Dear Karachi,
I've been wondering these days what to write about. When I'm walking around Moho I have words swimming in my head, and sometimes I stop to take it all in. It's breathtaking, really. Especially the way it is right now, empty and serene.
Today I sat at the Thirsty Mind and looked out the window, and it was beautiful. I used to dream about this place. When I'm walking around I find it hard to believe that it's been two years, that I made it here and that I've come this far. I find it hard to recognize myself.
But this place doesn't move my soul to poetry. It doesn't tug at me the way you do. I feel affection, not all-consuming love. I've been told to stop romanticizing you, but how is that possible? How does one do that? You have been my muse for as long as I can recall, my oldest love affair. Even your worst failings I remember with a certain fondness I reserve for those I love entirely too much. Sometimes I dream about your salty air, the seaweed smell mixing faintly with the scent of camel dung, and then it escapes me when I open my eyes. One picture of you and something feels caught in my throat. I can't look for too long.
And now I don't want to look at pictures, because I'll see you soon, and breath your air, and when I wake up, it'll be under your skies. I might close my eyes a few times, blink to make sure it's all real. And then I'll sleep better than I have in months because you will surround me again.
Much love.
Showing posts with label Moho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moho. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
change
Today at dinner I told my friends I don't understand atheism. I don't mind it, and I don't hold it against anyone, but I do not comprehend it. For a bit someone thought I was expressing my disdain for those who don't believe in any higher power, because in this place a lack of comprehension can be translated into intolerance. We like having our politically correct lines ready, just in case we may have to jump to the defense. So I explained, told her that's not what I was implying. Not an instance of boutique multiculturalism, merely a genuine inability to understand.
Somehow even my statements seem to come out as attacks these days, and I know I should probably learn not to cause offense. Cause offense to yourself if you must, trample all over your soul and sensibilities, but never those belonging to someone else. Those aren't yours to walk on.I try to stick fastidiously by those rules, and it's easier here where others play the same game. Easier to listen, easier to appreciate, easier to learn. The power of dialogue and the importance of words.
But there's nothing more difficult than realizing that this place that I have treated for the past two years as a distant (but dear) love, partly out of my longing for home and partly because of the inevitably temporary nature of my time here, is slowly becoming the place I'm terrified of leaving and losing. We talk more about our bubble now that the bubble has completed half its life. Somehow, once this is gone I can see nothing but a looming disappointment in my interactions with people.
The ugly politics of privilege, the false convictions of being better, their world and then mine on peripheries, choosing love or choosing principles, the growing panic that the restlessness didn't stop when I had promised myself it would, the disgust with someone's illusions of self-importance, the shocks of reality.
"You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all of the time.."
Sylvia Plath obviously knew a thing or two.
Somehow even my statements seem to come out as attacks these days, and I know I should probably learn not to cause offense. Cause offense to yourself if you must, trample all over your soul and sensibilities, but never those belonging to someone else. Those aren't yours to walk on.I try to stick fastidiously by those rules, and it's easier here where others play the same game. Easier to listen, easier to appreciate, easier to learn. The power of dialogue and the importance of words.
But there's nothing more difficult than realizing that this place that I have treated for the past two years as a distant (but dear) love, partly out of my longing for home and partly because of the inevitably temporary nature of my time here, is slowly becoming the place I'm terrified of leaving and losing. We talk more about our bubble now that the bubble has completed half its life. Somehow, once this is gone I can see nothing but a looming disappointment in my interactions with people.
The ugly politics of privilege, the false convictions of being better, their world and then mine on peripheries, choosing love or choosing principles, the growing panic that the restlessness didn't stop when I had promised myself it would, the disgust with someone's illusions of self-importance, the shocks of reality.
"You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all of the time.."
Sylvia Plath obviously knew a thing or two.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
When I was 17 I met this woman. I decide she was one of the most amazing human beings I had ever encountered in my life, and I was right because she changed my life. When I look back at it, her time here probably changed her into the person I met. And then she changed me.
It's so strange because sometimes we forget what success means, and we start defining it in terms of how much we have. But then there are people who remind us that success is the number of people whose lives we touch and change, like magic that they had never anticipated but were grateful for nonetheless. She was the one person, apart from my mother, who taught me the meaning of strength.
We forget how many people we have to thank for the blessings we have everyday.
