a plea

Shades of hesitant conversation, and fiery eyes, angry, yet sad: I don’t want to lose sight of these visions in the dark night of penitence that has come upon me. So listen, listen to this feeble voice, before the vulgar waves of the oceans separating us drown it out. My life begins in death; wailing, sobbing, trying to find for itself a face in a mirror of horrors. Radiant visages, muted, motionless, lie concealed in their unreachable homes of impenetrable darkness, shimmering away their eternal grace. I try and steal their glow, just to find my own way. But I do not always succeed. I stumble, I fall. Silver-tongued wraiths appear to me in friendly forms, leading me astray with dishonest enticements. I follow blindly; I let greed and desire be my guides. Until I reach a crossroads where all the world is hostile to me, and I myself am my biggest enemy. I fight these demons, individually, and all at once. I fight them with all I’ve got. I fight them until my sanity dangles by a hair from the edge of oblivion. It is a bitter fight; it is an unending fight. It is a fight that leads me to unfamiliar places; places where nobody recognizes me, and I struggle to recognize myself. It becomes a strange imprisonment where polite nods and soft smiles define the parameters of my solitary confinement; it becomes a strange exile where amidst the cacophony of a thousand voices, there is every opportunity to carry on uninterrupted conversations with the self. I crane my neck above the crowd to try and steal a peek at the familiarity left so far behind. I see brilliant flashes of color and light; I see two souls fusing; I hear the music of joyful celebration. But the odes to love and happiness that the flute sings reach my ears only as tunes of lament and mourning. They evoke times that were simple, and magical; unchanging and absolute. Times when we did not have to scour a thousand strangers’ faces in hopes of finding a faint glimmer of lost familiarity. But remember, you: the custodian of my blood; the keeper of my soul. I will come back for it; I will come back to them. And you. And you will have the power to decide whether when I look my soul in the eyes again, it stares back at me with a stranger’s empty gaze, or embraces me with the warm ease of a long lost friend. Be just, you; be merciful. A weary pilgrim come home deserves not to be castaway as driftwood on the seas of self-loathing and regret; a broken man deserves a chance to be one again with fragments of his soul.

twelve years & 99 minutes

It’s like this. You go get something, seemingly out of the ordinary, actually, not so much, and the world trips over itself showering praise. Amid the thunderous applause however, you yourself do not know what to make of your achievement. So you flounder about, doing one thing, then another, recklessly exercising the only tangible element of your personality: a bloated ego. And one day, without even knowing it, you fall in line, a line of sheep more like, mindlessly trying to do what every Bum, Dick and Hairy in the world is doing. But then you fail, completely, miserably, falling flat and hard on your face. And you just can’t deal with that. So it becomes a silent obsession, gnawing away at the back of your mind as your body feigns patrician swagger, eating away at your soul as it sinks deeper in the quicksand of its own poverty. Your ego becomes the stone wall behind which you yourself are the guinea pig in the experiments of your own psyche.

In time, you find distractions. You drown yourself in indulgences that often have your entrails hanging at your mouth. You tumble down culs-de-sac of love, always mistaking the heat of the moment for a promise of a lifetime. You delude yourself into believing that you, of all people, have a handle on the Truth. And despite all that, the fixation remains, biding its time in some remote corner of your brain, awaiting the perfect moment to grasp you by the nape. And then it happens. You are weighed, measured and found wanting in comparison to wild, alien enticements. Your sun-burnt patch of irises does not match up to the red and the gold of the other side. And just like that, a dormant ambition becomes a burning need screaming for gratification.

You align your entire existence in aid of your self-centered motives. You let life take its course, ordained by higher powers, acquiesced in by you. But secretly, you load every dice in your favor. In the public eye, you are the epitome of blissful sangfroid. In private, you’re a madman with a grudge, an insecure freak dying to prove yourself. You work hard, you plug all holes, and this time, you don’t take yourself prisoner. And you have it. The world once again is up in clamorous applause. Accolades filter in from far and wide. You are king of your world one more time. And just as before, there is emptiness, cluelessness, but mixed with unconscionable amounts of guilt. For in your journey from crest to trough to crest again on the sinusoid that is your life, you have created nodes, old and new, that are the basis of all that you are. Tears glisten in some innocent, unsuspecting eyes and endear all the world’s tears to you. Silenced voices lecture you on sanity, and you hear them better than the noise around you. Faces forever interred in darkness are your beacons to the meaning of life, and you prefer those visages to the light of day.

Hindsight constructs a reality that is impossible to disengage from. The Truth now appears different from what it used to be. The Truth now redefines your conceptions of priority. The Truth demands confrontation with all your well-concealed dualities. The Truth resides in a life-force far greater, far more valuable than yours. The Truth, however, retains its surreal volatility. The Truth, nonetheless, must be listened to.

birthday '13

ajab hai vasl mein ye bhi andaam e khu hona
makeen e naar so hona, tappish ki aarzu hona

nazar gudaaz, badan majrooh, soorat ashk aalood
namaaz e ishq mein laazim hai ba-wuzu hona

sakoot e shab aur hungaam e bosa e rukh e yaar
mumkin ho kahan dil e zaar se guft-o-gu hona

har gham zamaane ka jo ho gosha e gham e dil
bohat ma'asoom hota hai ye mojza e aansu hona

kisi maar e sangh kharaash ki kya auqaat o wujood?
likha qismet mein ho gar nazrana e gaysu hona

sabhi havaadis e lazzaat se charagar ho kar
jigger ka kaam hai ayeeneh k roobaru hona

jab ishq hee rehta ho beniaz e sood o zayan
munajat mein kyun ho naffey ki justoju hona?

har zeest k maare se bekhauf ye keh doh
jila hai zeest ki raahon mein be-aabru hona

khwab toot gaye, thehr gayi mohabbat ki mehak
khiraaj e umr hua behr e Mazloom surkhru hona

a lament for lost grace

It was a happy place; happiness built on the foundations of unconditional faith and kept by the power of love. It was a place where the heart learned the wisdom of love, and the mind romanced every shade of the truth; where the timid soul borrowed courage from the legends of the greats, and the wayward wits sought direction in showers of dazzling light. It was a place where music permeated the very being, and like the cheeky bard at a Khan’s court, the spirit sang merrily without fear or regret; a place where color infused life’s every beautiful face, and the miraculous downpours of the monsoon made the bright shine brighter. It was a monument to eternal love, white, like the purity that reigned at its core, and red, like the smoldering embers of separation which kindled this love. It was where the wounded heart returned for solace and sanctuary, and all that was ever broken could be mended with sagely words exchanged softly, intimately; where the habit of giving was extolled over the pious virtue of remaining constantly expectant; where the summer was the coolest time of the year, and the winter beneficent in the warm glow of companionship. It was a place that stood out like an island of serenity amidst a swollen river of noxious decay.

