we are not sociopaths, we need unity and ideology

A lot has been said about our propensity for violence, and our criminal degeneration as a society after the Sialkot murders.  Fasi Zaka calls us sociopathic.  He writes:

“We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don’t spread it to other people, other countries.”

George Fulton, asserted in a surprisingly supercilious manner (given that the racism should be obvious to him, and given that he is clearly NOT a true Pakistani) that:  

“We are, and have always been, a barbaric, degenerate nation revelling in bloodlust.”  

Fasi and George also agree that Pakistani crowds get some kind of pornographic pleasure from violence

(Fasi) Do not be shocked. This wasn’t isolated, it’s just that the crowd wanted to make sure their orgasmic moment could be captured for later viewing, at one’s pleasure.

(George) One just has to read eyewitness accounts of the riots, the train butchery, the brutal rapes and slaughter of that period to get a feel of the heady, almost orgasmic, delight that the perpetrators of these crimes revelled in as the nation was born.

Somehow, George's inane racism doesn't bother me.  It doesn't have the institutional backing of, say, the New York Times, or Mayor Guiliani, the American military-industrial-prison complex, or the immigration reforms.  He is too small a fish to fry, and his position is somewhat anomalous.  A white man and his silly racism, and married to a Pakistani talk show host, Kiran.  More insidious is the subtle contempt of Robert Fisk, or more relevant to our context the compassionate classism of Daniyal Mueenuddin.   If American society is deeply, deeply racial, ours is steeped in a virtual class apartheid. 

Fasi's angst doesn't bother me either.  I think a lot of people without coherent politics think and feel in the same redundancies, with equal passion and self- righteousness.  He, in fact, represents the problem that he is highlighting: the breakdown of our institutions, the breakdown of  coherent thinking.  


There are too many people espousing opinions without any real political or ideological basis , without any idea of how to achieve an equitable society.  They know how to vent, and they vapidly oscillate between wanting the army back, hating that America  and Israel are blamed for everything, feeling that Imran, Altaf, Ataturk, or some other honest, if swiftly brutal, person is the answer, and pointing to illiteracy and over population of our people as the root of all problems, wanting catharsis and saviors.   They also make vague claims against feudalism and corruption, and our venal politicians.  (But they wouldn't so much as attempt to hurl a shoe at any one of them.  They have not been trained in any school of political thought;  if they have read, they have done so haphazardly.)

See for example Moshin Hamid's recent plea that military and NGOs work together.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/op-ed-contributor/Pakistans-challenge-780

Perhaps because of institutional breakdowns, they do not know how to understand systems of oppression.  If they understood that the military is part of an oppressive structure, they wouldn't, in their right mind, suggest a partnership of this kind, and they certainly wouldn't (as some kids on Zamzama are doing) raise funds for flood relief for a major.

The army, the police, and the people emboldened by police inaction all perpetuate a system of unabated and unchecked state violence - whether it is in disappearing activists in Baluchistan, beating old men suspected to be taliban, raping Baluchi women in secret prisons, shooting people in illegal encounters, or presiding over public murders.  We are further crippled by military expenditures, debt servicing, wars in lieu of development, direct repression of social movements, privatisation and profit maximization without labor rights  -- further broken down institutionally.  

In order to understand why and how Pakistani institutions (besides the military) have gradually been eroded, listen to the experts --people of a generation who have tried building from the ground:  Urban Planner Arif Hasan on how NGOs once (actually) impacted policy; Tasneem Siddiqui of Khuda ki Basti on how the poor subsidize the lifestyles of the rich; Mohammad Ali Shah of the fishing community and how they have been driven out of traditional fishing grounds, how deep sea trawlers have depleted the oceans; Sheema Kirmani on how theater workshops in slums in Orangi changed people in ways they didn't even anticipate;  Kaiser Bengali on how the last major industrial development was the set up of the Steel Mills in the late 70s.  Labor activists and the women’s’ movement without whom – unfair IROs and Hudood Ordinances would be firm law without anyone even knowing about their discriminatory provisions.  


