why coke studio matters

no one in pakistan has any convictions, but everyone has an opinion.


the great joy of opinions is that you can change them with the wind. convictions require standing by your faith while others heckle you and throw half empty yogurt packs in your direction. opinions require you to be loud, and have an inflated estimation of your own self.

the kind of opinion pakistanis excel in is the one which finds faults in others. it doesn't matter if the opinion they currently hold completely contradicts everything they said yesterday, or exposes their hypocrisies. as long as it makes someone look bad, everyone's in on it.


all societies create heroes only to rip them apart. i know that. look at the brits and jordan.  but in pakistan, we skip the hero part, and start directly from the ripping apart business.


and i know that coke studio is already facing all this. everyone's got a million fucking gripes with the whole show.


this is where i answer them. because pakistan can't afford to have assholes with opinions destroy everything we have worth believing in .


(i) How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Cola


Before we had the Islamic Republic of Blogistan, desi opinions were voiced at a place called chowk.com. In 2004, someone named asif memon wrote a seminal piece with the same title as above, detailing the exploitation and destruction of pakistan's greatest ever rock band, Junoon. those of us who went along till the horrible ride knew the story well - a band that had defied governments and invented its own genres was eventually reduced to dishing out half-assed 'Best of' albums, and shitting out what was easily their worst album ever - Dewaar; an album which graced a large coke logo on its front.

but if Coke only epitomized the sloth that accompanied the once-glorious junoon, Pepsi's channeling of a bloke named Machiavelli throughout the entirety of the Vital Signs career was an even greater sin.


before he became a paranoid politico harping endlessly about military governments from a generation ago, NFP was the authority on music in pakistan. he had an even greater article, also in chowk.com, which traced the whole history of the Signs, including the role of Pepsi. NFP tells of how Pepsi tried to influence the kind of songs the band made, how they forced them to tour endlessly and release albums faster, of how they tried to leverage their position by siding with a band named Awaz instead, and how they eventually led to the destruction of the legendary band.

those of you too young to have spent broken-hearted summers listening to "Chalay thay Saath Saath" may not realise this, but at their peak, Junoon and Vital Signs represented the last line of the kalima. to fuck with that was a sin far greater than blasphemy, and both the cola giants had blood on their hands.


there will be idealistic numbnuts who will exhale whatever their smoking, clear their throats, and wheeze out that "that's what  you get when you sell out maaaan..." such assholes have no idea what it means to be a musician, or an artist in pakistan. when the people refer to you as kanjars, they plan to treat you like them too. take a look at the last days of mehdi hasan to get a feel of what i mean. 

this is a land without record deals, without agents or record labels, without royalties, without any way of making any living off your work. work which the whole fucking country would love to pieces, listen to and gain inspiration from, and use for their own commercial purposes, without ever bothering to treat you anything better than a kanjar. so if some young kids decide to make some money off the back of releasing a debut song which would win a shady BBC prize as the greatest song EVER, can you blame them? if an aging band decides that they have nothing to show for their years of building up a fucking industry on their own, so they might as well take the money and run, can you blame them? 


any true fan couldn't. they had to accept the demise of both these monoliths. but they all could, and did, begin to despise the cola kings. them they could hate with all their might. capitalism had destroyed art. end of.


but this is pakistan. where the greatest socialists are feudal lords, where the greatest writers are penniless drunkards, where the greatest sportsmen are chinese coaches and tory cheerleaders. where the maulvis sell heroin and the kuffar save lives. pakistan is that point where the past and the future collide, and you're never quite sure which one you're living in. so it makes sense that the most seismic event in this era's music has a cola sugar daddy which has radically changed the whole rules of the game. as we say, only in pakistan.

what coke has done is not what people think it's done. the whole concept, its equipment, its vision, its outlook, its feel, its music had been planned up, conceived by a man who is the Godfather of Pakistani pop - rohail hyatt. 


