By writing what I am about to write, I do not presume to conjecture upon the existence of an almighty God. Far be it for me, an infinitesimal speck on the limitless expanse of creation, to be vain enough to put forth hypothetical claims and opinions as regards the existence of an Omnipotent being, the Prime Mover Unmoved, Yahweh, God, Allah. All I mean to do is to talk about certain thoughts that are befuddling my thinking process after a very interesting exchange I had with a friend on the subject of god and his manifestation in terms of nature and life on earth. Although, if I am honest to myself, I think I am actually more motivated by what this other friend said. He told me that my blog seems to be drying up and perhaps I am losing the ability to write; nothing like an affront to what one secretly holds very dear to prod one into action. So, if nothing else, this post provides occasion to play Victor Frankenstein to the lifeless monster that is my blog. Hope that by the end of this piece, I can gleefully announce: ‘it’s alive!’ Here goes, then.
Life, as we experience it, and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing on the planet Earth and not just human beings, is cyclical. The concept was first introduced to me by Mufasa from The Lion King; the great circle of life. It’s an elaborate system in which species prey on other species just to survive in a never-ending game that engages all of life’s basic faculties and instincts: greed, opportunism, stealth, strength, brute force, hunger, desperation, hope, and most importantly, just the pure will to survive. Intense intellectual debate still abounds as regards the origins of this system. Some believe that this natural scheme of things evolved over millennia through rigorous processes of natural selection and the application of Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest in which millions of species existed and then went extinct to reach the face of life on earth as we know it today. Others speak of a divinely ordained intellectual design whereby this system was set in motion by the Lord Himself, persists because He wills it to, and will come to an end at a time of His choosing. In this carefully constructed divine system, God has given power to some species over others to do with as they please, and Man, being the best of all His creations, stands at the top of this power structure.
Now, let me start with the circle of life itself. Mufasa had us believe that although the lion eats the antelope, when the lion dies his body turns to grass, and the antelope eats the grass; a radical, new perspective for any 13-year old Disney enthusiast. At the age of 26 though, Mufasa’s philosophy seems to have broken down as I perceive a definite break in the circle. The circle is more like a triangular pyramid to me where all of the earth’s natural resources tend towards Man because of his intellectual and material superiority over all other species, while Man himself contributes minimally to the balance of nature. Deforestation, extinction of animal species and hazardous climate changes are all instances of Man’s arrogant ascendancy over the planet. The funny bit is that even when he dies, he is disposed off in manners that ensure that the earth does not benefit much from it either in terms of nutrients or as food source for lesser species.
Having said all of the above, it is universal belief that God is an Absolute being. He is One and cannot be compared to any other. His omniscience is unquestionable, and He exists in totality, and not in relation to any other object or being. Life on earth, on the other hand, is relativism incarnated. Man, by depending on his relative strengths upon other beasts and his ability to subjugate them to be used as beasts of burden or as items on the dinner menu, guarantees his own survival and dominance over all else. Lower down the food chain, all species are competing against each other as per their relative strengths and weaknesses in the struggle to survive. The Alaskan Grizzly knows that at this certain time of year, hundreds of thousands of salmon would try and come upstream to breed. And consequently, the salmon have to run a gauntlet of merciless claws and teeth just to be able to perpetuate their kind. It’s a system all right; a system where the strong takes down the weak and all is fair in the battle for survival. It’s a system that works; has worked for millennia, much before any conception of God or religion came about. Notwithstanding the question as to why a Being existing in totality would want to create anything in the first place, does such a system of relativity that we see on the earth seem like the handiwork of an Absolute God? Is a God whose creations are beset with such levels and gradations and relative strengths and weaknesses even absolute? And if an Absolute, Omnipotent God did create the world and gave life to it was this so-called circle of life with all its Darwinist trappings of cutthroat competition and survival of the fittest the only scheme in His Infinite Wisdom to sustain life? Or is one to believe that since Man is created in God’s own image, like Man, God Himself is callous and whimsical in the exercise of His Infinite Power, and has initiated this Great Game of life just to keep Himself entertained as the Lord and King of all in a very human-like conception of Kingdom and Lordship? How is this all to be understood in juxtaposition to the concept of the Absolute God?
Also, we are told since childhood that God is the Supreme Artist, and that He is Absolute Love. Every creation of His is like a work of art, and He loves each of His masterpieces; with a love that is absolute. Yet, he has subordinated some of his creations to others; to be utilized and dealt with according to the latter’s wishes, to be eaten or mistreated or simply killed just for fun. The Absolute Lover loves some of his creations much more than others such that He has made the former the arbiter of the latter’s lives and destinies. So much so that He commands His most favorite creation, Man, to sacrifice the lives of countless goats and sheep and oxen to Him at a given day in the year. Does a bleating goat feel no pain as its throat is slit? Does it not feel the life slowly draining out of it? Are those last-minute spasms and blood spurts signs of joy to be sacrificed to the Eternal One? Or is it just what it is, the macabre dance of death? Is such a bloodlust befitting to the One who professes Absolute Love? What difference then remains between Him and those minor deities he uprooted not too long ago; Baal, with his cult of human sacrifice, and all the gods and goddesses of Greece, Babylon and Egypt? Does either God (as we understand Him) or Man realize that life granted by an Absolute God to any being is an Absolute Reality and that, in principle, taking that life is an Absolute Crime? If Love is Sympathy, can God feel the pain of the dying animal, or is this sympathy overwhelmed by His Love for Man as he merrily takes life and then proceeds to feast on it? Why is human life alone sacred and all other life subject to the will of Man, when all life to all creation is granted by the Absolute God, and He alone should be the arbiter of fates? What is Man but the only beast that requires artificial skin on top of his own to even brave the weather? What is Man but a beast with all the basic instincts and desires of all other living creatures, but just the extra capacity for more efficient execution of all that his animal nature demands?
And what of the Supreme Artist? Why does He prefer a vertical ladder in the arrangement of His works of art, and not a horizontal shelf? From an entirely human, and therefore, probably irrelevant, perspective, would a Creator-Lover ever have His creations do to one another what life does to itself on the planet Earth?
By now, I am certain that any webspace pilgrim who has chanced upon this page has branded my line of thought a fine specimen of utmost stupidity. And it may very well be that. This is one reason I write over here where I am certain not many people will stumble upon it, at least not many of those who can actually get me strung up for such blasphemy, as it would appear to most. My weirdness stays in my own space. However, after many years of empty philosophizing, I have led myself to believe that the notion of God that we humans subscribe to is nothing but solace for our own tormented minds against the vagaries of that very system of life that He Himself is supposed to have created and set in motion, even if its current form has been shaped by human beings themselves over the centuries; a form in which the utility of a Divine Being guiding the hands of destiny stands visibly reduced. And after having observed this system, I can only hope that if there does exist an Absolute God, who is the Absolute Master of all Time and Space, let Him bring about a Day of Absolute Justice, so all would know what it was really all about.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
on being cynical
Although I like to believe I am beyond the days when I actually cared about what adjectives people apply to me, I have often been dubbed cynical by my nearest and dearest ones at times when I least expected it. Sometimes it has been because the words ‘sarcastic’ and ‘cynical’ are used interchangeably in colloquial expression; at other times, I admit I may have displayed cynical tendencies. The purpose of this piece of writing at this ungodly hour (for an early sleeper like me) is to, however, discuss two hypotheses: that I am not more cynical than the next guy and that the general understanding of cynicism is somewhat awry.
