copy paste material

Vote Me Guuyz

2011-11-22T17:58:00.001+05:00

If you would like to express your appreciation for this blog and provide me with validation that lasts for much longer than a comment, please go here and click on the five stars. Then do so again from your work computer, your mobile phone, your Dad's office laptop, and any other place you can think of.

http://pakistanblogawards.com/2011/11/11/culture-blog-karachikhatmal/

Cheers :)

A Non-Humorous Guide to Dealing with the Spot-Fixing Verdicts

2011-11-03T20:49:00.000+05:00

Before you begin, allow me to apologise for this glorified rant, which is quite emotional, and rather profane. I don't apologise for how I feel though, so take that as you will)

To begin with get off your moral fucking high horse. There is a prevalent sense that the cricketers deserved what they got. I can't disagree with the idea that their actions merited punishment, but to pass judgment from up high on their depravity isn't just ironic, it's a dangerous delusion.

Corrupt practices are rampant within our society, largely borne out of its reliance on patronage. I have repeatedly invoked the hypocrisy of disobeying traffic laws by all and sundry because it represents the clearest example of a law everyone flouts. But it doesn't end there - jobs, loans, licenses, visas are regularly procured through contacts.

People who are currently passing judgement live on land stolen from Karachi's macheras or Lahore's bastis. And while we’re at it, buying cut price smuggled goods, or exploiting the ridiculously inhumane conditions of our labour force to feed and clothe yourself, or indeed to stay in fancy hotels are also fabulously immoral.

And oh yeah, every time you puff a fat one or drown your sorrows, or even watch a blue ray version of the new Scorcese or even Shahrukh, you’re committing a crime.

These men were a product of our own society. To pretend that their actions constitute evil while your own are borne out of inconvenience is precisely the sort of denial that allows such practices to take root.

Secondly, fuck the po-po.

Or to put it less eloquently, the justice system. As much as introspection is the primary response to this issue, an unquiet rage isn't far behind.

How so?

Forget the fact that other sportsmen have been convicted of fixing without receiving jail terms.

What leaves me all sore and blue is that Salman Butt gets 30 months, while Mazhar Majeed gets 32. That's like sentencing a drug dealer the same amount as the local don.

Butt and the others brought the game in disrepute, but their punishments are added to their sporting bans and the social cost of public and professional disgrace.

But if their punishment is proportional then how are we to make sense of Majeed's sentence: a man who exists as one of the vital functionaries of a global criminal syndicate whose dealings are conservatively estimated at $50 billion?

It seems to tell cricketers that fixing will lead to an end to their careers, while bookies face only a short pause in pursuing their line of work. If it's argued that the rulings were in line with the law then I'm afraid this rancid injustice stems from the entire system.

But I won't be resorting to any hollow slogans railing against said system, because they are an affront to the honesty of my emotions.

To my mind, this ruling represents the same attitude shown towards rogue financial traders - heavy punishment for individuals which can help distract from any uncomfortable questions being asked of the institutions.

And finally, there is hope.

In the 1982 football World Cup, Italy stormed to a memorable win after a sluggish start. The Azzuri’s triumph was engineered by the goals of the waifish Paolo Rossi. Rossi's inclusion in the squad had been controversial since he'd just come off a two-year ban for match fixing. Perhaps it's my biased mind clutching wildly at straws but the similarities with Amir are striking.

Like Amir there was a feeling with Rossi that his naivety had played in his involvement. While Rossi always claimed his innocence, and his conviction was a lot dodgier than Amir’s straightforward guilty plea, there remains a sense of a young, talented sportsman caught in the machinations of sinister men.

What I sincerely hope for is that like Rossi, when Amir has completed his sentence we can all agree that's he's paid for his crimes and welcome him back. It won't be a closure we deserve, because I doubt we'll be changing or even accepting our failings. And it's one that neither Asif nor Butt will likely enjoy because their age, and in Asif’s case prior misadventures, will most likely end any options they might ever have.

But I believe Amir will return, and he will return a hero, because that is a closure he deserves. I don’t want to strike away the severity of his actions, but as several people have pointed out, this young boy was failed as much by his own choices as he was by us.

He, and countless others like him, were failed by a society which forever revels in the exploits of its cricketers, forever uses them as a source of catharsis as pride, forever uses them to construct it’s own identity without providing any institutional safeguards, or indeed any role models to emulate. A cricketer is forever afflicted by chronic insecurity, always a Chairman’s ego or a politician’s grandstanding away from losing their job, or even being banned for life. It’s a bullshit situation to be in, and one that needs to be changed.

There are already a host of narratives emerging which will seek to rationalise this moment, this scandal, in order to allow everyone else to go on with their lives and pretend they have nothing to think about.

Don’t be a chutiya and join their bandwagon.

What is a troll?

2011-07-05T01:49:00.000+05:00

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.

Why is Truck Art Cool?

2011-06-27T03:33:00.001+05:00

Why is truck art cool?

Because it's pakistani? because it's colorful? because it's made by the 'common man' and therefore has the requisite authenticity that none of the art-school graduates with opiate-addled blood and steroid-addled bank accounts can't ever have?

no.

it's cool because, well, it's cool.

foreign publications use it as the cover of their anthologies, fashion designers make clothes based on them, soft-story journalists have written and shot articles and packages on it.

and to be honest, there is nothing else really in pakistan that gets the goras so excited.

so it must be cool. ergo facto.

before we go any further, let's switch gears for a bit.

---------

you know what i hated about maths.

it was this idea that one day, those abstract numbers and formulae would somehow be important, nay, indispensable for us. that there was some grand meaning upon which these d/dx-es and x-squares were predicated upon, which we might be able to one day experience.

to be fair, i wasn't always anti-maths - i used to love it for its instant sense of validation. when you solve an equation and put down those glorious letters - QED - you feel a wave of your superiority complex gushing across you.

but after a point, it got frustrating and abstract.

in a way, my disillusionment was similar to another disillusionment many of us face - that journey from being a paanch-waqt-ka-namazi to abruptly stopping, no longer able to deal with the nagging feeling that our empty rituals are little more than petty bribes, a crass transactional relationship with God where we seem to be paying him off in rakats and rozas, in exchange for eternal bliss.

and with either maths or with bliss, there comes a point where you feel that you've had enough with the incessant promise of an eventual understanding. you want to feel that transcendence right frakking now.

written down here, this seems like the impatient niavety that seems to characterise our age - a demand for instant gratification, a readily digestible consumable that we can down and burp out before our lips go dry.

but i would argue otherwise. our constant rationalizations are forever trying to ignore the fact that we can feel, that we are tired of being numb.

in pakistan, we are nothing if not an emotional bunch. but we love pretending that our insanely volatile emotions are a consequence of some higher ideal - like a slight to our religion, or our morality, or our sense of justice - rather than being expressions of our readily suppressed desires.

these unchecked emotions more often than not lead to a complete perversion of whatever ideals we might have held, leaving us scarred and bitter. and so to protect ourselves from further damage, we adorn the cloak of cynicism, wherein anything that can possibly causes anyone amongst us to feel anything is immediately ridiculed and mocked.

excited about the cricket? don't you know they are cheats and fixers?

excited about a movement? don't you know its corrupt and broken?

excited about a girl? don't you know women are evil?

now, in some of these instances, there is a scope for gently redressing these endorphin soaked passions. but more often than not, we prefer to ridicule instead.

these days, i seem to have been very sensitive to this idea of ridicule, particularly towards coke studio.

whether its bilal khan's accent, or sanam marvi's lackadaisical approach, or komal rizvi's pitch, or the alleged nepotism in the case of mole, the constant heckling started getting under my skin.

the only thing people seemed to be seeing was what was annoying them, what was angering them, what was making them upset.

not only that, but in vintage pakistani style, they were taking their cynical reactions and spinning elaborate critiques upon its edifice. no one bothered to consider that it was perhaps their own insecurities and fallacies that were being imprinted upon their supposed insights.

i could accept such grievances if they came as part of a measured observation on what it was that they liked about whatever little they did. but if you press on that front, all you get is a litany of tired cliches - awesome, melodious, foot-tapping, mystical, sufi, stoner, amaaaaaaazing.

while the critiques are so eloquent and minutely detailed, the praise is about as sophisticated than the reaction of teenage girls sighting a topless edward cullen in the snow - albeit to be fair to the girls, at least their reaction isn't so lacklustre.

perhaps that was why when safieh wrote her two reviews, she went out to make sure that she put each song in its best possible light, she attempted to make sure that we could appreciate not just the what the song made us feel, but how it helped create that emotion. her reviews sought to pay homage to what were monumental - if not all always successful - creative efforts.

yet when we surveyed the muted responses to her celebratory pieces, and contrasted it to the excitement generated by more invective-laden ones, it felt very strange.

were we the only idiot optimists?

when it comes to art, safieh taught me that art, whether good or bad, is about feeling. bad art doesn't make you feel bad, it doesn't make you feel at all. and when it fails to do that, or better yet, when it makes you feel something, you can know why, if you only manage to recognise your feelings and what's more trust them, and give the piece a chance to affect you without preconceived reactions.

but then, i began thinking, what does it matter.

everyone seems to only get negative feelings, and relate them to these massive socio-political causes and pass off as intelligent. maybe that is what its about. perhaps it doesn't matter that most people can't even spot a positive emotion in a frakking lineup.

thankfully, god decided to intervene this time.

an unrelated search in my spam folders unearthed a mistakenly routed email containing the press release for the third episode. coincidentally, a review of the same episode was open in the adjacent tab.

here's what i found.

the picture you see is the article in question pasted on a word document.

the yellow bits are direct copy-pastes from the press release. the green bits are phrases from the press release which have been slightly reworded. the blue bit is factual information regarding the names of band members. the red parts are where the writer is criticizing the songs.

what's left are the positive, original insights the author had to offer. they include: "Some great work on the bass guitar was accompanied by interesting improvisations in the end, and is definitely worth a listen" and "another good piece of song writing by the youngster." as well as "the band sounded great and with the support of the house band, they took their music to the next level"

a cacophony of 'great' 'interesting' and 'good'.

despite clearly feeling that certain songs managed to make the reviewer feel something powerful and worthwhile, the language of emotions was limited to phrases that an advertising copy-writer would throw up on.

why are we so afraid to feel?

to know for ourselves what we like, what we appreciate, what we are in love with? and what's more own up to it regardless of how it may 'appear.'

see, that brings me back to truck art, and its alleged coolness.

its cool perhaps because it is an extension of folk art and islamic architecture, fused on a canvas which is at once immediate, ubiquitous, and forever fleeting. it is cool perhaps because it exists as a testament to aesthetics, juxtaposed within the context and on the body of the very cogs which keep capitalism's machinery rolling. its cool because it exists as a manifestation of the joie-de-virve, the much-maligned-mercurialism that we pakistanis seem to create as a reaction to the perpetual instability and uncertainty that defines our experience.

but to most of us, its cool because some cool people said so.

because most of us don't ever bother to feel. to think about how the sight of a beastly rhinoceros of a metal machine decked out as an acid trip is at once magical and familiar.

familiar? yes, familiar.

you have seen this gorgeous monstrosity all your life, and it links to your fears, hopes and guilt across your life. the imaginary horses and angels from islamic mythology, the heros ranging from osama to ataullah to queen elizabeth or whoever else is the folk hero of the season, the idealised hill stations that you never visited in your childhood, they are all symbols and signs of our own fabric.

these are all things that you already feel, have felt, can feel. i'm not saying that everyone should 'like' truck art, but rather, those that do can find a more profound reason than the cover of granta.

there is so much to us, to this bizarre country and its remarkable oddities and unlikely triumphs, that doesn't conform to dictionary definitions and textbooks, and its literally flying by your window, playing on your radio, crashing into your car.

when will you stop being afraid of your ability to love?

