The Omniblogus - Part One

It begins, like they all do, with 1992.

I had recently moved into a new neighborhood. It was my summer vacations. I didn't know anyone there. So in the afternoon, i went out on the street. There was a game of cricket in progress. My uncle asked the older boys to let me play. i was wearing a replica of the shirt worn by the pakistan team in the world cup earlier that year. i was nine. they asked me to field at third man, and called me world cup.
my cricket playing career moved little further throughout the rest of my life - no one needed to know my name, no one wanted me in their side, and i was always at third man.

i couldn't hope to bat; a fact i blame it on whoever taught me how to bat when i was really young. as a left hander the right handed grip imposed upon me meant that i was forever trapped being a leg-pay-lapparroo type rightie rather than a cover-drive-smoking leftie.

as for bowling, let's just say that most batsmen i got out would say 'i didn't realise it would get to me so slowly...' the people to blame here are wasim and waqar, since because of them i was obsessed with being a fast bowler. unfortunately if i couldn't bowl - for some inexplicable reason - anything which could be classified as fast. i would have had the sense to see that and move onto something new if those two hadn't made being a fast bowler such an essential aspect of being a badass.
i realised the only talent i had was at sledging, and being a crooked umpire.

i also realised - which you may also be able to after reading the above excuses - that like every pakistani, i was prone to blaming every personal problem on nefarious forces beyond the realm of my control.
the sad truth was that i could never ever play cricket.

but that didn't mean i couldn't love it.

10CC - Dreadlock Holiday
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i was part of a generation - a generation that first tasted cricket on that wondrous world cup of 1992. it was like watching irreversible, the ending of the movie came at the beginning. my first taste of cricket was at the top. inevitably, the only way to go was down.
but of course, pakistan being pakistan, the journey went down, but it went every where else in between as well.

bitch slapping the poms with the 'dark art',

getting high and tying one day matches in the caribbean,

learning what a bookie meant in bangalore,

scraping past the aussies in karachi,

the ball refusing to scrape through symcox's stumps in faisalabad,

the first time i kissed a man (saeed anwar on the tv screen following that innings)

all out to kumble,

invincible in sharjah

and indecipherable elsewhere,

watching the birth of the batsman-wicketkeeper extraordinaire in a heartbreaker in hobart,

watching the ultimate houdini by razzaq,

realising that jayasuria can hit the fastest 50 and still lose in singapore,

and grounds in nairobi becoming part of folklore...

then, a seminal event took place.

in 1999 world cup, pakistan looked set to conquer the world. the loss to bangladesh meant that we had even satisfied the bookies' hunger.

but then the world came crashing down.

the narrative of pakistani cricket changed course. in ancient times, entire civilizations would die out if a river changed course. now, pakistan too, became to transform.
slowly, but surely, pakistan began to change.

it has often been argued that the pakistani identity - surely one of the most fraught concepts of contemporary times - is best crystallized in the game of cricket, and embodied by the cricket team.

that identity was rapidly coming under threat.

[End of Part One]

(Next Part - Tangent One: The Man U fan)

Phallic Phallacies

AMpakistanis who have lived abroad, or more likely studied abroad, always carry a hang up of having been there. they love making endless comparisons, using it perpetually in arguments, talking about the best quiche they ever had, the most stunning concert they heard, the most fun they had, the best drink they ever tasted - while they were abroad.
i should know - i am one of them.

my stories inevitably begin with "when i was in america..."

so this is one of them stories. *these*

when i was in america, at my college, we would have a weekly assembly, where people from various countries would mark their country's independence day with a presentation about their country, they would play their music and dress in their native clothes, and talk about their country in general.

now firstly 14th august fell during the summer vacations, so i didn't have an option for that. but in my second year me and my first year country mate did do something for 23rd march.

back in 2002, pakistan was a country not many people knew about, and almost no one gave a shit about. in essence, the good old days.we forsook the talking about our country for a two minute video. the first slide began with the claim that pakistan was a country that was the bomb.

that was followed by a montage of pictures of beautiful pakistani women, and those of our nuclear missiles, played over salman ahmed's version of the national anthem.

as i recalled that incident now, the first thing that struck me was how incredibly misogynist it was. but i also recalled it as a deliberate attempt by us about making people know where and what pakistan was by making obvious the two most shocking things about our country - that we had women who were not wearing burkhas, and that we had a far more naked nuclear obsession.

my friends were genuinely surprised, perhaps because at age 16-18 kids are not as politically inclined.

