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It happens almost instantaneously. You’re happily walking down the street one minute and the next you find yourself inside a retail store trying staring at a pair of high-heeled shoes, your mind racing with a million reasons per second why, oh why you should definitely buy it. Those reasons could range from: they go with everything, the heel is perfect, it was what you always wanted, the style is very new and no one has it yet, it’s so ‘you’ etc. All you know is: you must have them. You ask the shopkeeper for a pair to try on.
When you do, it’s almost magical. If they fit right, you walk around the store and it’s almost as if a single light is shining down from the heavens spot-lighting you as you walk around the store. You see them from every possible angle: walking forward, backward, do a little dance move to test their flexibility. The shoes do everything right and you run off to the ATM hoping you have just enough money left to buy them. Incidentally you do and you go home happy with a package in tucked under your arm. Does it matter that, if you’re a habitual shopper, the chances of you actually wearing that must-have shoes are probably (5/365 days of the year) one in 73?
One cardinal rule I’ve always followed is that I almost never venture near a market or a place which would feature something I’d want to get if I don’t have the money to get it. This has almost always worked in preventing me from feeling “deprived”.
Before readers begin to roll their eyes at the “pretentious” notion of being a shopaholic, let me point out that we all have our guilty pleasures. For some that could be books, clothes, cellphones, DVDs, even something as small as stationary, we all have at least one product type that we’re willing to spend a lot of money on every time we come across it. Added with more and more young people (including more and more women) actively working nowadays and having a greater disposable income results in a rapid increase in consumer culture. Why else would there be such a boom in advertising? In “money-saving” deals? The “exclusive” offers in just about everything?
It’s taken a lot for me to admit that I happen to be one of those victims of the must-have/must-buy syndrome, or a shopaholic as the modern pop term describes us. That realization dawned on me the day I looked around and discovered I have around 60 books I bought but haven’t read, more than a 100 magazines that suffer the same fate, some not even out of their packaging so as not to gather dust, a wardrobe full of clothes I’ve never worn and probably never will and around 10 pairs of shoes I spent a lot of money on but never really took out of their boxes. I even have around 10 pets, eight out of which I secretly wish I never bought. But I really hit rock bottom when I realized that one fine day, in about a matter of two months I had spent all my savings and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out on what?
Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they’ll like this song?
Mother do you think they’ll try to break my balls?
Mother should I build the wall?
Mother should I run for president?
Mother should I trust the government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Mother am I really dying?
Hush now baby, baby, dont you cry.
Mother’s gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mother’s gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother’s gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooooh baby ooooh baby oooooh baby,
Of course mama’ll help to build the wall.
Lyrics from the song Mother by Pink Floyd from the album, The Wall.
“You’re from a family that dabbles in politics and you became a fashion designer,” I said to a young designer who showed his work at a fashion week recently. Knowing the odds that were stacked against him for his family approving of what he does, I couldn’t help but ask, “How did that happen?”. “It happens when you run away from school and go to fashion school!” he responded matter-of-factly. As if responding to my shocked expression he added, “I started working when I was on my O-levels to save up for college, so I wouldn’t have to rely on my family supporting me. When the time came, I got admission in a fashion school and I left.” He managed to graduate with honours and launched a successful clothing line, his family came around when they saw how settled he was in his profession and now accept it.
I have a friend, a Ms. B, who was a straight-A student throughout school, applied to a plethora of colleges and gained admission in most of them. The only problem was, her father forbid her from attending any of them. Determined to get a college education no matter what, she started working for various publications and after two years made enough to support her education for the first couple of years. In between she applied for a short filmmaking course abroad and while there, interacted with the education counselors, showed her certificates and managed not only to get a transfer to the same college but also a 50 per cent grant off her total fee. Although initially reluctant to send her off, her dedication towards her goal had managed to convince (and I assume, elicit the respect of her father as well) her parents to let her go. She is currently abroad enjoying studying the degree she worked so hard to get the privilege of attaining.
