What is a troll?

what is a troll?

ostensibly, a troll is someone who does something on the internet to provoke a response, and not just any response, but a down-and-dirty, bitter-and-raw, bile-bursting, gut-wrenching, throat-pharroing emotional response.

but what if we've gotten it wrong.

what if our emotions have so clouded our judgement that we don't realise that everyone we brand a troll is just someone with a different opinion from our own.

but i was still left wondering, why?

that's a funny question - why.

safieh argues that pakistan is a country where no one asks why.

no one bothers questioning why they do the things they do - why we eat what we eat, why we burn what we burn, why we think what we think, why we believe so recklessly in what we believe.

take dance practices for example.

in a sense, they're meant to be a pleasing combination of an opportunity to meet and hang out, to celebrate, to ogle at and mingle with the opposite sex, to let your hair down, to practice and perform a token of your joy for someone's marriage.

yet in reality, dance practices are generally a military drill without uniforms, with lots of anger both suppressed and bursting, an orgy of outbursts both personal and general, an advertisement for the necessity of deodorants, and an extremely tense and volatile atmosphere that pushes friendships and tendons to their respective limits. instead of a shits and giggles, there is a heady resolve to create some colossal work of art that would put the Boloshi Ballet of Moscow to shame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKyr6AdiJeE&feature=channel_video_title

there are those who decide that their will is God, and proceed to embrace the fire & brimstone version of the Almighty, constantly smiting you down for your tiniest transgressions. others decide to assume the entire event as a grand stage on which to play out their own petty squabbles and rebellions. and the entire process is fueled by mini-Geos who go about relaying every faux-pas to anyone and everyone in earshot. in each case, everyone decides not to deal with their own shit, but hijack the social conventions and play out their own drama on it. and no one ever explains to you why everyone turns what is meant to be an expression of joy into a torturous compulsion.

about a decade ago, during one such practice, i came upon a book which for my money remains the most important pakistani book i ever read.

now before i reveal it, let me make clear that this didn't win any prizes, and that it's author has become a favourite whipping post for the rent-an-expert-phenomenon, and that his second book unleashed the maelstrom which is pakistani novels being written for a gora audience.

but despite all that, when i picked up moth smoke during that fateful practice, nothing - not the increasingly shrill screams of the dance masters or the brooding resentment of the dance partners i had abandoned- convinced me to put it down.

at the time, i had never done drugs, gone to any parties (at least those with a decent 'ratio' and sufficient debauchery) or even been in lahore for more than a few days, but the central character of Daru entranced me like a moth to... you know what i mean.

because for every other fantasy that i conjured up subsequently for liking this book - the primary reason why it fascinated me so much was the sense of impotent rage.

like Daru, i raged over the vacuous misogynists who landed all the prettiest girls, i filled up with bile over the well-heeled dipshits who got into colleges abroad, i burnt in resentment at the acne-riddled laundas who roared past me in SUVs chockfull of testosterone-and-bullet bursting guards.

and it was this rage that consumed me so fully that it needed the litany of self-destruction i indulged in, or the relentless cruelty i visited upon others in order to be saked every so slightly, and it was this rage that forever blinded me from even entertaining the thought of why i was doing what i did.

and it's not like i'm the only one saddled with this impotent rage.

you and i can see it all around us.

remember that air-conditioner thesis from moth smoke? if you haven't read it, i suggest you do, but the gist of it was that it was the levels of access to A/Cs that ended up determining the paths took by the various protagonists of that story.

well, the generator is the new A/C.

in the pre-chinese flooding of the market era, the bijli would still go for 8-10 hours, and would depart during the summer vacations for chuttis longer than the one's taken by government offices. and there were a lot of pissed off people then too.

but now, every time the light goes, deep rumblings run out from the first house and race across the neighborhood like a demonic chinese whisper. even middle-class, apartment dwelling, limited salaried families have UPSes now.

all of which means that more of us have greater respite from the call of KESC's/WAPDA's/LESCO's/etc's nature than ever before.

and yet, the outcry is louder than ever previously imagined.

it's not the direct cause-effect relationship of the lack of light here, because as i made clear, things have gotten a whole lot better now.

it's the fact that the promised nirvana that we were supposed to get through the number of our O' level grades, our summer internships, our networking skills, our adherence to devoutness and debauchery never ended up being realised. that for all the year-end bonuses and invite-only passes we still don't feel anywhere near the control over our lives and our futures that we feel we deserve.


it's the fact that we're still stuck here - despite making nuclear bombs and a million news channels, soaring flyovers and roaring debts, lower blouses and cheaper jeans, despite every place we've went to and every place we've been, we're still here, 'powerless' in every sense of the way. 

and this futility, this hopelessness, this impotent rage doesn't burn on fused bulbs alone - it builds up into monstrous proportions because of all the rest of the shit that keeps hitting the fan every single day.


every time that you hear of a young man gunned down at a party, every time you see a politician recreating las vegas in defence for his daughter's wedding, every time you are forced to cut back on a luxury your brothers enjoy, every time you are barred from an entry which others of a higher birth gain access to, every time you get fucked over by a bully you don't have a response for, every time the barrel of a gun or the parchi of a Surname deprives you of what's yours, you are thrown face first into the bleak wall of your impotency, your sheer helplessness.

and in our society, where any breathing space is constantly tightened using the noose of patriarchy, of religion, of class, of caste, of taste clothes and speaking style, of knee-jerk conservatism and monstrously suppressed desires, any one of us from the general TC-ing americans for a few dollars more to the maasi silently suffering furtive fondling to keep her job, are all slowly being infected with this burning pus of a rage most impotent.

and so, like an overripe pimple, we explode.

explode in manners which are incendiary and violent, in ways which hurt us and rip those around us, in a fashion which seeks blood, seeks terror-stricken eyes and parched throats, a way in which we can finally unleash our pent up rage - explode in a way in which we don't ask why.

because if we asked why, then perhaps the college student snapping pictures of his unsuspecting girlfriend performing fellatio wouldn't post them online, perhaps the mob of unemployed young men wouldn't bother with torching every vehicle that dares pass them, perhaps the ambition-neutered aunties wouldn't launch themselves so brazenly at designer lawns, perhaps the smug twitterati wouldn't gang up on the grammatically-challenged ideologue and humiliate them on a public forum.

ask yourself why?

did you feel like a greater stud fucking someone's life over? did the empty stomachs of your family feed themselves on charred-car-corpses? did the lime-green sleeveless soothe your soul? does the now whimpering fanboy stand as a testament to your intellect?

so then why?

well, what would be the fun of asking why?

asking 'why' would only bring us face to face with the sheer futility of our actions, asking why would shower the pointlessness of our ability to achieve justice, asking why would strip bare the fuck-all-uselesness of our attempt to satiate our rage.

asking 'why' would mean not being able to troll anymore.