Cynicism, as explained by an online dictionary, is ‘an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others’. Fair enough. I shall begin with an example from daily life. You go to the market to get something as simple as a turnip and a bagful of potatoes. Why do you haggle and holler with the salesman over the prices? Is it because in some abstract, unreachable corner of your mind, you are convinced that the other person’s foremost purpose is to rip you off, and the least you can do is try and minimize the damage he is going to cause to your wallet? On the other hand, why is the shopkeeper selling his vegetables at bloated prices, if that truly is the case? Perhaps he thinks that if it were up to you, you would never pay him his product’s worth. Hence, the way out for him is to set the initial price higher than the actual so that after all the demeaning haggling, whatever profit he’s making is not compromised. And if you are the rare, not-bargaining kind, he makes an extra buck or two, and you get what you deserve for being naive in the ways of the market. Take this model to a higher level. Why are all corporate deals, all transactions between big businesses, so painstakingly negotiated with attention to every little detail and precautions against all possible loopholes, with all legalities and paperwork in place? The same principle is at work: it’s up to you to save your own ass, because, if given the chance, the other guy will pound it without remorse. It’s the economics of distrust; distrust, the middle finger of the invisible hand that eluded the contemplations of poor old Adam Smith. What we experience everyday then, in the name of laissez-faire, is cynical economics; and we participate in it fully, by choice or by necessity.
Politics, however, is a game more ostensibly cynical in its machinations. Anybody who has grown up in Pakistan would invariably attest to that. As it is, the subject is expansive enough to be fit for a thousand doctoral theses. A half-baked intellectual’s nighttime ranting could hardly do it justice. Therefore, sidestepping any theoretical discourse, I will keep the following Machiavellian proposition as the basic benchmark for my conception of politics: politics, in any shape or form, is the exercise for the attainment of absolute power, and the exercise of such power over the longest possible period of time. Now, in the wake of a lot of kite-flying related deaths in Lahore over recent years, the government took a very noble step; ‘basant’ was banned. The consequent controversy was huge; an entire industry had been destroyed, it was a big blow to tourism and culture, a very cheap and effective means of public entertainment had been lost, etc. In the opinion of a bleeding-heart humanist like me, it was the right thing to do; human life ought never to be the cost of a bit of fun. Along came the long march, a perceivable threat to the power of the people in charge. Now, inevitably, clever functionaries of state put their heads together to think up means to ebb the tide rising towards Islamabad. And the first light bulb that went on in somebody’s head was for the retraction of the ban on basant on the eve of the march on the capital. It would kill countless birds with one stone. The earlier acrimony among the lahoris would die down, and the support for the march in the Punjabi heartland would be checked for people would be more interested in a night of partying and kite-flying than preparing to march for a cause, the ultimate fruit of which remains questionable and distant, for all intents and purposes. Within twelve hours of the lifting of the ban, there have been two deaths, guys in their twenties, throats slit by wayward twine descending from the sky; a macabre exercise in the politics of cynicism. The powers that be had an end to attain. The means they chose for it they knew would be too irresistible for the general public, placing their bets on a national attitude of acting first and thinking later. These two deaths are collateral damage in what war, I fail to understand. If his writings are any estimation of the man himself, Machiavelli must have been one tough guy. Wonder if this made him turn in his grave.
At a more personal level, how often have you been genuinely nice to someone without getting the ‘hope he doesn’t collect too heavily on this one’ look in return? How often have you earnestly sought a friend’s opinion and gotten vigorous affirmation of your own opinion in return, only to be told later that since you only needed corroboration of your own ideas, it was provided in good faith? At the workplace, aren’t all your words and actions first weighed by your coworkers as potentialities by which they could be harmed or, at least, their interests put in jeopardy? Why are there incessant office power plays when everybody’s got their heart in the right place? Life, it seems, is brimming to the full with subtle cynicisms. The catch, however, is that if you live by these contradictions, you are a normal human being, a person striving to make his way in the world, a person having the right to live. If, by some odd chance, you start pointing out the inherent cynicism of life, and choose to have nothing to do with it, wanting rather to lose yourself in the simple pleasures of the dhol, and the shehnai, and love, and an occasional ghazal, you are, surprise surprise, a Cynic, a sociopath, a disparager of all that is good and the upholder of all that is evil. And from here, the circle runs in reverse till you’re the one convinced that you’ve got it all wrong in your head.
Cynicism, as explained by an online dictionary, is ‘an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others’. Fair enough. I shall begin with an example from daily life. You go to the market to get something as simple as a turnip and a bagful of potatoes. Why do you haggle and holler with the salesman over the prices? Is it because in some abstract, unreachable corner of your mind, you are convinced that the other person’s foremost purpose is to rip you off, and the least you can do is try and minimize the damage he is going to cause to your wallet? On the other hand, why is the shopkeeper selling his vegetables at bloated prices, if that truly is the case? Perhaps he thinks that if it were up to you, you would never pay him his product’s worth. Hence, the way out for him is to set the initial price higher than the actual so that after all the demeaning haggling, whatever profit he’s making is not compromised. And if you are the rare, not-bargaining kind, he makes an extra buck or two, and you get what you deserve for being naive in the ways of the market. Take this model to a higher level. Why are all corporate deals, all transactions between big businesses, so painstakingly negotiated with attention to every little detail and precautions against all possible loopholes, with all legalities and paperwork in place? The same principle is at work: it’s up to you to save your own ass, because, if given the chance, the other guy will pound it without remorse. It’s the economics of distrust; distrust, the middle finger of the invisible hand that eluded the contemplations of poor old Adam Smith. What we experience everyday then, in the name of laissez-faire, is cynical economics; and we participate in it fully, by choice or by necessity.
Politics, however, is a game more ostensibly cynical in its machinations. Anybody who has grown up in Pakistan would invariably attest to that. As it is, the subject is expansive enough to be fit for a thousand doctoral theses. A half-baked intellectual’s nighttime ranting could hardly do it justice. Therefore, sidestepping any theoretical discourse, I will keep the following Machiavellian proposition as the basic benchmark for my conception of politics: politics, in any shape or form, is the exercise for the attainment of absolute power, and the exercise of such power over the longest possible period of time. Now, in the wake of a lot of kite-flying related deaths in Lahore over recent years, the government took a very noble step; ‘basant’ was banned. The consequent controversy was huge; an entire industry had been destroyed, it was a big blow to tourism and culture, a very cheap and effective means of public entertainment had been lost, etc. In the opinion of a bleeding-heart humanist like me, it was the right thing to do; human life ought never to be the cost of a bit of fun. Along came the long march, a perceivable threat to the power of the people in charge. Now, inevitably, clever functionaries of state put their heads together to think up means to ebb the tide rising towards Islamabad. And the first light bulb that went on in somebody’s head was for the retraction of the ban on basant on the eve of the march on the capital. It would kill countless birds with one stone. The earlier acrimony among the lahoris would die down, and the support for the march in the Punjabi heartland would be checked for people would be more interested in a night of partying and kite-flying than preparing to march for a cause, the ultimate fruit of which remains questionable and distant, for all intents and purposes. Within twelve hours of the lifting of the ban, there have been two deaths, guys in their twenties, throats slit by wayward twine descending from the sky; a macabre exercise in the politics of cynicism. The powers that be had an end to attain. The means they chose for it they knew would be too irresistible for the general public, placing their bets on a national attitude of acting first and thinking later. These two deaths are collateral damage in what war, I fail to understand. If his writings are any estimation of the man himself, Machiavelli must have been one tough guy. Wonder if this made him turn in his grave.
At a more personal level, how often have you been genuinely nice to someone without getting the ‘hope he doesn’t collect too heavily on this one’ look in return? How often have you earnestly sought a friend’s opinion and gotten vigorous affirmation of your own opinion in return, only to be told later that since you only needed corroboration of your own ideas, it was provided in good faith? At the workplace, aren’t all your words and actions first weighed by your coworkers as potentialities by which they could be harmed or, at least, their interests put in jeopardy? Why are there incessant office power plays when everybody’s got their heart in the right place? Life, it seems, is brimming to the full with subtle cynicisms. The catch, however, is that if you live by these contradictions, you are a normal human being, a person striving to make his way in the world, a person having the right to live. If, by some odd chance, you start pointing out the inherent cynicism of life, and choose to have nothing to do with it, wanting rather to lose yourself in the simple pleasures of the dhol, and the shehnai, and love, and an occasional ghazal, you are, surprise surprise, a Cynic, a sociopath, a disparager of all that is good and the upholder of all that is evil. And from here, the circle runs in reverse till you’re the one convinced that you’ve got it all wrong in your head.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
the way it is...
tussan malik saadi dil de ho
jadan khwab vichaley mildey ho
janbaz dassan kya haal thheenday?
mein ronda han, tussan khildey ho
- Janbaz Jatoi
jadan khwab vichaley mildey ho
janbaz dassan kya haal thheenday?
mein ronda han, tussan khildey ho
- Janbaz Jatoi
Monday, January 26, 2009
ennui?