I think slowly and gradually we’re moving beyond the traditional (read: safe) professions our parents want us to follow, namely: do your MBA become a banker, be a doctor, an engineer etc. that in no way implies that there aren’t those professions your parents might think twice before letting you follow them, or that there aren’t those who end up fighting for their right to pursue their dreams. With the boom in the media industry (which is just about now beginning to fade slowly) resulting in a sudden spurt in the interest surrounding professions that revolve around art and culture, young men and women today have more options when it comes to “pursuable” professions that their parents are more open to supporting. That may include anything from interior design, architecture, art, photography or even in some cases, choreography.
Where some may have to fight to follow the profession they want, there are other ways (although longer) of attaining the same. While conversing with some visiting desi musicians from the UK a couple of months back, I discovered one common ground in all of them: they had all gone out, attained “safe” degrees whether a bachelors degree as a software engineer or in business administration, and once that was true (“what our parents wanted for us,” they responded) they went out and did what they wanted: pursue music. “It’s not that our parents didn’t want us to pursue our dreams,” they explained, “but they wanted something concrete we could fall back on, a plan B. Once we had that, we could do what we wanted.” I think that statement explains the apprehensions felt by most parents.
I had another friend who wanted to pursue a degree in media sciences. Her father initially forbid her daughter from even considering the notion. It was later when considering the fact that with every profession there is a degree of risk involved and that people only excel in fields that they’re most interested in, that he granted her the permission to do so. With fingers crossed off course.
– Photos by Biya Shadab
A grandfather holding his grand daughter during her Aqiqa - Photo by Madeeha Syed
There was a time when grandparents (at least mine) were like the eastern world’s equivalent of Santa: you mostly only went to them yourself to get your Eidhi. At other times, they were the villains in your life who would catch you smack in the middle of a game with your other cousins for a hug or a kiss. My grandparents were like those typical family heads that have a huge brood and their children to rule over – most of their time was spent solving problems, organizing meals and making sure everyone around them was comfortable. They had a strong presence but as children, for us, it remained more in the background; what was more important back then was deciding which cousin won the game at hand.
Fast forward many, many years and I find myself suddenly having an actual ‘interactive’ relationship with them. Their advice on life is now being dished out to me. I find myself talking to them more often, trying to know their personal stories, their perspective on issues, finding out how radically different our worlds are and yet there is a mysterious something that connects the both of us together.
The generation gap between my grandmother, for instance, and myself seems radically big on some issues, one of which was the levels of modesty that need to be observed in everyday garments. My grandmother insisted that religion dictated that women cover themselves from their ankles to their necks. The dilemma that posed for me was that current fashion trends dictated that several outfits be worn with a short, Capri-like pants, leaving the ankles and a bit of the calf in plain view. My solution to that was simple: I wore ankle socks. The moment she raised her eyebrows at my pants, I cheekily pointed out that she couldn’t deny the fact that, at least, my ankles were covered.
I also discovered that grandparents tend to become partners-in-crime especially when it comes to facing opposition from your parents. Be it needing a wing-man to get permission from your parents, condoning an act done that you know you will get in trouble for, right down to sneaking in a midnight snack in the kitchen, grandparents are willing to do it all with you.
When I first saw my own parents and how they behaved with my niece and nephews, I was happy but a little surprised as to how grandparents nowadays bonded with their grandchildren. They literally become babies for the babies they’re babysitting and I can safely say that for their grandchildren, they’re their best friends. The fact that they themselves have a relatively smaller family to look over and therefore more time to give individually to each grandchild is a factor that contributes to the cultivation of their relationship with their grandchildren.
Most people from the older generation equate the downfall of good old family values with the fast extinction of the joint-family system. But when I see little boys and girls instinctively learning how to take care of their grandparents, or great grandparents, by observing how their parents behave with them, I somehow see different generations coming closer to each other than drifting apart. when I see grandparents agreeing to chase their grandchildren in play, along with a bad back and advancing arthritis, I know that the bond is being cultivated both ways.
Originally titled “Kiss, kiss, bang, bang”
I still remember the first time I heard about anything like it. I was at my A level tuition centre and was talking to one of the boys from the junior, AS level who was waiting for one of his female friends to arrive. When she arrived, I discovered that she was an extremely skinny person, with perfectly straight, short black hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and an unsmiling mouth. But what actually bothered me was that on one side of her face, barely hidden by her hair, one could see a small bruise. She was 17 years old and I was told that her boyfriend (an A-level drop-out from another school), was responsible for it.