Lovely, Awais Lovely

2011-04-21T14:16:00.005+05:00

If you head over to Dawn right now, you can feast on what must be my finest hour as a blogger - an interview with the man himself, Awais Lovely.

But before I am drowned in a crescendo of "FAKE" shouts, let me cover my ass. this link below is a mp3 file of the entire interview, but before you click play, some disclaimers.

the recording quality is terribly shit. my voice is super loud, his isn't. i've tried and made some changes but there you go.
there's also a lot of disturbance because i was recording this outside. don't ask why.
the recording was made on my phone, which for some reason records calls in 2.30 minute chunks. so every time i would start a new file, i would lose the conversation in between.
it would probably help to read the transcription i've attached below along with the audio, to keep making sense of everything.

Awais Lovely Interview by Ahmer Naqvi

Lovely. Awais Lovely.

A=Awais , K=KarachiKhatmal

Meh= ‘in’ Mei=I/me/myself

Voice-0003

K: What makes Mr. Awais lovely?

A: Well, I’ll tell you something that since a long time ago I meet, guys and people are telling me that ‘Awais you are really different and you seems to be a very, very romantic guy so you can do something special in the world yeah’ so I’ve been feeling as well right? So that’s why I started making videos to introduce me like I am a lovely guy you know…And I’ve been so romantic with the girls as well, people telling me in my school in my college as well.

K: So whom do you want to introduce Awais Lovely to?

A: To the world…

K: Puri dunya mei hurr bunda jo hei woh Awais Lovely…They should get to know? But why?

A: Is liey keh mei apnay aap koh aik different larkay ki tarhaan, aik romantic aur achay larkay ki tarhaan introduce karvaana chahta huun. Mei iss liey – uss mei basically sub seh bari baat yeh hai keh mei apnay Pakistan koh – kyun keh I’ve been a lot of countries and I’ve been watching that keh logh jo hein naa woh Pakistan koh aik buri nazr seh daikhtay thay aur Pakistaniyoun koh aur mujhay buhat buraa lugtaa tha…Toh mei neh unko yeh batana chaaha keh hum logh bhee ‘lovely’ ho saktay hein, hum logoun mei bhee pyaar hai, hum logh bhee kisi aur ki izzat kar saktay hein, hum logh bhee romantic hein, humaray paas bhee dil hai, aur hum buhat polite hein. Aur hamaray mei bhee aisi cheezain hein. Iss liey yeh karnay keh liey mei neh apna nick AwaisLovely rakhaa.

K: In ‘romance’ what are the most important things? Three sub seh zyaada important things kya hein ‘romance’ mei?

A: ‘Romance’ mei meray khayaal mei sub seh important thing woh yeh hai keh…meray liey keh aap…How do you treat a girl? If you are really committed/corporative to her, she should understand that that is the guy I really wanted, keh yehi larka hai jo mujhay chaheay tha aur yehi larka who can make me better so ‘romantic’ honay ka mutlub sirf yeh nahi hei: to flirt (with) a girl…right? To give her a protect(ion) to give her a care of being a romantic guy you know? Yeh mei samajhtaa huun keh aap uss ki aankhoun mei aankhain daalein aur who samajhay keh yehi hai mera sacha, mera dost, mera saathi bun sukta hai

Voice-0004

K: Jin boys nei ‘bad name’ diya hua hai…toh woh kya ghalat kar rahay hein and what is special about Awais…What is the best thing about Awais that these other boys don’t have?

A: Doosray larkoun neh jo ‘bad’ diya hua hai? Kya diya hua hai?

K: Aap keh rahey thay na keh Pakistan ki image ko improve karna chah rahey ho aur like to show the world that we are also ‘lovely.’ Toh jun logoun neh jin Pakistaniyoun ki waja seh bad image hua wa hai toh what are they doing wrong aur aap mei kya best cheez hai jo aap uss ko overcome kar rahey ho?

A: Yaar mei yeh nahi kehta keh ‘I am the best’ but I am trying my best. Mei yeh kehna chahta huun keh mei neh aisay logoun ko dekhaa hai joh keh doosray mulkoun mei jaa keh woh samajhtay hein keh hummay koi nahi daikh raha and you can do anything over here right? They should understand that they are human being as well, that they got (a) mind as well. They think that they speak English and they don’t know what to thinking right? To be a Pakistani, since we are different we can do anything wrong over here and they would understand right? Yeh sub seh bari unn keh dimagh mei ghalat baat hai keh doosra yeh nahi samajhta keh who ghalat kaam bhee kar sakta hai. And girls are the ones, they treat them bad and they touch them on the wrong way and they follow them around…Woh Pakistan ko wahaan peh jaa keh is tarah seh keh wahaan ki larkiyoun mei woh samajhtay hein keh ‘gori’ it means like a bad girl right? ‘Gori’ ka yeh mutlub nahi keh woh larki buri hai…‘gori’ being a ‘gori’ is a Caucasian race right? Toh who logh sochtay hein keh hum Pakistan seh aaey hein aur hum yehaan peh aakeh kuch bhee kareingay toh yeh toh ‘goriyan’ hein yeh toh mind nahi karingay…They wouldn’t mind. But they should understand that they are human beings, they got minds, they got eyes, they can understand right? Iss waja seh Pakistan ka bad image banaa hai unn larkiyoun mei, iss liey mei Awais Lovely keh naam seh, being a Pakistani, unn keh behalf peh prove karna chahta huun keh we are really different and five fingers are not equal.

Voice-0005

K: Awais toh yeh bataiey keh aap ki aik jo normal youtube video hoti hai, toh woh kaisay shurooh hoti hai uss ka idea kaun laata hai, shoot kaun karta hai, edit kaun karta hai?

A: Jee bhaee, iss ko altogether mei karta huun, apnay mind seh. Mujhay bhee nahi samajh mei aata keh yeh aur kisi cheez hai mei baithay baithay soch layta huun keh video how should be. Toh meray dimagh mei baithay baithay, mei kisi seh baat kar raha hota huun na toh mujhay pata chul jaata hai keh iss tarah ki aik video bunn sakti hai. Toh ussi time mei meray bhai mei ?? charh jata hai, mei uss waqt boltna nahi huun, thori dair keh baad mein jub yeh baat karta huun toh uss waqt sirf?? meray paas aik hissa hota hai, thora sa normal sa ?? uss seh aagay mei kuch aur sochta huun toh mujhay naey (new) seh naey idea aajatay hein…Round about ten and fifteen minutes meh mei (I) soch laita huun keh kis tarhaan ki video honi chaheay.

K: Acha aur jo gaana aata hai, meray khayaal mei aap ka bhai cameraman ka kaam karta hai toh aap uss ko instructions daitay ho? Kaisay kartay ho?

A: Jee bhai uss ko instructions mei daita huun, song bhee mei choose karta huun, phir mei video jis traffic?? peh hoti hai uss seh mei usska song choose karta huun, uss koh phir mei apnay bhaiyoun seh format karwa keh, editing karwata huun, keh yaar aap iss ki tayaari?? kar doh kyunkeh iss mei convert kar keh phir who attach kartay hein. Laikin meray bhaiyoun ko mei batata huun keh ‘abay side seh shoot karo phir buhat acha view aaey ga’ MashAllah they are very intelligent like me.

Voice-0006

K: So do your brothers ever feel like keh kabhi hamari bhee video banay?

(recorder: 6:36-6:47)A: No no, (UNCLEAR) One said but I denied that he do it…I am their eldest brother iss liey woh meri izzat kartay hain jub mei unn ko bolta huun keh baita mei jo kar raha huun aap nahi kar saktay…I am taking a lot of responsibility on my shoulders right, so nobody else can do it. Who phir nahi kartay, meri baat maantay hein

K: Making these videos, being Awais Lovely aap keh rahey ho keh yeh buhat bari zimmaydari hai…Kya zimmaydari hai jo aap ki nazr mei maybe your brothers can do wrong?

A: Because iss liey keh iss world mei….This world is full of ‘haters’ and ‘lovers’ right? Iss dunya mei achay logh bhee hein aur buray logh bhee hein, toh mei nahi chahtaa keh…meray bhaiyoun ko koi ‘hater’… mei chahta huun keh agar mera koi ‘hater’ ho toh woh meray saath hee rahey…mei nahi chahta keh meray bhaiyoun peh kisi qism ki problem…I don’t want to show them to the world back there…its not right kyun keh meray saath buhat buhat (buray) qism keh comments bhee aatay hein, toh mujhay yeh sub kuch absorb/observe karna hota hai…So you need to get the balls - of steel balls to show yourself like that on the front of camera/film/video.

K: Aap yeh bataein keh aap ki favourite video kaunsi hai aur kyun? Apni joh banai huey hain.