what coke did was find an (almost definitely temporary) solution to a problem that the industry has faced for a long fucking time now. you see, music, like much else in this country, survives on patronage. people are loath to pay for music, and as such musicians have very few options. in the past, the national TV and radio would prove to be a modest source for most. but post-80s, the problem has exacerbated. during the 90s, amazing bands would put together the money for a video, then hope to get enough support to put out an album. but it would rarely be enough. which is why any act which manages to put out a second album in pakistan with the original line up automatically enters the hall of fame. 


as time passed, the profligacy of piracy and the rampant spread of downloading meant that money had to be made through endorsements (see Strings, Haroon et al) through sub-standard indian film songs (see Atif Aslam, Jal, Strings) through dubious charitable and religious causes (see Strings, Najam et al) or by pimping out your music fame for any and everything you can (see JJ, Nadeem Jafri)


in recent times, a strange 'improvement' has come about. a record label owned by a media house which loves to get down and dirty has taken on piracy, and started giving out proper deals. only, the kinds of bonded labor shit that the artists are being put through under their watch means that signing up with them is probably akin to artistic and financial suicide.


so when coke came up with the brilliant idea of giving out, handing out, fucking rewarding the whole country with awesome fucking music for free - nay, paying them to run it - it marked a radical departure from what the whole country or even the whole world had so far come up with. 


and then coke did something even better. they decided not to fuck with the sound, or make it commercial. they let it be, or even if they did meddle, they didn't do it enough to ruin the music.


capitalism and art in a win-win situation. only in pakistan.

(post script: in case some of you decide the pepsi is still evil, think of this. the current wave of music, of which coke studio either represents the peak of, or the final hurrah of, began when bands like Aaroh, eP, Mekaal Hasan, Messiah, Schehzad Hameed etc suddenly hit the scene. the reason they all came to the forefront at the same time was because of an event known as Pepsi Battle of the Bands.)


(ii) "Man, this year's Coke Studio has been a huge downer compared to last year..."


after the first episode this season, safieh came up with the golden rule of Coke Studio. sure it's nice to watch it, but you really need to listen to it to get it. the first time is like many other first times - a disappointing preview of whats to come. now you may think this is obvious, but she was speaking to a group which thought that the Arif Lohar song they'd just heard was too long, and Meesha was underused and off-beat. the song you now know as the official song of the summer. 


which is the whole point. most people who were excited about the show this year weren't even bothered with last year's season. in fact, most of the people who did watch last season never got past the blockbuster first episode, which had atif and ali zafar, and noori collaborating with some faqeer dude. so when season three rolled around, there was a lot of hype because of a particular breed of pakistani - the bandwagoner.

bandwagoners are a dime a dozen in this land. whenever they realise something is obviously cool, they jump on and pretend they were always there to begin with. in order to hide their pagan pasts, they become over-zealous about their bandwagon, eventually turning everyone else off. at which point they disembark and bitch to their heart's content. those are the people who were so fucking excited about coke studio because they knew it was cool. and those are the people who fill blog spaces and twitter spaces and youtube spaces with lamentations that the episode sucks.


well fuck you.


to begin with, the songs are being produced by a guy whose last band came out while most of you were still sperms and eggs, and still rumors of its comeback mark a frenzy. rohail hyatt KNOWS how to make timeless music. so if you think that you're the prick who's figured out his music a few minutes after hearing it, you deserve to die.


if anything, the whole program has taken on an even riskier route this season, and a far more nuanced one. gone are the superstars of pop. their place has been taken by people on the verge of breaking out, people who are already massive on another musical plane, and a couple of true blue legends. there is more genre hopping, and a lot, lot less virtuosity, especially for vocalists. this season has been about moods and spaces a lot more than the last one. and the music continues to get denser and richer.


this is not stuff you can digest overnight. its the kind of music you can walk away from and forget for a decade, until one day it suddenly comes rushing back through the smell of a biscuit soaked in brandy.


mark my words - as the time passes, this season will follow its predecessor in continuing to rise in people's estimation. and by the next season (if there is one) the same people who were bitching now would be harping on about how season three was the one that changed their lives and prompted them to create greater space for spirituality in their drawing room paint color choices.