The work of this generation of activists has not quite spread to newer people, has not quite led to a movement.  The womens' movement does not have a chapter in the universities; besides a few writers here and there, hordes of people are not campaigning for housing and transport reforms.  Most will cheer the new flyovers of Karachi, but as writer Rafay Alam points out, these are all short term solutions as Karachi swells with cars and people, and workers needing better commuting choices.  
   

I wouldn't use the word sociopath.  Mob violence is but a symptom of a society with too many dysfunctional institutions.  It is our inability to identify systems of oppression, and organize against these that is a pervasive, perhaps "sociopathic," problem  Rather, I feel people are groping wildly in the dark, lamenting in futility the soul of our nation, and wasting time on mindless, fatalistic equations about society -- illustrating with anecdotes, and so sure the truth of personal experience signifies a larger truth.  (At least I am grounding mine in years of activism and some politics.)

A labor party ally once commented:  “Shit's coming out of the pores of this society.”  While we do not have a particular propensity for violence (and no ethnic group is lazy, fierce, or musical), ordinary Pakistanis now experience violence every single day because of these institutional breakdowns.  And when we do not have the language or politics to understand and speak out against this violence, or avenues to organize effectively, this manifests itself in absurd expression -- like that of Mohsin Hamid and Fasi Zaka.   Even I can’t resist the temptation on most days as I fret through various obstacles in my still very good life – traffic, hostility of men, continually disparaging attitudes, blocks blocked by Bilawal's house  -- I too want to be fatalistic and reductionist.

Every night when I talk to S who is in Sukkur doing flood relief, we worry about how much change is needed.  People lack capacity, and there is zero data, zero record keeping, no training, no skills and the chiding of white bosses is often irrefutable.  Instead of throwing hardcore data at their faces, we bow our heads in shame (or lack of aptitude.)  


Students I encounter are more enthusiastic about consumerism and acquiring corporate jobs, than justice; more interested in defaming teachers than reading and engaging in debate, going for Moot in America than forming poverty law clinics at home.  

People I have hired have lied to and stolen from me, and neglected my children.  You have to remind yourself (grudgingly) that it stems from an exploitative system of wages, rather than a personal shortcoming in you or them.  An uglier form of this lying and stealing are the one hundred blue uniformed security guards I see congregating at Tauheed 7:30 in the morning to protect people like me and their wealth.

My sister, who works two jobs, was mugged violently twice in the last few months.  My brother desperately covered his children with bed sheets as burglars rummaged through every drawer in my mother's house.    It is hard to be rational when your family member has a gun to his/her head.  It is easy to resort to  -- this society is sick -- standard of analysis “and shit's coming out of its pores.”

I remember a 14th August many years ago when I was about 10 or 11.  I went to Jinnah's mazaar and managed to lose my father’s hand in the crowd.  Someone in the crowd reached out and slapped me hard across my face.  I was in shock and humiliated as I stumbled out, without one shoe, to find my father and a gymkhana uncle waiting outside on the steps.  I insisted I didn't need my shoe, but the uncle, somehow guessing from my shaken state thought it was the least he could do and got it out.  I was wearing a long purple polka dot dress with full sleeves.  I wondered then if I should I have worn a shalvar. The incident stayed with me for days. 

If I did not have politics today to understand oppression and exploitation, I could use these examples of personal violence to justify a stark, emotional, and black vision of our society. Or perhaps, I would go the other way and cheerily point out the goodness of people who rescued hundreds in floods even placing themselves at peril.

But focusing on the positives or obsessing about the negatives is not the point; in almost any society there are good and bad people – and sometimes even bad people are good – like the police officers who rushed in to save people from a burning tower.  There are many, many positive examples in society of students wanting to organize, ready to take on injustice.  But then they need unity and ideology too.