He was the unquestioned master of this unlikely bastion of blessed living. He had built it up from naught, snatching away his birthright from the fangs of injustice. Upon his command the spring spread its cornucopia of color; the furrow of his regal brow deterred autumn from stealing away the greenery of his fief. His code of honor defined life; his sense of order set the plane of existence. He spoke with the cumulative wisdom of ages; he laughed that infectious laugh which never failed to fill his universe with mirth. He spoke and the world was mesmerized; he spoke and the most subdued of listeners got swept away in conversation. But carefully, respectfully, for no one high or low dared raise their voice to his. For his was a voice, like a clap of thunder; resonating across time through the halls and chambers; echoing far beyond the perimeters of his keep. That voice preserved the labors of his love; that voice daunted the ugliness from breaking in. Once alone was there a breach. Feeble in body, yet steadfast in spirit, he stood like a colossus in the face of a pygmy assault, compelling the enemy to retreat with shame in the eye and muffled apology on the tongue. That was to be his last stand. Not long after, that majestic voice would only be heard in the echoes it left behind.

His strength was not his alone. It was derived from a quieter, subtler presence behind him; a slender hand the touch of which was the sturdiness of his back, even in that final moment of truth; a soft voice that spoke to his limitless reserves of courage. She was the burning beacon of progress that lit up a firmament darkened by the absence of a single guiding light, and the suffocating shadow of small-mindedness and petty intrigue. She emerged on the horizon like a lone star that leads lost travelers in the wilderness of self-deceit to the oases of enlightenment. She was the force behind his passion to invent a whole new system of circumstances. Hers was the measured speech, the voice of reason, which tempered his fiery spirit; hers was the calm intellect, the moral compass, channeling the authority that emanated from him into charting new courses. She was his perfect complement, in a way that only two people from two different worlds can be. She upheld the faith and became equal partners in the lifelong task of creating wonders and keeping malevolence at bay. If he was the sculptor of an alternate destiny, hers was the image that it was to be cast in.

After his towering persona was consigned to the fading canvasses of memory, she held their world together with a forcefulness that was undoubtedly his bequest, and an arsenal of love that was entirely her very own. She, with her inimitable clarity of vision, always differentiating between the material and the spiritual, cherished valuing the soul over pricing its utility. As the years went by and enervation restricted movement, her place of genuflection to faith was the center of gravity around which all those specks of dust whom she had given life, orbited. She welcomed every new pulse of life with a kind of spontaneous joy that it would not probably deserve for many more years still. Her face lit up at the sight of every young tot, someone who would never really know her and who would only piece together her life, and his, from what his father or mother tell him; and yet, someone who would be living proof of her triumph. And when the time came for her to return to dust, she wore that same celestial light on her face that would overwhelm the darkness in her final abode, just as it had done in the realm of the mundane.

Now, one might ask, what of that world that they had so painstakingly created? That haven of peace and happiness? For all one can say, measuring the strength of love like that is actually a question for posterity. Right now, every silent, lifeless object, every inch of stone and concrete, every piece of wood and cloth, every plant and every tree, screams out the name of a life that used to be. And for those within earshot, that just means a lot of secret tears in solitary nooks and darkened crannies, where many more memories lie in wait.

the broken anchor

kafan ki narm panahon mein se mumkin ho toh sunn
lehd k pak ujaalon mein se dikhta ho toh dekh

k gulistan e bazurgan pe jo guzri hai woh razm
kisi khamosh qayamat se kaheen kam toh nahi
her jhutlai huyi ah
pathrai huyi chashm
samaan e girya o maatam se kaheen kam toh nahi

sukarti khaak mein khoya hai laal e mehr o wafa
muneem e hashr sajaye hai dukanein apni
hissaar e haibat e gham ki faseelon per
naag o gurg ne taani hain kamanein apni

havas uriyan hai
aur azmaton ka laasha hai
shareef e waqt ka kaisa
zauq e tamasha hai?!

havaas bakhta hain sab sapoot e maslak e haq
yaqeen ka marqad hai, takht nasheen hai shak

koi toh ho jo samjhaye inhein sultani k umoor
aye khurshid siffat saakin e rehmat o noor
paya tu ne toh aaghosh e muwadat mein suroor,
mureed e Ghazi e be-kas, Asadullah k huzoor
per
koi jhalak teri reh jaye yaan bhi toh zuroor
dafn ho jaye kaheen duur
yeh fitna
yeh fatoor

warna ik zulmat si hai
her aan charhi aati hai

khizan deti hai dastak bar dar e shehr e yaar
ik maut si zardi hai, roothi hai bahar
her nafs pe taari hai khud parasti ka khumar
aankhein be-noor sabhi aur dushman hain hazaar

ye reet agar yoonhi chali aaye gi
saza e tangi e dil qabr talak jaye gi

sada tab bhi shayad yahee aaye gi

k kab ho jo koi tujh sa jahan mein aaye
kaun ho k teri dhaj se la-makan mein utrey?

the enemy concealed in plain sight

The brutal rape aboard a moving bus in Delhi in the waning days of 2012 took sub-continental society by the scruff of the neck and forced it to confront many taboos, many inconvenient truths that have conventionally been brushed underneath the carpet per dint of habit. Finding the intellectual environment in the wake of the Delhi rape conducive, I aim to shed light on another insidious cruelty rife under our very noses: child sexual abuse.

In 1993, at the age of 10, I was informed about all manners of sex by a domestic servant, a boy not out of his teens yet. At the threshold of puberty, my reaction to the stories he had to tell ranged from disgust to some sort of guilty excitement because it all sounded like so much fun and adventure. One day, after probably concluding that my verbal education was complete, he casually told me that whenever he found me home alone, he would do all those things to me. The bewilderment and the fear I felt then, I have no words to describe. After 2 days of literally hiding behind people, and a night of high fever and incomprehensible babbling, I mustered the courage to tell my mother, who in turn told my father, who dealt with that servant in a manner befitting an enraged father and a ‘zamindar’. Perhaps this incident permanently sensitized me towards the phenomenon of sex and adult-child relations and I felt later experiences more acutely.