(iii) "Abida doesn't sound so good - how could Coke Studio fuck that up?"


i realise that most of this can be answered by the rant above. but since this is abida we're talking about, i also realise that she deserves a whole section to herself. i concede that the two abida parveen songs weren't quite what i had hoped for, and in the case of the first, the situation has so far not improved with time. i realise that this is still too early, but there is another explanation.


you see, abida parveen is far bigger than the whole sum of coke studio - all the artists and people behind the scene and all the buzz and everything. she's been a global legend for some time now, she's worked with everyone, she's been covered in every genre, she's been produced a million different ways. while the level of technical and aesthetic production at CS has been unprecedented for most musicians, AP has already had that and more. that's why her songs have not been obvious so far, rather layered around her. 

moreover, sometimes the greatest things coming together doesn't work. there is a bootlegged mp3 of jim morrison singing while jimi hendrix plays guitar. its pretty shitty. 


(iv) "Why I'm proud to be a Burger"


one of this year's participants, Omer Bilal Akhtar had recently published an op-ed in the  Dr. NewsPaper/Mr Blog Aggregator Express Tribune recently by this name. it was pretty shit, and was absolutely crucified by commenters. the ADP frontman eventually wrote a hilarious and heroic defence of his piece, but it was too little, too late.


he had a point though - if burgers keep feeling ashamed and aloof, they'd keep being called out for living in a bubble. and since its assumed that those living in a bubble can't communicate with their society, they should and would be ridiculed.

but if anyone sits through the behind the scenes clips on the show, they'd see long haired, american accented, weirdly dressed, farangi influenced, clueless burgers talking very intelligently about music. and they'd see those same burgers being accorded tremendous respect and love by musicians from the other side of the bridge, the other side of the divide, from the 'real' part of pakistan. all goes to show that if you embrace your talent AND your identity, being a burger is no impediment, and even an advantage for creating something remarkable. 


and the ADP song had one of the most vintage pakistani freak out leads in recent history. so stop bitching on them.


(v) "Fuck yaar, they're just ripping off the originals..."


i could spend a long time on this, but a few lines should do. 'copying' someone's music and lyrics and calling them your own, ala Anu Malik, is cheating. paying homage to greats while composing something original is not cheating of ripping off.


there were a lot of people who did, and continue to, hate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. these were qawwali connoisseurs who hated his cheap remixes, and resented the fact this his fame was not anywhere in proportion to his ability or talent when compared to his peers and predecessors. and i'll be the first to say it - there are some truly terrible nusrat remixes out there. but the whole point is, if it wasn't for those dishkum-dishkum songs, an entire  generation would have been alienated from one of their most significant art forms. because without nusrat, there was no one who was able to make the conditions which allowed pop-music and casual listeners into the world of qawwali. who allowed us to discover his influences, and love it so much that we began to listen to the unremixed, unedited versions of his own qawwalis, and those of others. the man, on his own, resuscitated the entire goddam form.


that's what coke studio is doing now. sure, you have these snobby friends who will show you the original version of "Chori Chori" or "Chambey di Booti" and piss all over the covers. but what these music puritans and fundamentalists don't realise is that without these cover songs, this conversation about which Reshma version of Chori Chori is the best would have probably never happened. these songs are allowing us a way back into our own pasts, our own identities and selfs, which we would have otherwise lost in the morass of unseen youtube videos. 


(vi) "Oooohhhh, so they're not ALL reactionary, jaahil, media-obsessed, heads-in-the-sand, clueless, greedy, selfish miserable chootias..."


the greatest thing about coke studio is that it proves that if you do something with the best people, with the best intentions and the best efforts to create something according to an aesthetic ideal, it can be popular and widely accepted in pakistan. 


this is no small thing.


there is such little hope for people trying to not dumb themselves down, trying to avoid being popular for popularity's sake, for people interested in saying something meaningful, for people who lack the energy and bitchiness to find a savage way to the top. 


so when you see something that brings together the best people and works brilliantly, you know that its possible. if we put aside our bullshit, if we lay down our ideologies, if we shed our inhibitions and our insecurities, we can do something that stands the test of time.


and that is why coke studio matters.

