42.

Every time Karachi bleeds, people scramble around looking for something to believe in. Once again, with almost 70 people dead in three days of violence, there are articles insisting that Karachi’s spirit, tolerance, pride and resilience will carry it through. Insisting that it will survive. Insisting that it will come out stronger.

I like to read hopeful pieces as much as the next person, but as much as I appreciate the feeling behind them, I’m getting tired of the sentimentalisation of Karachi and all its problems. People here aren’t resilient because of their fierce pride in their city. They’re resilient because they don’t have a choice. They are proud because they feel defensive about a part of the country whose problems are too often treated like they don’t belong to the rest of Pakistan. They are spirited because if you abuse and batter anybody’s home for long enough, they will eventually fight back. As for the tolerance-I don’t really see who can honestly call this city tolerant. It is tolerant of many things, but considering that most of the metropolis has been soaked crimson in ethnically-inspired killings, I wouldn’t ever call Karachi a place where we welcome outsiders with open arms.

There are beautiful things about this city, yes. Love for Karachi is love in spite of everything else. You will want to come home to Karachi simply because it is home, even though you know you won’t have electricity, running water or security at any given moment of the day. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is good enough anymore. Is it enough to be hopelessly, helplessly attached to a place while you watch it go up in flames? Do the people on the other side of the city, the ones whose children are being murdered and homes are being looted on an almost daily basis, feel this love? Or do they simply feel gut-wrenching, all-consuming grief?

Our sadness and our sentimentality will only take us so far. I say this as someone who has been sheltered on the “safe side” of this city. As someone who always maintained that the city will indeed bounce back. No, it won’t-I realize this now. It won’t bounce back, because it is too broken and too battered. Half of the city has been affected by the violence, while the other half have convinced themselves it is part and parcel of life in Karachi. The divide remains, between those who are hopeful and those who can’t afford to be. There is no great change coming unless the entire class structure-both literal and geographical, in this city-is altered. Until then, the best we can do is acknowledge how Karachiites who lost loved ones and protest on the streets every day are hurting-and acknowledge our privilege in not experiencing the same.  

41.

In all nation-states, history is distorted to create convenient narratives. Our country is suffering not only from the usual propagandisation of the past, but also because its fiction is being ignored as a source of both art and inquiry. The truth in the works of Faiz or Manto might be uncomfortable for us to face, but responsible education should be structured around seeking truth rather than obscuring it; understanding history rather than ignoring it.

Saadat Hasan Manto is one of the best-known fiction writers from the turbulent period during which the subcontinent gained independence and was partitioned. His stories focus on the sense of dislocation caused by the Partition, were popular in his time, and remain so today, although rarely at an institutional level. “Mere Sahib”, a comparatively little-read short story by the author, raises questions about something that many Pakistanis have asked themselves-who was Jinnah? Based on conversations with Jinnah’s ex-chauffeur, the story provides food for thought about 1940s India, a period we frequently shelf away as the “before”.

Alternately funny and moving, the story is a refreshingly honest appraisal of Jinnah the man, rather than Jinnah the politician. Azad, the chauffeur, offers bits of his own psychoanalysis as well as glimpses into the everyday quirks of the man. It is perhaps as much a description of Jinnah as it is a portrait of the fan following politicians had the potential to attract, as well as an extremely honest picture of the interests and passions that moved individuals to participate in the Pakistan movement on a personal level. While Manto bases his story on an interview, it is through his literary lens that we meet its characters. The chauffeur’s viewpoint, while intriguing in its own right, is ultimately a literary device which the author uses to illustrate his own feelings about Jinnah and his legacy.

Manto describes Azad’s support for the Muslim League as enthusiastic and youthful and driven by his age more than anything else: he was young and wanted a revolution, he enjoyed the thrill of marches and protests. But as he mentioned himself, “it was a time when Hindus did not try to kill anyone who uttered the word ‘Quaid-e-Azam’” He candidly describes his obsession with seeing the Quaid in person as well as the reason he believes he was selected to be chauffeur: Jinnah liked healthy, good-looking men, he said, perhaps because of his own physical weakness.