In 1994, 7^th grade, unhappy at my lack of interest in sports, my mother moved me from co-ed to a renowned all-boys school. One of the first things I noticed at the new school was the warped gender notions the boys held, and the almost universal tendency towards prurience of thought and lewd, homoerotic innuendo in conversation. One day the entire school erupted into commotion. The local press descended upon the Principal’s Office, and the entire administration block was sealed off for students. It was later revealed that a boy, the son of a journalist and a year my junior, had missed the school-bus home a few days earlier. The P.E. instructor, a mountain of a man and a Hafiz of the Quran, had lured the boy into his quarters and then proceeded to sodomize the child. To avoid ‘shame’ both for the school and the child’s parents, the offending instructor was quietly fired. He later found gainful employment at another school. The press had been brought as a pressure tactic by the boy’s father. No mention was made of the incident in the papers. Even those directly involved in the matter refused to look beyond the incident into the wider problem. When the abused boy returned to school a few days later, he became the object of both sympathy and ridicule. However, he did not shy away from discussing his ordeal, and soon everyone knew what had happened. It is now in hindsight that one can really understand the gravity of what had happened, and the meaninglessness of the action taken over it. Be that as it may, some days afterwards, and perhaps emboldened by events around him, a classmate of mine, built like an ox but jittery and retiring in disposition, confessed to me how he had been similarly abused multiple times by a person called ‘Tohfa’, a peon at his father’s office. Somehow I can still remember the sadness in those bespectacled eyes. In early 1996, I moved to another school for my O levels, and lost contact with my aggrieved friend.

In 1999, that entire sordid saga of horrendous child abuse surfaced in Lahore, where a man by the name of Javed Iqbal used to entice homeless boys from Data Darbar to his home, sodomized them, murdered them and then disposed the bodies off in acid. When finally caught, the demon narrated his entire operation to the authorities in every gruesome detail, and confessed to murdering more than a 100 boys, with not so much as a missing child’s report filed for a vast majority of them. His placid demeanor became a fixture on the media, and the nation’s sensibilities were wracked with disgust and dismay. Yet, no real measures were adopted to address the conditions that facilitate the commission of such heinous crimes. Javed Iqbal was sentenced to death by the courts, but was found dead under questionable circumstances in his jail cell a year later with appeal pending.

In 2000, I began college education at LUMS. Even at that most prestigious of universities with a reputation for catering to the upper crust of Pakistani society, I came to know many people who had either suffered abuse, or had witnessed or heard of it happen in close proximity. Here I learned that most abuse of middle- and upper-class children happens in domestic settings. In the summer of 2005, having finished my stint at LUMS and being briefly unemployed, I took up the management of my ancestral lands in tehsil Jalalpur Pirwala of district Multan. One August afternoon, the calm of our village was broken by the cries and wails of a family carrying the half-charred body of a 6-year old boy. They had come to seek my elders’ assistance with the authorities for a case against the Maulvi of the Madrassah where the hapless child received religious instruction. The beast had so brutally raped the little child that he had died during the act. Then to cover his crime, the Maulvi had attempted to burn the child’s remains in the ‘tandoor’, the baking oven, of the seminary. A case was registered, but a compromise was reached a few years later. Poverty compelled the bereaved family to prefer receiving a sum of money over expending whatever meager resources they had in pursuing a case through the labyrinthine justice system of our country. And the monster got off scot-free to continue his career in religious scholarship, and more likely, pedophilia.

A month after this distressing episode, I went into interior Sindh on a joint LUMS-Collective for Social Science Research field venture. The tragedy that had transpired in my own village was still very fresh in my mind. So, while working through a questionnaire on the causes and consequences of poverty with rural people in Thatta, I asked whether pederasty and pedophilia were ever observed in those parts. With one of the most unfathomably lascivious expressions I have ever seen on any face, a man made the claim that “70%” of all children in any given village experience sexual contact with an adult. Now, even if one discounts for the notorious bucolic penchant for exaggeration, it may be concluded from that man’s statement that the phenomenon is prevalent enough to be considered wide practice. And that, in itself, is a sobering realization.

In 2007, another heinous incident happened within the remit of the township of Jalalpur Pirwala. A shopkeeper sexually assaulted a pre-pubescent girl-child in the back room of his shop. After the deed was done, he tried to finish the unconscious victim off by trying to slit her wrists and throat with a shaving razor, and left her for dead out in the street. He was apprehended shortly afterwards. I am not aware of what eventually became of that case. That same year, I worked for a multinational bank as Manager Ops. On Chand Raat, the entire senior hierarchy of the Multan branch got together to celebrate at a colleague’s house. Two servants were present there to serve the party of merrymakers: a man in his twenties and a boy in his teens. To add to the revelry, the top boss decided to have both the servants drink. Once things started getting out of hand, the second-in-command suggested that it would be fun to have the older servant ‘do’ the younger one for the group’s entertainment. At first I thought it was just a vulgar proposition of a sick mind. But then when he began pushing the idea, I protested. Mercifully, the boy had run out somewhere in the meantime, and was not to be found again that night. The verbal exchange between my boss and I got nasty, and I walked out of the party, sickened to the gut. In the morning, it was discovered that the boy had run away to his home in Vehari. Things got very uneasy at work for me. A week later, I resigned. Ironically, that deranged second-in-command had studied at the same all-boys school I had the displeasure of attending for two years.

In September 2010, as part of my Civil Services training, I was deputed on military attachment with an infantry unit deployed along the LoC in Azad Kashmir. The Commanding Officer of that Frontier Force regiment, a Pathan Lt. Colonel and a devout Muslim, recounted a horrifying experience he had had during the Swat operation of 2009 where the unit had seen active combat. He said that the unit arrested the head of a seminary with a reputation not just for training and providing succor to militant combatants, but also for flagrant pedophilia. Military intelligence interrogated him on both counts. On the charge of sexually abusing his wards in the seminary, the cleric stated under duress, and I quote from the Lt. Colonel’s own words, “I am a Hafiz of the Quran and an expert on Hadith. Both of these have such miraculous powers that they generate a very powerful force (heat) in the body that can only be vented properly through sexual intercourse with the pupils so that they too may partake of the miracle.” As shocked as I was to hear the Lt. Colonel’s story, I was also instantly reminded of a cousin, whose Quran-instructor had tried to have the poor child stroke his penis, while he enlightened him with Quranic instruction. Such depravity among these seeming exponents of faith finds no explanation in any rational or spiritual terms. I could see the Lt. Colonel feeling as befuddled telling the story as I did hearing it.

And finally, in the summers of 2012, the body of a minor washed ashore on my Grandfather’s land from the shallow waters of the Sutlej. Pitilessly ravaged and killed, the child was the son of a neighboring landowner. Suspicion was immediately cast on the father’s political rivals within his ‘biradri’. However, because of the family’s refusal to allow an autopsy and insistence on quick burial, all forensic evidence was lost. As of today, the suspects roam free, and legal proceedings on the case remain a non-starter. The bereaved probably await the right moment to extract vengeance in blood, an act that will inevitably kick off a vendetta. Nonetheless, the innocent child suffered his inhuman fate alone, forced into an untimely grave in eternal, ungodly silence. Had he been allowed to live to reveal the identities of his molesters, would he have been believed? Would the word of a ‘mere child’ have stood for anything in the rule-bound, paper-driven modern justice system? These are questions that will never now be asked, much less answered.