It comes upon him in the dead of night; an insidious specter, delighting in joining in the melancholic games of solitude the dark is playing on him, yet wary of his cornered spirit, his troubled mind. ‘What do you fear?’ it murmurs, mimicking the breathless tone of a lover about to bestow love's first kiss. ‘My vacillating faith’ he replies, sullenly, resignedly, not showing any interest in being wooed. The stillness of the dark is, for a moment, ruffled. ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ it asks in a manner of gentle bemusement. ‘I do not want to lose it again’ he answers after a long, empty pause. The dark gets denser around him, heavier. ‘And how do you fear losing it?’ it inquires, woefully, as if knowing what is to follow. ‘It’s a cruel, selfish world which does not comprehend the value of trust. When trust is shattered, all faith is shattered, all else is lost. I will not be able to survive any of that anymore’ he speaks wearily, half-expecting to be understood, half-imagining a ray of light in the unrelenting dark. ‘Sanctimonious liar’, it hisses, ‘you yourself are the thief, the desecrator of trust. And your only fear is that you may be avenged of your sin. You fear that which you deserve, and long for that which you do not. Be damned!’ ‘Amen’, he sighs. The dark closes in.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
seven years
Chacha Saeen
Ay raat jehri k sirf tuhadi yaad di raat hay te jeendi sik ich meda poora saal langhdey, aj traye baldyein angaryein di veil vaindi payee hay jehray dozakh di aakhri chund toon unchithay meday utey un dhatthin aur meda cheta itna ral gaye k mekoon na apna hosh reh na dunya o mafeeha da. Bus itna pata hay jo medi saari raat hunr tarapdyein guzarsi.
Tuhakoon andaza kaini saeen jo mein kitna sharminda han. Aur kitna mayoos vi kyunke mekoon nazarda pe jo mein een hik saal ich kitna khud-gharz te aapni haqeeqat toon kitna andha thhee giyan. Lekin, aye mein apney naal ehd karendan jo jay agley saal tayeen jeenda reehum, tan vala een raat koon khaali kaina vanjanr desaan. Te je mar giyum tan een kanu behtar biya kya thhee sagdey?
Bus, eeho kujh aahda hum. Kash bala das te phera marendi hovay ha. Kash tuhadi ja mein hovan ha.
Hasni.
Ay raat jehri k sirf tuhadi yaad di raat hay te jeendi sik ich meda poora saal langhdey, aj traye baldyein angaryein di veil vaindi payee hay jehray dozakh di aakhri chund toon unchithay meday utey un dhatthin aur meda cheta itna ral gaye k mekoon na apna hosh reh na dunya o mafeeha da. Bus itna pata hay jo medi saari raat hunr tarapdyein guzarsi.
Tuhakoon andaza kaini saeen jo mein kitna sharminda han. Aur kitna mayoos vi kyunke mekoon nazarda pe jo mein een hik saal ich kitna khud-gharz te aapni haqeeqat toon kitna andha thhee giyan. Lekin, aye mein apney naal ehd karendan jo jay agley saal tayeen jeenda reehum, tan vala een raat koon khaali kaina vanjanr desaan. Te je mar giyum tan een kanu behtar biya kya thhee sagdey?
Bus, eeho kujh aahda hum. Kash bala das te phera marendi hovay ha. Kash tuhadi ja mein hovan ha.
Hasni.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
haal e dil
aik bhooli bisri muddat k baad
iss be-jaan dil ka koi anjan kona
zindagi ki aik bekhauf lehr se thharra raha hai
jaisey
koi khud-dar shama
her simt k toofanon k beech
machley
per bujhey nahi
jaisey
kisi khar-dar payr ka koi badmast phool
apne ander mehak basane ki saazish ker le
aur kaanton ki baat na ban paaye
lekin
woh shama
yeh phool
muntazir hain tumhare
keh tum aao
inn kaanton se laro
unn toofanon ka rukh badal daalo
aur zindagi ko jila do
per dekho
aa ker agar
tumhare qadam larkharaye
ya in berehm dushmanon ko tum
dekh hee na paaye
toh samajh lena
keh zindagi phir haar gayee
aur iss baar uss ka maseeha
koi na ho ga.
iss be-jaan dil ka koi anjan kona
zindagi ki aik bekhauf lehr se thharra raha hai
jaisey
koi khud-dar shama
her simt k toofanon k beech
machley
per bujhey nahi
jaisey
kisi khar-dar payr ka koi badmast phool
apne ander mehak basane ki saazish ker le
aur kaanton ki baat na ban paaye
lekin
woh shama
yeh phool
muntazir hain tumhare
keh tum aao
inn kaanton se laro
unn toofanon ka rukh badal daalo
aur zindagi ko jila do
per dekho
aa ker agar
tumhare qadam larkharaye
ya in berehm dushmanon ko tum
dekh hee na paaye
toh samajh lena
keh zindagi phir haar gayee
aur iss baar uss ka maseeha
koi na ho ga.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Birthday '08
26. People have families of their own to care for by that age. People have careers, and money, and success, and promising futures, and burgeoning social lives that work to integrate them fully as responsible adults in the larger fabric of society, by the time they are 26. There are even a few who have lived lives so fully that beyond 25 is past their prime for them.
And then, there are others, who are hiding from life, and more so with every passing year. People who don't have what it takes to look life in the eye, and to take from it all that ought to be taken as the rightful prerequisite to happiness and the maintenance of it; people for whom it is nothing but one painfully slow tick-tock to the final hour of emancipation. Among these sorts are the kind who turn off their cellphones on their birthdays just because people wishing them well embarasses them; the kind who are yelling 'leave me alone', but the sound never really makes it past their larynx in the form of anything but polite chuckles and exclamations. And yet, some of these misanthropes dream big dreams, and nurture warm fantasies of happily-ever-afters in some secluded corners of their hearts, without having the decency to admit to themselves that what they crave can never truly reach fulfilment in the suffocatingly narrow conditions of self-confinement that they have created around themselves. What it takes though is a rare courageous fool to be able to mock his own naiveté and capacity for self-delusion.
In any case, 26 down. How many more to go, only the Master Accountant upstairs can tell, or His celestial minion in-charge of The Slate.
And then, there are others, who are hiding from life, and more so with every passing year. People who don't have what it takes to look life in the eye, and to take from it all that ought to be taken as the rightful prerequisite to happiness and the maintenance of it; people for whom it is nothing but one painfully slow tick-tock to the final hour of emancipation. Among these sorts are the kind who turn off their cellphones on their birthdays just because people wishing them well embarasses them; the kind who are yelling 'leave me alone', but the sound never really makes it past their larynx in the form of anything but polite chuckles and exclamations. And yet, some of these misanthropes dream big dreams, and nurture warm fantasies of happily-ever-afters in some secluded corners of their hearts, without having the decency to admit to themselves that what they crave can never truly reach fulfilment in the suffocatingly narrow conditions of self-confinement that they have created around themselves. What it takes though is a rare courageous fool to be able to mock his own naiveté and capacity for self-delusion.