“I don’t know why she’s with him,” said my junior, “I’ve told her several times that he’s bad news but she doesn’t listen.” Needless to say I was shocked at first, but then felt sorry for the girl. I found out that other than hitting her, he would often yell at her, call her names, was extremely controlling and would sometimes make fun of her in front of his guy friends. Despite all of that, she continued to be with him. None of it made sense to me, she wasn’t bound to the boy for any legal reasons or otherwise, so why be with someone who treats you so badly? “What’s wrong with her?!,” I couldn’t help asking. “I don’t know…” replied my junior, somewhat miserably, “she calls me in tears whenever they fight and he’s mean to her. I talk to her and try to calm her down. She promises me she’ll get out of it but the moment the guy begins to behave himself, she forgets everything and goes back to him!”
Just a couple of years later, I encountered an oddly similar situation closer to home. One of my very close friends, Ms Z and I were talking on the phone one day while she was visiting her boyfriend. In the middle of the conversation, the line dropped (or so I thought) and I tried calling her back but she wouldn’t pick up the phone. Several minutes later, I received a text message from her which read “he just hit me”. Something snapped inside me and I immediately took the ‘risk’ of telling my parents and we all went to where they were. I ‘rescued’ my friend and made her sit in the car with me while my parents gave the boy (who was incidentally a visiting foreign-exchange student) a piece of their mind – even threatening to report him to the embassy and have him deported for assaulting a local.
Ms Z would never, in a million years, tell her own parents what had happened. She came from a conservative but incredibly loving family that probably wouldn’t respond well to the notion that their daughter even had a boyfriend, let alone a gora boyfriend. My parents assured her that even if Ms Z’s family initially got upset over the fact that she involved in a relationship, their next instinct would be to protect her against such ‘crazy’ people. But telling them was her decision. She didn’t. In fact, after all this had happened, she went back to him.
“He was incredibly sorry for the way he behaved!,” Ms Z tried to justify her decision, “he was extremely stressed out, he just wasn’t thinking. But he really ‘loves’ me. I ‘love’ him too!” She hit me with the infamous L-word – something I don’t think should be accepted as an excuse. The gora was a strange character. No one would believe that he was capable of hurting a soul because he kept up a very amiable, very polite public appearance. But as it turned out, when it was just Ms Z and him, he was a very different character: he often lost his temper, was extremely controlling of who she talked to, what she did, even what she ate at times… he would even display these two sides simultaneously when at one point he would be laughing at another person’s jokes and at the same time he would turn and tell Ms Z that she wasn’t worth anything and that she was lucky he was even spending time with her. whenever she’d had enough and would threaten to leave, he would become tearful and extremely sorry for his behaviour and she would forgive him. It was almost like a never-ending vicious cycle. A year later when it was finally over, I asked my friend why she chose to stay with him so long? “I was… I’m still afraid no other boy would be attracted to me,” she said, “I thought he was the best I could ever find. Sometimes I still wonder that.”
Out of curiosity and a need to makes sense of the abusive boyfriends mentioned above, I tried to do some research their behaviour and found out that where there are many reasons for it, simply speaking such individuals direly need both anger management and treatment for acute depression. Personally, I also feel they need to be taught how to respect another individual and the knowledge that their behaviour is not without consequence. Women on the other hand need to recognize their self worth and when to firmly say no to accepting such behaviour. The fact that they, despite receiving support from family and friends, continued to let themselves be treated the way they did, makes them just as responsible for it. “It’s not the physical scars that we’re afraid of, they heal with time” my parents had said to Ms Z, “it’s the emotional ones. They inflict more damage and take much longer.”
Note: This is the raw version since I haven’t been able to access the edited version from the website.
