She is Gone
I write and I write for a sanity divine
I write and I write for you, insane swine
I wish and I wish for an ounce of pride
I wish and I wish, Oh! Please be my bride
I was to be right, but god made me wrong
I was to be a knight, not slave to the grind
Twenty fucking five years and vengeance I reap
My whole fucking life and now I grieve
We Are Pakistanis
On October 8th, 2005 the northern areas of our country was hit by major earthquake. There was irreplaceable loss of property and life but the earthquake was not the only major thing which happened that October. The people of our country poured out of their homes to help our brothers and sisters in need. Everyone contributed to their maximum potential. During the first week of the quake the PAF Museum, on Shara-e-Faisal, Karachi was swamped with all sort of vehicles bearing supplies and scores of people helping around with those supplies. Among those helping hands there were no class divides, there were no ethnic divides and there were no religious divides. Everyone was a Pakistani, working together to help the Pakistanis in need. The majority of those people were the youth of the nation, they were my generation of Pakistanis.
Today as I turn on any of the local news channel everyone is talking about Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan and NWFP. Analysts are going on and on about how some provinces feel bereaved while others just don’t seem to care about why there is a growing schism between them. The politicians with their short-term goal of winning the February elections are alienating other province in their campaigning. Call me naïve or call me ignorant but when these are the general elections for “Pakistan” why is there a provincial split there to begin with? Why are we still localized and can’t have a collective thinking for the greater good of the nation? It’s been 60 years, how many more do we need?
This is what I know. The youth is beyond schism. We don’t socialize or refer to each other depending upon the ethnicity we belong to. My grandfather moved to Pakistan in 1947, I don’t even know where to pin U.P. on the map of India, hell I don’t care either. I am home, why should I be bothered about finding some other place for identity? Same goes for the majority (if not all) the people I interact with. Of course there is a sense of belonging and endearment to the place you live at but at the end of the day we are a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural group of Pakistanis. In sixty years, Pakistan has been able to produce a generation which belongs to Pakistan and which might be able to carve a new path for it in the future. Irony is that the major threat we have is the unity fracture among the previous generations corrupting us.
Take this as a request, take this as an appeal but let us remember the unity the entire nation displayed in the events following October 8. Let us turn that tragedy into a day of unity. Let us all take inspiration from the young and the inexperienced. Let us all be Pakistanis.
Happy fucking New Year
Another year gone by. 2007 was good to me, seems my resolution was good after all. Don’t have one for this year yet, at the moment last year’s looks like the best option. However, its not about me. 2007 was bad for the country. It ended with Benazir Bhutto being assassinated; a violent conclusion to a violent story. 2007 was a year marked with think-headed leadership (though calling it leadership is me being thick headed to begin with), political turmoil and terrorism galore. We pushed our society and our classes into a greater divide. I for one find more and more Pakistanis saying, “That’s it for me, I get a ticket and I am out of here.” Little do any of them realize that only country they are moving to is Bangladesh but then again it’s their choice. Point being that with each passing month our youth feels more and more alienated.
So the year ends and we celebrate. Honestly, I didn’t hear that many guns being fired in the days I used to play “Counter Strike”, seemed as if every other house as an AK-47. It was war out there; and one would think that in the wake of BBs death riots somebody would keep a check on the arms in the streets.
So what exactly were we celebrating this year round? I say the entire notion of celebrating the coming of the new year is flawed. We should be celebrating or mourning the previous year depending upon how good or bad it went. But for the sake of argument let us continue with “what were we celebrating?” with the pretext that we are celebrating the coming year. Do we have a brilliant plan to get ourselves out of the dump in 2008? Will 2008 see the coming of some divine messiah? Do all of us who are rattling guns on the streets have a charismatic leader hidden among their ranks who will make himself public in 2008? I mean seriously, what the fuck are we so bloody jubilant about?
Yes I know, none of us really care about what we are celebrating. It’s a bloody party and we are all out having fun. The coming of the new year is basically an excuse to get drunk and maybe get laid. The reason for all the fun and frolic becomes all the more obvious for the citizens of Karachi who had been boxed in for five days thanks to all of our brothers out there setting things on fire. Somehow, this explanation seems a lot better than the fact that we were celebrating new year’s eve.
Either ways, we continue contributing to the class divide. Oh yes! Marching proudly towards a future where no one understand the other. A happy fucking new year everybody, I sincerely hope 2008 fares well for all of us.
P.S. Indeed a thoroughly pessimistic point of view on the coming of the new year but it’s not the new year I am pessimistic about, just the way things are right now.
P.P.S Thank you Mobzilla for the title.
The Walk
I walk for a living. I know, not something a lot of people would put under the “Profession” column when filing their tax return but it seems to be working out fine for me. It started from grad school, I was a business student with the entire education system training me to become one with the corporate mammoth. They will cut and crop around everything you are till you can fit into the same frame they have made for the entire generation, of course with a sampling error of plus-minus five percent. At the end of the day we would be no different than the troops out of boot camp, only we would be wearing a suit and a tie under our neatly trimmed hair. Mince every bit of individualism and you have yourself the perfect corporate fuck.
Then one day I decided I don’t want to do this anymore. I did what everyone does when they quit something; I walked away. Though I took the notion literally; I kept walking. I said fuck it to the world and took the road. For a while a l kept asking myself as to where I am going or what am I planning to do? Then there was a little voice in my head that would remind me of all the money I could make, all the Jaguars I could drive and all the super models I could take home for the night – I was going to a good grad school. With time the questions became irrelevant and the voice faded away.
Initially I used to be all alone on the road, then the truckers who were always on the highway started to notice a dude who is always walking, soon I had friends on my walk. Some of the truckers would stop, chitchat and then return to the monotony of their driving, others would just honk and wave as they passed by. I had more friends than I needed.
It was not long before the corporations I ran from caught up to me. Suited reps would get off their cars and walk with me, offering me sponsorship for my walk. I am not complaining, but not a single one of them ever asked me why or where was I walking. As for the sponsorship, if I needed money I would have been a suited jock just like them. Needless to say but I always declined their offers. However, the corporations were many and apparently there was never a shortage of feisty business grads who would want to sign me. They would try all sorts of gimmicks, I have had them talking to me dressed as hippies, bums, even athletes. I think today that if I would have taken some time off from my walking and gone to a court maybe I could have spent all those years without being bothered so much.
For some reason, which I can’t recall anymore I bought a journal and a pen from one of the “Stop-n-Shop” stores. With my walk, I started to write. I would write anything and everything. What I saw, what I heard and what I thought. Gradually I realized that I had something to care for, I would wrap up the journal in plastic if it would rain, sleep with it under my head, hide it if a car slowed down while passing by. Hell I would even wake up from my sleep to check if it’s still there.
A single journal became two, two became three. One day I sat down to read what I had been writing and the pages told me I had walked far enough. I couldn’t walk away this time because a walk is what I was quitting so I decided to stay in the same motel room I was and get my journal published. Surprisingly, the journals did get published. The publication and the royalties make up quite a huge pay check but I could never call myself a writer. So, I walk for a living because a walk is the reason I get a pay check and that is what I put under the “Profession” column when I file my tax return.