May each and every one of you find all the happiness in the world, because all of you certainly contributed to mine.
It's so strange because sometimes we forget what success means, and we start defining it in terms of how much we have. But then there are people who remind us that success is the number of people whose lives we touch and change, like magic that they had never anticipated but were grateful for nonetheless. She was the one person, apart from my mother, who taught me the meaning of strength.
We forget how many people we have to thank for the blessings we have everyday.
May each and every one of you find all the happiness in the world, because all of you certainly contributed to mine.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
I need to get my story straight.
Is this my battle to fight? Is it yours? Who gets to decide what's important and what isn't, or for that matter, what is entirely inconsequential? You hand me my priorities, you ask me to abide by them, and you want me to make you proud. You want a good daughter, wife, mother, sister, woman. You want me to free my thought, but only enough so I can give my unborn children a "good" upbringing, but you warn me not to go astray.
You define my rules, you tell me at the end of it all that I belong to a place and, because I have to return, I mustn't become too much of a stranger. Wisdom comes with age, they tell me every time. They tell me I don't know enough, I haven't seen enough. Here you are, they say, here is you in black and white. You will be nothing more, and nothing less, and we will love you for it.
Then there's them. They told me I could sleep with whoever I want, because it's my body. That I could parade around naked if I wanted to. That I could get fucked up and fucked and wake up in the morning and not regret it in the least. That you can discover your sexual identity if you step out of your heteronormative prisons. That we are social constructs, that nothing exists beyond our perceptions and the limits that define us. That I owe so much to this world, but not to the people who told me I had to be this or that, so I could flip them off and go on. Free giant fuck yous, and then some for the road. All the while I listened, bemused, interested, never entirely sure. Case studies, all of us to each other.
I get emails from the Feminist Collective, and wonder if I'll ever end up going, if I'll ever fight for the rights they think I should have, but probably don't.
I don't know where to begin that conversation, because I already have another set of rights, from another place and another time.
At the end of it, there's nothing but guilt. A little bit of disgust about my strange existential crisis, which fuels another one. Cycle away dear mind, you have nothing to lose.
You define my rules, you tell me at the end of it all that I belong to a place and, because I have to return, I mustn't become too much of a stranger. Wisdom comes with age, they tell me every time. They tell me I don't know enough, I haven't seen enough. Here you are, they say, here is you in black and white. You will be nothing more, and nothing less, and we will love you for it.
Then there's them. They told me I could sleep with whoever I want, because it's my body. That I could parade around naked if I wanted to. That I could get fucked up and fucked and wake up in the morning and not regret it in the least. That you can discover your sexual identity if you step out of your heteronormative prisons. That we are social constructs, that nothing exists beyond our perceptions and the limits that define us. That I owe so much to this world, but not to the people who told me I had to be this or that, so I could flip them off and go on. Free giant fuck yous, and then some for the road. All the while I listened, bemused, interested, never entirely sure. Case studies, all of us to each other.
I get emails from the Feminist Collective, and wonder if I'll ever end up going, if I'll ever fight for the rights they think I should have, but probably don't.
I don't know where to begin that conversation, because I already have another set of rights, from another place and another time.
At the end of it, there's nothing but guilt. A little bit of disgust about my strange existential crisis, which fuels another one. Cycle away dear mind, you have nothing to lose.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Sunday, June 12, 2011
4.
Every once in a while I come across something that makes me very glad that I had the choice and made the decision to study at a women's college. In South Hadley it can become difficult to see how choosing an institution can also be a statement of the politics you believe in. There are people who attend because they did not get accepted into their first choice colleges, there are those who become disillusioned with the somewhat militant versions of feminism (me being amongst them) that exist on campus, and then there's also the matter of becoming complacent about the bubble you find yourself in, and with the passage of time you inevitably start taking your environment for granted. It's easier to dumb yourself down at college more than anywhere else because you find yourself caught up in trying to maintain those grades you need to get into that graduate program you've wanted to be in for as long as you can remember now, because it will help you get that career you've always dreamed of. The things you were once passionate about either recede into a "temporary" insignificance because you promise yourself there will be time to attend to personal interests later, or they become part of your academics, and as much as you might love them there will be times when you feel sick of them because that's the difference between having to do something and wanting to do it.