School can be a strange, strange place. While in school, parents and faculty members can seem like even stranger people. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I do remember experiencing that period of time when our principal decided to implement a rule that all of us students found incredibly amusing. In the middle of the final year of my A levels, our principal announced that she was going to implement a “three-foot rule”. That basically meant that students of different genders could not sit/walk/interact with one another if they weren’t maintaining a distance of at least three feet. Yeah, right.
What had happened was that our A level was right in the middle of the junior and O level block in school. Apparently a couple from the first year of A-levels had been sitting together “somewhat inappropriately” and had offended the sentiments of a parent who had been visiting the junior block. That parent was adamant that she did not want her offspring exposed to such ‘vulgarity’ and complained to the principal. The principal then decided to implement the three-foot rule.
How the rule could be implement effectively was another thing altogether. No one really took it very seriously, even the sports teacher who was responsible for monitoring on-campus behaviour seemed very amused by the idea, but as a part of the faculty member had to support it. Whenever we’d see him approaching us, we’d laugh and extend our arms to indicate the distance. If he caught two opposite gender students interacting at a distance closer than three feet, he’d quietly stand behind them, extend his hands and slowly separate them to the approximate distance. The students would all roll their eyes at this and the sports instructor could be seen chuckling every time he ‘implemented the law’. Eventually though, the school grew out of the rule and life returned to normal.
Recently a huge issue had been created in among the student body of a popular business school in Lahore where a student had raised an objection to the public displays of affection (PDA’s) that other students were engaging in on campus. She had complained that the PDAs were a little too ‘graphic’ and made other students at the campus that had to witness such displays, a little uncomfortable. Eventually, among the student body it turned into a question of freedom of expression vs. censorship of behaviour, personal freedom against a rigid, conservative, ‘mullah-istic’ point-of-view towards behaviour. The administration took notice and, as has been rumoured, decided to see what they could do about it. members of the student body were a little taken aback that the administration should chose to pick such an issue to attempt to fix, whereas there were other issues (pertaining to facilities etc) that the students had been complaining about a very long time that they had chosen to quietly ignore. Even today, no two people have the same perspective on the same issue.
I have come across school teachers who complain that when they chastise students who engage in behaviour that borders on vulgarity, they are accused of being ‘narrow-minded’ and in some cases, even jealous! Students on the other hand complain that faculty members and parents are a little paranoid and that for them, two members of the opposite gender sitting a little close is considered ‘vulger’, and what exaggerated behaviour did the parents/faculty members ‘imagine’ the students might be engaging in when seeing that? They also claim that they have a right to behave as they please with their fellow students and that faculty should limit their attention and focus on what they’re ‘supposed’ to do: teach. Whereas one personally does not feel that another persons’ parent, other students or faculty members have a right to dictate what another student does in their private space; the student should also be sensitive to the sentiments of those around him/her and maintain a certain level of decorum in their behaviour. If they don’t want to be chastised for a ‘personal’ matter, then don’t make it available for public viewership.
Printed as “Birthday blasts”
Growing up is hard to do. As clichéd as it may sound, we go from the warm loveliness embodied by our families who make us believe we’re the most beautiful, unique, smart and loveable people to ever set foot on earth, to actually going out into the real world and discovering that with the good, there is also the bad and the ugly as well.
I often see people host elaborate events on their birthdays, they’re genuinely happy about that particular day because they believe that that day is not only unique to them but also symbolic of what they are essentially – so deeply rooted is the concept of celebrating their birthday to their own personal identity. Having said that, what happens when a birthday doesn’t go as planned? Contrary to popular belief, birthday’s going badly happen quite a lot. This post is dedicated to stories about a series of unfortunate birthdays.
I once met a person who, during her early teens, had three consecutive birthdays in which none of her school friends showed up for the party she’d prepared for. As it turns out, her best friend at that time was partly to blame. She would host a get-together at her place on the exact same day. It was easier for classmates to reach her place since she lived close to everyone and at 13, your major concern is not only getting a ride, but making sure you don’t anger your parents by making them drive too far out for you to go and have fun. When the hapless birthday girl confronted her best friend (?), her best friend would act surprised and say something along the lines of “but I didn’t think it was that important!” and then promise never to do it again. But she did. Time and time again. “I was still friends with her because the idea of breaking our friendship over a birthday event seemed a little stupid. But things were never the same again. I was always suspecting her motives… in everything,” she says, adding that, “I think twice about inviting people over now. At the back of my head, I do wonder whether they’ll show up or not; even when they’ve confirmed their attendance.”