A: Bhai uss mei sub seh meri jo favourite video hai, woh hai:?? Jo uss keh song peh mei neh shoot kiya, Scotland Glasgow mei. Aur aik meh jiss meh mei apni body dikha raha huun, kyun keh I like to do exercise but mei neh chor diya hai…Toh uss meh sub seh meri achi video hai jo mujhay achi lagti hai bayshuk woh itni achi nahi hai laikin mujhay woh…mei neh who jaldi meh shoot ki is liey woh yeh hai keh woh song name??? joh mei neh Glasgow meh shoot ki…Glasgow Scotland meh shoot ki who video – uss meh puri meri life hai. Mei yehaan she jub gaya tha, kyun keh wahaan ja keh mei apni family ko miss kar raha tha, apnay culture ko miss kar raha tha, apnay business ko miss kar raha tha, apnay country, apny logoun ko…I am walking alone in the garden on the lawn way and I am missing all those things happening in Pakistan right now joh ghar meh mei sub miss kar raha tha.

Voice-0007

K: Internet peh aik image hai Awais ki, aur aik real bundaa baitha hai Pakistan meh Awais. Toh internet peh jo AwaisLovely hai aur reality meh jo Awais hai, unn donoun meh kitna farq hai?

A: Yeh ub donoun jo image hein woh meray hee hein ya kisi doosray ka hai?

K: Nahi nahi. Aap jo apnay ‘khud’ ko mehsoor kartay ho aur ‘image’ ko mehsoor kartay ho unn meh kitna farq hai

A: Uss meh zyaada she zyaada dus (10% to 20%) seh bees percent farq toh ho gaa uss seh zyaada nahi. Jo mei youtube videos meh huun I hope keh mei itna achaa reality mein huun. Mujay aisa lagta hai keh jo youtube seh logh mujhay ‘hating’ kartay hein, achaa nahi samajh tay, unn logoun ko mei chahta ho keh mei personally [voice lost] woh mujhay bura samjhtay thay magar jab who mujh say khud mile Glasgow main toh woh mere bahut baray fan ban gaye.

Voice-0008:

K: Yaani ke youtube main bhi best possible image nahi aati, jo suchayee hoti hai?

A: Woh aisa hai keh woh meri hobby hai. Reality main jab aap mujh say milo gay I’m a different Awais, Mashallah aap mujh main aur bhi kafi saari cheez dekho gai. Kyun ke youtube per main apne eye contact, apne emotion, apni har cheez feel nahi karwa sakta. Lekin jab aap mere samnay baitho gay, jab personally sub kuch practically dekho gay feel ker rahay ho gay tab aap mujhe achi tarah say jaan sako gay. Lekin mein yeh challenge se keh sakta huun inshallah keh jo larka aap youtube per dekh rahay ho Awais mein reality mein uss se bhi acha ho sakta huun Inshallah.

K: Inshallah. Acha mujhe yeh bataein Awais keh aap ka ek fan hei jo aap ko sirf youtube video say janta hai, aur jo kuch bhi dekha hai to woh kya agar asli Awais ko mile ga to koi different banday se mil raha hoga, ya almost same banda ho ga ya uss se bhi behtar ho ga?

A: Mujhe jo umeed hai woh yeh hai keh uss se bhi behtar hoga.

Voice-0009:

K: Awais acha mujhe yeh bataoo keh agar app per koi movie banana chahe Bollywood main, to kiss actor ko aap chahein gay keh woh Awais ke part play keray?

A: Male actors mein se?

K: Haan haan

A: Ji mein chahoon ga – Shahrukh Khan.

K: Kyun?

A: Kyun keh, I’m one of his big fans, kyun ke main, mujhe aisa lagta hai keh, kuch percent mujhe apni cheezain Shahrukh Khan jaisi lagti hain, main yeh nahi kehta keh mein Shahrukh Khan huun ya mein koi big celebrity huun, lekin, mein, ek hota hai na ke insan kisi ko dekh ke sochta hai keh yaar yeh meri tarah lagta hai. Theek hai. Mein apni side se sochta huun keh Shahrukh Khan mein kuch aisee baatein hain jo meri tarah woh sochta hai keh woh bahut neechay se upar gaya hai, aur us keh ander kafi saari different cheezain hain aur woh bahut practical larka hai, aur bahut uss ne hard working ki hai life mein, naam kamaya hai, aur aaj bahut established star hai dunya mein…

[Awais later messaged me to ask me to change his choice for the star to play him from Shahrukh Khan to Imraan Hashmi]

K: Acha Awais yeh batao keh aap yeh youtube per video bana rahe ho theek hai, aaj se duss saal pehle youtube waghera bilkul nahi tha, theek hai, to kuch log matlab yeh bhi sochte huun gay keh humari generation jo hai, jo internet pay itna hoti hai woh samjhte huun gay keh yeh ghalat ker rehay hain, ya matlab yeh kya cheez hai ke koi ek doosray se banda zaati taur pe mil nahi raha hai, mafar tab bhi uss ke paas itne fan bhi aa rahay hain, haters bhi aa rahe hain, tou matlab agar jaise aap keh walid walidayn poonche, ya koi burra poonche to aap ussay kaisay explain kerain gay?

A: Main uss ko iss ka bahut acha image dekhata huun, mein uss ko yeh batata huun halankeh mujhe apni family mein problem hui hai iss wajah se, lekin families hoti hain na, rishte jo hote hain, woh iss hi liye hotein hai keh woh aap ke saath contact rakhte hain. Aap ke apnay aap ko samajh bhi jaatein hain. Aap un ko ghussay say bhi samjha sakte ho pyaar se bhi kyun ke they are your own right? Doosroon ki baat yeh hai mei un ko yeh misaal deta huun keh yeh jukha hua pair (tree) hai na, pathar bhi uss hi ko maarte hain jo jhuka hua pair hota hai, [voice lost] aur phir mei ne un ko yeh bola keh yaar abhi mere saath kaante hain, jab us par phool ugay ga na – phool ke saath kaante bhi hote hain – lekin ek waqt aaye ga jab mein ek level per pahunch jaaon ga, aur yeh saare haters jo hain jo mujhe like nahi kertay keh yaar yeh kya ker raha hai, jiss din mei phool pe pahunch jaaon ga, yehi log mujhe pasand kerain gay, yaar WOW larke ne kamala ker diya hai. Yaar kahan se start hua tha, kahan pahunch gaya hai woh kyunke every celebrity has this kind of sadful painful story behind it, behind its personal life.

Voice-0010:

K: Bahut khoob baat. Acha aap ne suna hi hoga keh aap ka twitter pe ek fake account bhi bana tha, theek hai, facebook pay fake accounts thay, aap keh khayal mein log aap ke fake accounts kyun banana chahte hain?

A: Woh mei ne jo aap se thori der pehle baat ki hai last mein, keh ek waqt tha log kehte thay keh yaar yeh pagal hai, videos banata hai, yeh kya hai iss ka? Aaj ek waqt hai ke log mujhe Mashallah agar youtube pay 50 log mujhe dislike kerte hain, toh 150 log mujhe like kerte hain. Mei, mei sochta hu keh ek samandar mein se ek baalti nikal do na, toh samandar ko koi farq nahi parta. Toh woh jo 50 log hain na haters, woh baalti paani ki tarah nikal keh mei ne pekh diyain hain. Jo 100 log hai na un se mein bahut pyaar kerta huun, woh mera samander hai. Toh yeh baat hai keh jo hai na log mujhe copy ker ke, kyun ke mein ub status ho gaya huun, Mashallah kafi dunya mujhe jaanit hai jaise aap mujhe call ker rahain hain, mera interview le rahein hain, saari dunya jaanti hai keh Awais Mashallah ek naam bun gaya hai, toh log mera naam us ker ke larkiyon ko impress kerna chahtay hain, kyunke girls are really attracted to me right now and before when I got noticed on the youtube as well, lekin yeh baat hai keh log mera naam use kerna chahte hain.

K: Acha tell me why do girls find you so attractive?

A: I don’t know. Lot of people ask me for that but bro I think this is God gifted thing, that’s why I was on the youtube because people used to say me that you are really attractive, so handsome Mashallah, kyunke Allah ka shukar hai mei ne kabhi comment nahi kiya lekin people used to say me you’re a cute, aur mere ander yeh cheez logo se hi paida hui aur mujhe khud bhi lagta tha keh mei kuch ker sakta huun, lekin yeh jo cheez hoti hai na larkiyon waali baat, yeh insaan ke ander hoti hai I was born like that.

K: Acha yaani keh koi aur issay, is skill ko develop kerna chahe toh woh nahi ker sakta?

A: Nahi ker sakta hai, yeh God gifted hoti hai. Log yeh poochte hain [voice lost] keh apni personality kharab na kero, kyunke agar aap doosron ko copy kerain toh aap ki apni bhi personality kharaab ho sakti hai. Toh mei chahta huun ke be natural, and be practical to the girls, and maybe she’s a, she will get in touch from you.

K: Very good advice.

Voice-0011:

K: Acha aap ek Pakistan ke chotay sheher say ho, jo zyada barre mashoor sheher hain Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad – maybe – toh un se matlab usually humari celebrities aati hain, aap ek chotay sheher say aa rahe ho matlab kya aap ke khayal mei aap ki outlook thori different hai, kya chote shehro ka, matlab Pakistan mei naye tareeke se dekhna chahiye?

A: Mei sochta huun ke bhaiyee koi chota barra nahi hota kyunke koyla kahan, diamond kahan milta hai? Koylay mein milta hai. Theek hai, heera aap dhoondne jaate ho to paharoo mei. Mei ek jeweller huun, mei ek sunaar huun, I have a gold jewelry shop I spend my time there, mein Mashallah ek businessman huun aur ek Pakistani jeweller huun mei. Toh mein yeh sochta huun keh heera koi bhi [voice lost] woh aap ko koylay se milta hai. Kyunke koi bhi cheez jo hai na barri choti nahi hoti, koi kaheen se bhi aa keh chaa sakta hai. Cos everybody got talent, everybody got quality aur kuch nahi pata hota yeh sab se barri baat muqaddar ki hoti hai, kaun kahan se aa ker kahaan chala jata hai, ek larki America mei bhaiti hai, aap Pakistan mei bhaite hain, aap dono ka pata nahi hota keh shaadi America mei bhi ho gee lekin achanak se koi aata hai woh bolta hai ek larki hai woh achi hai, woh America mei hai, kya aap un se shaadi kerna chahte hain, aap ke ghar wale chahtay hain woh bolte hain haan theek hai. Ab ek United States of America 20, 30 thousand miles away from here, aap wahan jaa keh shaadi kerte ho [voice lost]

K: Hello? Hello?

