4.

There are several armies in this country. There are of course, the regular Faujis. They're a dependable lot; one can generally rely on them to own vast amounts of land/clubs/hospitals, produce decent quality corn flakes and stage a military coup every decade or so. Then there is the army of God, as they see themselves. This is a versatile lot-they function as terrorists, loony ideologues, charitable organisations, scapegoats and fodder for dozens of conspiracy theories that fuel drawing room conversations. Lastly, there is the great army of liberal Pakistanis who represent enlightened moderation.

Oh wait, just kidding.

Let me rephrase that: lastly, there is a miniscule group of elite Pakistanis who believe that by going about their daily lives in the manner most convenient to them, they are waging some kind of war on the dark forces at work in the country. Art is no longer art, fashion is no longer fashion, great food is no longer great food. It is all part of Showing the World The Real Pakistan, Challenging Extremism, and similarly lofty aims. Yes, it does sound a bit ludicrous in writing, doesn't it?

This is not to say that the elite should live their lives differently, or conform to ideals they can't relate to. It is merely an attempt to call attention to the cowardice and delusion of statements littering the English media about how liberal Pakistanis project a good image of the country abroad, how Pakistan Fashion Week is a slap in the face for extremists, how throwing amazing parties showcases the progressive values of the hosts. Let's be serious now. Nobody outside of Pakistan really cares about how the elite live their lives here. The evils that plague the rest of society will continue to plague the rest of society in spite of the beliefs or behavior of a few hundred Pakistanis, and unless the Taliban are being invited to enjoy and tolerate Fashion Week, it will have absolutely no bearing on extremism in the rest of society. It is here that I will come to the most important and most vexing point of all: wild parties do not a progressive thinker make. Wild parties are fun, and progressive values are very important, but the assumption that there is a natural causal relationship between the two is bordering on idiocy. Somewhere along the line, the idea that one must be well-read or strive for education, tolerance and humanity was lost in the average socialite's definition of enlightenment.

So fight on, brave armies, but don't squabble with one another over influence. Continue to stage coups/enforce Shariah law/throw parties, but for the sake of rationality, don't fool yourself into thinking your cause is any more noble than it really is.

3.

People keep asking nowadays how the terrible things that keep happening are allowed to happen "in this day and age". This strikes me as extremely strange. Was there ever a day and age worse than this? Was there ever another time, another people, another generation with the same ability to swallow violence with such casual irony? Of course, we all know the answer is yes. Having lived only a couple decades or so, I can hardly speak for other times or people or generations. However, one thing I know we can proudly claim as our very own special prize as children of This Day And Age is dead baby jokes. Yes, I said it. Dead baby jokes/nuclear war jokes/apocalypse jokes, these brilliant artefacts of 2010 are most certainly ours and ours alone.

Assuming casual, dark humour isn't a trait reserved for hipsters who like to wear irony on their T-shirts (in a way that is subtle yet in your face, note the double irony of wearing irony), we are all party to the guilty appeal of laughing at the grotesque. I'm not going to condemn this; in fact, I fully support it. Parental horror aside at the crude jokes that drive home baby boomers' fears that we are indeed a depraved lot, it's only human to laugh when it's clearly futile to shed tears.

Perhaps the images we are constantly bombarded with on the ubiquitous media that it is so in vogue to criticize nowadays really have desensitized us. Actually, there's really no question about it; the media uses grief to sell products. We do distractedly note the merits of Surf Excel washing powder versus "Ordinary Brands" while we wait to hear the death toll of the most recent tragedy; we do acknowledge the refreshing taste of Limopani with the irritating ding of the timecheck before the news. Horror is a sellable commodity on the news, and it is as open to being poked fun at as anything else we buy. How can you cry at human loss when it is packaged for you with your favourite brand of tea or toilet paper?

I believe I am digressing from my support of morbid humour, but the reason I am getting at is not that shock value or depressing content desensitizes us, but that it humanizes us. Talking endlessly (casually, but endlessly) about the chaos we are spiralling towards, texting about the most recent evidence of corruption and joking about dead children is not evidence of callousness, but a desire to possess it. Who among us wouldn't want to be completely immune to fear, to not smell it's sickening stench or wonder where we will go when Things Get Worse, as we wait and plan for the time when everything is so wrong we Must Leave? It's like crying until you laugh, or laughing until you cry, until you can't tell the difference anymore.

2.

Dear Failed State,

What is really left to be said regarding your supposed Failure? All the usual things have been said: goodbye law and order, hello false democracy, fuck you Mr. President, etc. etc. In strictly statistical terms, of course you are a Failure, dear State. But don't make plans to blow up into nothingness (however good you are at Blowing Things Up) just yet. If one wants to be fair about it, it's not you, it's us. In fact, let's begin at the beginning: Attempts at forcing Nation-Statehood is a pretty stupid idea to begin with, and it's never been a good colour on you. Of course you failed at it.