A birthday can go terribly wrong when too many people try to make it special for you as well! A certain Ms X suffered a true ‘series of unfortunate events’ on her birthday when everyone from her family to her friends set up a series of surprises that just went all wrong. With her birthday falling on a holiday, Ms X decided to sleep in late, because of which she ended up missing going to a small picnic with her friends that they had planned. Thinking that she could another time, she messaged in her apology. As it turned out, her friends had planned a surprise birthday bash for her at the venue which was ruined with her cancellation.
With having done nothing all day, Ms X decided to go have coffee with a close friend in the evening. She ended up having a small argument with her parents who wanted her to stay at home and somehow could not give her a good reason as to why they were so (strangely) adamant that she stay. She ended up leaving for coffee. Only when she arrived at the venue was she told by one of her siblings that her parents had planned a surprise birthday bash and were just waiting for the cake to be delivered. There was no point in turning back from the café; the mood at home had been ruined.
At night, Ms X had been invited by a restaurant-owning couple to their restaurant’s anniversary celebration which fell on the same day as her birthday. Feeling incredibly guilty for ruining her parents’ plans for her birthday and thinking that her attending the event would aggravate the situation at home, she decided not to go. Several hours later, she got a phone call from the couple who told her that they had had a special cake made for her as well since it was also her birthday and they had been hoping to surprise her with it. “From that day onwards,” says Ms X, “I keep telling people: I know you love me, but if you really want to show it, then don’t try to surprise me on my birthday!”
Growing up is hard to do. As clichéd as it may sound, we go from the warm loveliness embodied by our families who make us believe we’re the most beautiful, unique, smart and loveable people to ever set foot on earth, to actually going out into the real world and discovering that with the good, there is also the bad and the ugly as well.
I often see people host elaborate events on their birthdays, they’re genuinely happy about that particular day because they believe that that day is not only unique to them but also symbolic of what they are essentially – so deeply rooted is the concept of celebrating their birthday to their own personal identity. Having said that, what happens when a birthday doesn’t go as planned? Contrary to popular belief, birthday’s going badly happen quite a lot. This post is dedicated to stories about a series of unfortunate birthdays.
I once met a person who, during her early teens, had three consecutive birthdays in which none of her school friends showed up for the party she’d prepared for. As it turns out, her best friend at that time was partly to blame. She would host a get-together at her place on the exact same day. It was easier for classmates to reach her place since she lived close to everyone and at 13, your major concern is not only getting a ride, but making sure you don’t anger your parents by making them drive too far out for you to go and have fun. When the hapless birthday girl confronted her best friend (?), her best friend would act surprised and say something along the lines of “but I didn’t think it was that important!” and then promise never to do it again. But she did. Time and time again. “I was still friends with her because the idea of breaking our friendship over a birthday event seemed a little stupid. But things were never the same again. I was always suspecting her motives… in everything,” she says, adding that, “I think twice about inviting people over now. At the back of my head, I do wonder whether they’ll show up or not; even when they’ve confirmed their attendance.”
A birthday can go terribly wrong when too many people try to make it special for you as well! A certain Ms X suffered a true ‘series of unfortunate events’ on her birthday when everyone from her family to her friends set up a series of surprises that just went all wrong. With her birthday falling on a holiday, Ms X decided to sleep in late, because of which she ended up missing going to a small picnic with her friends that they had planned. Thinking that she could another time, she messaged in her apology. As it turned out, her friends had planned a surprise birthday bash for her at the venue which was ruined with her cancellation.
With having done nothing all day, Ms X decided to go have coffee with a close friend in the evening. She ended up having a small argument with her parents who wanted her to stay at home and somehow could not give her a good reason as to why they were so (strangely) adamant that she stay. She ended up leaving for coffee. Only when she arrived at the venue was she told by one of her siblings that her parents had planned a surprise birthday bash and were just waiting for the cake to be delivered. There was no point in turning back from the café; the mood at home had been ruined.