A: Jee, aap sun rahe hain na?

K: Acha yeh batao keh Inshallah shaadhi waghera ho jaye uss ke baad bhi aap continue kerna chahe gain apna youtube account?

A: Filhaal mein shaadi abhi nahi ker sakta kyun keh abhi I want to have my bachelor life for a long time, aur Inshallah mei shaadi keh baad bhi sochoon ga – lekin agar shaadi ke baad mein ne videos banayee bhi tou mei kuch achi [voice lost] uss ke bare mei mein ne abhi socha nahi like kyun ke jab meri shaadi hogi phir mein sochoon ga mera mind kaisa hai ab mei kiss mind ka hogaya huun, kyuun ke man change you know, a person changes after marriage or something like that

K: Fair enough. Awais yeh batao keh abhi Pakistan mei different qissam ke log hain jo bolte hain keh yeh sab video gaana waana yeh sab kissam ki cheezain ghalat hain. Is ski wajah se Pakistan kharaab ho raha hai, girls or boys ki talking ki wajah se kharaab ho raha hai. Iss ke bare mein kya khayal hain aap ke?

Voice 0012:

A: Agar aap kiss bhi ghalat cheez ko sahih cheez mei laa ker uss ko represent ker rahe ho to uss mein ghalat nahi hai. Dekhain ghalat dekhna ho to bahut kuch ghalat hai, phir to hum uthte baithte kitna ghalat kuch kerte hain agar is tarah kuch dekhe toh. Ek cheez ghalat hai toh mei uss ko sahih nahi kehta lekin agar itna sahih hai to phir yeh sab kyun hai? Agar ghalat hi tha, tou phir sab kuch kyun hai, kyun yeh songs barrh rahe hain, kyun yeh gaariyon mei systems hain, kyun yeh cinema systems hain, kyun videos hain, phir toh sab kuch socho na, phir aap kya sochne baitho gay toh yahan samander ban jaye ga soch ka yahan aap ko kuch nahi milay ga jiss ka koi kinara nahi hai.

K: Toh abhi jo log, matlab hamare mulk mei dehshat-gardee waghera hai, log matlab qatl-o-gharat ker rahe hain, just to get their point across, what would you say to them?

A: Brother un ke liye toh yehi hai keh un ko sab se pehle toh Allah se darna chahiye kyun ke that’s why mei kuch different kerne ki koshish ker raha huun, kyuun ke humare Pakistan ka, kyuun ke dekho I was born in Pakistan, right, yeh humari identity hai, Pakistan, agar, kyun keh mei ne pardes mei reh kar mei ne bahut kuch dekha hai aur mujhe apne mulk se pyaar hai this is my home cuntry right, toh mei nahin chahta keh, mein kuch aisa ker ke dekhana chahta tha keh sirf doosre logoon ko foreigners ko, mujhe Pakistan mei kuch show kerne ki zaroorat nahi hai kyun ke yahan pe already sab ek doosre ko jaante hain, lekin mei, I want to show my culture, to the people of the States and out of Pakistan right, dekho hum log bhi apni sarkoon pay drive kerte hain, humari larkiyan bhi drive kerti hain, azaad hain, toh woh log sochte hain keh humari larkiyon ne humein dubaya hua hai, hum log yeh hain, hum log waise hain, gaariyon mei koi shopping kerne nahi jaa sakta bomb blast ho jata hai, mein un ko yeh dikhana chah raha huun keh “dekho I am driving on the road, a lonely, making videos, and you can see the roads, and you can see the development over here and I’m a Paki guy who making videos, I can dance better than yours people like, mei aap keh logo se bhi acha dance ker sakta huun, mein aap ke logo se bhi, I can [voice lost]

Voice 0013:

A: Scotland mei ek dafa mein ek disco mei gaya. Waha disco mei mein ne dance kiya tou a lot of girls did like me and they came up to me and they just crowd me and I was in the middle and they were just flashing me and snatching my body… two guys were behind me and they were just getting jealous unho ne ja keh DJ ko bola keh aap song ko change kero hum iss larke ko challenge kerna chahte hain dance mein. Pehlo unho ne aa ke mujhe bola ‘will you accept my challenge’ mein ne bola ‘yeah’ uss ne bola ke hum dance kerain ge, aur dekhte hain kaun jeet-tta hai. There were two guys dancing on the floor and I did alone myself and I just lose them in 50 seconds and all the girls and the guys clapped for me and they all asked me where are you from and I said I am from Pakistan, I am the guy from Pakistan, I challenge you over here and you LOSE from a Pakistani.

K: Bahut khoob. Un ka kya response tha?

A: They were just looking at me they were just ‘Oh my God’ yeh iss tarah ker ke who chale gaye they were ‘wordless’ wo-h kuch nahi bole unho ne drink pakri aur ja ke apni table per baith gaye. They were just confused, wo-h confused they…

Voice - 0014:

K: Speaking of confused, what do you think about Pakistanis who are elites…Are they confused?

A: Yes mei sochta huun keh they are confused they Paki-born-confused-Americans. Wo-h sochte hein keh hum Pakistani mei peyda hueay hain magar hum Americans hain. Mei chahta huun, mei poonchta huun keh aap Pakistan mei rahe ho, aap apna style rekho american yeh koi baat nahi hai, yeh sochna koi buri baat nahi hai, lekin overacting mat kero. Yeh mat show kero keh yaar, mei jo hai na Pakistan mei paida hua huun magar mei pata nahi kya huun. Mei matlab phutt gaya huun, mei special huun. Yeh nahi kehna chahiye, we love our country, mei ne aap ne dekha ho ga meri video mei keh I’m proud to be a paki and I’m proud to be a desi. Theek hai? Overacting kabhi nahi kerni chahiye jab bhi aap overacting kero ge aap confuse jo jao gay. Phir samne wala [voice lost] wo-h aap ko parh le ga keh yeh overacting ker raha hai, yeh jo nahi hai yeh who dikha raha hai apne aap ko. Tou wahan pe humari youth jo hai no who confuse ho jati hai. [voice lost] aap samajh rahe hai na meri baat ko?

K: Awais Pakistani cricket team mei kaunsa banda hai jo sab se zyada aap ki tarah hai, jiss se aap identify kerte ho?

A: Mei personally agar kisi ko like kerta huun to wo-h hain Shahid Afridi.

K: Acha kyun?

A: Kyun ke he’s attractive, he’s like a, mujhe uss mei, he’s a faster, and he’s a fashionable, aur mujhe jo hei na uss tarah kei fast log pasand hain, he’s very fast as well … he looks very cute aur style hai uss ka who jab kisi ko bowled kerta hai uss ka ek stle hai baat kerne ka style hai, he has a big personality as well aur mei personality walay bando ko bahut like kerta huun, aur Mashallah meri ek aadat hai keh jo personality wala [voice lost] lekin mei waisay bata raha huun keh koi acha insane hai, jis ki personality achi hai mei uss ko like kerta huun us say baat kerta huun like kerta huun usse.

Voice 0015:

K: Acha if you had to give a message to your fans, people who want to be like Awais Lovely, tou aap un ko kya kaho ge un ko kya advice do gey?

A: Yeh tou bahut complicated question hai iss ko mei kya boloun? Mei iss ko sirf iss pey yeh bol sakta huun keh mei apne fans ko, mei chahta huun keh, mei yehi kehna chahta huun apne fans se I’m nothing. I’m a normal guy, keh mei ek normal guy huun, wo-h ek awais ko apne ander dekh sakte hain. Awais jab you tube pe nahi tha, mei un ko yeh batana chahta huun keh jab Awais you tube pe nahi tha, they didn’t know me, wo-h nahi jante they keh Awais kaun hai, iss liye try to do something that you become your personality, and somebody you’d like to see, who’d like to be themselves, tou mei chahta huun keh apne aap ko iss tarah banao keh doosra bhi kehe keh yaar, wo-h bhi ek personality bun jayein aur wo-h bolain keh yaar, kal ko doosra bole keh yaar mei iss ki tarah bunna chahta huun. Awais is a lovely guy and he’s a casual guy aur meri personality is got to me by God, jo ke cheat nahi ho sakti jo by birth mere under aayi hui hai, aur uss ko copy ker ke kabhi bhi apni personality ko kharab mutt kerain. They love me I love them.

UthRecords Songs as Pakistani Fast Bowlers

2011-04-04T21:16:00.002+05:00

"Where does Pakistan keep finding these amazing fast bowlers from? Probably the same place they find great musicians from"
- Ancient Chinese Proverb

Somewhere beneath the madness of the world cup, one of pakistan's most significant cultural moments was gleefully occurring. I am referring to what is currently the second most important TV show in Pakistan - uth records.

Now i realise that some of you might have missed it (catch all of the first season here) And I also know that many of you are still trying to adjust your mind's bleary eyes from the crushing hangover of the world cup. so, in an extravagant display of my magnanimity and confused mindset, i am going to put indulge in some intellectual crossing of these two perennial nashay - music and cricket.

presenting - UthRecords Songs As Pakistani Fast Bowlers.

(please note that the analogies are for the songs, not the artists. thanks.)

Jumbo Jatt - Jahiliya

In the recent past, Sheikhupura has beget two fast men to make it into the national side. A few years ago, during a vist there, i met three men whose primary pursuits involved getting drunk and betting on cricket. they had been avid followers of the domestic circuit for reasons of both passion and money, and they were extremely confused by something. of the two bowlers i speak of, one had been a waif like no-hope who had nothing special about him. a waste of space, they condemned him. the other, had it all.

and yet, mohammad asif was making mark nicholson cream his pants, while rana naved-ul-hasan was getting the thanks-for-coming notes.

it makes sense. rana's seam when he releases the ball is truer than a biblical prophet. he bowls at real pace, yet his slower deliveries are as deceptive as an akmal brother. he ticks every check box a premier fast bowler needs to. and yet.

something isn't there - the sum is not greater, even lesser than the parts.

that's the feeling i get with this song. i can't quite see what's wrong with it. the lyrics are contemporary, the sound is great, the length is just right, and faraz anwar provides some fascinating virtuousity right at the end. and yet.

perhaps it just sounds too much like a lot of other things.

the vocalist is good, but not distinctive. the guitars are awesome, but in an adequate way, if that makes any sense. perhaps the song suffers from hitting the right areas too much, and not providing a moment that surprises you.

don't get me wrong - its not in any way a bad song. it's rather tasty, but in a aalo-gobi kind of way, where you know its filled your stomach, but you're not going to spend the next day dreaming about it.