Some points that raised the most important questions were the ones about Jinnah’s connection (or lack thereof) with the average Indian Muslim. Manto provides comic scenes where Azad imitates Jinnah’s attempts to speak Urdu, which are astonishingly terrible for a man who insisted on championing the language as a uniting factor for all Indian Muslims. His legal acuity, which is never questioned, is depicted through his pool game: “He would spend a long time in his analysis. From this angle. From that angle…but if another angle come to his mind, he would stop, think, make sure.” Manto also allows Azad to throw in his own opinions generously; how Jinnah was as careful in the game of politics as he was on the pool table, how he loved his shoes “because they were always at his feet and moved according to him.” He paints a three dimensional picture of his sahib: intelligent, generous, disinclined towards small talk, bitter, lonely, removed, admiring of physical strength and beauty. What stands out most for the author in his conversation with Azad is the last question he asks him: “Did you ever hear Quaid-e-Azam say I’m sorry?”, and the answer he received: that if such a thing did ever happen, Jinnah would have removed those words from the dictionary forever. For the author, this “sums up the entire character of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah” as far as he was concerned.

This bitterness is emblematic of Manto’s work about Partition, but its popularity in the 1940s and 1950s illustrates that it was a bitterness that many readers empathized with. Though I am aware that historical inferences through literature can be risky, I believe that “fiction…has provided an intense window on the personal experiences of 1947,” in the words of historian David Gilmartin. Fiction such as Manto’s cannot be taken for its factual value, but its popularity underscores the psyche of those who appreciated it. In a time when history, literature and art are all crying for their fair share of attention in Pakistan, Manto is only one example of an author who is largely ignored in formal education. If we really want to create a society where people are encouraged to think, inquire and above all, read, reclaiming authors who write in the vernacular languages would be a wise step to take.

---

40.

A Mount Holyoke College brochure arrived in the mail today. For once, a college envelope was for my sister, not me. I admit I stole it-for a while. I took it to my room and stared at every page for a long time.
It was strange to think that I held a version of the same booklet a few years ago. It was strange to flip through it and see familiar faces, familiar places. It was strange to see a place you consider home being advertised to you. The whole experience of half an hour (yes, I spent that long on it) was a bit surreal.
There was a photograph of a group of students sitting around a professor in a politics class. I stared at that one for a long time. The round room, the long windows, the professor's face, the bottles of vitamin water on someone's desk-it was all so real. So rememberable. So rememberous. But it felt a million years away. It was the first time I thought "wow, that was a long time ago" even though it's barely been half a year.
Karachi has a quicksand quality about it. You fall in and you can't get out. I don't mean this as a bad thing, but once you're in it, you're hardly going to worry about what's outside it. It doesn't allow you to. I wonder if a few years from now, I'll look at photographs of Karachi and stare at them, because they are advertisements for a place I call home. I wonder if I'll recall the smell of gasoline, salt and warm air and long for it, the way I suddenly recalled the smell of falling leaves and my dorm room. When will I see something from my home right now and think-that was a million years ago?

39.

It seems that for every step we take forward, we take two steps back. Pakistan has been unsuccessfully struggling with the concept of land reform for decades. As other Muslim societies move forward, ours is still debating whether or not the concept is Islamic.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan’s recent condemnation of the MQM land reform bill is unsurprising, but frustrating.

Keeping in mind that our constitution is not secular and religious hurdles to legislation will always be present, religious debates over certain issues have outlasted our tolerance for them. As long as our religious parties are populated mostly by political stakeholders, rather than Islamic scholars, their statements will be difficult to swallow.

It may well be true that Islam - narrowly defined as what was practiced during the lifetime of the prophet and ignoring all the religious scholarship that has been undertaken since - does not put a cap on how much wealth an individual can own. However, in the same vein, “Islam” in such a narrow context also does not have an opinion on modern farming practices. Or the MQM. Or feudalism in South Asia.

