On Friday, we knew it was a holiday tomorrow, what with the government saying they may clamp emergency and MQM and the Chief Justice’s supporters asserting they would all take out a procession of clashing wills and agendas. I think most of us were all set to see modernity and humanity fail on Saturday because Karachi is notorious for both. But I don’t think anyone was prepared for this level of failure or perhaps no one was prepared for this kind of vivid, visual reporting, live, minute by minute.
At 12 pm at a late breakfast, I lost appetite when they said firing had started on the main artery of the city, Shahra-e-Faisal, my favorite road in the city, claimed 8 lives. At 2:30 pm the count was 14 and at 2:45 pm. the count was 15. It’s 3:01 pm now, but it continues. I’ve never had “war reporting” done, ten minutes from my home. I wonder if it was this bad in 1995 but we didn’t have local television channels working from Dubai, so perhaps that’s why we didn’t see images, like the bus driver staggering, bloodied, in the aisle of his bus with a bullet lodged in his throat.
The mythical youths with the guns, that I never saw, but suspected of gunning my uncle in 1995, I can see now. They’re wielding guns without any mark of identity but wearing caps and out of fashion yellow T-shirts with black stripes. Walking amongst burning vehicles with a confidence that flies in the face of the terror on the little boy’s face who is running for cover under the Baloch Colony Bridge.
Karachi is a city where people like Lieutant Vimes often identify where they are not by the name of the road but by the number and quality of potholes on it. I cannot tell you, how crippling it is to be able to name the landmarks of violence.
The same protest was conducted in other parts of the city-in Lahore and Islamabad with no incidence of violence. The extra element in Karachi has only been the MQM. Be that as it may, the Chief Justice has refused to take the helicopter from the airport to the High Court and has also refused to go back. That is how celebrities are made I suppose aaj kal, just on the brunt of their egos; famous for being famous.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
4th Fulbright Alumni Conference, Islamabad
I really didn’t want to go but I figured my guls will be there so I may as well. Quite unexpectedly had a blast with friends and blew over 4 grand on books from Saeed Book Bank plus a few admirers are not bad for one’s rapidly plunging self-esteem. And it made you feel good that Fulbright was willing to splurge so much moneees on you, hotel and air ticket and all. They gave us Indian-type patchwork orientation bags, very pretty most of them, except mine looked like it had been made from leftover bras.
The first day of the conference had 2 speakers I actually listened to. One was Dr. Jonathon who spoke at length about the Indus civilization and outlined interesting stuff I didn’t know before
a) The Khyber Pass is always made out to be a passageway for the influx of news ideas into this region, however a lot of development was parallel and the pass was a significant avenue for exporting ideas. Hence, the idea that writing trickled from Mesopotamia here is incorrect as historically writing developed in both regions almost simultaneously.
b) The Indus civilization was one of those rare kinds that did not maintain an army at all, nor was it ruled by a monarchy. Walls were made more for economic divisions than anything else. (I wanted to but didn’t get the chance to ask him more about the system of elders, was it consociational, elected or what?) The two main reasons for the decline of the civilization were i) drying up of the river and ii) inability to enforce economic strength through armed power. Makes sense in a theoretical way (a system of governing can’t go on without having an army to enforce the writ of state) but he didn’t really have the time to make the connections clear.
c) And the bangles that Thar women wear were in those times (maybe they are still?) a “conflict avoidance strategy” i.e. the length and material of bangles would indicate whether you were unmarried or not so no one would hit on you. We should really have an alternative in the modern world. Nothing short of being visibly knocked up seems to act as a deterrent at times.
Dr. Fran o’ Neal made a presentation on how, after a long time, American culture is breaking out of the legacy of George Washington so that public opinion is having an influence on foreign policy. Washington started off with how America should just not bother to dabble with international affairs because all other countries were so incredibly messy and as silly as it may sound I don’t think I really understood the impact of that stance until this presentation. (Okay I’m going to try and put in words without sounding dismissive about Americans in general). Essentially I guess, government policy and its subsequent implementation seeped into American culture, thinking and schooling. And when the government did start interfering in international affairs, it did pots of rhetoric to ensure minimal civilian involvement. So to date, perhaps, what the world knows as American stupidity and ignorance isn’t so much a deliberate blockage of information on part of individuals as much as it is a cultural heritage. Similar to how Pakistani children are taught to think of India as an enemy. That said however, there is always a point where Pakistani children do move away from hating India out of habit to either hating it from structural/ancestral reasons or just liking it. To make such a break is the onus of every individual for which, at a certain age, culture provides no excuse. Some lessons in school/college will always tell you how there are more than two sides to a story and after that ignorance is a choice made.