In any case, 26 down. How many more to go, only the Master Accountant upstairs can tell, or His celestial minion in-charge of The Slate.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
and she's gone
before yesterday
'get out of my room'. heh. 'turn down the music. are you deaf or what?' hahah. 'what are u? a pig? can't you just shower and not bathe my entire room with you?'. teehee. 'what is all your stuff doing lying around here all over my room? what in hell is your own room for? just sin?' ouch. 'this is MY computer. I got it out of the ONLY paycheck I ever got. and you act as if you own it! get lost!' heheheheh. 'i swear to God I will retrieve all the porn hidden in this thing and show it to ammi. You have another thing coming if you think im kidding.' bring it on. 'what is my faiz doing by the flush again? do you wanna flush it down the toilet just as you did my dewan-e-ghalib? do you have no respect for anything?' hahahahah. 'I will have as many lights on in my room as I want. I don't care if they're burning your doped eyes. You should thank god i'm not telling ammi baba. Wonder what I did to deserve a leech like you.' snigger. 'You are the equivalent of a middle-aged, parisitic spinster, you know that? Wish I had grown up with some real men around me!' snort.
tonight
I have it all to myself. And yet, unwanted, emasculating tears roll down my face. My head is against this screen that has seldom shown me anything but lies, and I want to smash it in. but what truly is the strangest and the scariest bit is that, tomorrow, life is supposed to go on.
'get out of my room'. heh. 'turn down the music. are you deaf or what?' hahah. 'what are u? a pig? can't you just shower and not bathe my entire room with you?'. teehee. 'what is all your stuff doing lying around here all over my room? what in hell is your own room for? just sin?' ouch. 'this is MY computer. I got it out of the ONLY paycheck I ever got. and you act as if you own it! get lost!' heheheheh. 'i swear to God I will retrieve all the porn hidden in this thing and show it to ammi. You have another thing coming if you think im kidding.' bring it on. 'what is my faiz doing by the flush again? do you wanna flush it down the toilet just as you did my dewan-e-ghalib? do you have no respect for anything?' hahahahah. 'I will have as many lights on in my room as I want. I don't care if they're burning your doped eyes. You should thank god i'm not telling ammi baba. Wonder what I did to deserve a leech like you.' snigger. 'You are the equivalent of a middle-aged, parisitic spinster, you know that? Wish I had grown up with some real men around me!' snort.
tonight
I have it all to myself. And yet, unwanted, emasculating tears roll down my face. My head is against this screen that has seldom shown me anything but lies, and I want to smash it in. but what truly is the strangest and the scariest bit is that, tomorrow, life is supposed to go on.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
shab-e-firaq: the sublime
raat yoon dil mein teri khhoee hu'ee yaad aayi
jaisey veeraney mein chupkey se bahar aa ja'ye
jaisey sehra'on mein haulay se challey baad-e-naseem
jaisey bemaar ko be-wajah qarar aa ja'ye
- Faiz
jaisey veeraney mein chupkey se bahar aa ja'ye
jaisey sehra'on mein haulay se challey baad-e-naseem
jaisey bemaar ko be-wajah qarar aa ja'ye
- Faiz
shab-e-firaq: the meek
mohsin hijjar di raat koon hanj di zakat dey
ay be-suhag raat azal di ghareeb hey
- Mohsin Naqvi
ay be-suhag raat azal di ghareeb hey
- Mohsin Naqvi
shab-e-firaq: the overwhelming
stay by me
my tormentor, my heart’s keeper
stay by me
at the hour, the night spreads
intoxicated on the crimson of the heavens
the dark night spreads,
wielding soothing salves of musk,
and agony that pierces every pore
chanting merrily a dirge of sorrow
it comes
rattling wildly the rattle of death
it comes
at the hour
when hearts sink deeper,
looking to hands held hostage in sleeves,
in futile hope
and the sound of wine,
pouring out
as if sobs of a frightened child
in restlessness, implacable, wretched
when no words form a sentence
when no sentence forms meaning
at the hour, the night spreads
at the hour, the grieving, desolate, dark night spreads
stay by me
my tormentor, my heart’s keeper
stay by me
- A transliteration of Faiz's 'Paas Raho'
my tormentor, my heart’s keeper
stay by me
at the hour, the night spreads
intoxicated on the crimson of the heavens
the dark night spreads,
wielding soothing salves of musk,
and agony that pierces every pore
chanting merrily a dirge of sorrow
it comes
rattling wildly the rattle of death
it comes
at the hour
when hearts sink deeper,
looking to hands held hostage in sleeves,
in futile hope
and the sound of wine,
pouring out
as if sobs of a frightened child
in restlessness, implacable, wretched
when no words form a sentence
when no sentence forms meaning
at the hour, the night spreads
at the hour, the grieving, desolate, dark night spreads
stay by me
my tormentor, my heart’s keeper
stay by me
- A transliteration of Faiz's 'Paas Raho'
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
breathing
[the setting]
late dusk; the marble terrace besides the lawn. the old man sits reclined against his favorite cushion on a charpoy, puffing away majestically at his hookah and humming an old tune. a few of his progeny sit on cane chairs surrounding the charpoy, conversing amongst themselves, and occasionally breaking into raucous laughter. a light westerly breeze makes for a very pleasant evening in the outdoors.
a boy-child, not more than two and a half in years, sneaks up to the charpoy from behind the chairs and stands staring at the old man with a playful look in his eyes. the old man focuses his weak eyes on the child and smiles upon recognizing the moon-face.
[the exchange]
the old man: is that you, asghar?
the child: tee-hee
the old man: come, khan saeen, come. give us a hug. come, o badmash.
the child begins to scramble away but the old man hauls him up onto his chest, and kisses him on the cheeks.
the child: dada?
the old man: your dada’s baba, sardar sahib. you remind me of my Asghar when he was your age.
the child [feigning seriousness]: I want to go to my ammi.
the old man [laughing]: go then, you trickster.
the boy jumps off the charpoy and scampers off to play with the other children in the lawn. the old man’s eyes stare wistfully at the departing child for a long moment.
the old man: may u have the life of Khizr, my child. for your parents, for your children, for your children’s children. may u never know any suffering, nor hardship. may no man’s child ever suffer like I have.
[the remains]
tears
silence
late dusk; the marble terrace besides the lawn. the old man sits reclined against his favorite cushion on a charpoy, puffing away majestically at his hookah and humming an old tune. a few of his progeny sit on cane chairs surrounding the charpoy, conversing amongst themselves, and occasionally breaking into raucous laughter. a light westerly breeze makes for a very pleasant evening in the outdoors.
a boy-child, not more than two and a half in years, sneaks up to the charpoy from behind the chairs and stands staring at the old man with a playful look in his eyes. the old man focuses his weak eyes on the child and smiles upon recognizing the moon-face.
[the exchange]
the old man: is that you, asghar?
the child: tee-hee
the old man: come, khan saeen, come. give us a hug. come, o badmash.
the child begins to scramble away but the old man hauls him up onto his chest, and kisses him on the cheeks.
the child: dada?
the old man: your dada’s baba, sardar sahib. you remind me of my Asghar when he was your age.
the child [feigning seriousness]: I want to go to my ammi.
the old man [laughing]: go then, you trickster.
the boy jumps off the charpoy and scampers off to play with the other children in the lawn. the old man’s eyes stare wistfully at the departing child for a long moment.
the old man: may u have the life of Khizr, my child. for your parents, for your children, for your children’s children. may u never know any suffering, nor hardship. may no man’s child ever suffer like I have.
[the remains]
tears
silence
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Musings VII
alam-e-khwab mein jo paa'ee ik roz haseena hum ne
aarzoo machal gayee, dil bhi be-taab hua
aur toh kucch na bunn para uss ghari hum se
haalat-e-shauq mein bus bister hee kharab hua
- Hasni Khan
aarzoo machal gayee, dil bhi be-taab hua
aur toh kucch na bunn para uss ghari hum se
haalat-e-shauq mein bus bister hee kharab hua
- Hasni Khan
Saturday, July 12, 2008
serenading yesterday's jalfrezi
You rip at my entrails like a banshee on fire
Like a rocket at go-time, like a rat in a cage
Like a storm in the pj’s, like a dirty brown motion
You fill up my bedsheets, don’t do that again
Come let me lose you, let me give my all to you
Let me drown you in sewage, let me shake off your charms
Let me wash up beside you, give me one last look at you
Come let me flush you, there you go again.