The Omniblogus - Tangent 3: There was Once a Wasim

[Part One]
[Previous Part: Tangent One - The Man Utd Fan]
[Previous Part: Tangent Two - The Lagaan Discourse]

This blog was written on the 22nd of June. A variety of reasons, most notably my wedding, prevented this from being done earlier. yet i am convinced it retains a timeless quality, undiminished by the fading memory of that glorious day at Lord's, and the subsequent semi-final defeat.

Can you name any movie that James Dean was in? Probably not. Yet most people could recognize this picture of the short-lived superstar.

There are people who come to define not only a profession, but an era. Their essence seems to capture the world around them, the glories and vagaries of their time, the sense of how life was meant to be lived within their context. the word "zeitgeist" was invented for them.
One such person was Wasim Akram.

The Left Arm of God was a man who was plucked from obscurity at 17 and went on to redefine what it meant to be a bowler. Like one of his contemporaries, Shane Warne, his mastery of his art was so great that he left his greatest victims (the English, the Indians) with massive Stockholm syndrome. And yet he was also a playboy, a poster child for diabetics patients, a prodigal son for bookmakers, a partygoer and a scapegoat.
But for my generation, he was, is and always will be – Wasim bhai.

For the longest time, I had not questioned why we called him wasim bhai, Then I saw this again, and immediately i recognized the awe that fills up in the future Ufone salesman you see below.

In fact, this public service message may well have been my first real encounter with Wasim bhai the person, and as the ad makes evidently clear, Wasim Bhai was already a legend.

Remember, this is before the 400 test wickets and the 500 odi wickets, before the tri-series in Australia, before the repeated brutalization of India in Sharjah – heck, it’s even before the bloody reverse swing sodomization of England, both in the test tour and the world cup.
Our cricketing consciousness woke up to an age where Wasim bhai was already divine.
And so while I, and people my age, got to see Wasim Bhai’s greatest years, as well as his latter days, we never saw the awkward young boy who was just learning to make his mark, learning where to bowl the inswinger, when to use the bouncer, how to disguise the slower one.
In a sense, we never really grew up with Wasim Bhai.
Yes he was always there, the ever-protective guardian of our dreams and hopes. Time and again, when the Pakistani team’s collective brain farts would leave our spirits flagging, wasim bhai would resuscitate them faster than Pamela Anderson on Baywatch. Bowl after bowl he would beat the bat, flirt with the edges, and when the slips inevitably dropped the resulting catch, he would glare, call their mothers whores, and return to bowl the batsman out. In a previous era, fast bowlers bowled short, broke bones rather than stumps, and had long, long run ups. Wasim bhai almost ambled in, and bowled them full, but man, did he bowl them well.

But still, he was after all, wasim bhai.
For us, our generation’s hero, our era’s James Dean, came to be in 1996, in a forgotten ground in Nairobi.
It began perhaps the most insane and counter-intuitive love story since Rumi gave up his scholarly trappings after one gaze in Shams’s eyes. Other countries venerated men like Tendulkar, who gave them century after century, or Waugh, who gave them illusions of immortality, or even Hick, because really, they had no one else to support. So what was it about this man then that turned all Pakistanis delirious?

It was not like we were blinded either. Every inevitable failure, every ugly swipe resulting in tame dismissals, every golden duck, every moment of indecipherable stupidity was roundly criticized, chastised, moralized and analyzed to death. Fathers and uncles would make exasperated grunts and evoke memories of Zaheer and Mushtaq, young girls would find their cricket fever suddenly cured, foreign commentators would sound bemused and smug. There would be snide remarks about the stereotypical idiocy of the pathans, and vows that he would never be supported again. Logic, common sense, pragmatism, his lowly average, his sheer uselessness all screamed for him to be banished to the wilderness.
And perhaps that was why we loved him – because he encapsulated best the spirit of what it meant to be Pakistani in our times. He was something no one else could quite understand, he used an approach that no one would dare mimic.