regardless, the prinicpal was aghast - she summoned us and lectured us about the inappropriateness of the message we were putting out about our country. she was almost weeping when she spoke about how much she would hate someone portraying her native Colombia in such a manner.

thinking about it now, i wonder why i decided to present pakistan in such a manner. instinctively, the first response i recall was wanting people to realise what and where pakistan was - i mean before the epicenter of terrorism stuff most people thought of us as somewhere between saddam and apu.i also remember that at that time i found our nuclear pride a bit hilarious - i didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the people of our bum fucked nation were distributing sweets in public to celebrate the nuclear tests.yet, i am still not sure if my eventual message was as genuinely satirical as i recall. because eventually, i was projecting the two things pakistan the nation, the construct and the state love doing - brandying off our nuclear power, and exploiting our women.


essentially, both impulses arise out of the strenuously patriarchal nature of our society. the phallic missiles aside, the nuclear bomb is a blatant display of geopolitical machismo.
it is perhaps the IR equivalent of wearing one of these.
as for women, i don't know if i really need to qualify anything here. women in pakistan exist in a surreal reality.
they are upheld as the barometer of our morality and values, and are hence punished barbarically if they stray even in the slightest from the standards we uphold for ourselves...
...yet at the same time, it is a national pastime to ogle at women, to fantasize about women, to poke women's private parts in public places, to fornicate with women with or without their consent.

for many young pakistani males, getting together to bang a hooker is an acceptable weekend activity. if my former driver is to be believed, in rural areas getting together to gang bang any woman is acceptable weekend activity.
we have found ways to make sleeping with nine year olds religiously acceptable, and if we feel that we must protect their honor, we have found justifications for marrying them off to the Holy Book.

essentially then, the interplay between women and nukes was so vital in my presentation (even though i didn't realise it) because it represents the pakistani psyche, with both elements representing integral parts of our masculinity - with the nukes being the national penis, and the women being the national penis receptacle.

put in such a context one can understand why just about every problem in pakistan is inevitably attributed to a foreign ploy designed to steal our nukes. in essence, we are afraid of being castrated by the big white man. we are afraid they will take away our penises.
so even though we are largely poor and illiterate as a nation, and remarkably fucking corrupt and lest we forget, in the eye of the global shitstorm, our primary obsession is the nukes and their planned theft.
because, as i just said, without the nukes we would be chakkay, heejray, na-mard.
so imagine the delightful irony of this delightful situation, described here in the words of my colleague

"The entire national security doctrine is based on the revenge of a lover..."

it appears that a couple of pakistani nuke scientists - oh those epitomes of our nation's valor - were willing to fucking sell out the nation's grassy diet for a little bit of cash. if we extend our analogy here in, some pakistani males were willing to castrate our national lun to buy some rolexes or what not. to make these guys even more scum of the earth, one of these fuckers had an office romance (which i find abhorrent) and then decided to jilt his lover.

motha-fucka.

in essence, the pakistani male is willing to chop off his own cock for the sake of some money, which he would probably spend on getting a hooker upon which he would realise that he no longer has a dick and thus the money and his penis would both go to waste.
now, as my fiance reminded me, it was a woman however, who helped us retain our luns, and thus through perverted pakistani logic, our murdangi.
and what makes this woman, who was also a nuclear scientist by the way, even more impressive, is that she did not do it for the national cock, but rather out of the fury generated by a love betrayed.
now if there is one thing we can do right, it's love. love is a good enough reason to do anything, and if someone fucks with your love, being delivered to the ISI is a pretty easy let off.

so next time you bitch and moan about the fact that the foreigners are looking to castrate the nation and run off with the nukes, remind yourself that those who rule, those who obsess about their phalluses the most, are the ones that are most willing to sell them off for some money.

like every other problem in pakistan, it seems that only those who are getting fucked will be around to save the country (and it's penis) when it needs them.

Proof of the Mumbai attacks - Obama did it

the title of this post is an attempt rooted in curiosity over the idea if a certain title, or tags of a post encourage greater volume of visitors.



time will tell i suppose.

i had great hopes for my first post of the new year. wanted to usher in something encapsulating the past crazy 12 months. unfortunately, that has not happened.

but what i did find was this article. it may not be news to you, or interesting even. but in my line of work, and the general obliviousness towards reality that has come to be a way of life in pakistan, i felt compelled to share this wonderful piece by a man who has rapidly replaced mohsin hamid as my favorite pakistani author. that has also been due to the fact that the reluctant fundamentalist was such a terrible terrible let down.