Petty Scandals

This past weekend I attended a conference at the Lahore University of Management Sciences which had panelists flown in from Europe, America and India, carefully iced with the best Pakistan had to offer. I found that there is no dearth of intellectually brilliant minds in Pakistan; the dearth lies in our knowledge of their existence and appreciation for the work they do. I’ll be the first to shamefully admit that I had heard of only a few of our local attendee’s, and that too by word of mouth. I’d never taken the time out to look into the work they were doing or gauge what it was they were trying to tell us. Doctor Phil says that admitting the problem is the first step to recovery.

Take Strings for example, until they were jamming with John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt, we didn’t really give a dhaani. We all know the tale of how we found Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan astounding once India started begging him to sing for Bollywood. That’s when we started noticing what the likes of Peter Gabriel and other maestro’s of the West had noticed decades before (also, the West loved him for his Qawali’s – long before his soundtrack to Dead Man Walking). Then, we all heard the tale of how Ustad Nusrat’s grave was dug up and his body was found enveloped in his own tongue. Why? Blasphemy, of course - he used the same tongue to sing songs for the Hindu’s that he once used to praise Allah. Astaghfar. I mean, none of us use our namazi tongue’s to curse at the beggar who dared touch my clean car window that I zapped up as he approached. Never. My grave will be sound and my body shall not be shroud in my tongue, but in light - nur; Alhumdulillah.

The appreciation our local hero’s (including academics) receive and the acknowledgement their work and contribution to Pakistani culture and heritage is given is negligible, to say in the least. Instead, it is the likes of Shoaib Malik that are recognized, not for their “confused-cricketeering” (in the words of a world-renowned cricket blogger), but for marrying someone from behind enemy lines. That seemed to be all I could find on the news this week. As much as I wanted to escape it, I could only find information of the weight problems faced by Shoaib’s first wife (Note to World: nikkah’s conducted over the phone are so passé) and how Sania Mirza really doesn’t like wearing short skirts – they’re just practical. I couldn’t find any coverage of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Peshawar or the general state of affairs in the world, post Obama’s speech to change the U.S.’s attitude towards use of nuclear arms; all that is secondary to the love affair that shall be settled in a nikkah in Dubai, where Shoaib’s family can incidentally fly with more ease.

Hina said to me that it was refreshing, seeing Shoaib battle with the media over his personal life. She said it was refreshing because it “takes our mind off of the explosions and all the lives we’ve lost”. However, instead of distracting ourselves with educational information concerning the majestic character that was our Quaid (as opposed to the run of the mill, boilerplate description we find in our Pak-Studies books), we’d rather watch the latest Michael Moore documentary on how the U.S. is full of sicko’s. “It’s cooler”; just as it was once cool to smoke, then it wasn’t and now it’s cool again. Frankly, I’m losing count.

What Hina said next is what caught me off-guard and made me think. She said that India has prospered because they revere their culture, promote it, and endorse their leaders and figureheads; “Gandhi is god”. I’m not saying Gandhi was not all that they say he was; he was indeed, a brilliant man, but so was Allama Iqbal and Ajmal Khattak. My friend eloquently concluded: “in our country the going-rate for buying respect is a couple of million Rupees, not good deeds.” Sadly, she’s right; we promote the wrong people. Sure Meera Jee has contributed to her share of cinema and whether or not I think she’s good is secondary (I don’t). But that we’re so fascinated about what email address it was that she used to write to her purported husband in impeccable diction, is what leaves me dumbfounded.

Indian artist, Bhai Baldeep Singh, calls it involvement in “petty scandals”. We’re too involved in how one of our own would take a bride from the other side of the border, to notice that about 40 children get kidnapped each week from villages and remote areas we cannot drive our newly polished convertible’s to. Reports of these kidnappings will never hit the airwaves like Sahil Saeed’s kidnapping did because these children do not speak the Angraizi and their parents make minimum wage – barely. Mr. Singh says that we’re too engrossed in religious and geographical preferences to notice our real issues and try to resolve them. I believe that we need a break from the constant flow of bad news; but our media personnel should be looking to fill that void with good inspirational stories, not a bad remix of Star Plus and old-wives-tales.

After listening to all those intellectuals talk of how India and Pakistan, although partitioned, shared much of the same problems and had much of the same soul, I wonder if they’re right. Clearly, India seems to be going places we’re only beginning to learn of. I don’t think our partition with India is remotely related to our plight; it’s our partition from our own culture, our own people and their achievements and accomplishments that require more consideration. Just like we’ll come out in flock to see what Sana Safinaz has in store for this year’s lawn season, let’s see what the likes of Kamal Khan Mumtaz, Ayesha Jalal and Tariq Rahman have to say, generally.