Consider this – the only thing that matches the volume of opinions regarding the failure of Pakistan as a viable entity is the plethora of expert conclusions that his career was finished. And yet, both of them are still around. Because just like Pakistan, he is forever resilient, forever capable of reinvention. When even he could see that the batting was just not happening anymore, he did not slip away into the darkness. He came back as the baddest mothfucker leggy since a fat boy from Victoria.

Once, while I was somewhere up north, a friend and I saw young children jumping across a yawning ravine with death defying leaps. At first we wondered how they could do something so stupidly dangerous. Then it occurred to me that the reason they could pull off such insanity was because the possibility of failure never came to their heads. They had pure faith in their madness.
Mohsin Hamid had written of 1998 that no one believed in consequences anymore.

Every day, as we break red lights and jostle with vehicular madness, as we consume tainted water and questionable food, as we bribe and barter, we live in existence where the possibility of the consequences of our actions can not hope to be considered, because perhaps we know of no other way.

It would be foolish then to expect our Lala to be any different.
We will never be what this game, or this world is supposed to be about. We may never fully democratize, or industrialize, or de-feudalize. He will never learn a method, or perfect a formula, or become predictable.

But when it all seems over, when there is no hope left, when everyone will write us off, we will have our moment of undying glory.
We are “The Boom Boom” generation.

Blasphemy no. 5

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The Joys of Quality E-Mail FWs

You are definitely staring at a monitor right now. but you may or you may not have your speakers on, or have headphones either.

Similarly, when you are watching the tv, there is a way to mute the sound, but you can not mute the picture.

it is perhaps why music aficionados don't like videos - those who access videos inevitably become viewers, rather than listeners.

but even the visual sense has its own class markers - much the same as everyone on the blogosphere cares more about the class and ideological differences amongst themselves rather than realizing that they are all part of the smallest pyramid on the income distribution chart.

so, there is text, images and moving images. clearly, text is the clear loser, because it is slower, useless unless focused on and thought about, and requires the greatest effort.

the difference between the image and its moving counterparts may be difficult to split on aesthetic differences, but the moving image category provides you the most bang for your buck, so that's where people end up going the most.

so, it's all about what you see, often over what you read.

now, i received an e-mail this morning proudly exclaiming that

"FW: Most Good Looking Man In The World Is a Pakistani! (Internal)"

now my eyes saw, but they did not believe. but, as the Oracle says "Believe"

but why take my word for it. who am i to tell you what to believe and what not to. 

why.

don't you see.

for yourself.

TA-DA!

it's ok. 

you can scroll back up.

do i really need to write anymore?

well, what you saw up there was the straight-on to camera, look-me-in-the-eyes, understand me, know me, luuvvee me style. it's important to note that even if not visible, the hands are not on the hips, in a threatening or aggressive manner, but probably pressing lightly against the thighs. it suggests a laid-back, lackadaisical, almost bohemian approach sprinkled liberally with good-clean-fun. but that is not what is arresting you.

it's the eyes. 

as mansoor malangi put it so eloquently, "teray naiiiiin, tere naaiiiin, te-ray naiiiiiin..." 

a set of eyes almost perpetually behind some dapper set of shades are presented in all their un-tinted glory. and it's a sensual, almost holy experience. these are not the eyes of a politician, a statesman, a deeply respected icon... 

 these are the eyes of a young boy, 

playing on a karachi street, 

in the blazing afternoon heat, 

and he's asking you...

... to love him

but it doesn't end there.

Chotay, agli slide lagao.