Jahiliya - Rana Naved

Usman Riaz - Hum Tum

If you ever talk to any Pakistani fan about fast bowling, particularly those from the 90s, they'll tell you a legend. a legend of a bowler so fast, he made shoaib look pedestrian. a bowler so demonic that lara himself bowed to his greatness. the bowler in question was mohammad zahid, and we'll forever associate him with the refrain - what if? what if his action hadn't caused his spine to shatter, curtailing his career? what if we had speed guns then to measure him, or what if we hadn't spent all our energies taking care of the other express man of that time - shoaib akhtar? what if?

and "what if" is the question that keeps coming back to you in this song.

let's face it - Usman Riaz is a talent of a phenomenal level. its kind of apt that he is such a fragile looking person, because that's the feeling you get from listening to him - someone so precocious and odiously talented feels too good to be true, you fear that this ugly world will devour him.

and perhaps recognizing that, Gumby and Omran were extremely careful with his song. they got the help of the supremely creative Sir Ahmed, they drafted in one of Pakistani pop's best vocalists. they did everything possible to make this work.

but when you listen to the song, you wonder - what if the vocals didn't come in to drown out the gorgeous guitar and piano solos? what if they had gone with a different feel, which wasn't so eager to be catchy? what if usman had just been left to his own devices? what if the collaborator was someone unassuming and unknown, instead of a colossal ego with a beard?

i honestly wanted to refrain from being bitchy in this review, but ali noor's attitude kinda pissed me off. with the utmost respect, the man deserves his ego. but like those tales of senior cricketers snubbing the youngersters in the team they feared would take their places, ali noor doesn't really go out to embrace the wunderkid, instead admonisihing him that the only way to do the song would be his way.

the silver lining of course is that the show has put usman riaz on the map. we all know him now, and perhaps a lot of us would be hungering for something more sublime from him. perhaps we will be more willing to treat him and accept him for the virtuouso he obviously is, and we will make peace that he won't give us catchy songs. i sure as hell hope so, because i don't want to be asking 'what if' with this guy any longer.

Hum Tum - Mohammad Zahid

Athar Sani - Jaane Kyun

"Sometimes in the heart, yes I do wish that I have the same kind of fans that Afridi and Shoaib have, the same fan following. But even then, I am satisfied with the following I have but I am never satisfied with my performance."

Umar Gul is quite an enigma for a Pakistani fast bowler. he has no airs, no tantrums, no controversies. he's a guy who went from here,

to here,

and he still comes across as the most honest, down to earth, sincere person to ever play for our ever-mercurial, self-destructive, attention-whore of a team.

in fact, in many ways he's like an anonymous fast bowler from another country - a bresnan, or an elworthy or a bichel. men who bowl honestly, who always try hard, who hit the right spots, and who you can always depend on. but what makes gul stand out is the fact that he has those amazing yorkers. you might go for a whole spell and spend half of it without seeing anything approaching brilliance, but when he comes good, he reminds you why exactly he deserves many more accolades than he ever gets. he reminds you why he's no forgotten fast men, but rather a proud addition to pakistan's pantheon of pacers.

this song is exactly like that. when you hear it for the first time, or perhaps when you are in a hurry, it sounds like a great song from an indian movie or pop album (which isn't saying much) yet, if you delve a little deeper, its beauty starts to come through. you realise that athar isn't just a good singer, he's a damn good one. you start hearing those subtle strums on the guitar, you feel the synth slowly enveloping you. you realise that the lyrics aren't as obvious as the chorus might have made you think. and you start realising that this song is something special. it won't get the headlines, and it won't make it into the greatest ever lists. yet it will be more than something dependable, something that would require patience. like gul, this song doesn't contract genital warts or smoke pot to get attention. it remains true to itself, and that's a quality that will endear this song to you quite unlike anything else.

Jaane Kyun - Umar Gul

Natasha Ejaz - The Right Way to Fall

I have to admit, i don't have a good analogy for this one. allow me to explain why. the first reaction i get when i listen to this song is how gorgeously smooth it is. there isn't quite another word that explains it as well - this song is like silk-made sharks in an ocean of cream. although i suppose if i am delving into culinary analogies, i should choose something which also reflects how light this song feels. not in a way that is vaccuous, but rather its lightness comes from a sort of whimsical joy it exhibits.

keeping that in mind, the best bowler-fit would be michael holding. if you haven't seen holding in action, click here and understand why umpires would claim they couldn't hear him approach when he bowled because his action was so rythimical it was virtually silent.

but holding's a jamaican. wasim bhai's action was beautifully efficient, but his action was not really the definig feature about him, so that's another analogy that tanks. the closest one that comes to mind is aqib javed.

aqib was a lot better bowler than history allows us to remember, mainly because he was drowned out by the two Ws. but aqib was also all about grace and guile, his approach was simple and yet it masked a ferocity.

in the same way, this song is deceptively simple because it masks an immediate ferocity of talent beneath. along with usman, natasha ejaz stood out as someone voraciously talented in this show. and its quite amazing that she didn't choose to have all of that in display in one go. instead, we got a song which is understated, yet of the kind which justifies why music players have the Repeat One option.

the real beauty of this song is natasha's voice, but you also have to acknowledge the 'techno-hip-hop' bits the producers provided. they complement the song beautifully, and never overstep the mark. trust me on this, you might not immediately shout and scream about this, but this song is something special.

Right Way to Fall - Aqib Javed

RamLal - Naughty Boy

Its almost too easy to find a Pakistani fast bowler who is analogous with a song called Naughty Boy, but let's not rush ourselves.

The bowler in question needs to be a druggie, a rogue, a subversive fellow who hits it with the ladies but isn't quite sure why. A guy who doesn't obviously come across as a problem, yet he is. more importantly, he needs to be a bowler who appears unassuming, and yet has the ability to make you start jumping with joy. someone who has the skills to seduce you without really looking like it.

step forward, Mohammad Asif.

the defining feature (rather memory) of asif's bowling was how the ball would wobble like a nautch-girl delivering thumkas in an item number. you could never tell from the seam which way an asif delivery would go, but it would perform all sorts of sorcery. in another culture, asif would have been a mcgrath - hugely succesful yet no more than a bland metronome. but because asif was pakistani, his bowling would have the same staid pace, but the wickedness of a saasu maa missing her tajori ki chabiyan.

that's what naughty boy is all about. its not in-your-face-rock. instead it has this jazzy, big band kind of feel, which like asif amongst the speedsters, is wonderfully refreshing. the guitars in this song are also delectable, changing tone and rythm deceptively yet decisevely. and the killer, that asif-esque moment of sublime brilliance, is the trumpet, which suddenly takes this song beyond decades and genres. but perhaps you were too busy laughing/being aghast at the subversive nature of the lyrics. its rare for such an honest and casual approach to 'dating' and 'mazay' being seen in the open in pakistan, but naughty boy does it in a way no one else has managed. Naughty Boy is a song that ambles up to the crease and doesn't exert too much effort, and yet its detached coolness kinda blows you away.

Naughty Boy - Mohammad Asif

Yasir & Jawad - Riedi Gul

My first memory of Mohammad Amir was at the World T20 final. till that moment, i'd known he'd existed because i'd seen him in the previous matches. and i knew that pakpassion had been hyping him up like crazy. but then again, they do that with everyone. i hadn't seen anything extraordinary till then. five deliveries changed my mind forever.

let's get the context in here. this was a world cup final. at fucking lord's, which has more history and tradition than the Jews. and at the crease was the small matter of the man of the tournament, the guy they'd just named a new stroke after. and the bowler was an unknown teenager.

this was a moment so huge physicists had to be called in to measure it.

and what did amir do - he siezed it.

no, he didn't just sieze it, he came up with the most surreal spell of momentum shattering bowling i had ever seen on such a huge stage since those two balls at the MCG. and from that moment, you knew that amir belonged. he was young, and raw, and there was a way to go, but he belonged and what's more, he was a superstar. no question.

i think you get my point here. this song, the moment you hear it, the moment the rubab comes in, the moment the beauty of the vocals hits you, the moment that the meethas of the song, the subtleties giving way to the soaring climax, the whole deal HITS you, you know these guys belong. you know these guys are superstars, not celebrities. its the sort of song, which even when you discount for my fetish for pashto vocals, makes you swell up your chest and feel good about living in a time and place where such beautiful music is made. it makes you feel good about yourself, even when all you've done is listen to it. it's that frickin' good.

now let's just hope that this song never meets anyone named mazhar.

Reidi Gul - Mohammad Amir.

Post-Script: Two shout outs remain here. the first is to zeeshan parwez and the program itself, but i'll save that for another post. the second goes out to Gumby and Omran.

its really difficult to truly see just how amazing these two have been for this show. for starters, they're not two-bit hotel lobby musicians, they're absolutely huge stars in their own right. and yet, not only are their egos safely parked elsewhere, they go out of their way to get the kids to relax, and with each of them, they've been brilliant in getting the best ouf of them. that's no mean feat when you consider the constraints of time and the innate pakistani penchant for marroing.

more importantly, they've led brilliantly with their instincts. other than usman riaz, where perhaps there was some overanalysing to blame, each of the songs have been produced but not overproduced. the collaborations are generally inspired - the biggest hit was the trumpet for Ramlal and the tabla for Athar Sani, but the decision to go rather bare with Reidi Gull was just as impressive. with each song, these guys were genuinely eager to get the best thing out there. and for that, a big sabz salam.