If there is a pathological problem in our society, it is that our institutions, for the numerous historical and political reasons, have broken down, compromised our theoretical understanding of oppression and thus hampered our ability to resist the state in any organized and sustained fashion.  May all corpses find coffins; may the rest find causes.

some stuff that annoys me in these days of trouble

(1)  A woman who drives a silver Prado with the number plate BD something.  I have encountered her on the road twice in the last year and a half.  She honks and bullies her way ahead in every jam.  I once showed her the finger and she reciprocated.  I think she manages or owns a salon or a cafe or something.  Can someone give her manners a manicure.  Ummm...her etiquette an appetizer.


(2)  A's new school.  Too many aunties trying to cajole too many weepy 3 year olds into school life;  too many aunties telling too many kids to stop banging toys;  telling mamas, "don't give chips and cocomo, pack a healthy snack."  I saw one kid eating cucumbers.  Poor, trusting soul.  But A equates that to eating plastic or concrete.  Aunties, do you know how hard it is to stand 6:45 am in the kitchen and conjure up images of healthy snacks, let alone, create healthy snacks?  I thought fun snacks would alleviate the pain of schooling.   But now I have to give him plain bread.  On the plus, Aunty Bee redeemed herself with her rendition of "Little Red"; otherwise she had Italian mafia written all over her, doling out little stickers and all.  Uff, she is delightful.


(3)  People who are cynical and apathetic.  They are disgusted that the Butt brothers were killed so brutally but believe that petitions, press statements, protests will not change anything.  And sitting around and doing nothing will?  May their families and loved ones find peace.  Sign the petition, and don't let it drop.


http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/justiceforbrothers/




(4) People who can't stop watching tv and complaining about the government.  This is how superficial their critique is.  "Zardari is corrupt.  The government is corrupt.  No one gave to the prime minister's fund; they'd rather give to the army."  I mean, can anyone ask them to be more specific?  Go up a notch, deepen the analysis a bit, get some details.  The devil is in the details, you know.  Can you perhaps critique legislative proposals, actual actions by local governments around the flood - prevention and relief, why NDMA failed to protect the people from their own predictions, why certain things happen under certain people in certain places.  No.  "Zardari ullo ka patta hai.  Us ka baap to Bambino Cinema ka owner tha."   End of story.




(5)  People who love jawaans.  Okay, I too thought Rashid Minhas was brave.  But I was twelve!  Its great that jawaans are doing their part, but rest assured it is part of their job description in times of crisis.  Also, that does not put them above accountability.  If Shahbaz Airbase was indeed protected from flooding at the expense of nearby villages, as AHRC reports (see link below), and with minister/army collusion, then we will protest.  Come what may.  It already has.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m69031&hd=&size=1&l=e




(6)  People in America who ask what charity should we give to because "we are very concerned that it may not go to the deserving people as Pakistanis are dishonest and lack capacity, and we also have to be careful about jihadi outfits with a citizenship interview coming up in three years."  Okay, so you want to be cautiously altruistic, just give to Edhi.  His beard is certified by the UN.  And he is honest and capable.  And in case you think I am belittling your $100 contribution, I am not.  But after you zip it over real quick, pick up the phone and call your representative, or your lawyer, your mom, write a letter, a pamphlet, a text or something -- for the US to increase the aid, help cancel our debt, end its Afghan Pakistan war, provide reparations to victims of drones, and then just go away.  Angelina can stay.  Really.


(7)  People who write comments like this:


The Taliban in Fata and the mob and the police in Sialkot are kindred beings bound by an aversion to tomorrow, tomorrow being a metaphor for modernity and progress towards due process and individual rights.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/41810/stone-in-the-midst-of-all/?sms_ss=facebook

Yes, its an alliance against the  Human Rights Convention, and it was formed in Vienna in 2007.  The Taliban and the Gujranwala police ratified an ordinance saying the same.  Then they all roasted a goat and ate it the same day because they hate tomorrow.