After all the eroticism, it is perhaps almost a relieved soul that greets this image. the maddening ecstasy induced by the last picture can now subside into a calm ocean of wisdom and gratitude, the waves of reverence gently lapping on your grateful feet. 

when the continued encroachment of the Taliban *coff* Pathan*coff* worries you, when the hollow words of the media and Imran Khan compel you to take the streets in the month of May, when the issues of federation, feudalism and fucking-staying in power are not to be found in any political party's manifesto, you need not despair. 

because somewhere, in England, in a small garden, in the morning, a well dressed philosopher is slowly composing his daily voice-mail,  issuing instructions for you, your family and your friends.

and it's not just there, in the garden, where the creative grapes are fermenting to produce the intoxicating wine of wisdom. the thoughts are just as powerful when composed in a coquettish glance away from the lens, into the lookspace of the mysterious realms of the metaphysical world

and now, what do we have here...

as mentioned above, the placement of the hands is a lovely indication of the disarming, unarmed, welcoming tone of the body language. but here again, one sees the vision on display. that glorious path towards fascist emancipation that we all await deliverance upon. and that smirk - that gentle, mirth-filled little scrawl made by the positioning of those full lips that signify hope, elation, contentment and eventual salvation. 

but it's not all about being a leader, forever frozen in thought amidst middle-class English town surroundings. a leader also immerses himself in the cultural milieu, a leader's heart beats with the passions of the masses, a leader is he who lives the lives of his people.

i'm not sure if he's dressing like Osama bin Laden would at a qawwali. i am even further unsure about how much i like the people around him - i hope they are not his companions. the guy on the right seems to be sleeping, and has a large camera bag, which surely has no place at a performance such as this unless it involves a cameraman, which snoozing beauty over here clearly isn't. and those guys on the left - what is the guy in black wearing, and why are they talking. i mean, what the fuck is so important that you have to talk about it during what was clearly early-era Salman Ahmed doing the solo for "Do Pal Ka Jeewan". I mean, what else would move the Bhai of all Bhais and their Behens to such a pure moment of bliss? 

The eyes are focused in concentration, the arm extended in simultaneous appreciation of the sound, as well as creating a symbolic connect - like an antenna - with the fabolous energy floating in the auditorium. 

Rock on Altaf Bhai, rock on.

At first, this picture seemed to have too many colours that the BJP likes to wear. That can never be good. But then, it becomes obvious that Pir Sahab is visitng another Pir and the ecsatsy of the divine union has climxed into an orgasm of colours which have flocked to  the shareer of the Bhai who is Pir.

In fact, such mortal divinity causes collective cumming across the confounded devotees, and they often like to express their honor and love. Sometimes, they do that through a placard. 

"Welcome In Delhi, 

Mr. Altaf Hussain

A Man Loves To All Folks

By - Indo-Pak Friendship Forum"

A Man Loves to all Folks. 

How true. How poignant. 

No other man has the amount of loves that he can dispense upon all folks like my Saathi. So many loves, so many folks. It is truly incredible. And don't be put off by the cringe binge expression he's carrying, he likes it - he likes it a lot. 

but sometimes, a man who loves to all folks also sends his love to all tribes. and the nomadic peoples of the desolate stretches that is Bumfuckistan, Pakistan. and as i had mentioned, the leader is one with his people, and his people are the Mohajir. Those who migrate. And since all of us are forever migrating, forever in transit, across time, space and the ether, we are all migrants, we are all Mohajirs, and we all have one leader - a man with the ability to effortlessly lose himself in to costumes of any one. His visceral link with the common man means that even in strange costumes, he immediately appears as the perpetual native. it is only when you look at that visage, that self-content mystique of the seer that you realise it is not just a common man, it is the Common Man. 

Pir Saab can also be the Nawab, the Khan, the Malik, the Makhdoom, the Chaudhry, the Mian and the Malik, the Syed and the Thakur, the Saeein, the Saaaaaaaaaattttttthhhhhhhhhiiiiiiii...

But then there is one pitcure I can't really say much about. Only a question, if you were the handsomest man alive, and you went online, what would you look at?

A Case of Exploding Aaloos or "What do they know of Pakistan, who only Pakistan know?"

This post is long. It's also kick ass. Relax and enjoy it.