The list of things that Islam does not expressly forbid simply because they may not have existed 1,500 years ago is endless. It is vital for the JUP, or any political party for that matter, to advance beyond their present rhetoric and allow for deeper and broader interpretations of religious law. Simply saying that a law does not exist is not enough; certainly not when millions of Pakistanis are bonded labourers or languishing in the personal prisons of wealthy landowners.

Unfortunately, a resistance to either the bill or its detractors is likely to be turned into a brawl with bias and name-calling from both sides. The debate about whether Pakistan was intended as a secular or Islamic state rarely progresses beyond the simplistic allegations of “what Jinnah wanted” and turns ugly far too quickly.

With our (lack of) land reforms preventing economy or society from progressing, it is high time that creative dialogue is initiated on the subject. Until then, it is likely that the discussion about vitally important developments, such as breaking the backbone of feudalism, will remain mired in accusations of being either extremist or godless.

back.

I FINALLY HAVE INTERNET AT HOME.
For anyone who still bothers reading this, I haven't been able to upload a thing for weeks. Now to get to the actual writing (and uploading stuff that's been getting published elsewhere in the blogosphere).

38.

The Ayodhya verdict that was delivered yesterday showcased considerable maturity on the part of the Indian judiciary. I won't get into the specifics of how justice could be achieved on the issue of Babri Mosque, simply because that requires a discourse on Indian domestic politics from the 1980s onwards. Politically speaking, however, the decision to divide the land, and the manner of division, made absolute sense. Had the courts made a decision in favour of either side, there would have been violence and rioting, to say the least. A pro-Muslim decision would have been like gift wrapping more votes for the BJP, while a pro-Hindu decision would have spoiled the Congress' supposedly left-of-centre image and caused riots across the subcontinent.

My only objection to the verdict is the some of the issues on which it was based. The first question the court considered was whether Ayodhya was truly the birthplace of Ram. What business is it of the judiciary to be making statements about whether or not someplace was the birthplace of a god? It firstly assumes a belief in the divine, which strictly speaking, a secular state can not do. Secondly, it presupposes that such a divine figure had a physical birth place. Even if the court was making this decision based on theological advice from religious authorities, there is still no absolute way to prove where anybody was born, least of all for a court of law.

Secondly, it asked whether the Babri Masjid was built according to the tenets of Islam. Islam forbids the building of mosques on desecrated religious sites, which the spot in Ayodhya may indeed have been in the fifteenth century. On that count, the mosque might have been un-Islamic. However, the motivations of the Sangh Parivar in wanting to tear it down were certainly not the preservation of the true Islamic character of the mosque, so the issue should not have been treated as such. Also, it plunges the present Indian judiciary into the murky territory of litigating issues that arose literally centuries before the birth of the modern Indian state. How far back can one possibly litigate? Does this mean crimes committed in the colonial era are also for the Indian and Pakistani courts to decide on today?

The issue of Babri Masjid was deeply symbolic, and the judges in Lucknow did a good job of providing a reasonable verdict keeping mind the charged nature of the problem. However, if it had been treated like a case of disputed territory from the very beginning, rather than the ideologically-based struggle the RSS had hoped it would become, a great deal of communal tension might have been defused years ago.

37.

I am so sick of the Dr Aafia case. I refuse to read a single more so-called news item about yet another politician jumping on the shewasinnocentUSAhatesmuslims bandwagon. She probably was innocent of the crime of which she was convicted-shooting a soldier. She probably was guilty of the crime of which she wasn't convicted-supporting Al-Qaeda. I doubt it matters one way or another whether her story is fabricated or not, since the courts have refused to try her for the terrorism allegations. The only thing worth mentioning in the entire case is that the United States ignored due process.