The intention behind recounting all these horrifying stories was not to make the reader have a constant knot in the stomach. I, in fact, want to make a very specific point: if in my 30 years, I have had all these run-ins at a very personal level with the phenomenon of sexual abuse of children, how deep is this social sickness really? How widespread is the malaise? With the singular exception of the Data Darbar case of 1999, none of the others was reported in mainstream media. It is all firsthand knowledge. Add to this those countless cases that are daily reported in the newspapers and on TV? And yet, we, as a society, obstinately refuse to have open, honest intellectual discourse over the topic? Who are we deluding here? And what of all those cases that go unreported? All the instances that I have related are particularly vicious in nature. But what of ‘milder’ abuse; abuse that becomes a lifelong secret between predator and prey; where an adult uses the innocence or natural curiosity of a child for some sort of perverse gratification without the child even realizing the severity of it? And yet, it may leave an everlasting psychological imprint. I still sometimes grapple with the legacy of my premature education in all matters sexual by a wannabe pedophile. And what about all those instances that are hushed up for concerns of ‘shame’ and ‘family honor’, or due to the exigencies of poverty and social disempowerment? Where child molesters walk free in an intrinsically flawed judicial system, and where parents are compelled by some twisted notions of love to keep silent and avert their gaze from the trauma their child has been through, just so that he or she could avoid being stuck with the stigma of having been made impure by the evil act of another? In our dysfunctional society, the emotional and psychological baggage of sexual abuse becomes the victim’s burden alone to haul through life, if at all they survive the ordeal.

Child sexual abuse has much in common with another horrendous social crime: rape. Both have a lot to do with perceived notions of power and control, and the practical exercise of such pernicious concepts. Rape has to do with power disparity between the sexes; child abuse is about the abuse of power disparity between adults and children. Both carry fatal consequences, not just for the victimized individual, but for society in general. There are a few differences too, however. When an adult is sexually assaulted, he, or as is most often the case, she, is better equipped to resist than a child. Case in point being the heroic girl on the Delhi bus who resisted till she could. A child does not even know that there is something seriously wrong until it is too late. Adults are forced into involuntary sex, mostly at pain of death or severe physical torture. Unless it is outright child rape, most children are lured or sweet-talked into the act. Perceptions of some guilty fun are planted into their heads which is in stark contrast to the actual physical pain they are eventually made to feel. This creates a feeling of being betrayed and exploited that a child is simply incapable of dealing with. Furthermore, adults are more capable of dealing with sexual harassment, as they have a voice and a better understanding of reality. In cases of ‘mild’ abuse like improper touching, rubbing, fondling and lewd talk with children, the child, more often than not, doesn’t even realize something’s awry. In such cases, even if the child does complain to a responsible adult, it is ultimately the child’s word against the grown-up’s, who with his wits and senses about him, can spin the story to his advantage. Observation suggests that in our society, such kind of ‘mild’ abuse is either widely condoned or not considered abuse at all.

Bertrand Russell, in his famous parable of the school bully, has neatly summed up the human condition. When asked as to why he beat up kids younger than himself, the bully matter-of-factly replies that the older ones beat him, and so, it was only ‘fair’ that he beat the ‘babies’. In this perspective, and indulging crude conjecture, when a child abuse victim reaches adulthood, the permutations in which his (her) repressed rage and frustration and the countless painful questions haunting the psyche may manifest themselves, may have severely negative socio-psychological fallouts. He may suffer, and others may suffer with him, or because of him. Therefore, leaving this baleful phenomenon unchecked, and all of its incumbent issues unaddressed, is a sure recipe for adding dangerously to the national psychosis that is already threatening to rip this country apart at the seams.

In this regard, I would prefer to see a few things happen immediately, although the possibility of them ever taking formal shape is largely absent from the horizon. I would like to see society wake up to the reality of child abuse, to not turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to specific occurrences, and to form a broad consensus on what needs to be done to stop it and counteract its effects. In short, child abuse needs to be a subject of wide national discussion and debate, rather than something taboo for conversation, something best not even thought about, much less mentioned. An ethos needs to be evolved where someone who has been a victim of such bestiality has the courage and the confidence to speak out about it without fear or shame. Society should learn from these examples so as to be able to understand and minimize its occurrence, and victims must be given broad, open and unconditional support in overcoming their abuse-related problems. Some non-governmental organizations are doing a good job with regards to the latter, but given the scale of its incidence, concerted, statewide efforts need to be made to assess and tackle cause and effect. Interestingly, a bill for the formation of an authority for the rehabilitation of violence and abuse victims has been lying dormant in the National Assembly since 2010; shows the level of commitment our democratic representatives have towards good work that has little to do with political grandstanding or profitable division of the nation's resources among our numerous power elites. Be that as it may, meaningful and specific legislation needs to be enacted via political consensus that fully defines child abuse down to the minutest detail so that the provision of justice does not get lost in interpretation. Separate, specific and draconian penal stipulations need to be instituted for child molesters, and carried out with the full force of the law, so that deterrents are created for future offenders. Co-education needs to be encouraged and promoted so as to reduce the sexual objectification of the opposite sex that is the source of much of the gender disconnect in our society. This disconnect, and the skewed gender relations it engenders, in my opinion, is one major cause behind rapes and child abuse as men channel their repressed desires and frustration in all the wrong directions. If men and women interact at a social level as equal human beings rather than one viewing the other as forbidden fruit, perhaps this demystification of the opposite sex will lead to reduced levels of sexual frustration. Furthermore, the state needs to find a spine and clamp down stringent regulations on religious schools and seminaries. Every facet of Madrassah life needs to be brought under strict parliamentary supervision to ensure nothing ugly goes on behind the veil of religion. Our instinctive deference towards a man with a beard, or a person familiar with Arabic or the holy book, needs to be revisited and toned down. No amount of religious fervor instilled in our children is worth their physical, emotional or psychological well-being. And finally, we need to recognize that we ourselves are ultimately responsible for the protection of our under-age children. Trusting a stranger blindly with your children, and then spending a lifetime trying to deceive yourself into believing whatever happened was not your fault, will lead you through the same hell your child is going through. And if you have the misfortune of living in a society as insular as Pakistan’s, it will be lifelong denial that eats you away on the inside.