At night, Ms X had been invited by a restaurant-owning couple to their restaurant’s anniversary celebration which fell on the same day as her birthday. Feeling incredibly guilty for ruining her parents’ plans for her birthday and thinking that her attending the event would aggravate the situation at home, she decided not to go. Several hours later, she got a phone call from the couple who told her that they had had a special cake made for her as well since it was also her birthday and they had been hoping to surprise her with it. “From that day onwards,” says Ms X, “I keep telling people: I know you love me, but if you really want to show it, then don’t try to surprise me on my birthday!”
Where birthdays can be made into a special event, it is important to remember that they’re not the end-all when it comes to defining you or your identity. If you’ve a bad birthday, that doesn’t mean that the heavens conspired to put you down on a personal basis. Be happy about it, but also treat it like any other day – what makes a birthday special is not how big a hoopla you create while celebrating it, but realizing how much you’ve grown as a person and how far you’ve come in your relationships with people, your understanding of life.
There are many different kinds of women to be found slogging away at the gym. They include the obese; those who need to tone down their abundant figures in order to live a healthy life. They are seemingly a tad self-conscious, look at every other member from the corner of their eye while working out, and look away the moment you catch them staring. Then there are the chubby ones, those who know that by loosing just a couple of kilos they’ll reach their image of the perfect body. They seem to possess the most determination and approach their workout routine as if they were training for the military.
Last, but not the least, there are the self-obsessed, made-up ones. These women are neither chubby nor obese, leave their hair open and wear full make up (I thought that was a big no-no; doesn’t it block your skin’s pores when you sweat, resulting in huge, horrendous pimples?) and are more interested in checking themselves working out in the mirror more than anything else. The gym seems to render little use to them other than another place where they’d like to be seen.
The pressure to look good (read: skinny) nowadays has increased in enormous proportions from the time I was in school. For us, it was mainly about keeping our hair neat, making sure we smelled good and getting rid of any unwanted facial hair. At 14, I had a friend who constantly fretted about her weight (she still does. She also conveniently blames her tendency to gain weight on her Arabic roots rather than on her voracious appetite), who constantly announced that she was going on a diet (I thought only adults were allowed to do that!) and then would proceed to drown her sorrows in a bottle of soda.
When I used to watch my sister prepare for school, I would get both amused and admittedly, a little scared. She would get up two hours before it was time for her to leave, spend 15-20 minutes taking a shower, 20-30 minutes of that time on her hair (straightening/curling/setting), 20-30 minutes on her make-up (a weird combination of facial powders and what not, plus the eyeliner had to be put on just right) and the rest of the time deciding whether her clothes – and the overall combination – looked good on her. The end result: she looked perfect, almost doll-like. Her friends are just like her. Collectively, they keep a close watch on what they’re eating all the time so they don’t pack on any unnecessary pounds. On the flip side, that’s the only measure they use against weight gain, what happened to healthy exercise? But then this is not just limited to my sister and her posse, go to the mall, take a good look around and you’ll discover that you’re surrounded by a multitude of “mini-models” who sport the same haircut and overall look (they could be clones) and most of them, are incredibly skinny.
Where one thinks that there is nothing wrong with presenting oneself beautifully, but it does raise some questions: to what lengths is the current generation of teenagers willing to go in order to fit into a certain stereotypical image of the perfect-looking person? Secondly, by concentrating so much on their outward appearance, are they forgetting their most important accessory, the one thing that is known to hook people better than any lipstick ever made: their personality?
My mother had once said: you should know how to use public transportation so if the day ever comes that you don’t have access to a car, you’d know what to do. That, and coupled with the fact that I had several other demanding siblings at home and just one car meant that at times in order to get to destinations, I’d have to use a rickshaw. Since then, I have met many others who do too. These are my experiences; they are the rickshaw diaries.