(8) But even the talented Mr. Daniyal.  Carefully and at first, without an ounce of voyeurism, without the pride of a rescuer -- writing the sadness.  And then this line:


"The people of this area recognize their cattle as easily as you or I recognize a cousin or neighbor — they sleep with their animals around them at night, and graze them all day; their animals are born and die near them. "


I mean, couldn't you just say that livestock is really important to their livelihood, and often one cow is worth Rs. 1 lakh, and in desperation many fleeing the floods have, reportedly, sold these for Rs. 10,000 each.  So imagine the loss, and grief for the animal.  And yes, we too feel affection for animals, much like all of humanity, and often more than the affection we feel for cousins and neighbors because often we do not recognize them.  And then this:


In one family’s encampment, discordantly, sat a dresser with a mirrored door — how did the man who had brought that through the floodwater think it would be useful?


You tell me.  I do not know how much you have the presence of mind to take or salvage in times of calamity and strife.  But people salvage their stuff.  It is something they do if they can.  There is no reason.  They are not weighing utility or cost/benefit.


(9)  Charity without politics, and politics without generosity.


(10)  People who bitch me out, and then I find out about it.  Uff  Allah Mian, please keep it to yourself.  Lets just put it this way if all people say all good things about you, then its all bad.  If all people say all bad things about you, its all bad.  If bad people say bad things about you, its all good.  If some good people say a few bad things about you, its totally fine.  Gotta develop a thicker skin, and keep up the solid fight.  


On the pluses, tomorrow.  Because I hate today.

floods

The human mind is incapable of grasping the scale of the floods, the extent of this human tragedy, and what it means for 20 million to be affected.  While the UN has pledged about $450 million, it acknowledges that this crisis of biblical proportion requires billions of dollars worth of aid.

In fact, the UN needs to take over the management of this disaster as it will only get worse.  The Pakistani government and NGOs are utterly incapable of handling this because of lack of capacity, engineering, and (the government) an utter disrespect for human life.  I don't know whether they are trying to save face and pretend to the world they can handle this situation - but quite frankly, this is beyond them  The army and the civilian government combined do not have the foresight to even allow accurate reporting, and show the world really how much chaos and devastation these floods have caused.  Why?  It beats me.  Perhaps, because they do not want to lose control of their population, and hence their legitimacy.  People on the ground report the dead to be much higher than 1600 - yet media is sticking to this figure.

But this crisis is worsening as waters rise, starvation increases, and people stay out in the open.  What I find shocking is that people who hail from villages that have now been submerged are going about their normal lives as if a little bit of charity is all they can participate in.   This crisis has exposed the hypocrisy of big landlords; in many instances they have diverted water from their fields to those of poorer tenants in order to save their crops and profits.

Most people want to help;  most want to make their donation  But their main issue is not - Shit, this is a catastrophe - but shit, what if the NGO I give to is dishonest, and how can I help financially in a way that will make a difference?  NGO dishonesty and food distribution is not the issue.  Every NGO on the ground, (Edhi, TRDP) is working beyond capacity and skill.  Whatever you give will not alleviate the crisis.  But whatever you give, a portion of it at least, will be channeled through, and may provide wheat/tents/medicine for some people for some time.  Whether they get it by looting a truck or convoy or by legal disbursement.  So yes, give away.  Give a lot.  But remember, there can't be complete accountability and transparency.  Yes, aid will be mismanaged, and misdirected.  We do not have the NGO infrastructure that can cope with aid properly.  I know an NGO worker who refused medicine loads because his organization simply can not accomplish distribution.

Individuals can and are going with trucks.  That too is band aid.  But what else can people do?  Many people want to help.  But volunteers must be organized and supervised, and oriented by experienced parties to the affected villages and their geography.  Who will do this?  Despite valiant online organizing efforts, how do people go into villages they do not have roots in and expect to make some sort of sustained difference in an organized manner?

S has been in Sukkur since Tuesday and is pretty much unable to leave the warehouse and see this peoples' tragedy because he says he can can't wrap his head around it anymore.  He can't see the waters and helplessness in the eyes of the people sitting in open air.  I think most of us can't.  If something does not happen to our loved ones, we simply do not feel pain that acutely.  Call it the human spirit, mental resilience if you will.

