but not all of it. I absolutely love what he says about life; to see it as it is. However I also feel that moralities, ethics and laws are important. I personally find nothing miraculous about chaos. Same with security; I see the world exactly as he says one should, through the people and things, literature and music and I do find the world to be an incredibly rich and beautiful place. But I feel that I have the luxury to see it this way entirely because of the relative amount of security that I do enjoy. For someone like me it would become impossible to see the world this way with out it. Which is why I feel that some of what he says here is too generalized. I accept that without death there is no life, and I would never replace the pain that my own arm may give me with an artificial one. However, I would also not go out of my way to risk death or hurt my arm (I'm not a risk taker by nature). Yet I don't feel that this hinders my ability to see the world as it is. For someone like me it just enhances it.
In a way this may also explain how I feel about the Islamic concept of heaven. From what I've always been told about it, we will have anything and everything we could ever want in heaven, but what we won't have is our earthly relationships. We won't even remember the people we knew and loved on earth. It took me a long time to accept how it could be heaven without the people I loved, but in the end I got it. It's the lesser of two evils (figuratively). It's to protect us from the pain we might suffer if one of those we love doesn't make it to heaven. That's the difference between heaven and earth. In heaven we wouldn't sense the loss. I still don't like it, but I understand it now.

PS: Nadia, I hope I've made sense here, this was supposed to be a short comment on your post, but it kinda got away from me, and seemed a little too long to use as a comment :D Now, I have no idea what we learnt in our operative dentistry lecture today. This is what comes of facebook-ing during class!

Of Fairy Lights And City Nights.

Two years ago, I started this blog in an attempt to explain (to myself and anyone else who may be interested) how I saw the world around me, how I saw love, how I saw life and how I saw me. However, I've never really expected anyone else to see what I see or even understand it. But tonight it felt like someone did, and all it took was 11 directors and 17 writers. What I'm talking about is the movie "New York, I love you". In my previous post I tried to explain what it was that drew me to the various cities of the world, the sense of wonder, possibility and (though it may seem odd) peace that only cities bring me. This movie did that. For me it wasn't just about New York, New york was just the back drop, it was about life, it was about people. How they feel, how they think, how they love and how their lives intersect without them even knowing it. I felt it was about fate, about destiny, about the grand scheme of things, whatever you want to call it. My favourite stories included the Shekhar Kapur segment with Julie Christie and Shia LaBeouf, and the Joshua Marston segment about the old couple. I don't know how others feel about the movie, but I got it and in a way it got me. I hear it's based on an older movie called "Paris, je t'aime", I guess I'll be watching that next.

There Will Be Fairylights As Bright As Any City Night.

There is something amazingly breathtaking about city nights. A city skyline aglow across an inky sky, pinpricks of light drawing out this perfect spiderweb down below, streaks of colour like brush strokes sweeping back and forth. I'm trying to explain that feeling you get when you look out the airplane window, just as it's landing, at the sleeping city down below. When you're standing outside on your roof or your balcony, just breathing in the chilly air and looking out at this sprawling mass of life around you. Specially around dinner time, when things are relatively quieter, when all you hear is the clanking of pots in the kitchen, and mothers calling their kids inside, with the occasional siren wailing in the distance along with the honking of the minibuses and the whooshing of traffic. To me a city signifies millions of people, all with their own separate lives and stories. I love the anonymity of a big city, how you can be entirely alone without ever really being alone. Some people may find that depressing, I find it exciting. Whenever I pass the lit up windows of some house, or people walking on the street, or even people driving in the car along mine, I always wonder what their lives are like. What are they doing, are they happy or unhappy, what are they thinking at this very minute? But that wonder is never more alive than at night. At night every city in the world comes alive, the city shows you it's true character, it's personality, the magic it wields...for every city is magical. I remember sitting on the windowsill of our hotel apartment in Paris, at 4'o'clock in the morning and looking down at the bright empty street and never being more in love with that city than at that precise moment. I remember sitting on the pavement outside my hotel in Edinburgh around 10-11 pm, looking out at the ancient illuminated castle right in front, and never feeling more at peace with the world. In London it was during the walk back to the hotel, late at night after a long day, again the streets were almost empty but the city was still bright. It's been like that with every city that I've ever visited and with the city to which I belong. It's during its' bright silent nights that we bond. I love cities in general and I love Karachi in particular. Even with all the load shedding and its somewhat discontinuous skyline, at the end of the day all that matters is the city's soul, it's life force, and what it says when it speaks to you during it's hushed and enchanted nights.

A Short Love Story In Stop Motion By Carlos Lascano

This is a beautiful video I happened to come across, entirely randomly, on youtube. The animation is sheer genius, while the story reminds me ,somewhat, of the opening 15mins of Disney's 'Up'. 15 mins that had me sobbing my heart out by the way. Anyway, the song playing in the background is also one of my absolute favourites, Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros. The song reinforces the sweet simplicity of the story; the dream of a humble, unaffected and enduring kind of love. The sort of love that many would swear no longer exists, but which I feel many people, including myself, have had the honour of witnessing in their parents and grandparents (mashallah), arranged marriage or not. It is the kind of love which I feel is deceptive in it's simplicity and is achieved only through mutual respect, consideration, understanding and a constant give and take. It is the kind of love that I aspire to, and hope am one day worthy of.

Let Them Eat Cake.

Yesterday, while bombs blew up on Shara-e Faisal and outside the Jinnah Hospital, while people all over the city mourned for their lost loved ones and prayed for the wounded, while one of my friends attempted to make her way back home (she lives in the doctors colony within Jinnah), this is what I was doing:



Yes, I baked a cake, a gorgeous chocolate cake with fresh strawberries in the center. The irony of the situation hit me as I was beating the sugar and eggs together. The greater percentage of our population is finding it difficult to afford enough sugar for their tea and flour for their roti, but here I was making a superfluous cake for no reason other than the fact that there were fresh strawberries in the fridge and I wanted to try out my new cake tins. I am greatfull to God for having blessed me as He has, but they are days when I am excessively ashamed of myself. I feel like I'm two separate people arguing with each other. "What is wrong with you there are people dying, your city's in turmoil, what are you doing here" "No I don't want to hear it, I don't want to know how many people have died, I don't want to watch the news, just leave me alone, let me make my cake in peace". I feel so out of control that I feel it's preferable to just bury my head in the sand. I don't have any other way of dealing with it. They say that as citizens we should try and do something, but how exactly do citizens stop bombs from exploding? Governments are corrupt, people are angry, the extremists running rampant, we're in a downward spiral that no one can find a way out of, so we all just close our eyes and go along for the ride, living each day as normally as we can and to the best of our abilities, contributing in what little way we can. But how much longer could we possibly have before we hit the ground in a deathly splat?

This Is Going To Be One Of Those Posts.

I'm stuck. Something inside me is very very stuck. Obviously not physically; just emotionally...psychologically. I don't know why, I'm not even sure what. I just feel odd. Usually I can pinpoint what it is, what I'm feeling, these days I'm not very sure. Usually I write it out, but how do I address a problem when I have no idea what the problem is. I haven't written since September, I haven't wanted to write since September... I still don't... I just think I should. Stuck really is the only way to describe it.