Let's be responsible about this analysis of where you went Wrong. There are several places we could start:
a) 1600, when the East India Company decided to arrive
b) 1947, when you were born
c) some point between 1947 and now, TBD by various squabbling factions.
I'm going to scratch option (a) for now, because that merits a separate letter about your origins, and truth be told, we never really explained to you where you come from. I'll also have to dispense with option (c) because I'd rather not get political and point fingers at any of our Great Leaders, none of whom I would choose to lead you again. I think it's time we acted like two adults here and talked about birth.

You weren't really what anyone would call a planned birth. You were more of a pleasant surprise, even if the labour was long and hard, even murderous, one could say, and even if your parents were going through a period of confusion about who they want you be and how they would like to raise you. Your father made a speech 63 years and 1 day ago about freedom of religion at the same time as he made one about the Triumph of Islam, at the same time as he championed the poet-laureate who had brilliantly political ideas of his own, at the same time as he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan which never really wanted you anyway...you get the idea? The truth is hard, and the truth is, there is none really. Or if there was, it's been dead for 62 years, like a joke from another decade, being dredged up years later by people going through mid-life crises and attempting to relive the great trends of their youth. This is not a cynical explanation, dear State. It's simply the kindest way of saying, nobody knows who or what you really are and the collective confusion this creates has led to your multiple personality disorder today.

What matters now is that you understand and accept yourself who you are-a badly explained idea with a series of poor choices under your belt. What matters even more is that you quit trying to understand how you ended up this way, make better choices and choose to take your disorders with you to rehab. You may not have made your own bed, or at least not all of it-saying that is like saying your toes should suffer because someone flicked you in the eye, but you can make it easier to lie in. Rhetoric about democracy/dictatorship, enlightened moderation/religious guidance, fuck you Mr.President/fuck you Mr.Prime Minister/fuck you Mr. Chief Justice may be fun, but it's just so last year. I suggest you come out of your long stupor by beginning to think more (but not overthink, it is a guaranteed migraine), talk less, for God's sake talk less, and move beyond the circumstances of your birth into the hopefully wise sexageneranian you should now be. It's not (entirely) your fault, and we don't mind that you already Failed in the eyes of statistical evidence. Unless the world really is ending in 2012, there is endless time to right wrongs, provided of course you become less of a whiner and more of a doer.

Happy (Almost) Birthday, remember to have fun and try to be good.

Sincerely,

Your Citizen


Acknowledgement: Thank you to Zehra Nabi for writing the first letter :)

1.

Four years ago, I acquired the frequently distressing habit of recalling every single one of my dreams first thing every morning. It was all part of a desperate bid my parents made for me to understand my subconscious better. For one week of my life, I opened my eyes to my parents' unblinking, anxious faces, asking me what I had dreamt, what it felt like, what I felt like, what colour it was, what it could have meant, and I would dive back into the murky recesses of REM sleep...a car...a dog...a dog biting off somebody's leg...a long drive. And so it went, until I learned to dive in and out of dreams, coming up for air with broken recollections and holding my breath to remember farther back, with the talent of a seasoned swimmer. By now, there's hardly any diving required; I weave in and out of dreams while going about the mundane tasks of my weekdays, occasionally confusing something I saw or felt or smelled in the otherworld for something that happened in my realworld, straining to differentiate one from the other.

The otherworld is a dangerous place to indulge for too much time; it's where all your longings and fears and hopes mesh into a wild chase, or a film-grainy horror scene, or the paraphernalia of your childhood, and they pop up and distract you from correctly squeezing the toothpaste tube or closing the car door. They beg you to stay, they ask you to try and go back, but you won't ever find your way there once you've lost it.

There was a warm paper bag in my hand, rain in my hair and dampness in my boots, my fingers rubbed against the magnetic stripe of my card, bits of grass stuck to the soles of my shoes while I walked home in anticipation of dry clothes and the smell of winter-approaching hung about. There were children too, all seven my siblings, and a chimpanzee...and how happy we all were together. Sometimes, I know already how terribly I will miss the people I meet in this world, and I float out of it reluctantly and spend idle moments trying to recreate them, or hoping I meet them again. It's strange how a week of practice opened up my whole being to this otherplace, stranger still how it feels like home, how the tug of nostalgia lends itself to figments of my sleeping imagination. I still hope to be reunited with my seven siblings again; my chimpanzee; my wet hair; my warm paper bag, my home.