Children, as many as 8, naked, sitting under one plastic sheet.  People facing increasing hunger.  Livestock at roadsides, literally starving to death.  Areas in Kashmore and Jacobabad at risk of becoming water-locked.  Women at warehouses begging and fighting for one sack of flour.  The pictures are everywhere.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/continuing_pakistani_floods.html

Large scale airlift and rescue operations are needed immediately.  The UN must start planning to rebuild infrastructure.  Medical teams must be shipped out to deal with the health crisis to come with so many people exposed to waterborne diseases.  Things will not be back to normal for at least 10 months as some estimate.  There has to be some major plan to deal with the issue of food insecurity the entire population, not just these 20 million, will face.

We are in a state of emergency.

Kolachi: There’s a little Karachi in all of us, now is the time to show it!

This is the description of the play, Kolachi, that ran at T2F in Karachi, this past week of August.


Picture your life in this City of Lights … now flip it on its head, invert the colors and forget what you think is right. What you see might not make sense, but be careful to pass judgment based on a daily pretense. Welcome to “Kolachi”, your one-stop destination for not so obvious truths and inglorious revelations. The routine here is all too absurd instead of the absurd being all too routine. These are your scenarios, your thoughts and concerns, depicted in a way that will make you wonder, laugh, and if lucky, maybe even look away. We’ve got eight stories to tell, some involve strong language and others involve going to hell.

This was theater -- eight pieces.  A bizarre opening scene, an angry end scene, a dating scene, a hell scene, aunties trying to get a boy married, a father and his son's tuition teacher, Mr. Ghani, two boys in a cafe talking about being stuck "in a Karachi,"  and four boys smoking a joint and blaming everything on Britain, USA, Israel, and India (in that order).

Often farcical, there were moments when it seemed like "Goodness Gracious Me" on crack, and at other times, as if the entire cast had just taken their A -level exams and were giddy to display that they too absorb politics and are imploding with creativity, bursting in irreverence.  Most characters' lives revolved around fashion, espresso, Canadian universities, chicken rolls, shaadis, and Boat Basin.  Still, there was enough self criticism with dashes of humor (American breakfast: cheese omelet, desi breakfast: Double roti), that you can't entirely dismiss this effort.  Ultimately it was a little bit about the madness of Karachi.  And a reminder, that even burgers suffer the disorder of this city. That when you order a 7-up you get everything but a 7-up.  And internet service providers provide service so  poor, that in hell, they would be relegated to the torture chamber.  Edgier than Nida Butt's Mamma Mia, and more light hearted than Sheema's Tehriq-i Niswan, this was something that may just grow into something bigger if it steps out of the transit lounge into Karachi Real.

One scene teenage critics, who punctuate their statements with "chootia" and "bhen chod", is observation that our youth have nothing useful to add to the debate except blaming every other nation for their misery and pinning hopes in the Muslim ummah.  Probably the preachiest skit.  What else could the message be but -- improve yourself instead of blaming others?  But isn't this the unfinished politics of our youth already?  


Most good artists have politics, or as Anis Shivani said, good writing has a "moral core."  What are their politics?  What was the moral core? And in the madness of Karachi, do they have a vision beyond sending the city's madness through a prism?  This was not bad writing.  It had comic timing, a fluidity.  Even in the stammering, "actually, actually, actuallys,"  it had flair.  But, conspiracy aside, Israel and the US are big problems, no?  And in immature politics, we often miss that subtlety that, yes, it may somehow be connected to the craziness of our city.  And bringing about social change does not mean forgetting structural critiques and focusing on self, but both.