Children are one of the few things that bring pure, unadulterated beauty to the adults’ dreary world governed by a cynical scrounge for resources and a mad dash for survival. I stand on the brink of fatherhood, and to be honest, the thought of the ugliness into which I have colluded to bring such helpless innocence gets overwhelming at times. I have had a close brush with abuse, and I know for a fact that I will be one of those dads constantly paranoid about the safety of their children. But such incessant paranoia would be infinitely preferable to the regret of having failed one’s children at a time when they had no one else to look up to. It is in protecting their today that we can hope to secure their tomorrows. After all, parents who fail to shield their children against the caprices of the world deserve not to be called parents at all. Likewise, societies which fail to look out for their weak gradually forfeit the right to exist; they invite either total destruction, or painful fundamental restructuring. 

eleven years

pas e salasil
sakoot ki yeh manzil
k aahat na wujood
per kucch sunai na de

her ik sada e be-karan se pooche mera dil
koi hai, dushman e rug e jaan?

'nahin, koi nahin'

aur zindan k talismon se parey
aik taraf
nigah bhatke toh wohi mujra e shauq
wohi bazaar e taqseem e sood o ziyan
wohi bikte huye jism, be-hiss, uriyan

mata'a e havas
bikne ki chashni maangey
her aik ang
lazzat se aagahi maangey
barehna hirs
shohrat ki roshni maangey
sharminda chashm
chhupne ko teergi maangey

toh paltey

aur phir wohi dildar qafas
kamal e zabt bamuqabil e sarkashi maangey
nazar daraz, sama'at ki tishnagi maangey
hisaar e nafs mein sirf aajizi maangey

aisa ho taqaza e bandagi k ab
ashk
takreem e hasrat o nung mitana chahein
aankhein
roodad e safar bhulana chahein

aisa rahey hungaam e khalvat k junoon
her ik saans mein ho
aur kucch sunai na de

dil sawal karey
besakhta
qafas ki shorish se
koi hai, raqeeb e jan e janan?

'nahin, koi nahin'

moharram in music: the seraiki maaru

In some remote enclaves of the Seraiki belt, the venerable tradition of the 'Maaru' lives on; the use of the dirgelike melodies of the flute (sharnah, in seraiki) and the doleful beat of the war-drum (naghara) to gather together the mourners of Imam Hussain in the first ten days of Moharram. The particular subject of this post was recorded on the intervening night of the 8th and 9th of Moharram at Shujatpur, the ancestral village of the Langah Khans on the banks of the Sutlej at the southernmost tip of the district Multan. As is age-old convention in this exclusive hamlet of Azadars (mourners), the Maaru is played in the evenings of the 1st through to the 7th of Moharram to bring the community together for 'Maatam'. Maatam is organized chest-beating to the tune of a 'Nauha', elegiac poetry sung by a chorus of 5 to 6 Nauhakhwans, commemorating one episode or the other from the events of Karbala. On the nights of the 8th and 9th of Moharram, the Maaru announces the commencement of the 'Majlis', a gathering in which the 'Zakir' (speaker) employs the magic of words to bring alive the tragedy of Karbala in the imagination of the listeners. The final Maaru of Moharram is played in the deep afternoon of the 10th of Moharram, roughly corresponding with the time of the Asr prayer, the time of Hussain's martyrdom 14 centuries ago. This Maaru is different from all those played on the previous days. It has an eerie warlike rhythm to it as one would imagine playing in the background of medieval infantry going on the attack. The steady thud-thudding of the drum and the piercing defiance of the flute accompanies the 'Zanjeer-zani' (self-flagellation), the Azadars' tribute in blood to the fallen Imam.

The recording in question is the most elaborate specimen of the regular Maaru played in the first nine days of Moharram. The Maaru ensemble laid out beneath a tree at the Imambargah's gate includes the sharnah-maestro Ustad Ghulam Haider Mirzada at the primary flute, Bidani Mirasi with the supporting flute and Bachu at the drums. Through the length of the Maaru, Ghulam Haider plays the tunes of three different Seraiki Nauhas in the flute. He starts off with the theme of 'Aa Qasim tekoon mehndi laavan, tedi maut de sagan suhavan' (Let me henna your hands, O Qasim, for you must now wed death). An increasing volume of human voices can be discerned in the background. Azadars drawn to the music are beginning to gather around the trio of instrumentalists, chanting 'Haye Hussain, Shah Hussain' (O Hussain, our persecuted King) while doing symbolic Maatam. In the 6th minute, Ghulam Haider moves to 'Mekoon loago Hussain ahdin, maen laash Akber di chaee aandan' (I am Hussain, O people, and I bear my murdered Akber on my shoulders). Akber was the Imam's 18-year old son who is believed to be a spitting image of the Prophet of Islam. He was killed in the battle of Karbala by a javelin through the heart. Those who are familiar with the lyrics of this Nauha break into tears when the flute intones: 'Musafir han Madine da, maen te itni ghareebi hay, kafan bajhoon maen Akber koon, bunn de vich sumhai aandan' (I am a traveler, far from home; and so abject am I that I leave him unshrouded on the burning sand). In the 10th minute of play, the maestro picks up the tune of 'Zalim ve, mekoon Shaam di taraf na torr' (O cruel fate, do not take me in chains towards Shaam). The seamless transitions through the three Nauhas speaks volumes of the flutist's mastery. The lyrics of this third Nauha are even more moving, but in the 11th minute, a quick flick of the Langah Sardar's hand brings the Maaru to an abrupt end. The chant of 'Haye Hussain, Shah Hussain' builds to a crescendo as all those who had been silently relishing the beauty of the Maaru join in. At its peak, the chant ends as the crowd cries out in unison, 'Haq pak fazl e Panjtan, Ya Ali; Ya Allah, Ya Mohammad, Ya Ali!' The Azadars flock into the hall of the Imambargah for the Majlis to formally commence. The Maaru has served its purpose one more time. In 11 minutes, a sleepy hollow of scattered mud-houses, disparate clans and uneasy neighbors has been galvanized into a single-minded whole in the love of Hussain Al-Shaheed Al-Mazloom.