So there i was, enjoying a feisty comments-debate (on a blog i gave props to in my last post, so i'm not going to do so again. i'm very much like this) when suddenly, it felt like an intense deja vu.

it was something that has happened so often during the past year i have been an active participant in the blogosphere that i wonder if i should even partake in it any more.

it goes something like this - a blogger puts forth the idea that the country should be democratic, it should be modernized, it should have peace with its neighbors, it should not be forever insecure, it should be secular.

that leads to much controversy, inevitably, because such an opinion OBVIOUSLY means forsaking our islamic identity, NECESSARILY implies that we become closer to the americans or the west and accept the superiority of the indians. it dictates that we lose our national sense of morality,
sell our women to be ravaged and ravished by uncircumcised RAW agents,
send our poor to be melted in vats of acid, collectively desecrate the memory of the Holy Prophet, start listening to "Stairway to Heaven" in reverse and believe that Ajit Agarkar was a good bowler.

In short, such an option for pakistan would mean that we would become the most despicable excuses for humanity possible.

you also notice that the people who draw such conclusions at even the slightest hint that pakistan should be anything other than mullah omer's wet dream
are people who are not living in pakistan. a majority of them are those who are living, working or have emigrated abroad. is this a huge generalization? perhaps...

now if we come back to the comment-debate i was talking about, the person in question was someone who indeed lives abroad. during two-month long vacations that he/she takes to pakistan on an annual basis, this person achieves the superhuman feat of empathizing, sympathizing, and most importantly, relating completely with the "average" pakistani. the "common" man.

doesn't it suck that someone like me who has never stayed in pakistan beyond a 2-month period would be more accepted by the general people than someone like you? doesn't it suck that if i went to chill with some of the poor at orphanages in balochistan or went to the villages im from in punjab or visited schools we've help build in kashmir that you, and not I, would be the obvious misfit?

let us discard for one moment the fact that such a person - the common man - doesn't exist beyond drawing room, and by extension, blogosphere conversations or celebrity op-ed contributions.
now these expat pakistanis feel that pakistanis from similar class/social status as themselves are becoming increasingly baysharam, bayhaya, that they have sold out the values and identity of the country and the nation, that they have committed sacrilege and blasphemy, that they have become traitors to the country as a whole.
when they combine this impression with the depressing social, economic and political news they read and watch about pakistan, they come to the conclusion that because of the actions of the "elite" that they encounter, the country is at its current impasse of being absolutely fucked up.

i'll put it in simpler terms - because the elites they meet are all fucked up, and the country they live in is all fucked up, it stands to reason that the former is responsible for the latter.
now, i'm not saying that the actions of the elites are not responsible for pakistan being bum-fuck crazy. but such a deterministic and ultimately simplistic argument never appealed to me. how can it be that 5% of a country half the population of Europe can be the sole purveyor of blame, while the rest of the 95% are idiots and simpletons who can not exert any control over their lives?

however, thinking like that leads one to the idea that pakistan somehow needs to be saved. can't argue with that. but the savior most people have in mind is either the magical cure of an islamic society, or the globally proven balm of constitutional democracy.

now i wrote to my vacationing in pakistan friend in the comment debate that one thing we must understand is that pakistanis as a people are a incredibly harami lot. i mean we are kanjars par extreme.

this sounded offensive to many, and i can see why. here is what my comment-debate friend had to say

"you clearly pity yourself and your absurd mentality that pakistan is a harami place is part of the problem. self-pity never helped anyone get anywhere and it wont help pakistan. if it is such a harami place incapable of changing, why are you there? or do you, as with most priveleged pakistanis, have a superiority complex and trust in your ability to thrive in a harami environment?"

now i replied to that with an intensely emotional response. this blog is a more rational take on things.


you see, there are a million reasons why pakistan is a harami place. i can go into all of them, but i would encourage readers to give their own examples in the comments section.

here is one reason that i think perfectly encapsulates pakistan's harami-ism.

back in the 90s, when relations with india were a lot more paranoid and closed-off than they are even now, post-Mumbai, cricket matches between the two countries used to be held solely on neutral locations.