Or maybe the moral core was, this shit is so bad, we can only enact it with mad genius and young guts.  One skit showed that in Karachi if you want something, you will never get it, so ask for the opposite.  It was good commentary about the dis-empowerment of youth, and their twisted adaptations to the city they will inherit.  But ultimately class is a subject most artists ignore or deal with inaptly.  In a conversation, an actor insisted Karachi is safe saying, "I have never ever been robbed." Another responds. "But would you ever let your sister walk from one end of St. Pats to the other?  The joke got laughs because the inside joke was that the Saint Patrick technical school boys seem really horny.  But between the lines is the realization that perhaps their sexuality (they being lower and middle class) is threatening to their richer counterparts. 

And more of this:  When Sindhis go to hell, they are to stand in one spot for the rest of their duration as punishment for owning too much land.  Really, all Sindhis?  Even the Haris, and the dalits?  Most farmers in Sindh actually own too little land. (1)

The narrative was pretty male-centric.  Testicle jokes, homophobia, a gratuitous swing at Mathira's breasts.  (Why would U.S. like to control Pakistan?  Answer: Mathira, accompanied by grabbing motions)  And in hell, the devil sends atheists to one corner.  Later the militants are told, they will not get the hoors they imagined, but are free to screw the atheists. One denies the existence of God; the other its essence.  So they get to do each other? Not asking for political correctness, but at least be outrageous with finesse.  

There was genuine angst in the last skit, which had all the makings of a disastrous ending.  In an emotional piece, the lead, Amr Rouvan, pulls off his shirt, exposing a vulnerably thin torso, and asks a guardian angel to protect him, the city.  He beats himself, yells, does maatam, acts psychotic.  Not one person in the crowd was smiling.  In fact some looked disturbed and self conscious when accused by the actor of voyeurism.  After a series of funny skits, it was a manipulative trick.  Almost as if the actor wanted you to feel shame for laughing.  Herein, was the genius.  And why not shake people up?  We have floods and evacuations and yet we are sitting in a cafe giggling.  Kudos to Amr Rouvan Mahmud for being brave enough to thoroughly alienate the audience and distance himself from them, after winning them over with hard work and humor.

In the end, just as the angst filled young man (of course, a metaphor for Kolachi) gives up, and turns away, the angel bends down and embraces him from behind.  The sweet moment was ruined by audience members murmuring "Awww.."

This brings me to dating scene, the second skit.  As audience members rushed to their cars, I kept hearing people say.  "The dating scene was the best."  "Oh, the dating scene."  The dating scene was, indeed, very clever.  The concept was to get retakes at dialog until you get the girl!  Ahad was a brilliant actor.  And the fact that it could have played out anywhere goes to show that the elite live their lives "in a Los Angeles" even if their bodies are, sadly, in Karachi.  The tuition scene is hilariously dark, deliberately surreal.  A very crazy tuition teacher has no remorse over killing a student, nor recognition that murder is a crime.  He studiously lectures a parent about the dead boy's bad behavior.  Apparently the teacher can not be sued because of a contractual provision.

What else can I say?  Karachi got talent!  I was surprised, excited, and entertained by most of the stuff.  


And T2F audiences are so beautiful, it reminds of what Khuswant Singh was once rumored to say.  In Pakistan, you look at a line of women and it is hard to find one who is not pretty.  


I am not sure how much Karachi there is in Rouvan, but there is definitely some Faulkner.  ("The writer's only responsibility is to his art...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate.")  And naturally, one of the characters is reading "The Sound and the Fury." 

(1)According to Pakistan Agricultural Census Organisation, in 2000 more than half of the cultivable land was possessed by less than 10 percent of the landowners – who own 20 or more acres of land.

I am turning into Bill Cosby

A's first day at play school.  I sat in the lobby for 30 minutes as he was oriented to the classroom, his two new teachers (one of whom is Nariman, and hardly an old parsi man, she is striking).  Here are some of the essays I read in the newsletter.  All of these were written by first and second graders - their views on education, culture, and parenting.   (Edited because I don't remember all the bad spellings.)  I am not a sociologist, but there is a lot you can tell about their world from this "darnedest" material.

School. I hate school.  I like to play with my fish and my chiks.