(sung to the tune of Annie's Song)
Like a rocket at go-time, like a rat in a cage
Like a storm in the pj’s, like a dirty brown motion
You fill up my bedsheets, don’t do that again
Come let me lose you, let me give my all to you
Let me drown you in sewage, let me shake off your charms
Let me wash up beside you, give me one last look at you
Come let me flush you, there you go again.
(sung to the tune of Annie's Song)
buffer post #1
See, the post below this one is beautiful poetry, imbued with profound spirituality and philosophical poignancy; Iqbal at his best (which is rare), artistically postulating what brings sublime joy to many hearts that beat as if war-drums, testifying to the absolute truth of love. Also, these few lines from Iqbal’s works in Farsi hold special meaning for me since I first heard them from my Nana many, many years ago. The post that will follow this one, on the other hand, is crass, nay, outright disgusting. Allowing it to impinge upon the dignified beauty of the previous one by putting it in the latter’s direct neighborhood would be utterly irreverent of someone even the likes of me. Therefore, I follow one of humanity's grandest old traditions, compartmentalization, whereby incompatible phenomena are kept apart, and life made invariably simpler, because then there is neither any need to explore the dynamics of such incompatibility, nor any cause for discarding something that might have caught one’s fancy at any level; hence, this buffer. Do I wish that the two aforementioned posts were not even on the same page? Yes. But there is not much I can do about it. I just hope the universe appreciates what great flip-flops people can be.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Nana Jan's tribute
Mariyam az yak nisbat-e-Isa aziz
Az seh nisbat Hazrat-e-Zehra aziz
Noor e chashm e Rehmatul-il-Alameen
Aan Imam e Awwaleen o Akhireen
Bano e aan Tajdar e hal atta
Murtaza, mushkil kusha, sher e Khuda
Maader e aan Nuqta e parkaar e Ishq
Maader e aan Qafila Salaar e Ishq
- Iqbal
Az seh nisbat Hazrat-e-Zehra aziz
Noor e chashm e Rehmatul-il-Alameen
Aan Imam e Awwaleen o Akhireen
Bano e aan Tajdar e hal atta
Murtaza, mushkil kusha, sher e Khuda
Maader e aan Nuqta e parkaar e Ishq
Maader e aan Qafila Salaar e Ishq
- Iqbal
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
nightlife
Wake up with a cold sweat from the agitated slumber which replaces the long, peaceful hours of sleep of the old days. Creep up to each of three bedsides and pierce the darkness with burning eyes to be certain that every breath that is inhaled is exhaled, mumbling a word of gratitude for that. Climb up to the roof and spread out on the hard, heat-radiating terrace. Stare into the dusty skies, caught between thoughts and notions, hopes and memories, all innately contradictory, all demanding big leaps of faith. Sob, as men do in solitude, and wait for the call to prayer to sound above the lifeless. For then, as the world awakens, sleep overwhelms all consciousness of it. Telle est la vie dans l'obscurité.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
deathly still
kucch hameen ko nahi ehsaan utthaney ka demagh
woh toh jab aatey hain ma'yel ba karam aatey hain
aur kucch der na guzrey shab-e-furqat se kaho
dil bhee kam dukhta hai, woh yaad bhee kam aatey hain
- faiz
woh toh jab aatey hain ma'yel ba karam aatey hain
aur kucch der na guzrey shab-e-furqat se kaho
dil bhee kam dukhta hai, woh yaad bhee kam aatey hain
- faiz
Sunday, May 18, 2008
fiat justitia ruat caelum
As much as I disdain to soil my blog with an opinion piece on temporal matters, the times are such that even the most phlegmatic of bystanders goes like ‘what the hell is going on?’ It has been well over a year that the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan, even though there is nothing proverbial about the ever-increasing stench, and the dark stains of humiliation upon the nation’s face. On the 9th of March, 2007, a dictator, drunk on eight years of unchecked power, and deluded by some notion of his personal indispensability to Pakistan, threw a gauntlet that has since become a massive, nationwide struggle, underscoring disgrace and defeat for some, individual glory and public accolades for others, and a noble contest between right and wrong, justice and injustice, for yet many more. However, as of today, what remains at stake? The restoration of some 60-odd judges of the superior judiciary who were gallant enough to resist the dictators’ PCO and bore the vagaries of the state’s heavy-handedness, all starting from the Chief Justice’s resounding ‘No’ sending shockwaves throughout the country, the first time the commando ordered him to get packing. The questions that have been plaguing my mind, however, are at a bit of a tangent from the larger issue. I do not intend to doubt the rightfulness of the cause for restoration. True to my lethargic self, all I am trying to figure out is whether this entire ruckus is worth all the attention it gets or all the energy that has been expended thus far.
An independent, not free, judiciary, as an institution, is generally seen as the cornerstone of a fair and a just society. The idea of an independent judiciary springs from the theory of separation of powers articulated initially by Baron de Montesquieu in the early eighteenth century, and is said to be successfully implemented in the constitution of the United States, and is also thought to be effectively practiced in the United Kingdom and in other developed countries of the West. This theory attempts to bring about a balance of power between the three pillars of state, the legislative, executive and judicial, such that a check is maintained on the power of one by the collective and simultaneous powers of the other two, ensuring that neither branch has freedom enough to infringe beyond what is sanctioned by law on the rights and freedoms of its citizens. In this we see the raw skeleton of a social contract the likes of which every third world country in the postcolonial era is expected to emulate along with some form of democratic government, presidential, parliamentary etc. This emulation is necessary for survival in the new world order as much foreign aid and international acceptance depends on it. In this blind emulation of these systems that seem to be working quite well in the First World, both the exporters and the importers of such political philosophies forget that for such types of organized and institution-oriented governments and states to succeed, there needs to be a strong socio-economic base, and not vice versa. Domestic stability is the key. Let us examine the stellar examples we have. The United States gained that stability by an extremely vicious process of internal colonialism, that was irreversible, gradually eliminating an entire people, and by its policies of politico-economic imperialism in recent times. The United Kingdom achieved domestic stability through the 400 year long era of colonialism, in which the British Empire was built on the blood and corpses of peoples from the Americas to Australia. In the postcolonial stage, it maintains that stability by being the foremost client of the world’s strongest power, and everything looks to be hunky-dory for sometime to come. Unfortunately, third world countries, newly released from the shackles of colonialism, have no opportunities for similar glory, and are caught in the dilemma of building institutions on the Western pattern, without the requisite objective conditions. Just looking at ourselves, in a polity so fragmented, divided in a million ways, having multiple identities within one state, how is the simple concept of ‘majority rule’ supposed to work? On the other hand, the assumption on the part of the West that since they succeeded with a certain model of governance, it has to work in the rest of the world too is arrogant to say the least. Does the US forget its own bloody civil war over the question of ‘states rights’, which is now cleverly disguised as a righteous struggle against an evil as uncouth as slavery? Or was it that slavery did not pose as big a moral question, as it did an economic and political one. Be that as it may, like they say in Punjabi, ‘jeday ghar daaney, oday kamley vi siyaney’. The situation that countries like Pakistan face is rife with institutional failures. Pakistan, specifically, is currently experiencing one of the worst times of its history.