Last Stop on the Rawalpindi Express (Part 1, maybe)

2011-03-21T20:22:00.000+05:00

when i was young, i had a certain idea about love. to me, love meant contentment. it meant something pleasant, something that did away with your fears and anxieties and worries. something which was soothing, reassuring, pampering even. i expected love to be a natural progression of adulthood, as inevitable and predictable as finding a 9-to-5 job, of finding a respectable spouse, of having a number of well-behaved children living in a well-kept house. i thought love was about the absence of tensions and worries and dread and fear. in my understanding, love was like gripe water, soothing my infantile pangs of pain.

in a way, none of this was wrong. love can, and is, all these things my testosterone-challenged mind had concocted.

and yet, love is something more.

if sunday was the day the e-mail was invented, then monday was the day the first forward was sent. email forwards are a culture unto themselves, revealing little in terms of truth themselves, but opening up so much more about the person who sent them. the recently politicized student who sends you petitions to sign, the recently married acquaintance who masks her new-found disillusion by swamping you with brainless quotes written on jpegs of blooming clouds, the idiot friend whose much-hacked inbox keeps popping out viagra-extolling viruses, the generally shy colleague who sends you jokes that contain some contrived homily at the end.

then there is the forward that fathers or uncles usually send. those that are vague attempts at asserting continuity and stability. sometimes this is manifested in ISI-sponsored propaganda that link to the dajjalian conspiracies seeking to threaten the status-quo. sometimes, they arrive as pseudo-scientific studies proving that sleeping on time and driving carefully are the road to wisdom and salvation. and sometimes, they arrive in the form of lists which are meant to showcase and reimagine the 'image' of pakistan.

usually, such emails contain a host of images and bland facts which are meant to prove how pakistan is not just a haven for terrorism and violence. they are replete with pictures of places like lalazaar, with inane descriptions such as "considered by many to be heaven on earth." they tell of disparate achievements, such as female fighter pilots, and of course this guy.

inevitably, as they scramble around vainly to find something to impress, they proudly mention that largeness of our army.

it goes without saying that such forwards do nothing to fire up the patriot within me. after all, those lovely places are rendered unvisitable due to the wars. those o'level grades are just past-paper-rattafication taken to a new extreme. and that large army... well, vicariously overcompensate much?

but that's not the reason such a forward, or indeed any discussion on the 'image' of pakistan is so irksome. firstly, because unlike other countries, we are the problem child, the sulken sallow faced one with the absuive history, with the suppressed past and the unpleasant future, with the myriad contradictions and the embarassing realities, with the stunted development and without the full eyes, the perky breasts or the coy smile. discussion of image don't work well with our country.

but more improtantly, it is because the quintessential experience of living in pakistan and actually enjoying life there is notoriously difficult to distill into words and images. if it must be understood, it has to be felt to be known.

milan kundera had written once about how someone in love can be surprised to find themselves feeling hungry, because love has this way of taking over your body, your physical sensations, your internal workings. its the realisation that love is not always a soothing panacea, but instead something which has a way of shredding nerves, jostling your insides, plummeting your breath and squeezing your mind. love can't be understood through words and drawings, through painting and sonnets, through songs and ballads, love must be felt. love is visceral.

and that's how we arrive at our understanding of shaiby.

of the countless eulogies that will be written for him, all will make use of statistics to highlight his chronic absenteeism, all will give numbers to collate his outrageous disciplinary fines, probations and bans, all will wistfully reflect on figures to showcase what could've been, had he been more fit, more committed, more someone else...

which might be fine, but the true joy of shaiby, the love felt for him, is experienced, not written.

cricket is a game of infinite pauses, of starts and re-starts.

every delivery, the game comes to a rest, and every delivery it starts up again. each delivery builds up a sense of anticipation and each delivery is resolved with some sort of a climax. it is this pattern that makes test matches so addictive, because the whole pattern replays itself for two innings, for ninety overs a day, for five days. inevitably though, most of the time such moments are bland, the buildup tepid, the climax anti-climatic. the toilers toil, the grafters graft, the nurdlers nurdle, and fakmal drops the catch.

not with shoaib though.

every time, every single time he runs in from those colossal distances, there is an exhilirating buildup, a cascade of potential outcomes, each more glorious and disastrous than the next. his run-up whips us into a frenzy that engulfs everyone, his action and delivery are literally an explosion, and the outcome forever brands itself onto your emotional make-up.

what is truly brilliant is that these emotions are not restricted to his team's fans alone, because the inflammable nature of shoaib means that any and every eventuality is possible.

to make my point, take these two deliveries to sachin. i don't even need to link the videos, because you all know what i mean.

the first is from kolkata, where it takes literally an hour for sachin to arrive at the crease while the crowd shits its pants in anticipation, and it takes ages while tony grieng and charu sharma continue to mount incessant platitudes on the little master, and it takes another lifetime for the sachin to get ready and face up, and further eons still for the thundering speedster to arrive at the crease.

and then.

and there is an ecstatic blur as the ball is released.

and then.

and then there is silence.

there are flayed stumps. there are broken hearts. there are new dreams and old fears. and there is a new hero.

take your time to digest that.

but as i said, the joy is not for his supporters alone. four years later, the two met again in centurion, in a world cup. it was a moment that sachin himself has been waiting for for over a year. that rabid fans had been praying and cursing for even longer. and once more, as shoaib runs in, it feels that all the world and time and history are collapsing into this one moment and either you or the entire cosmos are about to implode. and when sachin visciously stabs at the ball and it soars in the air, the moment seems to stretch even further, becoming even more unbearable and oppressive, until it sails into the crowd and despair/joy overwhelms you.

those two balls, those two moments - that's what shoaib is about.

not about five-fors or strike rates, not about tests played or fines paid, but about the moment, the unbearably violent, destructive, overwhelming experience.

those who know love will know this feeling well, this feeling where everything seems to be in chaos, everything seems to come together and break away, everything rips anew and apart - the feeling we feel when shaiby bowls.

because love is not just rainbows and cookies, love is agony, love is pain, love is delirium.

love is a shoaib akhtar delivery.

A Nation of Ches

2011-02-23T14:23:00.000+05:00

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.

A holy fuck

2011-01-22T00:24:00.000+05:00

by night, i might be a blogger, but by day i slog through the hours at a shia channel in the UK, where i produce two shows covering politics.

i had tweeted a while back about callers who would shout "youse all are kuffar" before hanging up, but recently something new has started happening.

one of my shows has the blessedly generic name 'behind the headlines' where i round up a week's worth of stories relating to islam and muslims and then three hosts discuss them while taking calls.

last week, we did a show discussing the comments of Jack Straw, a former Labour cabinet minister, that Pakistani men "are preying on white women." the hosts then asked the audience if the statement was a valid one. they also made mention of the fact that Straw's own brother had been put on the sexual offenders list.

now the response was beyond anything our show had seen. pakistani callers of both genders nearly melted the phone lines as they chimed in with their vitriolic responses. but they weren't only concerned with Straw's comments, they were mega pissed that the channel had even brought up the question. in fact, days after the show we were still receiving emails literally bursting at the seams with venom over how our show sought to repeatedly bring up anti-pakistan stories.

now this was something i have long held disdain for. back in pakistan journalists would forever get pillored for promoting a 'negative' image of the country. in a month where pakistan remained in the news for blasphemy rows ranging over issues such as water glasses, business cards and posters, culminating in a brutal murder which was roundly appreciated by all and sundry, it's really not my fucking fault if pakistan is 'looking' bad.

and as my forays into both news and non-news media have blatantly illustrated, everyone loves the controversial, shocking, 'negative' stories far more over any uplifting, positive ones. moreover, i am sick to death of this refrain because if these problems do exist, the worst thing possible would be to start pushing them under the rug.

take the Jack Straw story again. he made his comments a week or so after pakistani gangs who ran prostitution rings got busted. now the stories in all the papers were about how they were using white women. no one bothered mentioning that there were a lot of asian women involved as well. why?

because for people like Jack Straw, the question is one of an event reconfirming a bias brought about their own anxieties. the bias being that pakis are up to no good. the anxiety being that these good-for-nothing pakis are ruining our beloved Blighty.

its not like Straw is alone on this.

for starters, without resorting to anything more than anecdotal evidence and personal experience, there is a impulse, nay a raging desire, amongst pakistani men to fuck white women. its not that they are the most obvious cultural marker of beauty of our globalised society, although its that also, but because of something simpler.

men like to play out their politics on women's bodies.

for the colonised brown man, the pain of being politically subjugated seeks relief through the physical conquering of the coloniser's woman. for the downtrodden minority, doing someone from the majority is meant to alleviate all other miseries.

of course, in actuality this far too often leads to self-hate and eventual acting out etc.

but that never subverts the desire to play out your ideology via a vagina.

take the partition for example. for so long, i have tried to rationalise or attempt to understand why the announcement of a homeland being broken led to a mass explosion of unrestrained sexual violence. i mean we all know about looting, plundering and raping hanging out in the same crowd. but widespread lopping of breasts and collecting them in sacks? forced circumcisions by the dozens? rape at such magnitudes that the governments for both the new nations actually had to develop policies of how to deal with rape-concieved-children-of-the-wrong-faith?

the only answer that makes sense is that the helplessness felt at being uprooted and having your home torn apart was alleviated by forcibly imposing a grotesque level of control through rape.

and its not like this, as we so often like to delude ourselves, was a one-off.

even now, our allums (you know, the big-ass flags you carry in war) are adorned with women. when the woman is aasia, her feminity and humanity are torn off and she is presented simply as evil incarnate. when it comes to aafia, her feminity is ramped up through the selective lens of mehramness, and she ascends as the daughter of the nation. no one has any clue about who they were as people, or even as women, yet deranged fanatics continue to projects their beliefs amidst their breasts.

because when women can be objectified, as a hole to put your dick into, an image to spill your semen on, a symbol for your desire to crawl back up the uterus, a standard bearer for all your morality and anxieties, it allows you to cloak yourself from the actual responsibility of dealing with them.

what do i mean by "dealing with them?"

well, i mean realising they are human.

now, i know you know that. but let's take this conversation down to a basic level. let's take it down to sex.

because you can say whatever the fuck you feel like, and your brain can make as many logical and rational and intellectual arguments as it wants, but your body and its urges always act in what you truly feel. and so its one thing to say platitudes about women, quite another to make love to her in a way which is equitable and enjoyable.

its an idea i have thought about often, even making a short film about this.

and i returned to it in quite a staggering manner. a person i interviewed told me about how in iran, the middle class families would snap up the books by the Imams on jurisprudence and the hijab, but no one would buy the books on sexual advice. and by that, i don't mean stuff about chastity and what not. i mean details on how to find the g-spot, on techniques of love making.

holy fuck, emphasis on holy.

and if you think that this is just khatmal mythology typical of this kuffar sect, check out what the Prophet had to say on this matter.