The fact that she was tried in a court of law although her arrest and detention were illegal and overseas shouldn't have been overlooked-by U.S. residents. For Pakistanis to be screaming themselves hoarse about a miscarriage of justice is ludicrous on several levels. For one thing, no amount of screaming in this country will make any difference to the American judiciary. For another thing, if due process for our citizens is really what anyone cares about, they should probably begin by standing up in defense of Pakistanis who have been languishing in prisons around the world since 9/11. They should probably demand that America return all the other people from this country who have suffered in the war on terror and been kidnapped or tortured by intelligence agencies without trial. They should probably make a hue and cry about all those who have lost everything at the hands of justice systems but haven't been lucky enough to be afforded the title of qaum ki beti.

Really, is this the only beti our qaum could find? Notwithstanding that Aafia Siddiqui might be innocent, this country has thousands of "daughters" who deserve justice a great deal more, by simple virtue of being Pakistani citizens and residents. However heartening it is to see our backward leadership supposedly making a stand for women's rights, it would be far more heartening to see them carry the fight to prisons where so many women are awaiting justice in our own obscenely sluggish courts. It's convenient how governments in both the East and the West decide to care about women's emancipation when it suits them; even more convenient when they find a single figurehead who will symbolize their good intentions. Not so convenient for us ordinary citizens is how quickly we are all forgotten. Do all women and illegally detained prisoners in this country need to be on the CIA radar to get attention?
The Pakistan government had a right to demand that Aafia Siddiqui be tried in court as a U.S. citizen (which she was) and be sentenced accordingly (which she was, whether anyone likes the verdict or not). The angry protestors on the streets, led by opportunistic politicians, however, have an obligation to be true to their supposed values and fight the good fight in the name of all torture, all sexism, all miscarriages of justice, all illegal detainment. We are tired of hearing the same old nonsense, and selective campaigning just won't do anymore.

36.

I don't know anybody my age who has ever had faith in Pakistani democracy. It's a sad but true fact that those of us born post-Zia, having grown up watching the Benazir-Nawaz Sharif-Musharraf merry go round, can place little faith in concrete change. At any rate, things to seem to be getting progressively worse. It is rare to find a country where children are born to parents who remember a more liberal and tolerant society, but we are living in one of them and are used to our elders' reminisces about What Used To Be. Why do I find myself looking forward to the 2013 elections then-if they ever happen?

For someone who came out of the womb feeling cynical about our leaders, I am excited at the thought that I might be able to exercise my vote to throw a government out. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen, but the prospect is exciting. The last time the country held elections and made the tragic mistake of bringing the current regime into power, I couldn't have cared less. I was newly eligible to vote and couldn't find a single contender I wanted to see in office. This might be the case again. I'm just curious to see whether anything new comes up in the next three years. I'm curious to see whether our collective national frustration will be exercised in the voting booth rather than on the streets with bombs strapped to chests. I wonder if this is what people in real democracies feel like-do they look forward to exercising their right to try and kick someone out, rather than bringing someone in?

Sure, it might not work. Sure, the next guy might be worse, who knows. Something tells me though that Pakistanis have had enough, and no matter how hard we try, we can't ever as a nation seem to give up our obsession with politics. Bring on the elections; I think more of us might want to vote this time. We might actually have Zardari to thank for something after all-he's inspiring us to have hope in democracy long enough to see his sorry ass leave.

35.