Hailing a rickshaw is easy: all you have to do is extend your arm towards the street and wave it as a rickshaw passes by. The rickshaw driver will always quote you a higher fee than is reasonable, completely depending on how well-dressed and stupid he thinks you are. You bargain and bring the amount down by 30 to 50 per cent. You climb in, clutch your bag tightly to your chest (the ride will be jittery at best and you want to remain uh… ‘close and tight’), and say a little prayer. The first thing you will notice is the change in ‘street attitude’ when shifting from a car to a rickshaw: staring, which is a national male hobby (most consider it their birthright) will shift gears with those in cars indifferent to your presence and those in buses and motorcycles suddenly believing that you are in their league.
Occasionally being harassed comes hand-in-hand with riding in a rickshaw. Rarely will bus passengers make the effort to yell something at you, but on occasion they will. You probably can’t do anything about it: the window is too high up for you to get off and slap the harasser and if you wedge one foot on the rickshaw for leverage, there is a very good chance of you falling off when the traffic signal goes green. Remember: you are a strong… woman, not John Rambo.
Motorcycle wallas fall in the worst category. The ease and independence with which they can move gives them much confidence. They will do everything from riding their motorcycle beside your rickshaw and jeering at you to trying to follow you home (try to arouse the rickshaw drivers’ desi inborn concept of ghairat and he’ll work on giving the motorcycle walla the slip without additional charge) to actually just drive fast enough to be able to tug at your (flowing) dupatta from behind the vehicle. As most desi women are trained to either slap or ignore, this would be the time to ignore. The moment will pass. The motorcycle walla will get his kick and leave. Scream (you will do little more than to amuse him) and endure a second round of the touch-the-dupatta game.
I once ended up with a rickshaw driver who probably believed that he was actually a formula one car driver than one who drove a puny vehicle with very small wheels. Off we went, in the middle of a cold and windy Karachi winter, flying over every small rock, threatening to smash into every little hole in the road. I held on for dear life. By the time we got to one of our stops, not only did I feel like a frozen popsicle but the vomit that was building inside me this entire time was frozen as well. When I came back several minutes later I was told by the driver that “I don’t like to wait. I will gladly drive you to any end of the Earth, but I can’t stand waiting for someone. It’s boring.”
There was this one time I did not bargain the fare. That was because I was too shocked to argue. I absentmindedly started talking to the driver in English and he responded… in English! As it turned out, the driver held a masters degree in both Persian and English and had a vast knowledge of physics and math. He was very talkative and had an opinion on everything that passed by. I, only had one question that dominated my mind: how can a person having attained such education be a rickshaw driver?! When I did manage to ask him that, he looked visibly shattered, told me that was something he didn’t want to talk about and drove away. Since then, I’ve really learnt not to judge or stereotype anyone driving a ‘puny vehicle with small wheels’.
– Photo by Fayyaz Ahmed
Like most traditional South Asian families, my paternal family happens to be huge. I don’t think my grandparents subscribed to the school of thought that believed that “less is more”. In fact, all evidence points towards the opposite. Judging by the sheer number of their offspring (10. There would have been more had medical science been able to achieve back then what it can today), I presume that conceiving, birthing and rearing children was a favourite pastime of theirs. Add to this their children’s spouses and their children, and in some cases grandchildren, the number of immediate relatives numbers just under a 100.
The population explosion can be best observed in the wedding portraits of my parents and those of my father’s siblings. As a tradition, one family photo is printed, framed and hung on the wall of my grandparents house. As you progress from the eldest sibling to the youngest, you can see the family growing bigger and bigger. As of right now, there has come a point at which the entire family cannot fit on one shaadi ka stage and the wedding photographer has to walk a great distance just in order to try and fit all of us in the frame. After the photo is printed and hung on the wall, we’re just short of using a magnifying glass to figure out which one of those countless round heads smiling back belongs to whom.
There are both pros and cons of being a part of such a large unit. The advantages could include the fact that there is never a dearth of uncles/aunts willing to babysit you, you’re never really truly alone in the world and there are people watching out for you. But most importantly, you get a lot of eidi on Eid. You also have a large number of first cousins to keep you company. It’s even better when they’re all born in or around the same year (I have seven cousins who were! Yes, judging by the looks of it, it was a very fertile year for the family). The cons can also include that you’re never, really, truly alone even when you really, truly want to be. Whenever our parents are away, we’re literally drowned with phone calls and visits from well-meaning relatives, all of whom want to make sure we’re fine, comfortable and not getting bored. The latter would be impossible especially considering that we often spend most of our time responding to them.