Hoodhboy went on about himself quite a bit (though I was not unimpressed by the fact that he made an illegal transmitter that covered half of Karachi at the age of 17) and then launched into anti-Musharraff talk (thoroughly enjoyable) ending with how the Lal Masjid mullahs (who I SAW guarding the barricade at one am when we were returning from a coffee rendezvous) said Quaid-e-Azam University was a brothel and all the women who go there were prostitutes and how one mullah went on an illegal FM bandwidth to state “I don’t recommend it but if anyone throws acid on their faces (the women), I won’t be able to stop them.”
The next post on Fulbright I promise childun will not be preachy but will be about how the entire auditorium was lectured on sex.
The first day of the conference had 2 speakers I actually listened to. One was Dr. Jonathon who spoke at length about the Indus civilization and outlined interesting stuff I didn’t know before
a) The Khyber Pass is always made out to be a passageway for the influx of news ideas into this region, however a lot of development was parallel and the pass was a significant avenue for exporting ideas. Hence, the idea that writing trickled from Mesopotamia here is incorrect as historically writing developed in both regions almost simultaneously.
b) The Indus civilization was one of those rare kinds that did not maintain an army at all, nor was it ruled by a monarchy. Walls were made more for economic divisions than anything else. (I wanted to but didn’t get the chance to ask him more about the system of elders, was it consociational, elected or what?) The two main reasons for the decline of the civilization were i) drying up of the river and ii) inability to enforce economic strength through armed power. Makes sense in a theoretical way (a system of governing can’t go on without having an army to enforce the writ of state) but he didn’t really have the time to make the connections clear.
c) And the bangles that Thar women wear were in those times (maybe they are still?) a “conflict avoidance strategy” i.e. the length and material of bangles would indicate whether you were unmarried or not so no one would hit on you. We should really have an alternative in the modern world. Nothing short of being visibly knocked up seems to act as a deterrent at times.
Dr. Fran o’ Neal made a presentation on how, after a long time, American culture is breaking out of the legacy of George Washington so that public opinion is having an influence on foreign policy. Washington started off with how America should just not bother to dabble with international affairs because all other countries were so incredibly messy and as silly as it may sound I don’t think I really understood the impact of that stance until this presentation. (Okay I’m going to try and put in words without sounding dismissive about Americans in general). Essentially I guess, government policy and its subsequent implementation seeped into American culture, thinking and schooling. And when the government did start interfering in international affairs, it did pots of rhetoric to ensure minimal civilian involvement. So to date, perhaps, what the world knows as American stupidity and ignorance isn’t so much a deliberate blockage of information on part of individuals as much as it is a cultural heritage. Similar to how Pakistani children are taught to think of India as an enemy. That said however, there is always a point where Pakistani children do move away from hating India out of habit to either hating it from structural/ancestral reasons or just liking it. To make such a break is the onus of every individual for which, at a certain age, culture provides no excuse. Some lessons in school/college will always tell you how there are more than two sides to a story and after that ignorance is a choice made.
Hoodhboy went on about himself quite a bit (though I was not unimpressed by the fact that he made an illegal transmitter that covered half of Karachi at the age of 17) and then launched into anti-Musharraff talk (thoroughly enjoyable) ending with how the Lal Masjid mullahs (who I SAW guarding the barricade at one am when we were returning from a coffee rendezvous) said Quaid-e-Azam University was a brothel and all the women who go there were prostitutes and how one mullah went on an illegal FM bandwidth to state “I don’t recommend it but if anyone throws acid on their faces (the women), I won’t be able to stop them.”
The next post on Fulbright I promise childun will not be preachy but will be about how the entire auditorium was lectured on sex.
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