No, I don’t want ‘fraandship’ with you
Most people reading this, especially women, probably already know the drill. If you happen to be a female in Pakistan and if your age just so happens to fall between the range of 16- 30, then you are liable to have already accumulated a respectable (sic) variety of cell-phone stalkers and perhaps a handful of the corporeal variety. The jury is out on which brand tends to be more abhorrent. What is particularly interesting about cellphone and/or Facebook stalkers in Pakistan is the consistency of their attack and the belligerence with which they continue to assume that the word ‘no’ means ...
Read Full PostLet transgenders vote!
It appears to be the season for new voter demographics. With perhaps the largest, long-dormant voting segment – the Pakistani youth – finally energised to cast their ballots in the upcoming elections, it is heartening to see that a much smaller and traditionally ostracised segment of the population will also be voting next year. The latest decision, on the part of the Supreme Court, to register transgenders as voters could not have come at a better time. Tentative estimates put the ‘third gender’ population in Pakistan between 80,000 and 300,000 people, and SC Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhery, has ordered ...
Read Full Post‘Holy’ castration…what’s next?
A recently published story in The Express Tribune titled ‘Pir processing: toddler castrated to free him for temptation,’ September 12, poses stark questions with regards to how sexual violence is rapidly increasing in Pakistan and how the public and authorities are choosing to deal with it. The story itself involved a pir in Gujranwala who castrated a two-year-old boy in order to ‘make him a malang’. The child’s mother was complicit in the act and told reporters that she had promised her son to pir Haider Ali, who she insisted had ‘helped her conceive’ after eight of her children died. ...
Read Full PostHRK: The politics of pretty faces
The media coverage of newly appointed Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar’s Indian tour is proving to be equally offensive either side of the border. Given Khar’s youth and her inexperience, there were already plenty of ‘ifs and buts’ floating among Pakistanis regarding her capabilities with respect to her new role, but it appears the media’s fascination with her wardrobe has trounced all performance related concerns. Indian electronic and print media has recently been reported calling the minister everything from “model-like” (Navbharat Times) and “Pakistan’s Best Face” (Times of India) extending to insinuations about her being “drool worthy” as well ...
Read Full PostTribute to ‘Hazrat Sheikh Osama’…really?
On May 2, 2011, when President Barack Obama went on international television and announced to the entire world that Osama Bin Laden was dead, and that US forces had found the world’s most wanted man hiding safely ensconced in a luxury compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, many things changed. Especially, for Pakistan. As a nation, we had to collectively swallow the bile of many-a-public boast regarding our unquestionable allegiance to the United States government in its War on Terror and our repeated claims that we were the greatest of US allies, in said struggle. Above all, was the mixed response to ...
Read Full PostAre doctors there for patients, or money?
The recent uproar regarding the issue of increasing doctor’s salaries saw the Young Doctor’s Association (YDA) take to the streets and boycott hospital wards. The strike lasted over two weeks and finally came to an end on Monday, when YDA officers were called in for a meeting with Health Secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad and accepted the latter’s ‘word’ to speak to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on their behalf and raise salaries by July this year. It is no secret that doctors in Pakistan are woefully underpaid at every level. Many would grant the YDA’s appeal for an increase in salary as ...
Read Full PostConfessions of a flawed feminist
“Should they be like us? Or should they be allowed to be different from us? This has been called an impossible choice.” – Leti Volpp I recall tumbling upon Volpp’s particular conundrum while I was working on my Master’s degree at Oxford. My preconceived notions regarding ‘feminism’ had hitherto been limited to the patrician suffrage struggles of Virginia Woolf’s essays, a bit of De Beauvoir and the provocative poetry of Urdu poet Parveen Shakir. At the time I still harboured the naïve impression that merely supporting women’s equality against all those that opposed it made me a feminist, until I ...
Read Full PostLet there be laughter
One of the many parallels to the chaos theory demonstrate how, even when everything goes terribly wrong, the result can be inherently ‘right’…for reasons that defy explanation. Such was the packed audience’s reaction to Production Illusion’s farce titled ‘Noises Off’ that opened at Al-hamra on August 5, 2010. The play was written by English playwright Michael Frayn in 1982, after he contemplated the nature of ‘backstage’ drama. According to the playwright, “It was funnier from behind than in front and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind.” Noises Off, thereby is a play within a play ...
Read Full PostA regular reality check-up
I can’t recall when I first heard the expression ‘ignorance is bliss’ but it never really sat well with me… until now when I wish I could seek refuge in it. As part of my job, I monitor and edit stories from Southern Punjab on a daily basis. I feel oddly possessive about the district pages or ‘Page 15’ of our Lahore paper because somehow over the past few months they have provided me with my daily dose of much needed ‘reality’. Despite living in Pakistan where one is seldom at a distance from the ‘reality’ of terrorism, corruption and ...
Read Full PostColonial ‘chai’ and capitalist ‘coke’
A few days ago, a guest at my house enquired why I don’t drink tea. I mentioned that at some precarious juncture of my youth I irrevocably replaced ‘chai’ with ‘coke’ as my daily conduit. He expressed his dismay and proceeded to tell me how ‘coca cola’ was a Zionist enterprise and a universal capitalist symbol. I responded that ‘chai’ was just as much a colonial symbol as coke was a capitalist one. If one beverage carried with it the plasticity of commercialism; the other bore the bourgeois refinement of elitism. The conversation got me thinking seriously about our colonial ...
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