A Nation of Ches

so as some of you may know, i have repeatedly professed my distaste for blogging about politics. but the kind of job i have means that i am always involved in reporting on them, and of course i have opinions on that. so i decided to write a political-flavoured post for this blog's sautan, my dawn blog. unfortunately, i decided to make a "statement" by posting an early draft of the post as a tweet, instead of mailing it directly to my long suffering editor. by the time we got around to cleaning it up, it was wednesday. and by then a far more famous and respected columnist who i've been accused of copy-paste-materialing had sent in his piece, which referenced similar themes as mine. and so, in a twist which is rather fitting considering my penchant for introspection, i am left as the che i was railing about. here is that never-to-be-published post.



Last week, I was part of a momentous, historic occassion. I was present at Tahrir Square when Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation. Almost immediately, the crowd went into raptures. People young and old hugged and kissed one another, communists and Islamists began to engage in consensual copulation, women emerged simultaneously adorned in burqas and bikinis reading aloud Germaine Greer's tafsir on the Quran while calorie-free chocolates began to sublimate out of thin air as everyone's bank balances were stuffed with all the money they had dreamed of.

Oh no wait, that was the fantasy I concocted after reading what all of the Pakistani corner of the blogosphere had to say on the events in Egypt. 

Which is surprising, because the more appropriate Pakistani reaction to the events on the Arab street should have been "Been there, Done that."

Yet it seems that all of us are afflicted with the sort of short-term memory loss which only a prolonged usage of opiates can bring upon. 

But in either case, a simple visit to google would have reminded the Sons of Revolution that Pakistan has not only been always "with it" when it comes to global revolution fads, it has actually been ahead of its time in the latest version. After all, its only been three years since a prolonged civil society instigated popular movement upended a decade-long military dictatorship, benevolently enlightened as it was.

And that was only the latest in a long history of "people power" movements in Pakistan. After all, when the entire world from Paris to Prague was whipped up in revolutionary frenzy in 1968, Pakistani students were leading their own marches in the homeland. The decimation of our eastern half, and their subsequent genocide, was also instigated when people power demanded its rights. And Mr Bhutto's decision to lengthen his proverbial beard and ban discos, daroo and 'deviant' sects was also on the back of street protests. And these examples don't even begin to consider the rent-a-rallies every other social/economical/political/veena malikal issue seem to spawn in Pakistan.

And yet, without ever considering these stone-cold events of reality, there are those complaining that Pakistan's revolutions are fake, reactionary, chaotic, and futile. 

Anyone making this claim seems to forget that traditionally, revolutions involve lots of blood shed, lots of chaos and violence. And in the recent past, these have ended up with regimes which rack up the repressiveness. Those that don't bequeath an all-powerful Eternal Leader/Supreme Ayatollah/Venerated Sun God leading an all-draconian Big Brother government end up with a lot of the old faces trying to dance to different tunes. 

But still, we Pakistanis act like the crazed Mom visiting Shaadi.com, convinced that someone better out there exists for their molly-coddled ideals of revolution and freedom.

So the obvious question is - why do we do this?

The answer lies in a t-shirt. 

The one I wore in the prime of my youthful naivety, the one that so many others have also bought in similar moments. You know the t-shirt, the one with the black-and-white picture of a forgotten revolutionary looking really damn hot? You know, this t-shirt. The t-shirt we all bought believing that wearing it would somehow proclaim us as intellectual radicals, a t-shirt which would deliver us from injustices and a t-shirt which would redress inequity while still giving us time to party. The t-shirt which was little different from any other sold at Voo Doo Tees or Zainab Market, the t-shirt which allowed all of us to buy into a culture of heady literature, rousing rock, timeless slogans, and the t-shirt which allowed us to pretend that all revolutions were as simple, rewarding and comforting as the joy of wearing a cotton t-shirt on a warm day. 

The t-shirt which would make us Che.

The irony being of course, that we all succeeded into turning in to Che, just not in the language we had intended to be.