The not so curious case of a chaotic and confused mind

.

What would we do without the paragon of virtue, Qibla Mufti-e-Azam Hazrat Maulana Ansar Abbasi sahib - the upholder of morality of millions of Pakistanis, the mainstay of the sanctity of the family values and the defender of the piety of all?

Because he has an opinion on everything under the sun and his expertise ranges from Kerry Lugar Bill to NRO to Baloach dissent to Altaf Bhai’s embroidered kurtas, it is but natural that he would also dabble on some fashion journalism. But because he does not do it like other run of the mill journos, he would just not report on fashion, nor would he write an investigative report on it, he would comment on the recent fashion week with quotes from Quran and try and tell us how high fashion impacts the mating habits of millions of Pakistanis.

Ansar Abbasi started off with how scantily clad women on the catwalks of the fashion week will adversely impact on the family values and somehow linked it to people living in sin and how children will not know who their fathers are. With all due respect, I would like to ask Ansar Abbasi if he lives in the same country. Who in their right mind would prefer cohabitation over marriage with Hudood ordinance looming over their heads? He lamented Western depravity where men and women live together outside holy matrimony and procreate and then was outraged that men can get married to other men and women can get married to other women. I mean stick to your guns Abbasi sahib, you can either be pro marriage or against it, you can’t change your stance in the middle of the sentence, can you?

According to A-Dawg (I rechristen him after this definition of T Dawg which kinda fits him to T), fashion weeks (with an audience of perhaps 0.001% of the population) have made Pakistan more obscene and vulgar than countries like USA or India (beacons of vulgarity in A-Dawg’s opinion). He is not too happy with the likes of Imran Khan, Syed Munawar Hasan, Nawaz Shareef, Chaudhry Nisar and Fazlur Rehman for not protesting against the fashion weeks and wanted the Chief Justice to take suo moto action against it. When he could not make sense out of their collective silence, he picked on the average citizens of the city of Karachi (the venue of the fashion week) for not coming out on streets to protest against it. Most of the poor Karachiites do not even know when such events take place, they are too busy commuting from this end of the city to the other, attending a million and one weddings (which totally rubbishes his theory of people living in sin) and dodging the stray bullets meant for political targets but A-Dawg is too angry about the obscenity to care.

Café Pyala has a posted a pretty decent translation of his column (if it can be called that) but I suggest that those who can read Urdu must read it in its original glory. The number of times A-Dawg has used the words ‘uryaniyat’, ‘fuhashi’, ‘behayaee’, ‘belibasi’, ‘behudgee’ (variations of obscenity, vulgarity and nudity)speaks of a truly pious mind.

.

Veneration of bigotry

.

Most of the print media – at least the papers I read – are covering the story of Aasia Bibi who is the first Pakistani woman facing death sentence under the draconian Blasphemy law of the country. Aasia Bibi was reported to have committed blasphemy against the prophet and the religion, but according to her she never said anything about either. She offered water (a kind act) to some of her co workers who refused to take it from her because she was an ‘unclean’ Christian. She was not too happy about it and had an altercation with her colleagues. A few days later, she was accused of blasphemy and a local mullah took a frenzied mob to her house to teach her a lesson; she was later taken by police in ‘protective custody’. Instead of providing her with protection and holding those leading the mob accountable, the local Police charged her with Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code, the much maligned – and rightly so – blasphemy law. After a year and half, she was awarded death sentence by Judge Naveed Iqbal of the Sheikhupura district and sessions court – perhaps the most glaring case of bigotry at lower level judiciary. 

To say that this case is particular to either Aasia or rural Pakistan is incorrect. Such attitude is pervasive all over. Just a couple of months, our maid asked me if I can help her son find a job. I asked if he has had any education and what kind of work he is interested in. He has passed his matriculation (tenth grade) and was interested in working a peon (a combination of mail boy/tea boy). I asked someone I know to give him job in his fairly large firm, he agreed and I thought that was the end of it. A couple of days later, I got a rather indignant call from the same gentleman (an Ivy League graduate) who asked me if I knew the boy I was suggesting for employment was Christian. I told him that I knew to which he quite openly expressed his discomfort and said that he cannot hire him because his employees would not be too happy taking water and tea from a choora (a derogatory term for Christian sanitary workers). I argued that he is the boss and if he hires someone, no one in his employment would have issues with it but he decided that he cannot disturb the ‘peace’ of his office. I was extremely sad at this blatant display of injustice but did not push the matter for the fear of any crazy guy going after that boy accusing him of blasphemy because he dared to refuse to become a sanitary worker like his father and grandfather and actually contemplated upward social mobility. That boy is now working in a bank as a sanitary worker.

Aasia perhaps is much braver than I am. She raised her voice against this bigotry and discrimination and learned it the hard way that such valor and bravery is not valued much in this society. Her story is the story of centuries old intolerance that is deeply embedded in our society and no amount of education or interaction with the outside world has made much of a difference. In my opinion, Aasia Bibi was first lynched by a mob and was later taken into police custody because she raised her voice against the treatment meted out to her, something peasant women do not do in Pakistan and a Christian peasant should not even think about.  

Women, not allowed

.

Women may not visit the mosques in Pakistan but they regularly go to shrines to seek divine intervention for things spiritual and trivial. The tomb of sufi saint Shah Jamal, in Lahore, is one such shrine which attracts a lot of devotees. Women are usually allowed to go to the general area and have a separate area where they can pray, sleep or eat. However, they are forbidden to enter the room which houses the grave of the saint. Shah Jamal is no exception. The entrance to the grave in the general area have this board which says: "Entrance of women is strictly forbidden." I have seen such boards before but what I find humiliating is that now they have added the image of a young girl in pony tails with a red cross sign on it, really pushing the message that women are NOT welcome.

Sign of no entry in the general area

Sign of no entry in the segregated area for women. 

Interestingly, inside the segregated area, they have this sign which says: "This area is for women only, men are strictly forbidden to enter." However I spotted a few men who were roaming inside. A couple of them were distributing mithaee (traditional sweets) but the rest were just loitering. I guess women do not enforce the edict as vigorously as men do.

I saw a lot of really young girls in the shrine and I was wondering what kind of message the silhouette of a young girl in in pony tails with a red cross sign on would they get. Not a nice one, methinks.  

I am from Karachi and I don't know who they are

.

I was in Lahore over the weekend and knowing that I am/was a Karachiite, most people I met had asked me two questions; one of them was about who are the people behind the blog called Café Pyala.

For those who are not Pakistanis or the Pakistanis who have somehow missed out on Pyala, it is an anonymous blog run by a few journalists who generally write about the media industry in Pakistan, the people who run it and the people who think they are ‘it’.

Like I said to all the wonderful people I met in Lahore, being from Karachi and somehow linked to the media industry does not necessarily make me privy to that information and even if I had known, I would not have disclosed. Seriously, do we really need to know who they are? Come on, not everyone is born with the suicidal gene like I am that I go on writing about people, organizations, past bosses, botched up interviews under my real name and basically killing any chance of ever being employed. At times, even I wish to go anon but I am too lazy to get started all over again. The Pyala people are a smart gang with no obvious professional death wish, let them write in peace so that they can continue to entertain us.

Go Pyala!

.