Asr e Ashur

han woh Hussain, tishna o majrooh o natavan
saaqit khara hua thha jo laashon k darmian
sunta raha sakoon se woh pir e neem jan
Akber se naujawan ki jawani ki siskiyan
haye haye ki aa rahee thhi sada kainaat se
phir bhi qadam hataye na paye sabaat se

- Josh Malihabadi

birthday '12

You plunge down the road, from home to home, and all you want to do is have some sense of purpose, some small achievement to show, if only to beat the encroaching night. The sky is overcast, the horizons, starless and bleak. The ominous gray of the right and the shrinking pink of the left conspire to make sure every oncoming gaze reduces you to innumerable flights of terror. Your resolve is shaken; you veer off the path into doubts unspoken, dangers untold. But only momentarily. Mild westerly’s kick up a heady breeze, easing the stuffiness inside. With the wind comes the phantasmal dust, dancing across the spectrum of vision, concealing that which is near, accentuating that which is far away. Across the dust’s erratic screen, alien eyes project surreal images, living silhouettes of objects lifeless and bound. It gets in your eyes, the insidious dust. You rub and there is aggravation. You don’t and you are blind. Rain begins to pour; fuses with the dust. Your perceptions become a murky pool and you wade through them in fits and starts. Your mad dash is now a snail’s pace; your purpose is defeated; your achievements, flimsy. Inertia carries you forward; frailty slows you down. Passing familiarity becomes a ray of hope. You latch onto it like space-junk at the end of a comet’s tail. It takes you deep through the realms of scorched clay. Colossal mud cannon point mutedly at the sky, belching acrid black fumes, as though they just fired at god and now await reprisal. You deviate into abstruse inquiry and all familiarity is lost. The darkness you had set out to conquer overwhelms you. You are home perhaps, confined and suffocating; home, from where there is no going away. And resurrection, it feels like such a distant promise.

vehshat e shab

raat se raat ka yoon fasana kehna
jaise apne hee halaat ko begana kehna

rudad e wasl ki rahat moasar hai k yoon
pehlu e yaar, shab e purkhar ka tarana kehna

wajh e zuhd apni hee ghilazat ka wuzu
wajh e wuzu pevasta e zamana rehna

deen o dil k tasadum se barh ker hai kathin
aatish a nafs ka ausaan se yarana sehna

muztarib dil kahan thhera hai bina e tauqeer
nazr e darya karo ye farsooda, purana gehna

shab e zulmat bhi hai, hosh o havas ki mehfil bhi
fana ka kaisa haseen rung hai anjana rehna

hazaar ma'ani e dauran pe gawara hai mujhe
ishq e Hussain ibn e Ali mein deevana rehna

chamak raha hai qamar badosh e shams e zuha
ain e fitrat hai issi noor ko yagana kehna

despairing whispers

It speaks to me of a barren soul
of withered minds, rotten whole

of gravel red with worthless blood
and dignity writhing in the mud,

of ravenous hate worn on the sleeves
of eternal want, the joy of thieves

of darkness shrouding the desolate land,
night and day, harsh in its stand

of lies and truths, hawked on the street
of triumphant lust, of love’s defeat

but then it strays to faraway lands
to dancing waves and golden sands

where reaching out to the pure azure
spirits freely, merrily soar

sparkling red and glittering gold
seductive sirens from days of old

where love is easy and happiness right
time stops to serve the senses’ delight

the soul, unburdened, unhindered, set free
looks to nothing but that moment of glee

and yet, in the throes of temporary bliss
something’s vaguely but surely amiss

for in that haze, as life is blurred
firmly, sullenly, it says not a word

back in the darkness, the misery, the gloom
the season of whispers remains in bloom

for in this firmament, starless and bleak
the mystic heart deigns to speak.

Gilani: The Prodigal Son

So, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani has bit the dust of the political arena, his four and a quarter years at the helm of this country coming to an abrupt, screeching, and apparently, ignominious end. His administration, according to popular discourse, was marred by endemic corruption, gross ineptitude and a seemingly vast chasm between the needs and aspirations of the people and the goals and mindsets of the leaders. Hence, a clearly audible breath of relief right across the country.  However, the Gilani phenomenon is far from over, least of all in the politics of Multan.

Yousaf Raza Gilani is a scion of the grand old Gilani family of Pak Gate, Multan, and the singular individual who has taken his clan to the greatest heights since their illustrious progenitor, Syed Musa Pak Shaheed, rode into the city in 1592 AD, as myth would have it, holding aloft his own severed head and escorting his harem to safety. Thus began the infamous Qureshi-Gilani spiritual rivalry that continues to shape the flavor of Multani politics to this day. Yousaf Raza, despite having been born into the elite Makhdoom family of the Gilanis, had relatively humble beginnings in terms of wealth and landed property. He did inherit a political legacy, however, and the way he wrested political leadership from his father’s aristocratic cousin, Hamid Raza Gilani, is the stuff of legend. He defeated the formidable Hamid Saeen in the 1988 national elections through a sheer groundswell of popular support rendering obsolete the latter’s patrician methods of politicking, and breathed new life into tottering Gilani political fortunes. But, like any man starting from the absolute grassroots, Yousaf Raza had his sights set high.

Cut to March 2008: Yousaf Raza Gilani is not really a national statesman at this point. He is, however, a prime mover and shaker in Multan, and a trusted member of the PPP old guard. BB is no more. Zardari needs a Prime Minister who is both loyal and pliant and least capable of hijacking the party from under him. The egoistic Shah Mahmood and that wily old insider, Amin Fahim, just wouldn’t do. The placid Yousaf Raza is the man of the hour, slated from the very beginning to play second fiddle to Zardari’s main theme. Multan’s pride takes center-stage.

Now politics in our land of the pure is hardly a pure business. Merit and/or fair-play have little to do with it. Political power is ultimately the control on the distribution of state patronage and resources. In Pakistan, that power has traditionally been exercised by democrats, bureaucrats or the boys in khaki, to enrich themselves and a select few. It is a vicious pattern of circular favors and not one of the numerous actors on our political stage can claim to be free of it. Stories of overnight rags-to-riches abound in the Pakistani political dream. In this paradigm, I cannot even think of attempting to refute the claims that Gilani and his ilk have made illegal billions. They may very well have, and in that typically clumsy, undisguised manner of the parvenu that has left them open to such public vilification.

However, as a politician with a fundamentally local predisposition, Gilani does not seem to have dealt his constituency a bad hand. Multan district’s gleaming new roads and flyovers are testament to that. In fact, development projects at such a wide scale have been undertaken for the first time across the Seraiki belt, galvanizing the region’s recognition of its historic deprivation. Unlike many of the erstwhile political luminaries from the region, Gilani has operated as somewhat of a Seraiki icon, strengthening and promoting the identity. For the first time in two decades, cotton farmers have gotten good prices. Many a hapless youth has been given employment, perhaps violating the precept of merit, but deeply appreciated on the home-turf. Furthermore, the Gilanis have done well to shield their voters from the oppression of the Patwari and the SHO, a factor that matters more in rural politics than any power crises or corruption. And soon, Multan will begin to miss the exceptional treatment it received in power outages throughout the Gilani tenure.