Our history as a nation-state is short and, therefore, easy to take a bird’s eye view of. In this short history, the history of the judiciary as an institution is way less than glorious. It has been the most honorable judges of the highest courts in the country that have provided judicial cover all sorts of upheavals, military, bureaucratic, democratic, beginning from the first articulation of the ‘doctrine of necessity’ by Justice Munir in 1953. The judiciary has been up for grabs for various players in the power game, facilitating, or shall I say, taking wholehearted part in such acts as the judicial murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, or the recognition of martial coups through eclectic interpretations of the various constitutions we have had. This is not surprising to me at least. Was it not out of the Quran that the tyrannies of sultans and shehnshahs justified by over-zealous qazis and mullahs? Was it not that after having raped and pillaged entire populations, proud Muslim generals stood tall and quoted from the Quran, saying ‘And He disgraces those that He desires!’ In this context, the misinterpretation of a man-made constitution sounds almost trivial. Needless to say then that the judiciary, when compelled to choose between justice and political expediency, has often opted for the latter; it has shirked its responsibilities. And this has been primarily because judges have owed their high offices to generals and politicians, and have done exactly what they were supposed to do in a system of never-ending favors and a vicious cycle of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Most of the 60 judges in question accepted Musharraf’s coup of 1999 by taking oath under the 2001 PCO. Senior Supreme Court judges were superseded for the appointment of Mr. Iftikhar Chaudary as the Chief Justice by none other than Musharraf himself. Is it possible that at that time, a campaigner as weathered as Mr. Chaudary did not realize that there could be strings attached? That the favor that had been bestowed upon him would never be called? Did he actually think that being handpicked by a dictator for such an important post would allow him to function independently, and that all he needed to do was get there via the dictator’s favor, and that the end would justify the means? And when he started showing some signs of independence by striking down prime projects of the regime, did he not expect his benefactor to feel wronged, and do what dictators do best: summary execution? In my opinion, the events of the 9th of March were careerism gone wrong for the CJ. If Mr. Chaudary was concerned about justice and fairplay, he would not have postured and lobbied to get the highest judicial post in the country through the good offices of the President-General in the first place.
This brings me to the next, bigger question. Are these judges, for whose reinstatement such a movement is in action, wedded to the ideals of justice and upholding the law and the constitution, or are they, like the average professional that we see around us, and ourselves are, believe in doing the 9 to 5 routine and heading back home to enjoy all the perks that come with their positions? The cars, the mansions, the butlers etc? For if they are just time-servers like the rest of us, and only come to work a day at the office, i.e. if that is their psychology, the only difference between them and the judges that have taken the oath under November’s PCO is that of names. For if these latter ones are beholden to Musharraf, the former ones, if reinstated, will owe a debt of gratitude to one Mr. Nawaz Sharif. And anyone who was alive in the late 80’s and the 90’s in Pakistan knows that that cannot really be a good thing. Nawaz Sharif is being hailed all around for taking a principled stand on everything, from the judiciary to democracy, which is one factor that has given his party unanticipated electoral success in urban Punjab earlier in the year. I personally know people who flew all the way from Karachi to their hometowns in the Punjab to vote for Mian Sb. Notwithstanding the question as to whether he really is firm on principles this time around, or is just finding it politically beneficial to go with the general mood of the people for the time being, Nawaz Sharif and his cronies are children of the establishment, through and through. In fact, they’re children of the worst military regime in Pakistan’s history, that of the humble Momin, Zia-ul-Haq. They are people who came into the political mainstream on the backs of military intelligence and ISI, and continue to truly represent only a certain segment of Pakistani society, the industrial-business elite, insofar as their party structure is concerned. Nawaz Sharif himself is beset with an upstart industrialist mentality which dictates gauging every action in the narrow prism of profit and loss. Is his commitment to democracy and an independent judiciary only a part of his personal vendetta against Musharraf for overthrowing his government? Will his resolve to work towards institution building only remain strong till the time the General’s ousted? These are questions only time will answer because his history does not support any such hopes. I have to hand it to the Pakistani public though. Even after all the disappointments of the past, their faces had this strange gleam of hope on the morning of the 19th of February. It made a cynic like me wonder if such undying optimism ought to be celebrated or lamented. What I do lament, however, is our collective short memory, and inability to learn from experience.
Our civil society, which is just a more ‘civil’ term for the upper and upper-middle classes, seems to have decided that capitalistic democracy is the panacea for all our ills. However, this strata of society, which includes myself, seems to be more confused than anything else. A friend of mine, a successful corporate banker, and quite active in the movement for the restoration of judges as a part of the Direct Action Committee, attending rallies, shouting slogans, distributing propaganda material, praised the principled stand of the judges and of Mian Sb’s party in their fight against the dictator. Five minutes later, he spewed some pearls of wisdom on corporate success, saying that the first principle of survival in this world is, and I quote, ‘to screw the other before he gets a chance to screw u’. And the first thing that came to my mind was, isn’t that what Musharraf tried to do? Anyway, it’s been more than a month since that happened and I’m still pondering on the apparent dichotomy of principles, and how it plagues our class and my generation. In this respect, though, the media has had a very significant role to play. Like the clergy of medieval Europe, it is the fourth pillar of the state today. I draw such a comparison because the potential for demagoguery appears equally enormous in both cases. In Musharraf’s economic boom, besides banking and telecom, media is the only industry that has proliferated. And now, as is natural, it does not know what it ought to do with itself, since quantity has effectively inundated quality. So, in between the Indian style soaps to pander to the tastes of the wider market, rather than restricting itself to keeping the public informed of facts so that it could draw its own conclusions from them, it has taken to opinion-forming. There is a ‘breaking news’ and every channel has a different story as to the actual happening. Old-timers sit together in talk shows and analysis programs and tell the public exactly what they ought to be thinking. And that’s what the public is doing. Everybody believes in the righteousness of the lawyers’ movement because some droning journalist on TV said so. Nobody seems to be thinking out loud on national TV that if these judges are restored would the lawyers, and especially the frontline leaders in the lawyer community, never try to capitalize on their blood and sweat? Will that not leave the superior judiciary in the same sort of fix that it always has been in? Earlier it used to do the bidding of generals and bureaucrats. Now, it will owe a lot to bar councils and senior lawyers, and you never know what new direction that may lead us into. Everybody believes in the sacrosanct nature of the freedom of speech, not realizing that that also gives a natural edge to the one who can shout the loudest.
Finally, let me bring forth what little I know of the justice system in Pakistan. I will restrict myself to the rural areas since I have little knowledge of how stuff gets done in the cities. This in itself is saying a lot since 70% of Pakistan is still supposed to be rural. To the rural poor, the first adjudicator, or dare I say, the scribe of their destinies, is the Thana incharge. Whatever he writes in his FIR is the basis of all litigation afterwards. Therefore, this man wields tremendous power, and consequently, enjoys tremendous opportunity for making money. This is where the poor soul who got himself involved in such a messy business as seeking justice is bled for the first time. If he gets lucky, he’ll only get away with paying a few thousand bucks in bribes. Else, if the SHO likes his daughter, he might have to offer her up to make sure that the cattle that are his livelihood are returned safely from the robbers who took them. Also, if he is on bad terms with a local influential who is on good terms with the police, or the offending party, he might end up getting charged for a crime himself and might find himself tasting the hospitality of a rural interrogation office. There are a million possible combinations wherein a poor man seeking justice may have to sacrifice his belongings, dignity or honor and I could possibly not list them all. Let’s just say, to get the process moving effectively, u need to have money, contacts, guile and zero self-respect. From here, the process moves into the courts. Here the baser things are truly not en vogue, since judges are educated, refined types, and only work for money, or the right person calling them up. This is where property disputes can take more than a decade to sort out, and where murderers and rapists are let free based on how well they are connected. Although, it must be granted that the level of corruption decreases as you move up from the district courts to the provincial high courts and then on to the supreme court, isn’t the corruption at the lower end, the end closest to the civilian, the deadliest? Because it is here that lives are made or broken. A poor man, whose son’s murderer is acquitted in a district court, may not have the resources or the will or the physical strength to take the case to a higher court. He may just do what people in our parts have been doing for centuries: leave it to God’s ultimate judgment. All the 60 honorable judges have passed through this very system. I do not attempt to associate any sort of corruption or malpractice with them and I am very sure that they are all men of great integrity and moral fortitude. But all of them have passed through this system. All of them know what goes on in the peripheries and at the lower levels. In this entire 14-month struggle, has there been a single cry for reform? For actually taking any steps towards changing a system in which justice is bought and sold like a common whore? Will this system where the SHO of a thana somewhere in some long-forgotten tehsil of a district in the middle of nowhere earns at par with any corporate fatcat, profiting on the misery of the poor, be allowed to persist after everything is ‘set right’? Has any leading lawyer raised a voice of protest against this system in his speeches on freeing this country from the clutches of dictatorship? Or do they assume that with Musharraf gone, everything will correct itself from top to bottom? I am very sorry but people assumed the same about Ayub and Yahya and Zia, and nothing happened. And it is actually sad to say that it feels to me as if this entire struggle has become a battle of egos centered around the basic notion: ‘give them their jobs back’ and ‘I want my job back!’ Hell, at the risk of sounding repetitive, if you’re only going to do what you did before you were kicked out, and what the PCO judges are doing now, might as well stay out. Most I can do is condole with you over loss of perk and privilege. For I feel that we have had enough of a top-down approach in this country. It’s time that we started bottom-up, towards a system in which everyone matters, where justice is just blind, not deaf. Laws that are not uniformly applied at every level of society encompassing the entire body politic of the nation are not worth the paper they’re written on. And all well-suited gentleman who like to fancy themselves the custodians of law and its actual spirit, should also have the courage to fully understand what is truly engendered in such grand titles, and that it actually means a lot of responsibility to each and every citizen of a country in much need of justice, not just posturing to effect a favorable balance of power at the top. And suffice it to say that the top, from the perspective of the people, is way out of reach. Everyone in this country aspiring to do great things at the top, the politicians, the lawyers, the generals, the media, all of them have had their fair share of trying to win the hearts and minds of people. And even when the people have demonstrated vigorous willingness to be won over, they have been let down. Now would be the perfect time for a revolution of hearts and minds, a complete change in mindsets and attitudes, and in deference to an old national habit, it would be much better if that transpires top down.