I miss my old school.  But the bathrooms are cleaner in this new school.

My mother went to the hair salon, and did not come back for a long time.  When she came home she had a haircut.  She looked fierce and I screamed.  Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My mother.  My mother goes to the hair salon.  It is boring there.  She puts something green on her face.  Then she turns red.  Then she looks good.

My grandfather is ded.  He is with god in the sky. When he was alive he took care of me.

Liar liar.  I asked my father if he would come to my presentation and he said yes.  Tody I asked him and he said that he was sick.  I know he was making up a story as he went to office.

When I was born, I was very noty.  The doctor slapped me.  My father went crazy.  He slapped the doctor, and bit him with an ant.

My father always tickles me.  When I tickle him he says children can not tickle grown ups.  But he is wrong.  I tickle him after he has fallen asleep.

Bandits came into my house last night, and we called the police  They took them away.

And the following essay, only in Pakistan.

How to make a Nehary. (recipe follows)

And it ends.  This is your nehary.  Enjoy!  (Kinda sums up Karachi culture for me.)

bullets over karachi

I do not think the time demands that we get a group of veteran activists in a room to discuss how we deal with Karachi's situation.  I do not think that going into your basements to collect old sweaters and blankets for those affected by the floods is going to cut it.  I do not think that press club protests have lost their drama or effectiveness forever, but in this instant -- they have.  We are faced with a political beast that we do not even understand, and whose name we can not even bring ourselves to take out of some supernatural fear of instant reprisal.  

Whatever we can do right now, in the ways of doing and giving we understand, is clearly not enough.

Activism around these issues needs a level of debate and serious rethinking.  We do not need the same old people revamping ideas, and recycling old organizations that will fizzle away with activist burnout or disagreement over minutiae.  We are becoming a city of remarkable resilience.  We are also becoming a city of redundant displays of activism that spiral into oblivion or go off in tangents of egoism and territorialism.

Look, nobody's silly narrative matters.  Nobody's art or essay is more important than the collective.

There has to be some earnest long term planning, whether it is in response to the floods or the recent Karachi homicides and arson, or to the general news that people have nothing to survive on, and have shit for transport, and struggle daily for basic rights to housing, water and power.

There has to be some level of serious minded campaign building around important issues such as food insecurity, labor rights, or ethnic and religious solidarity -- something that grabs attention and goes beyond conference room activism, and facebook groups.  Something beyond one person's control, and another person's diffidence.  Something that actually hits the ground, and is real.  Something that feels like a movement, but works with the manic efficiency of a good NGO or a solid campaign.  Something that does the math, and adds the numbers.

Something that accepts that the mayhem will continue whatever the wars played over our heads by the agencies and the imperialists, for short terms profits or eventual regional domination, and that once, twice, or even thrice a market will be bombed, a procession interrupted.  That the irrevocable tension between political and ethnic rivals will go on, unabated, and the only thing we can do is engage in construction.  Can we as human beings even fathom such a challenge?

We swim to the edge; yet the edge keeps receding.  With every passing minute that there is no justice for the victims of May 12th, the evicted Pashtuns of November 08, the Ahmedis, the people whose mothers were blown to bits on Ashura, we diminish in size.  We become more cruel, more acclimated to a cynical, ugly way of being.  In fact we are not resilient at all.  We are more brittle than china, more fragile than a new born baby.  We are now so sad and scared that we mourn our city, and then get busy with the business of things.  And we try to survive in the face of reality.  We even get guards.  But clearly, with so many people moving out of the country, the privileged parents like you and me, and with other retards like Atif Aslam now singing about it - something has gotta give.

I sound like a bloody priest;  But the only way out is concrete action that starts small, and thinks big.  So jarring has been this return to Pakistan (floods, murders), I have been unable to write anything.  Not even stupid trivia about the quietness of streets, the haunted schools, the jittery police, the news of men in jeans who open fire from their motorbikes, stories of four dead bodies near Punjab Chowrangi, reports of doctors in emergency wards who patiently wait for the arrival of the dead.