My point is that these things never occurred to me while I was at Moho, and even if they did, it was easy to forget about them. Till I came back to Karachi. I've learnt again and again that distance gives you clarity.
Last night my friends and I were talking about a certain couple and their not-so-strange relationship. The boyfriend is an emotionally abusive, patriarchal, pig-headed and overly possessive waste of space, and the girlfriend is, accordingly, meek, obedient, afraid to death of him and acts as the fuel that feeds his already inflated ego. These kinds of relationships are fairly common, granted. However, what I fail to understand is that this girl is one of the few in a country like ours who have been given the opportunity to have a certain degree of autonomy over their lives, and yet here she is, willingly involved in an abusive relationship with someone who claims to love her but will refer to her as a whore if he catches her even saying hello to another man. While women all over Pakistan are involved in a struggle to be considered human beings and first class citizens who should be able to enjoy equal rights and liberties, should have access to fair justice and should be able to have a say in how they will live their lives, there is this girl who insults these struggles by allowing a person to determine every aspect of her life, down to when/if she can breathe.
While I am in no way disregarding any emotional attachments that come as part of being in love with someone, my main problem here is the abuse of choice. There is something absurd about being with someone who insists that you cannot be friends with girls who are not in committed relationships or are not married, because women who are single are a corrupting influence. She has chosen to be with someone who abuses her emotionally and perhaps even physically, but there are women who have to suffer the same kinds of relationships everyday of their lives without being given the choice to put their foot down and say no, I will not take your nonsense, I will not let you take ownership of my person, I will not let you make the decisions I should be making for myself, and I will not let you make me so dependent that I have to rely on you for my survival. And perhaps some will argue that she should be left alone, and I suppose they would have a point, but it wouldn't be one I believe in. By choosing to stay in a relationship so poisonous, this girl belittles me, she belittles my mother's struggle as a single parent to three daughters in a country so deeply steeped in sexism, Mukhtaran Mai's fight for justice, the work of institutions like Aurat Foundation and the common struggle of thousands of women, for many of whom it takes the form of hope that perhaps their daughters will not suffer like they are suffering.
I could say it in one line, or I could say it in a long post, but dear girl, you have no right. Really.
My point is that these things never occurred to me while I was at Moho, and even if they did, it was easy to forget about them. Till I came back to Karachi. I've learnt again and again that distance gives you clarity.
Last night my friends and I were talking about a certain couple and their not-so-strange relationship. The boyfriend is an emotionally abusive, patriarchal, pig-headed and overly possessive waste of space, and the girlfriend is, accordingly, meek, obedient, afraid to death of him and acts as the fuel that feeds his already inflated ego. These kinds of relationships are fairly common, granted. However, what I fail to understand is that this girl is one of the few in a country like ours who have been given the opportunity to have a certain degree of autonomy over their lives, and yet here she is, willingly involved in an abusive relationship with someone who claims to love her but will refer to her as a whore if he catches her even saying hello to another man. While women all over Pakistan are involved in a struggle to be considered human beings and first class citizens who should be able to enjoy equal rights and liberties, should have access to fair justice and should be able to have a say in how they will live their lives, there is this girl who insults these struggles by allowing a person to determine every aspect of her life, down to when/if she can breathe.
While I am in no way disregarding any emotional attachments that come as part of being in love with someone, my main problem here is the abuse of choice. There is something absurd about being with someone who insists that you cannot be friends with girls who are not in committed relationships or are not married, because women who are single are a corrupting influence. She has chosen to be with someone who abuses her emotionally and perhaps even physically, but there are women who have to suffer the same kinds of relationships everyday of their lives without being given the choice to put their foot down and say no, I will not take your nonsense, I will not let you take ownership of my person, I will not let you make the decisions I should be making for myself, and I will not let you make me so dependent that I have to rely on you for my survival. And perhaps some will argue that she should be left alone, and I suppose they would have a point, but it wouldn't be one I believe in. By choosing to stay in a relationship so poisonous, this girl belittles me, she belittles my mother's struggle as a single parent to three daughters in a country so deeply steeped in sexism, Mukhtaran Mai's fight for justice, the work of institutions like Aurat Foundation and the common struggle of thousands of women, for many of whom it takes the form of hope that perhaps their daughters will not suffer like they are suffering.
I could say it in one line, or I could say it in a long post, but dear girl, you have no right. Really.
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