When I was twelve, I would tell people that when I grow up, I'm going to plant sunflowers all over Karachi. I thought of starting a campaign that would leave the streets clean and tree-lined, with flowers bursting out of every corner. I imagined I would do it, because I was sure of myself, sure that my plan would succeed. I imagined the idea would be embraced by all Karachiites, because who wouldn't want to look out their car windows and see the upturned faces of bright yellow flowers?
I dropped watermelon seeds into some dirt once, waiting for a plant to grow. It didn't. I put it down to my black thumbs, but looking back, it probably wasn't my thumbs, only my innocent desire to believe I had so much control over the unyielding patch of dry earth.
In Karachi, "sore eyes" takes on a whole new meaning. I feel as if my eyes are literally aching for a hint of beauty. I stare out my car window when I pass through Saddar and Old Clifton, trying to absorb the finer points of the architecture and old trees through the ugly structures surrounding them. Last time, I scanned the roads for a place, any place, where I could scatter a few seeds, in case I ever launch my plan of so many years ago. I couldn't find one that hadn't been trampled on by tar or cement.
The thought that there is no place for anything to grow makes me panic a little.
The thought that Karachi's soil has become hardened, hostile, disbelieving. An earth that questions why I would even want sunflowers.
I'm not someone who hungers for natural beauty or simply likes to see a lot of trees around. Trees would be lovely, but I would take anything at this point. I smiled a little when I saw that someone had installed pretty little lights along one road which happened to have electricity. Then I noticed all the lights were shaped like the Kaaba. There is nothing wrong with expressing your love for the Kaaba, but is a religious reminder the only reason anyone will do anything anymore? What happened to beauty for the sake of beauty, lights for the sake of lights?
Beauty might be low on the list of priorities for this city's residents, but I think a few flowers might do us all a lot of good.

Disclaimer

On some days I write essays that I choose not to share with the world. This doesn't mean I'm not writing one every day, it just means I won't blog it. I'm going to keep numbering the ones on the blog in order though, cause I like the way it looks.

34.

I can never recall what day it is, where I kept my cell phone or what I had for breakfast this morning, but I have a ridiculously good memory for irrelevant things that happened very long ago. Unfortunately, I wasn't bestowed with the gift of an incredible short-term memory, so I can't ever really pride myself on remembering things. I do, however, take the phrase "ringing a bell" to a whole new level. Bells go off in my head about five thousand times a day, as random smells and colours and comments remind me of something that happened when I was two or six or eleven.
It's usually instantaneous. I can never explain this to people who don't have a good sense of smell or an olfactory memory, but the smell of the air can take me back in a second to another day fifteen years ago which had the same smell. If there is a slight breeze which smells like traffic, chances are I will have a flashback to opening my car door in 1992. You can probably imagine how I spend most of my time having tiny little flashbacks. I've tried telling people I'm not spaced out or anything, I just keep remembering things. Nobody gets it. If you get it, please share it with me.
The other day, something literally rang a bell. The tiny ghungroos at the bottom of someone's window blinds moved and instead of the usual clear flashback, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it reminded me of. I remembered something round, something silver, something to do with a spoon, something to do with my grandfather, a yellow toybox, a room with high ceilings. It took me longer than usual to piece together the irritatingly disconnected rememberings into a coherent aha moment. Someone gave me a real silver rattle when I was born, which lay around our house for a long time. It made the exact same sound as the tiny ghungroos on the blinds.
What amazing satisfaction it gave me to remember.
This means I don't really have an amazing memory. I just remember what I rehearse, and thanks to my sense of smell, I've rehearsed every stupid moment of my life because it corresponds with smelling something. Apparently, back when I had silver rattles, I paid more attention to sound than smell.
Since I'm a would-be historian and not a would-be psychologist, I have no idea what this says about the human brain, but it says plenty about the past. No wonder I'm obsessed with the past when I return to it (on a micro-level) so many times a day. It just takes me one step closer to my time-machine fantasy.

33.

Let me first say, I will obviously not manage my goal of one hundred essays in one hundred days, thanks to my ten-day hiatus from the blogosphere. In a hundred and ten days, maybe. But not a hundred. The disappointment of this was preventing me from jumping on my laptop and writing an essay yesterday, while I was still in my "what's the point if I don't get a hundred in a hundred" funk, but I got over it. I usually get over things pretty fast.
So...I'm back! And how I missed my daily exercise. Contrary to what you might believe, it was neither laziness nor lack of inspiration that kept me away from writing. Still, the break was good. It taught me a lot of things, one of them being that I need to write simply because mental notes do.not.work. They just don't. When beautiful ideas go floating past you in your sleep, there is absolutely no point in telling yourself you will wake up and record them, because by morning, all you'll remember is the missed opportunity.
I also learned that a break can provide enough time to think of all sorts of essay ideas that were missing before. Where ten days ago I was pestering everyone I knew for whatdoIwriteabout? tips, my brain is suddenly exploding with ideas. I don't think I'll be able to stop when my hundred days (or hundred and ten) are up. Every day that I skipped an essay, I felt anxious and unsettled, like I hadn't put on the right underwear or had forgotten to brush my teeth. I also felt guilty. There are stories demanding to be told in the world, and I haven't been telling them.
It's good to be back.