To keep on repeating ‘how dare a dictator do that?’ is like oversimplifying the issue because then one would have to make an honest inquiry into why the dictator is there in the first place, and soon enough, not much of our ‘civil’ society or the civilized world, will be able to avoid blame. Remove the dictator by all means, but also make sure that the restoration of the judiciary does not simply equate to professional reinstatement. For I feel that justice, rather than any institution that claims to administer it, is the solid base upon which the edifice of state and society ought to be erected. But it will continue to remain an illusory ideal till we can effect a change in mentalities. I believe that that is what our brightest minds should be working on. The nation has had enough of protracted wars of wits and egos, even if the realization of that has not yet dawned fully.
An independent, not free, judiciary, as an institution, is generally seen as the cornerstone of a fair and a just society. The idea of an independent judiciary springs from the theory of separation of powers articulated initially by Baron de Montesquieu in the early eighteenth century, and is said to be successfully implemented in the constitution of the United States, and is also thought to be effectively practiced in the United Kingdom and in other developed countries of the West. This theory attempts to bring about a balance of power between the three pillars of state, the legislative, executive and judicial, such that a check is maintained on the power of one by the collective and simultaneous powers of the other two, ensuring that neither branch has freedom enough to infringe beyond what is sanctioned by law on the rights and freedoms of its citizens. In this we see the raw skeleton of a social contract the likes of which every third world country in the postcolonial era is expected to emulate along with some form of democratic government, presidential, parliamentary etc. This emulation is necessary for survival in the new world order as much foreign aid and international acceptance depends on it. In this blind emulation of these systems that seem to be working quite well in the First World, both the exporters and the importers of such political philosophies forget that for such types of organized and institution-oriented governments and states to succeed, there needs to be a strong socio-economic base, and not vice versa. Domestic stability is the key. Let us examine the stellar examples we have. The United States gained that stability by an extremely vicious process of internal colonialism, that was irreversible, gradually eliminating an entire people, and by its policies of politico-economic imperialism in recent times. The United Kingdom achieved domestic stability through the 400 year long era of colonialism, in which the British Empire was built on the blood and corpses of peoples from the Americas to Australia. In the postcolonial stage, it maintains that stability by being the foremost client of the world’s strongest power, and everything looks to be hunky-dory for sometime to come. Unfortunately, third world countries, newly released from the shackles of colonialism, have no opportunities for similar glory, and are caught in the dilemma of building institutions on the Western pattern, without the requisite objective conditions. Just looking at ourselves, in a polity so fragmented, divided in a million ways, having multiple identities within one state, how is the simple concept of ‘majority rule’ supposed to work? On the other hand, the assumption on the part of the West that since they succeeded with a certain model of governance, it has to work in the rest of the world too is arrogant to say the least. Does the US forget its own bloody civil war over the question of ‘states rights’, which is now cleverly disguised as a righteous struggle against an evil as uncouth as slavery? Or was it that slavery did not pose as big a moral question, as it did an economic and political one. Be that as it may, like they say in Punjabi, ‘jeday ghar daaney, oday kamley vi siyaney’. The situation that countries like Pakistan face is rife with institutional failures. Pakistan, specifically, is currently experiencing one of the worst times of its history.
Our history as a nation-state is short and, therefore, easy to take a bird’s eye view of. In this short history, the history of the judiciary as an institution is way less than glorious. It has been the most honorable judges of the highest courts in the country that have provided judicial cover all sorts of upheavals, military, bureaucratic, democratic, beginning from the first articulation of the ‘doctrine of necessity’ by Justice Munir in 1953. The judiciary has been up for grabs for various players in the power game, facilitating, or shall I say, taking wholehearted part in such acts as the judicial murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, or the recognition of martial coups through eclectic interpretations of the various constitutions we have had. This is not surprising to me at least. Was it not out of the Quran that the tyrannies of sultans and shehnshahs justified by over-zealous qazis and mullahs? Was it not that after having raped and pillaged entire populations, proud Muslim generals stood tall and quoted from the Quran, saying ‘And He disgraces those that He desires!’ In this context, the misinterpretation of a man-made constitution sounds almost trivial. Needless to say then that the judiciary, when compelled to choose between justice and political expediency, has often opted for the latter; it has shirked its responsibilities. And this has been primarily because judges have owed their high offices to generals and politicians, and have done exactly what they were supposed to do in a system of never-ending favors and a vicious cycle of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Most of the 60 judges in question accepted Musharraf’s coup of 1999 by taking oath under the 2001 PCO. Senior Supreme Court judges were superseded for the appointment of Mr. Iftikhar Chaudary as the Chief Justice by none other than Musharraf himself. Is it possible that at that time, a campaigner as weathered as Mr. Chaudary did not realize that there could be strings attached? That the favor that had been bestowed upon him would never be called? Did he actually think that being handpicked by a dictator for such an important post would allow him to function independently, and that all he needed to do was get there via the dictator’s favor, and that the end would justify the means? And when he started showing some signs of independence by striking down prime projects of the regime, did he not expect his benefactor to feel wronged, and do what dictators do best: summary execution? In my opinion, the events of the 9th of March were careerism gone wrong for the CJ. If Mr. Chaudary was concerned about justice and fairplay, he would not have postured and lobbied to get the highest judicial post in the country through the good offices of the President-General in the first place.
This brings me to the next, bigger question. Are these judges, for whose reinstatement such a movement is in action, wedded to the ideals of justice and upholding the law and the constitution, or are they, like the average professional that we see around us, and ourselves are, believe in doing the 9 to 5 routine and heading back home to enjoy all the perks that come with their positions? The cars, the mansions, the butlers etc? For if they are just time-servers like the rest of us, and only come to work a day at the office, i.e. if that is their psychology, the only difference between them and the judges that have taken the oath under November’s PCO is that of names. For if these latter ones are beholden to Musharraf, the former ones, if reinstated, will owe a debt of gratitude to one Mr. Nawaz Sharif. And anyone who was alive in the late 80’s and the 90’s in Pakistan knows that that cannot really be a good thing. Nawaz Sharif is being hailed all around for taking a principled stand on everything, from the judiciary to democracy, which is one factor that has given his party unanticipated electoral success in urban Punjab earlier in the year. I personally know people who flew all the way from Karachi to their hometowns in the Punjab to vote for Mian Sb. Notwithstanding the question as to whether he really is firm on principles this time around, or is just finding it politically beneficial to go with the general mood of the people for the time being, Nawaz Sharif and his cronies are children of the establishment, through and through. In fact, they’re children of the worst military regime in Pakistan’s history, that of the humble Momin, Zia-ul-Haq. They are people who came into the political mainstream on the backs of military intelligence and ISI, and continue to truly represent only a certain segment of Pakistani society, the industrial-business elite, insofar as their party structure is concerned. Nawaz Sharif himself is beset with an upstart industrialist mentality which dictates gauging every action in the narrow prism of profit and loss. Is his commitment to democracy and an independent judiciary only a part of his personal vendetta against Musharraf for overthrowing his government? Will his resolve to work towards institution building only remain strong till the time the General’s ousted? These are questions only time will answer because his history does not support any such hopes. I have to hand it to the Pakistani public though. Even after all the disappointments of the past, their faces had this strange gleam of hope on the morning of the 19th of February. It made a cynic like me wonder if such undying optimism ought to be celebrated or lamented. What I do lament, however, is our collective short memory, and inability to learn from experience.