Come July 19, one of Gilani’s own will easily rise on his vacated seat. A by-election in rural Pakistan, however, is seldom any measure of political popularity as the people are generally canny enough to see their advantage in voting for the party in power. Elections-2013 will prove what the home-boy really means to Multan, brutally interrupted as his ascendancy has been, winning him martyr status with the sentimental rural voter. With two sons and one brother still in assemblies, and an unparalleled standing in the PPP, the party closest to the Seraiki soul, Gilani remains a force to be reckoned with. Bets are off on whether even Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi can win back his ancestral seat from Gilani’s PPP in Multan.

phoenix rising!

in this moment
there is nothing

the moon
nor the sun
the dark of night
nor the glow of dawn

no veiled beauty behind the drapes of the eyes
no muted pain in the folds of the heart

on the boughs of fantasy's luscious tree
no dreams may now make nest

was it an illusion? or perhaps, too real
that fading sound of familiar footsteps

no hate, no affection
no bond, no relation

no one yours to have
and no one mine to lose

this is a cruel moment, a desolate one
yet, my timid heart
'tis but a moment
take courage
a lifetime awaits.

- a translation of Faiz's 'Iss Waqt Toh Yoon Lagta Hai...'

ten years

Ten years to this day, Chacha fell prey to the greatest depravity human villainy is capable of. The murder, blind as they call it, devastated the family, powerless rage and agony manifest in the heartrending wails of the women and the deathly silence of the men. For me, it provoked some sort of a revolution within the self. It caused me to begin questioning many givens, both in life and beyond, and to unconsciously start forming my own, independent frames of thought. I got my first actual taste of depression as bitterness crept in, and I shunned company for the solitude of my own imaginary world, which increasingly resembled some bizarre Stanley Kubrick direction. Much of what I am today, greatly different from what I was all those years ago, owes to that single soul-crushing tragedy. But what was once raging, all-consuming pain is now just a dull pang in some corner of the heart. Some solace comes from the strapping young men both his sons have grown into; upbeat, eager for life, independent to the extent that even us older ones often find ourselves looking up to them in life’s tougher situations. They are those unyielding saplings that have weathered nature’s every caprice to become tall, sturdy trees. That, however, is a bigger reflection on the character of the gardener, their caretaker, that blind old man, bent with age, grief and worries, tenaciously protecting them from the scorching sun of the summers and the icy gale of the winters. It is his courage from which they have partaken, and it is his spirit which makes them reach for the sky.

And ten years on, grief, valid as it still is, gives in to awe, to sheer wonderment at the immense reserves of courage and forbearance my grandfather has, to be able not only to deal with the unnatural loss of a son, but to be able to pick up the pieces and give some measure of a new life to his orphaned grandsons, even as their mother left them to find herself a ‘mard’. Dada Jan was 76 in 2002. He is 86 now. This is no age for responsibility. And yet, he somehow managed. If his isn’t a tale of overcoming immeasurable suffering in a mammoth effort to reclaim life, whose could ever be? Fatima, cousin, childhood friend, miscarried in the seventh month of pregnancy last year. One can’t even begin to fathom what a blow that would have been to a mother’s heart. And yet, she defeated the pain to give life another chance. Take a look around. You will see that as Michael Stipe proclaims in his rather doleful monotone, “Everybody Hurts”, even the ones who are ostensibly happy, or in the perpetual pursuit of happiness. Everybody suffers. Real suffering! Not the shallow id and libido related melodrama that I have so shamelessly reeked of till quite recently. Since a spoilt brat like myself, born with a silver spoon up his arse, has never really known actual, personal suffering, he creates a web of lies around himself just so to pretend to be cool in his own head. And here, I must apologize to this blog as well. What started seven years ago purely as a medium for conversations with the self, was whored out as a petty means for pandering to false egos and miserably projecting self-delusions and half-truths. No more.

This blinking cursor, it still dares me, challenges me, to write like the olden days, in flowery metaphor and euphemism, to create images through words in attempts to blow my wife’s very-visual mind away. And I think to myself, later perhaps. Right now, she must be content with the sonorous melodies of my all-too-frequent burping. As it is, this blinker is a lot like the current state of my memory: there one moment, gone the next. Even as my air-headedness constantly amuses my wife, one thing I have learned of late is never to trust fleeting things again.

In 2007, I put up a blog-post on the anniversary of Chacha’s passing, and it has become something of an annual tradition since. This year, however, a very unusual feeling pervades me; as though everything in the world is at peace, that it is time to erase the soreness of gloom and regret with hope and determination. I realize this must sound a tad out-of-tune with the times since 2011 was supposedly one of the most turbulent years ever in human history, and a whole lot corny. But what is a conversation with the self if it can’t get just a little corny and selfish? So, I can’t really say if I will be blogging this time 2013. Let 2012 set the mood for 2013. And what with that Mayan Apocalypse hanging over our heads in the last week of ’12, who is to say that this time next year, we won’t all be ingloriously deceased? Or, better still, suffering a fate worse than death?

salut!

Rakht-e-dil by RrJ

Faiz Ahmed Faiz in a progressive rock rendition: A tribute to Salmaan Taseer

Birthday '11

the PI apologizes...

PI? Now what in the name of Jesus H. Christ’s controversial Dad could that be? Could it be that dratted π = 22/7 that appears in every mathematical identity, and whose point Archimedes himself could not explain? Or does it stand for something? Private(s) Investigator like that Magnum PI character we used to watch on NTM every week for lack of satellite or cable TV, the one who all the women used to drool over, and who, I still maintain, looks more like a gay pornstar than a ladykiller? Or perhaps, it means Poop Inquirer, or, wait wait, Pube Inspector! Now, in the latter case, one would have to apologize at so many different levels, it would simply cease to be funny! One would need to start apologizing from God Himself to one’s parents for never having the requisite credentials to merit a better job description to the subject of inspection itself. In the rare event, however, that the subject in question is a pube exhibitionist, taking great pride in the dimensions of his or her bush, as the case may be, the need for an apology would stand waived. In this case, the PI would deserve some token of appreciation, although self-obsessed subjects have seldom been known to give any.

No, my gentle, and by now I hope, sufficiently appalled readers, PI, for the purpose of this piece, means none of the scandalous options listed above. It merely stands for ‘pseudo-intellectual.’ My friends from the college days would remember me as one of those morons who would go on and on, ad nauseum, ad absurdum, about everything that had anything to do with politics, local or international, philosophy, religion, economics, society and culture. In fact, I used to be, and I state this most emphatically, an expert on every science that did not involve mathematics. This was more than just a tad ironic because I had A’s in both my O- and A-level Math, and was studying for a major in computer sciences with a minor in math. Be that as it may, I had an opinion about almost everything under the sun, and the disdainful certainty with which I propounded my opinions and rejected everybody else’s, makes me want to puke now. To me, God was a fictional character, I was the embodiment of all good with all the love for the poor and the downtrodden in my heart while everybody else lived selfishly and inhumanly, the true axis of evil was Bush and Musharraf, the maulvi, mullah, maulana, allama, ayatollah were all demons in sub-human form, communism rocked, the Seraiki people were all absolutely oppressed, the Punjabis all remorseless oppressors, hence, ¡Viva la revolución!, Marx’s words were nothing less than ‘hadith’, Che was the superhero, Adam Smith was a plagiarizing idiot, Mill an insufferable fart, democracy was a total farce and capitalism was evil, along with the entire white race. These are a few choice nuggets I remember out of an entire buffet of high wisdom from the days I fancied myself an intellectual. And now, just the firmness of my convictions amuses me.