for those who don't appreciate the place cricket holds in our hearts, you must understand that cricket in south asia is an extension of nationality, and even religion. for a lot of us, the cricket team is the only genuine thing about this country we can be regularly proud of, and it is also something that helps us punch above our weight. a pakistani cricketer can become a rock star, an intellectual, a prophet, an action hero, a pin-up model, a father figure and a sex symbol all rolled up into one.

the greatest batsman of our generation was inzamam-ul-haq, affectionately known as inzi.

although inzi's list of achievements can go on forever, his first act alone should reserve a god-like status for him for all eternity. if it wasn't for a 37-ball innings of daring genius by this man, we would have never been world champions. simple as that.

anyways, in 1997, pakistan and india were involved in a series in toronto known as the sahara cup. at one point during the second match, inzi - whose demeanor incorporated the zen-like calm of buddha with the laziness of a bored cow - rushed up to the stands with a bat in hand to assault a spectator.

what heinous and despicable acts was this brazen villain committing?

he was calling inzamam an "aaloo."

a potato.
that had been enough to upset the demeanor of a man who ferocious fast bowlers, wily spinners, sledging close in fielders, cheating umpires, vindictive journalists, brutal selectors and everyone in between had never even extracted a raised eye brow from.

so how would a cricket mad country treat one of its most revered stars, who had to face the unimaginable ignominy of being insulted by not just a spectator, but an indian supporting spectator, not just an indian fan, but a dirty, cow worshipping, piss drinking, Babri mosque destroying, Zionist collaborating Hindu?

the next time, and far as i can remember, through out the next 11 years of his glorious and exemplary career, inzamam would be welcomed to the batting crease by his own supporters, his own countrymen, his own people the exact same way.

they would welcome him with the chants of "AALOO, AALOO"

every single time.

please remember that cricket stadiums are overwhelmingly populated by the common man. please also remember that inzi's favourite hobby was rescuing the shame and izzat of the pakistani team over and over again. and finally, please remember that he was one of the kindest, softest, most lovable and huggable pakistanis alive. and yet, every time, every single fucking time -

aaloo, aaloo.

at a moment like that, confronted with a reality like that, how can you not come to the conclusion that your entire country is nothing else if not harami?

i mean, forget the drones based in our own country, forget supreme court stormers upholding the independence of the judiciary, forget claiming that gang-rape gets you canadian visas, forget everything else.

aaloo, aaloo.

Reverberating through the concrete wasteland of the NSK, bouncing off the arched roof of the Gaddhafi, echoing through the male-only stands of the Arbab Niaz - aaloo, aaloo.

but does that mean that pakistanis, and by extension pakistan, are to be hated, or looked down upon, or despised for their innate harami-ness? (harami translates into bastard)

two people helped me realise that this is not so.

the first was this man, my grandfather.


when i had grown up enough to realise that he was not just my nana, but a poet of stature, i would wonder why he chose patriotic poetry. i mean, where is the rebellion, the middle finger to the establishment?
by no means was all his poetry patriotic, but it was one of his central ideas. i wondered if he was just naive, what with his simplistic calls for love for the country.

as i learnt of him, his life through my family, i came to understand the eminence of the man, the trials and tribulations he withstood in the face of the stark reality of supporting a family, and the repeated betrayals of his country and his people. for him to not get jaded, to not let those things defeat him, to still be consumed by the passion of his ideals taught me that there is something worth loving in this god-forsaken land.

the second person is the woman i love.

she taught me a lot about our country, but her invaluable contribution was that she taught me how to love. she made me realise that you love something for what it is, not what you want it to be. that love is not about contentment, but continuous unrest. it breaks you down to build you up again. when we love, it is not out of convenience, not out of intellectual fulfillment, but rather out of need, out of desire, out of a compulsion to love.

"jaan"
for the simple understated necessity it employs,
for placing atop enviable heights,
yet familiar like dew bitten earth to the senses,
bare
embarrassing
vulnerability.

you can not love that which you cannot stand unless it changes. you can not love that whose identity you deny. you can not love what you do not understand. you can not love out of contempt, but through truth and through hope.

yes, pakistan may be harami. but whatever it is, and however i wish to see it change, this is the pakistan that i love.