32.

When I go to watch a movie in Karachi, I am willing to overlook all the things that are common to the city. I don't complain about the electricity going in the middle of an interesting scene, the terrible print, the bad bhangra songs that blare in the intermission, the fact that there is a 20 minute intermission at all...none of it really bothers me. The only thing that seriously does is the ridiculous number of babies that people bring to watch movies that are rated R for language, sex and violence.

You might think it is cringeworthy to watch embarrassing scenes on TV with your parents or grandparents, but think again. There is nothing as cringeworthy as hearing someone on a big screen say "Suck my dick, asshole!" before slitting someone's throat, while parents and their toddlers happily share their popcorn. You might think I have no right to judge, but honestly, some people just shouldn't reproduce. I don't care if they can't afford maids or nannies and don't have anyone to babysit. The quality of the cinematic experience in Karachi isn't so amazing that you can't live without it until your kids are old enough to either understand the movie or stay home.

For a country that has adopted an extremely prudish attitude towards sex, some people seem remarkably cool with kids absorbing inappropriate sexual references with their baby food. Do you really want to shush your five year old when he asks "What does he mean he took off her clothes?" in a packed theatre? Can you really enjoy any film knowing that your 3-foot-high genius is going to tell all his friends what the F word is? Do you really want to spend 500 rupees on giving your children this educational experience?

My anxiety at the sheer amount of bad parenting and stupid life choices around me prevent me from really enjoying any movie. Yes, I am easily distracted. You try to passively pay attention to a screen when a week-old baby is wailing its lungs out because its parents have brought it to a war movie full of people's heads being blown off. You try and have fun on a night out when you wonder why someone doesn't realise that their nearly naked infant is probably howling because it's freezing in the theatre. It's like tolerating child abuse for an hour and a half straight.

Then people wonder why so many idiots make it through our educational system. Look at how they're being raised! I bet Zardari also enjoyed his little family night at the Bambino cinema. It obviously did wonders for his personal growth. This is where it all begins. Age 1.5, seated at the Seaview Cineplex, watching Cameron Diaz sexually proposition Tom Cruise before one of them is shot.

And you thought Uncle Sargam was a little creepy.

31.

Being an adult sucks. I'm not one of those people who just wakes up one morning and panics at the realisation of responsibility. Contrary to what a lot of people might believe, I'm almost always responsible. I almost always have been, to a thoroughly boring extent. That's why I can't believe how difficult it is for me to adjust to the daily grind of a steady job and no school.

I've tried in vain to find something very wrong with my job. I've tried criticizing it from every angle in the one month I've been employed. I've overthought my general lack of excitement and happiness in the past few weeks. There is no good reason for it. I'm just bored. Adulthood is boring.

I terribly miss my own time. I had planned to do so many things once I have time. There are so many things to do. There are so many things to do before more responsibility sets in. Theoretically, I have more time now than I did in college, but I know now that being an "adult" isn't about doing what I want. It's about learning that I usually can't. That I usually won't be able to. That there really isn't any such thing as my own time.

I used to pack my day with so many things to do I barely had time to breathe and literally didn't have time to sleep or eat. I thrive on pressure. On productivity. What is it about sharing my life with others again that has slowed it down so much? Suddenly, I have gone from nonstop action to far too much waiting around. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting to learn patience, waiting to be able to do what I want. It terrifies me that a time like that might never come. I hate self-help books that tell you to seize the moment, the time is ripe, blah blah blah. It's not that easy, I want to scream. On what planet do people with work and loans and families and curfews suddenly take control of their own lives one fine day?