Thing is, my nonexistent audience, as life rolled on, I realized that one does not really need to refer to high-sounding philosophies and ‘-isms’ to make sense of it all. One can pretty much make head and tail of most life-phenomena, if one views life as a perpetual game of conflicting and aligning interests. ‘Interest’ is what makes the world go round, the basis of all economic and politics. It is what governs human behavior at every level, from individual to the highest levels of social organization: socioeconomic classes, political parties, means and mechanisms of government etc. All history and religion fall into place. We find every political and economic theory speaking to or of one interest or another. I don’t intend to delve deeper than this, nor am I trying to prove any point. All that I am trying to say is, if one makes an unbiased assessment of one’s own existence, it is hard to find any action that is not motivated by narrow self-interest. Far be it for me to make crass generalizations, but barring even the overtly interest and greed-centered capitalistic world system, isn’t charity often done with the ultimate end of paradise in mind; point-scoring with the G-Man? Are all the proponents of Marxist revolution above taking it as a bid for gaining power? Journalists and social workers may be committed to the ideals of truth and social justice, but can all of them say that the motive of self-projection, fame and influence-garnering does not lurk somewhere in the background? Couldn’t academics and intellectuals be driven by the same? But let’s return to the individual level. In our limited spheres of existence, do we not do everything in our power using all the breathing space that life affords us to remove any obstacles in the path of our desires or ambitions, justifiable and otherwise, often letting go of even the last shreds of decency along the way: lying, making false promises, creating a whole lot of hurt and acrimony? And having done that all day, we go online, watch the 8 o’ clock talk shows and rant and rave about how Zardari is worst thing to have happened to Adam since Kane, the PPP has picked the country’s corpse down to the skeleton, the MQM are all bloodthirsty ethno-linguistic zealots, Nawaz Sharif is an elitist stooge, the Army is the root of all evil, Amreeka is an exploitative global hegemon etc. After all, aren’t all of them using all the space they have, the power they wield, to protect, preserve and project their own interests, the way they define and understand their interests, the same as us? Even if we think they are all thieves and murderers, don’t thieves and murderers organize to look after their own interest, just like we do? Who is the hypocrite here? Who gives me the right to sit in judgment on all these macro evils when I am just as evil at the micro level? It is at the micro level that people first perfect the unscrupulous exercise of self-interest into an art-form before they go on and execute it to a tee at the macro level. So, where is the big fucking difference?

In the final months of Nana Jan’s life, he was once having his nightcap when I went to spend some time with him. One of those 8 o’ clock shows came on and a bunch of politicians, intellectuals, media-persons, experts got together to opine on the political situation of the country, in sagely tones and self-righteous airs. I expressed a desire to be one such person one day, someone who is listened to, who can influence the way people think, who has a voice, someone who is not just a someone but a somebody. My dying nana spoke priceless words that night: ‘baba, ay sab barey bhenr de chud hin. channel change ker. Madhuri da dance gole.’ Literally translated, it means: ‘my dear boy, these are all sister-fuckers of the highest order. Change the channel. Find the channel where madhuri is dancing.’ This nanaismo is now the only ‘-ism’ I subscribe to, the only philosophy that makes sense in this life which is just a jumble of a thousand different complicating interests. Now, where to find my madhuri is the question?! And how?! Because the real one is now beyond even the MILF stage!

I have a feeling this piece has gotten a bit too dense for something that started out as an attempt at humor. I think I am still as big a PI I ever was. And I leave the definition of it to you this time, kind imaginary reader. The point is mankind would need to find a higher driving force than interest to be able to get in touch with its own humanity. Plato spoke of the need of a philosopher-king to set society right, not a sales-king, not a corporate-king, not any democratic dictatorship, not an absolute monarch nor a Machiavellian prince. A philosopher king! But hey, wait a minute, wasn’t he a philosopher himself?! O brother, it looks like even Plato had his own agenda; he is announcing his own candidacy for the top job, making his own sugar-coated grab for power for himself and his ilk. The bastard!

Musings VIII

tedi chashm siyah da a'ashiq hum

tedi mast nigah sab koor aahi

hun vaal teday meday sir di chhaan

bas mehak siwa sab koor aahi

teda shauq ta teday vas da nai

teday jism di bhha sab koor aahi

teday hij'r ich oon ta mar giya hum

ay maut langah, sab koor aahi

- Hasni Khan

the Ides of March III

thak gaya hoon

bohat thak gaya hoon mayn

ussi ik rah pe chaltey

girtey

sambhaltey

dhool khaatey

aur phir girtey

bohat thak gaya hoon mayn

safar zindagi ka talkh hee hai hamesha se

umeedon k saharey kat-ta bhi nahi

ma'aloom hai mujh ko

per tum aaye

aur lamhon mein

ka'ee se khwab bunn bethay

ka'ee sawalon k kitne rangeen jawab chun bethay

machal utha dil ye bhi

nakaam o nakara

barson baad mila iss ko

jeenay ka koi chara

per ye woh dil hai jo zindagi bhi

mer mer k jeeta hai

zindagi ki her ramak se

der der k jeeta hai

bolay tum meray be-chayn dil pe haath yoon rakh k

huns k, madhosh ho k, mast nazrein chaar ker k:

'sab theek hoye ga'

uth para mayn bhi phir safar ki tayari mein

dikhne laga rung, khuda, khushbu

tumhari yaari mein

ab aaye koi bhi toofan, dekha jaye ga

girey sir pe chahay aasman, dekha jaye ga

ma'aloom kya thha k tumhare saans ki mehak

tumhare honton ka ras

baney ga woh zehr e qaatil jis se

issi nadar musafir ka jigar chaak ho ga

woh khwab jo basaye tum ne meri aankhon mein

bikhar jayein ge raahon mein

raiza raiza ho k

kaanch ki kirchion ki tarah

khoon-khwar kaanton ki tarah

ab inhi raahon mein din raat kata kartey hain

tamasha dekhne waley

ji bhar k mujh pe hanstey hain

chalta hai yoonhi nok e sina be-bas saans ka raqs

khoon behta hai magar aisey k dikhta bhi nahi

dil woh hai k kisi tor bhi bikta hee nahi

bas yahee aag ka safar hai,

aur tanha mein

apni bejaan umangon k laashey gintey

dil k veeraney ko jazbat ki dafan-gah kartey

thak gaya hoon

bohat thak gaya hoon mayn.