The Prophet said, "Three people are cruel: . ..a person who has sex with his wife before foreplay.'' (Wasa'il, vol. 14, p. 40) Another hadith equates sex without foreplay to animal behavior: "When anyone of you has sex with his wife, then he should not go to them like birds; instead he should be slow and delaying." (Wasa'il, vol. 14, p. 82) The Prophet said, "No one among you should have sex with his wife like animals; rather there should be a messenger between them." When asked about the messenger, he said, "It means kissing and talking." (Tahzibu'l-Ihya, vol. 3, p. 110)

as i was saying, holy fuck.

because it got me thinking, do all these doyens of religion, and those champions of equality and rationality, ever allow these thoughts into their bedroom? do they ignore the imperatives of their raging hard ons to try and get their wimmin hot and spicy? do all those millions who massed for upholding the Prophet's sanctity and protecting the daughter of the nation, do they try and see if their tongues and their thumbs can locate clitorises (or is it clitori?) does maulana fazlur rehman consider that reverse cow-girl might not be as fun for him, but it could be more fun for his zoja? or do our chest-thumping, equality now bloggeratis pause their impending premature ejaculations in an attempt to at least try and ensure that the match doesn't end with the female orgasm stranded on a golden duck?

cause eventually, all this talk of politics and rights and ideals are smokescreens obfuscating your own agendas, insecurities and beliefs. stop the talking, let your actions (and i mean this in the most colloquial sense of the word) prove your worth.

Blaspehming Blasphemies

2011-01-07T21:15:00.000+05:00

A version of this post was originally published here.

The Blasphemous Blasphemy Law
i usually don't do smash and grab super quick blogs, and i try and avoid politics and internet activism like the plague. however, a couple of days ago i was asked by ahsan butt of fiverupees to do a post, and since ahsan is the dawood ibrahim of paksitani blogging* i couldn't say no.

*(if you don't believe me, check out the untimely demises of Aslam Kana'a Senior, Chotta Bubs and Nithoo Bhola to see what i mean)

the post in question is to talk about the upcoming rally to protest the blasphemy law. in case you don't know about it, check out the details here. (Ed: the protest has since been cancelled until further notice)

but in order to avoid this event becoming a glorified GT, we have to get our heads wrapped around what argument we are proposing to place on the agenda. as mosharraf zaidi pointed out in his excellent article, the for and against camps in the blasphemy debate are often speaking at cross currents.

for many of us, the blasphemy law is abhorrent because it is so frequently misused and abused. however, we can't expect to present this argument, because it shifts the focus away from the legitimacy of the law to a question of how it is being enforced. which leads us into the cesspool of arguing over how to implement laws properly in pakistan.

for others, the blasphemy law needs to be repealed because it is a violation of freedom of speech. this is the exact point (you might as well mark it and take a picture with it) where the anti-blasphemy law campaign finds itself being portrayed as a bunch of 'liberal-extremists' licking the soles of western boots.

why does that happen?

if we are to accept freedom of speech as a valid value to cherish, then it means that we believe that we think everyone has the right to say what they feel. that's great in theory, but in practice it boils down to two things.

first of all, it ignores the fact that in pakistan, by and large, you don't have rights, you have power. if you have power to say what you feel like, you might pretend you are exercising your rights, but in reality you are flexing your considerable muscles. which means those without power are by and large without rights.

secondly, it implies that the only thing sacred is the right to free speech, and the sanctity of that right exists above and beyond anything else which might be held sacred. for the pro-blasphemy camp, this essentially translates into saying that people 'should' have the right to trash all that is sacred.

i might be wrong here, but i can sense that you are tensing up a bit. fear not - for many of the 'progressive' crowd, words like sacred and holy are immediately problematic and uncomfortable.

unfortunately, the problem is that until we can frame our debate in those very contexts of religion and things that are sacred, we are always opening up ourselves to be outflanked by claims that we are brainwashed from abroad and that we have no clue about what it means to be a pakistani.

so why don't we take this debate on in a religious context?

the reason we don't is that we seem to imagine islam like a supercomputer which we can only use once we have learnt C++ and Java and other more complex languages.

let me explain myself.

a few weeks ago, there was this thing on twitter where everyone was tweeting as their 16 year old selves. my favourite tweet of that day was by someone who wrote "one day i am going to learn arabic, interpret the Quran the right way and then all our problems would be solved."

i know a lot of people who can relate to that feeling that there is a truth out there that we can get to if only we are learned enough.

however, we grow up and come to assume that the supremacy of islamic knowledge lies with those whose day job it is to memorize it, and thus we can't hope to enter into a religious argument with them without resorting to non-religious points of views.

well that's just bullshit.

because if the blasphemy debate is to be won over, and i am talking in pragmatic terms here, it has to be framed in the context of religion itself. whether we like it or not, that is the context wherein the majority of our society can converge upon. that is not to say that we are all rabid fundos or enslaved by the opium of religion, but rather the fact that it is the most widespread mode of articulating ideas in our society.

and there is no reason we can't frame a progressive argument in religious terms. this doesn't mean looking up ayahs and tafseers and hadith, but employing some basic logic.

the problem with the idea of blasphemy, particularly at the level of personal insults, is that it implies that the Prophet or God or the Book are some sort of virginal brides in see through chemises whose honor can be irrevocably slighted with even the smallest speck of dirt.

unleashing the law to punish business card trashing and water bringing betrays a supreme sense of insecurity about the perceived value of that which is meant to be sacred, because it implies that something as mundane as those actions would bring the whole edifice of faith and religion crashing down.

so we need to ask the pro-blasphemy camp - is the Prophet an idea, an example, a person so weak and defenseless that even the naming of a teddy bear will tarnish his image? is your faith so weak that it needs to kill an impoverished woman to save itself? is your religion so wobbly that a business card can bring it down?

even if you don't believe in the sacred history, the more or less accepted versions of historical islam admit that the Prophet bore some hardcore persecution of his people and his self without feeling the need to avenge them. so why is it that his followers 14 centuries on feel so insecure about any criticism thrown his way?

the blasphemy law needs to be repealed because it is a blasphemy in its own self. it reduces that which is supposedly sacred into an idea so weak and powerless that only the most violent action can seem to save it. the blasphemy law is an insult to anyone who has faith, because it claims that an idea which requires blind belief can be shattered by something inconsequential.

you might not agree with me, and you might not feel that you can carry this debate with anyone armed with tafseers and hadiths. that might be true, but i honestly believe that even if this is a losing argument, it is not a futile one. because it zeroes in on the realm of religion - the very realm the pro-blasphemy camp seems to believe it owns, and can thus manipulate it for its own purposes.

at the end of the day, the reason we should wish to repeal the blasphemy law, or amend it is not because we would like to see the triumph of our own political belief and agenda. we should wish to take this stand because we don't want to see innocent, powerless people be mercilessly persecuted and murdered.

the reason we should wish to make this argument should not be about politics, but about humanity.

On the Murder of Salman Taseer

2011-01-04T20:54:00.001+05:00

most of the time, i write blogs because they give me a chance to show how smart i am, to validate my intellect amongst a handful of people who read them. some days, they even make me think that i am a 'great' person who is affecting change.

that's bullshit. one blog post doesn't change shit.

but perhaps a consistent, constant and clear stream of conscience-based ideas can, over a great length of time, get people to start thinking differently.

even then, change doesn't come about through thoughts - its when those thoughts become actions that we get to see change.

but consistency is a fickle monster to tame.

when i logged on this morning, the chattering clouds were awash with the flood of salman taseer's murder.

and many of us, petrified by the killing of someone who held the same vices as us chose to don the cloak of sanctimony, and condemned the heinous acts of those who were celebrating this death.

and in doing so, we all willingly waded into the already rancid cesspool of contradictions which is our society.

for starters, celebrating deaths is a pretty shitty act.

but if we start thinking that it is a refuge only taken by the stone-age , FATA-living, honor-killing, beard-measuring fundamentalists, we need to think again.

for starters, one of the reportedly eight fan pages of taseer's killers had over a 100 fans. when i clicked through their profiles, they were also fans of stuff like Enrique Iglesias, Family Guy, 300, Coke Studio, the Godfather.

a prominent ahmed qureshi-clone blogger, dan qayyum, constantly tweeted that it was time to take out all the liberal extremist cunts. his previous tweets had been about how roy hodgson wasn't good enough his beloved liverpool.

see the contradictions here?

unfortunately, its not like those of us who stood under the banner of liberal or humanist values have never done the exact same.

honestly, did you go around feeling horrified when people celebrated the death of baitullah mehsud? or have you been one of the many people who tweeted or facebook statused or whatever that it is horrid to speak ill of the dead, before unleashing a tirade against the still-dead zia ul haq for his murderous policies?

i don't want to speak of ill of governor taseer, but i also don't want his death to be a moment where we whitewash the past.

his death was barbaric, and there is no denying that.

but if we feel sick, its also because we fear that we are going to be killed too. not because of how we feel for asia bibi, because if we truly cared we would have taken to the streets a long time ago.

but because like the deceased governor, we enjoyed the acts our state holds illegal, and like the governor we could enjoy them because of the power we wield.

the problem with pakistan is extremism, but let's not fool ourselves that its only one side that's extreme. we keep running further to the side of intolerance, we keep getting more and more bigoted. and then we tell ourselves that only the other side is to blame.

to be honest, i can't say much for the future of pakistan etc, because what is the point of that debate? we can't even have a moment of understanding anything amongst ourselves. we can't even look into our own contradictions in an honest way.

i am not trying to hold onto my usual blogging alter-ego of being holier than thou. and i am frankly sickened by all that has developed today. but somewhere, i can also see that i am not sickened because of my principles but because of my fears. and i'm not alone here.

when we act out of fear, we act in a fucked up way. the guard who shot taseer knew deep inside that he wasn't doing so for the sake of the Prophet - he knew he could just use that as a cover up. he did so because he feared the kind of pakistan where salman taseer could fulfil his ideals. he was afraid.

and now we are just as afraid, because we fear a pakistan where malik qadri's ideals are going to get fulfilled.

i want to write something authoritative like 'we must not act out of fear' but i know that's me trying to act all cool and brave. the reality is that i am not sure i can start expunging such deep seated fears from my self. i can't really ask you to do the same.

[edit: i have removed the following lines "he took a stand yes, but in light of all his other stands, it was more in line with his constant stance of needling the provincial government of the PML-N rather than his own belief in the ultimacy of human rights." because as @mypplwannajump and @sisyphusgrey point out, its unfair to reduce his stance to just that. fair point in my view. i would still implore against letting our anger blur our vision of the past, but still the governor had a strong principled background on this issue.]