Who cares?  Who needs to revisit the misery and hope for things to calm down already when things should really be simmering. Theorizing is good, but often there is no place for it, when it becomes vampirish, feeding on the collective, but never ever giving back.  So pardon my impatience.  Makes notes instead, and document everything.

Start with organized thinking, note what changes we need besides debt forgiveness and cutting the military budget.  The floods, for example.  Reminiscent of the earthquake, relief efforts are abound.  But can we go past and organize beyond the immediate relief?  Relief officials claim that the floods have destroyed 1.3 million acres of crops in Punjab.  This would mean rising food prices and near starvation for many people, and for the economy more imports, and less exports.  Food prices continue to rise because of, among other things, a lack of vision in agricultural planning, lack of knowledge on key issues, water scarcity, inadequate means of irrigation, poor soil, companies selling GMOs, inegalitarian and obsolete systems of land ownership..

When we stop seeing images of whole villages submerging, the emotional need to give will come to an end.  But these issues of food insecurity, currently exacerbated by the floods, will go on.   When the blood in the streets is cleaned by jets, and aman and iman is restored, we will forget the need to build community.

There is some value in activists and human rights officials coming together and issuing a statement against Karachi violence.  I think it is important to register that, we as citizens, do not condone this violence.  But then what?  So much more.

nursery school mommies

Schools are closed today, and while we follow through the day news of incidents of violence in Landhi and Orangi, here is a little pink food for thought.  As a mother it is disconcerting to see the heavy duty gendering happening at school.  I did not have a lunch bag for M, so I gave her a spiderman bag that belongs to her brother, and is rather hip and glitzy, and certainly not available in Khadda.  I was sure she would whine in the car and accuse me of not being considerate to her gender detail.  (After all most kids had come with their "gender constant" colors and gadgets.)  Surprisingly, M insisted she keep the bag.  I asked her why and she wouldn't tell.  I then said, perhaps unfairly, if it was because the other kids liked it.  I was wondering if the boys thought it was cool.  There was the slightest nod from her.

I have, over the last year, surrendered to gendering.  I resisted it in the beginning, but then she would keep wanting barbies, and Lego houses were houses for barbies, and action figures were companions for barbies, that I gave in.  A went from having pink as one of his two favorite colors (the other was black) to gravitating towards blue and sword fighting.  He thinks dinos and trucks are pretty cool, and M casually watches and laughs at his obsessive and childish need to point out every digger and cement mixer on the street.

Where pink meets blue is in the playground - stacking bricks, digging holes, filling them with water.  Where the level of entertainment derived from sand and water is so immense even the sociopathic gendering fails to interfere.

M's teacher once told me that she notices that girls (and these are four year olds) tend to huddle in groups and talk, ( at once involved in sorting group dynamics and weighing loyalties?) while boys run around and play physical games, and form gangs of a different order.  The man at the toy shop asks you when you go to buy a birthday present - boy hai ya girl?

Ads play a huge role as this essay suggests.

http://www.sociology.org/media-studies/care-bears-vs-transformers-gender-stereotypes-in-advertisements/

And then us.  We, parents, take slight preferences shown by their kids, probably absorbed through media, as personality defining.  We take gendering as if it gives law and order to our world, allows us to organize.  But this organization is ultimately chaotic if it trains children to suppress other interests, or adapt to expectations that are imposed from above.  Boys aggressive, and girls as homemakers.  At birthday parties, only moms are invited.  Moms pick up from school, while fathers drop kids and then rush off to their corporate jobs.

We can stop taking little girls to beauty parlors.  We can stop buying them gendered toys all the time.  We really must try to destroy them less.  I know, in some circles, girls are playing soccer and boys are going for cooking class, and leaning kathak.

Someone said the other day, there are three parsis in school.  And someone responded, they are all trans...fers.

I heard transvestities.  I wish all children were, well not transvestities, (that might be nice), but androgynous.