Coming to the communication in such a large ‘establishment’; as all grandmothers are wont to, mine also has a little black book full of phone numbers of every conceivable person who can possibly be called a relative. At times that includes people related to us in such a complicated permutation, it would take an experienced and highly-qualified anthropologist to figure out and remember just exactly how. Miraculously, embodying the memory of a matriarchal elephant, my grandmother remembers each and everyone one of them. She can rival any journalist when it comes to not only keeping tabs on family members but spreading any potential news there is within seconds of it actually happening.
One doesn’t realize the scale of one’s family unless one sees it from the perspective of an outsider. A couple of years ago, one of my khalas was visiting from the UK and we happened to take her to a family dinner. When it came time to leave, she first looked around at the number of people she would have to personally meet and say goodbye to. Then she stood in one conspicuous corner of the room, waved her hand in one grand sweeping gesture and said “Goodbye O kin of my brother-in-law”. While making sure there wasn’t a single family-member that I had forgotten to wish, and feeling very amused at khala’s behavior, I couldn’t help but think: how convenient!
I recently tried to get in touch with a person (ms X) I had interacted with briefly during my stint in college. I was told by a mutual friend that she had moved out of the country, quite abruptly, in the middle of pursuing her degree. Baffled, I couldn’t help but wonder why? The answer shocked, angered and saddened me at the same time. It continues to even today, even time I think about it.
Ms X was the epitome of a good girl. She got good grades, dressed modestly, was very polite and friendly and had a good relationship with her family, friends and acquaintances. One had heard of a person that Ms X referred to as her long-time boyfriend, someone she had full intentions of getting married to once she was through with college. As it turned out, for whatever reason, she decided to end her relationship with the said boyfriend. He apparently didn’t take it well and set out to destroy her in a manner that (despite it sounding a little dramatic) I can only assume is unforgiveable. He posted some intimate, somewhat explicit photographs of her online that he had taken from his cellphone. Knowing how the internet works, they were copied and hosted almost immediately on almost all of the popular servers.
Everyone saw them. In reaction, the students at the university stopped talking to her and ostracized her. People working in the professional field where her classmates were interning, saw them and pretty soon, she developed a ‘reputation’ there as well. Her neighbours saw them and began to talk, sometimes giving outright hostile looks to her family whenever they would pass by. She changed her cellphone number and her mother would screen her calls at home. Eventually she stopped attending college, took her semester exams separately and she, along with her entire family moved abroad. I don’t know what happened to the perpetrator, I don’t even know who he was: in the media posted online, his face is (conveniently) hidden.
At a themed get-together, in my attempt to find the restroom, I came across a room in which an acquaintance had ‘passed out’ on the bed and another individual (who, it turns out was simply posing, otherwise he had no business being parked where he was) lying beside her. What disturbed me was that there was a whole group of guests standing over them, ALL of them taking photos of the two from their cellphone cameras. The girl would find it hard to escape her ‘embarrassing moment’ as it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the photos would be shared from friend to acquaintance, making fun of the girl and what not.
Incidents in which cellphone cameras are being used to take intimate photos which are then shared by the photographer between first his friends and acquaintances and then (perhaps, out of malice) online are becoming worryingly common. They are also used a means through which the photographers blackmail their subjects. Teenage boys have been known to scare their (somewhat stupid girlfriends for allowing themselves to get in this position in the first place) girlfriends in the same manner, often to scare the girls from ‘dumping’ them.
Where one feels that in part, such incidents are just as much of a fault of the victim since they willingly (and stupidly) allow themselves to be recorded in such a manner, one also feels that the person recording the media needs to behave in a mature, responsible manner and give due thought to the (sometimes irreparable) damage he/she would inflict on, not only the victim, but also on the victim’s family and friends. In this age of instantly recordable and transportable media, both need to consider the consequences of the media they are using, for what purpose and how it can be exploited.