Is growing up about giving up? Is it about finding a place in what they call our collectivist society and falling into it? Is it about cutting back on what you want to do to accomodate everything else? Because it can't be. The past few years of my life can't have been an isolated bubble. I know I can do five thousand things a day, and not being able to drives me INSANE.

Wish me luck. I will either abandon adulthood or my sanity, because I'm not giving up.

30.

Dear Punjab government and censorship authorities,
While we all know that the prosperous, peaceful times we live in must leave you all with plenty of free time on your hands, your latest act of stupidity belies that you might be a tad overpaid for sitting around debating nothing. Of all the inane things to do, you have decided to ban the one Hindu cartoon that airs in Pakistan. The one program in the plethora of absolute crap which we are forced to bear on our television screens, which was the easiest possible target for you. After all, with only a million or two Hindus around, you can easily avoid the tire burning brigade that you would ordinarily come up against.

I was a bit confused when I first heard that one program on TV is supposedly going to corrupt our children's pure Muslim morals, go against our Pakistani culture and encourage citizens to fraternize with the enemy. I suppose if I'm fair, you might have a point though. Watching an animated Ganesh or Hanuman dance across a screen for 30 minutes a week can in fact brainwash our impressionable youth into believing they should renounce Islam, cross the border, double-cross the ISI, sell their souls, etcetera. After all, we have already observed how Dora the Explorer has duped our kids into believing that they are Hispanic, and Sesame Street into forcing us all to think we are hairy muppets and should refer to ourselves in the third person. I suppose if you give a decent amount of thought to the topic, it can be inferred that Hindu cartoons will cause mass conversion to Hinduism. The fact that your faith in Islam or what you call your Pakistani culture is quite so delicate that it requires censorship to maintain is irrelevant, I suppose. To each his own, but at the rate you are going, oh holy ones, I'm afraid your souls might need more saving than the children who misguidedly watch animated shows about mythology.

I might have to put the (lack of) logic in the actual desire to censor aside for a minute though, since God knows censorship is awfully arbitrary these days and I have no control over what you choose to make your issue of the day. However, I am compelled to point out a slight problem with your definition of "Pakistani cultural heritage". I dislike mistakes; I think if you are going to make a point and defend it against all odds, you should at least do us the service of getting your facts right. You might have skipped eighth grade (chances are, with your fake degrees you probably did), but um-we didn't actually inherit our culture from an alien land. The lines that were drawn across the subcontinent in 1947 did not unfortunately erase about a millenia of heritage that we got from being-don't shoot me-Indian. I hate to break it to you, but some people across the border (the Hindu kind) actually speak the same language as us, not to mention other equally unfortunate similarities. A little deduction will lead you to the conclusion that we might share a little culture in common with Hindus. I hate to break it to you, but denying that Hinduism and its mythology plays a part in your pure Pakistani culture would require that you stop eating biryani. Immediately. It's not our cultural heritage. From now on, you might want to consider a ban on all food that doesn't originate from the holy land, because it doesn't fit too well into our culture and all.

I know that was hard for you to hear. I know you probably stopped mid-bite to consider the misery of giving up your God-given right to enjoy the best parts of your culture. I know you are reconsidering your obsession with being Arab (and therefore a better Muslim by your own definition). But please, don't let me distract you. You have to get back to business. I suggest that you start by banning a certain fake cleric whose show advises your children to kill Ahmaddis in the name of Islam but spare chipkalis in case they are really jinns in disguise. Then you might want to move to ban news shows which barge into the tents of flood survivors who observe purdah and terrify them into sharing their stories because misery sells. Maybe when you're done with all that, you can spare a glance for a Hindu cartoon. You know, the one that a few thousand Hindu kids who can afford TV like to watch so they feel like their cultural heritage isn't being ignored. While you're at it, feel free to eliminate TV shows with yourselves airing your moronic opinions, because I am afraid that being exposed to such content makes me think in expletives that are not becoming to a Pakistani Muslim at all.

Yours sincerely,

A still-Musalman who watches TV.