Our civil society, which is just a more ‘civil’ term for the upper and upper-middle classes, seems to have decided that capitalistic democracy is the panacea for all our ills. However, this strata of society, which includes myself, seems to be more confused than anything else. A friend of mine, a successful corporate banker, and quite active in the movement for the restoration of judges as a part of the Direct Action Committee, attending rallies, shouting slogans, distributing propaganda material, praised the principled stand of the judges and of Mian Sb’s party in their fight against the dictator. Five minutes later, he spewed some pearls of wisdom on corporate success, saying that the first principle of survival in this world is, and I quote, ‘to screw the other before he gets a chance to screw u’. And the first thing that came to my mind was, isn’t that what Musharraf tried to do? Anyway, it’s been more than a month since that happened and I’m still pondering on the apparent dichotomy of principles, and how it plagues our class and my generation. In this respect, though, the media has had a very significant role to play. Like the clergy of medieval Europe, it is the fourth pillar of the state today. I draw such a comparison because the potential for demagoguery appears equally enormous in both cases. In Musharraf’s economic boom, besides banking and telecom, media is the only industry that has proliferated. And now, as is natural, it does not know what it ought to do with itself, since quantity has effectively inundated quality. So, in between the Indian style soaps to pander to the tastes of the wider market, rather than restricting itself to keeping the public informed of facts so that it could draw its own conclusions from them, it has taken to opinion-forming. There is a ‘breaking news’ and every channel has a different story as to the actual happening. Old-timers sit together in talk shows and analysis programs and tell the public exactly what they ought to be thinking. And that’s what the public is doing. Everybody believes in the righteousness of the lawyers’ movement because some droning journalist on TV said so. Nobody seems to be thinking out loud on national TV that if these judges are restored would the lawyers, and especially the frontline leaders in the lawyer community, never try to capitalize on their blood and sweat? Will that not leave the superior judiciary in the same sort of fix that it always has been in? Earlier it used to do the bidding of generals and bureaucrats. Now, it will owe a lot to bar councils and senior lawyers, and you never know what new direction that may lead us into. Everybody believes in the sacrosanct nature of the freedom of speech, not realizing that that also gives a natural edge to the one who can shout the loudest.
Finally, let me bring forth what little I know of the justice system in Pakistan. I will restrict myself to the rural areas since I have little knowledge of how stuff gets done in the cities. This in itself is saying a lot since 70% of Pakistan is still supposed to be rural. To the rural poor, the first adjudicator, or dare I say, the scribe of their destinies, is the Thana incharge. Whatever he writes in his FIR is the basis of all litigation afterwards. Therefore, this man wields tremendous power, and consequently, enjoys tremendous opportunity for making money. This is where the poor soul who got himself involved in such a messy business as seeking justice is bled for the first time. If he gets lucky, he’ll only get away with paying a few thousand bucks in bribes. Else, if the SHO likes his daughter, he might have to offer her up to make sure that the cattle that are his livelihood are returned safely from the robbers who took them. Also, if he is on bad terms with a local influential who is on good terms with the police, or the offending party, he might end up getting charged for a crime himself and might find himself tasting the hospitality of a rural interrogation office. There are a million possible combinations wherein a poor man seeking justice may have to sacrifice his belongings, dignity or honor and I could possibly not list them all. Let’s just say, to get the process moving effectively, u need to have money, contacts, guile and zero self-respect. From here, the process moves into the courts. Here the baser things are truly not en vogue, since judges are educated, refined types, and only work for money, or the right person calling them up. This is where property disputes can take more than a decade to sort out, and where murderers and rapists are let free based on how well they are connected. Although, it must be granted that the level of corruption decreases as you move up from the district courts to the provincial high courts and then on to the supreme court, isn’t the corruption at the lower end, the end closest to the civilian, the deadliest? Because it is here that lives are made or broken. A poor man, whose son’s murderer is acquitted in a district court, may not have the resources or the will or the physical strength to take the case to a higher court. He may just do what people in our parts have been doing for centuries: leave it to God’s ultimate judgment. All the 60 honorable judges have passed through this very system. I do not attempt to associate any sort of corruption or malpractice with them and I am very sure that they are all men of great integrity and moral fortitude. But all of them have passed through this system. All of them know what goes on in the peripheries and at the lower levels. In this entire 14-month struggle, has there been a single cry for reform? For actually taking any steps towards changing a system in which justice is bought and sold like a common whore? Will this system where the SHO of a thana somewhere in some long-forgotten tehsil of a district in the middle of nowhere earns at par with any corporate fatcat, profiting on the misery of the poor, be allowed to persist after everything is ‘set right’? Has any leading lawyer raised a voice of protest against this system in his speeches on freeing this country from the clutches of dictatorship? Or do they assume that with Musharraf gone, everything will correct itself from top to bottom? I am very sorry but people assumed the same about Ayub and Yahya and Zia, and nothing happened. And it is actually sad to say that it feels to me as if this entire struggle has become a battle of egos centered around the basic notion: ‘give them their jobs back’ and ‘I want my job back!’ Hell, at the risk of sounding repetitive, if you’re only going to do what you did before you were kicked out, and what the PCO judges are doing now, might as well stay out. Most I can do is condole with you over loss of perk and privilege. For I feel that we have had enough of a top-down approach in this country. It’s time that we started bottom-up, towards a system in which everyone matters, where justice is just blind, not deaf. Laws that are not uniformly applied at every level of society encompassing the entire body politic of the nation are not worth the paper they’re written on. And all well-suited gentleman who like to fancy themselves the custodians of law and its actual spirit, should also have the courage to fully understand what is truly engendered in such grand titles, and that it actually means a lot of responsibility to each and every citizen of a country in much need of justice, not just posturing to effect a favorable balance of power at the top. And suffice it to say that the top, from the perspective of the people, is way out of reach. Everyone in this country aspiring to do great things at the top, the politicians, the lawyers, the generals, the media, all of them have had their fair share of trying to win the hearts and minds of people. And even when the people have demonstrated vigorous willingness to be won over, they have been let down. Now would be the perfect time for a revolution of hearts and minds, a complete change in mindsets and attitudes, and in deference to an old national habit, it would be much better if that transpires top down.
To keep on repeating ‘how dare a dictator do that?’ is like oversimplifying the issue because then one would have to make an honest inquiry into why the dictator is there in the first place, and soon enough, not much of our ‘civil’ society or the civilized world, will be able to avoid blame. Remove the dictator by all means, but also make sure that the restoration of the judiciary does not simply equate to professional reinstatement. For I feel that justice, rather than any institution that claims to administer it, is the solid base upon which the edifice of state and society ought to be erected. But it will continue to remain an illusory ideal till we can effect a change in mentalities. I believe that that is what our brightest minds should be working on. The nation has had enough of protracted wars of wits and egos, even if the realization of that has not yet dawned fully.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
from on high
Snakes, bright and glittering, slithering along, atom by atom, side by side, on intersecting pathways of light, straight and unending, through a jungle of an unearthly aura, alive, breathing, lost in its own consciousness, forbidding to any callous adventurer. A dense jungle; every leaf, a vibrant sign of life, a sparkling dot of color, a thousand different colors intermixed, stretched out till where the eye can see, shaming the stars in their monochromatic night sky. Is this my Garden of Eden?
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