Stabbing Lions in the Skull is the path to Salvation

2010-12-21T21:29:00.000+05:00

look at this picture.

no really, take a look at it.

are you suppressing a giggle, or perhaps recalling the awesome article on cracked.com that showcased this once?

this picture, and i am not mincing my words here, explains why the burqa/hijab and its politics are such a huge issue in our modern world.

no really, take a look at it, and you should see be able to see it.

still don't get it, do you?

let me tell you a story.

there used to be two tribes, one in the east and one in the west.

the men of both tribes would gather every day to perform their rituals. in the east, they would inhale gas. in the west, they would imbibe liquids.

the men of the east said that our faith is in something that can not be seen or measured readily, but can be felt. so our ritual centers around gas, because it is what exemplifies our faith.

the men of the west said that our faith is in something we can see and know and measure, so our rituals are based on liquids.

one day the men in the east realised that the tribes of the west had built big buildings and fancy roads and phones you could touch instead of tap, and it made them very upset.

some of them thought, hey, why not give this liquid idea a try. so with heads filled with up with gases they started to give this liquid thing a shot

but other men of the east got really pissed, so pissed that they started filling themselves up with gas until they blew up. they didn't realise that they were in on the liquid too, because their denial was so powerful.

interestingly, the women of the east had no choice on the matter but to keep up the rituals that had always existed.

one year the tribe in the west started running out of its liquid, and suddenly there was great commotion and despair. some of them shouted that the men in the east had probably finished off all their liquid, siphoning it into their dirty gaseous minds. all hell broke lose, as the tribe vowed to get their liquid back, and to make sure that no gas-guzzling easterner would ever get to sip any liquid until they provided permission.

cue chaos and confusion.

cue, this picture.

why do i keep returning here? well, i had seen this image a few times on the web, and my reactions had ranged from the incredulity of being confronted with pakistanica, to embarrasment at our tackiness, to titlation based on my desire to feel different. but i'd never quite understood it.

then, i visited the british museum, and suddenly i saw this, and it floored me.

to be honest, i actually saw a version of this image where the king was actually stabbing the lion through the skull with a dagger, but even here, you can make out the fight with the lion resulting in a stab wound for the beast.

suddenly, as cracked.com would say, something punched my brain in the face. the sultan rahi poster was not some example of deranged pakistani violence fantasies, or the poster that hate mailers send to PETA.

it made a very strong and obvious point - this image is of a hero.

heroes in all mythologies kill lions to prove their valour. in one image, that poster tells me everything i need to know about who sultan rahi is, and the moral world he inhabits.

now, perhaps it seems like a huge leap to link the persepolis image with the pakistani one as either ends of a tradition, but i have reasons.

you may claim i am simply doing so to root this piece of faux-art onto a venerable tradition. you may even say that the reason i do so is to find a rooting in history for my country and its culture, which suffers from such absurd amnesias in definig its own past.

but i am doing it because it makes sense. it makes sense because of trucks.

truck art has become this symbol and motif of showcasing non-terrorist pakistan.

its this idea that 'we have culture too', although most people who use it do it to add some ethnic flavour to their own ideals. they do it without ever understanding it, but only showcasing it like a circus shows a bearded woman.

infact, if i may say so, truck art is the most exoticized pakistani object after mathira's body.

what makes things interesting is if you try and investiage why trucks in pakistan are decorated the way they are, you find something revelatory.

almost every aspect of truck art, from the way those giant d-shaped crowns are created, to the patterns and motifs inscribed, to the very idea of decoration itself, stems from traditions in islamic art.

essentially, artistic traditions organic to this area and region which have just morphed from buildings and canvases onto truck bodies.

which is why the sultan rahi poster itself fits in with the persian king - both of those are part of certain ideas and traditions.

what is worrying is that i had no idea about any of this.

and i'm not alone here.

we've all found ourselves in the position where we are unsure whether to take gulps of gas or shots of liquid. and by we, i don't mean western-boot licking liberals, i mean all the tribesmen of the east, because when you use a mobile phone to blow up the infidels, well you're using the products of liquid faith.

but as we rushed to bathe ourselve in liquid, we did not consider that perhaps liquid and gas could have a synthesis, or that gas may have something to say about liquid or vice versa. so eager were we to reap the benefits of liquid that we felt the best way forward was to pretend gas never existed.

which is why a 27 year old film graduate had no way of understanding the imagery of a local film, because that whole world view had been replaced a long time ago.

and unfortunately, while the men of the east gave up their traditional forms of dressing and their traditional occupations and thoughts, they could never really let go of the idea of tradition itself. they just reduced it to certain symbols that proved to themselves that they were still a gas.

and so, cue the hijab, cue halal kfc, cue men dressed in jeans and working in investment banks who feel that women who don't cover up are asking to be raped.

in this post 9/11 climate of mosques floating upon grounds of zero and sikhs being thrashed for their turbans and newspaper comics becoming nuclear bombs, we find ourselves in an odd position.

the west doesn't 'hate' us, it just doesn't get us.

and they don't get us because we don't get ourselves. the reason we don't get ourselves is because we don't know what was ours to begin with. like this image.

i'm not trying to make this a pedantic debate about islam and the west, or the perils of modernity, and i am certainly not advocating a return to the stone ages.

what i am trying to say, is that when you and i don't know what sultan rahi is doing stabbing two lions in the head, its not because we were never interested in that lollywood crap to begin with, but because we have no clue how to decode and interpret the symbols that are organic to us.

because somewhere in the past few centuries, we oscillated between trying to buy into modernity and trying to retain our own identity. and in doing so, we made the disastrous decision to ape the liquid drinkers in the areas we needed to, and spurn their logic when their ideas meant our own privilieges would be threatened. that meant that our own traditions and logic and worldviews literally vanished in thin air, leaving us gasping for breath.

and in today's world, where suddenly all of us - from the talib in swat to the student in swarthmore, are finding ourselves like the kawa with the peacock feathers, we have no idea where to turn and what to look at. because what we see, we don't understand.

and if we can't understand our own selves out, no amount of development funds, sympathetic op-eds, well meaning NGOs and facebook protests can save us from our self-inflicted destruction.

Why We Watch Sports

2010-12-04T00:10:00.000+05:00

I have branched out my blogging of late. I can recently be found on these two sites:

http://blog.dawn.com/author/ahmer-naqvi/
http://clearcricket.wordpress.com/author/karachikhatmal/

now, here is another post that recently got published at dawn. i have written other stuff for both blogs that i haven't put here yet, so do check it out.

London is a notorious city to travel in. According to one account, the average speed of travel across the city has not changed in over 300 years. The situation becomes exacerbated further when winter comes in, especially this year’s edition which promises to be the worst in 30 years. Yet last night, I found myself braving the elements to take on a two-hour journey, all to catch the last 15 minutes of a match.

Unfortunately, the team I was supporting was decimated, to put it politely. You can read about it here, but as far as I was concerned, there was a more pressing question I needed to answer. Why did I care?

At first, my meditations flocked around the match in question, which involved two teams I had no link to, had never seen in person, and was probably never going to be able to either. But perhaps the sheer magnitude of the loss forced me to delve deeper – why do we follow any sports at all? Especially people like me, who have been so bad at all sports that they are forced to buy the equipment in their local gully before anyone reluctantly puts them in the team.

Sports as war

Ok, that is a rather sensationalist claim, inspired by George Orwell’s observation that all sports was ‘war minus the shooting.’ But its not completely off the mark.

Modern football, for example, evolved from annual events where neighbouring villages would compete to drag an animal carcass across a lengthy field. The whole fiasco would result in outrageous violence and often, fatalities.

However, the noblemen realised that if the villagers would be allowed to vent their emotions, angers and frustrations through such events, they would be less likely to involve themselves in actual warmongering, particularly against their overlords.

To date, a lot of sports allow themselves to serve as a way of channelling machismo, aggression and frustration. The Pakistani artist Faiza Butt has done some fascinating work showcasing how sports allow ideas of masculinity to be represented and reified. As a recent blog noted, channelling machismo is not always the best recipe for success. However, it continues to be the way forward for sportsmen, but more importantly sports followers.

Getting excited, angry, vengeful, bullish, threatening on the fluctuations of a match allows supporters to come to terms with their own emotions that they perhaps struggle to express otherwise due to the bounds of civility, legality and social norms.

Sports as narrative

One day I was being deliberately sexist (I do that as part of my roguish charm routine. It’s not always successful, but I am married, so clearly it worked when I needed it to) and claiming that women are vacuous because they like watching soap operas. My wife had a pithy response – watching a soap is no different than following a football team.

What? At first, I began to pout and snipe, angrily demanding she take it back. But later, I started to think about what she had said.

Every day, I find myself scouring blogs and articles which dissect the latest sporting events, the reactions of the competitors, the intrigue of the administrators, the drama, the suspense, the excitement.

However, I recently realised that the restrictions of work and personal obligations meant that I was rarely able to actually watch the sports I was following so diligently. I could not stop going into work, or avoid picking up a relative from the airport just because a sporting event was playing live.

More interestingly, I hadn’t even realised that I had been reduced to following these sports through some scattered highlights, and a plethora of words on websites, tweets and forums. So I wondered, why am I so eager to follow the interpretation of events I am not even watching?

The answer is that our own lives are messy, seemingly random experiences. Sure we have goals and dreams, but our trials and tribulations are constant and monotonous, our ‘defining’ moments occur haphazardly and irregularly, and it is often difficult to discern any tangible meaning from the procession of our daily routine.

In contrast, sports follow pre-defined patterns. There are seasons, tournaments, leagues, rankings, competitions. The adversary is easily defined, the end is easily identified. There are winners and losers, champions and chumps, heroes and villains.

We can’t watch every match, but we can follow the score, day in day out, through out the season. And doing so, it helps provide a steady tale of ups and downs, of victories and defeats, of hope and sorrow. And so if our own lives seem messy and complicated, sports (and indeed soap operas) allow us to follow something that does seem to make sense, and end with a nice ceremony.

Sports as art

For a lot of people, a trip to an art gallery can be bewildering. Very few things seem to make sense, and fewer still betray any idea as to why they were deemed important enough to be put up in such a sacred manner. Which is why, a lot of attendees are there to curry favour with others, to be seen and talked about. But that’s not true for everyone. Appreciating art requires an understanding of context, but also technique. The knowledge of both allows one to appreciate a work for what it’s trying to say, as well as the difficulties and the limits, of conveying and representing what has been said.

Sometimes, watching sports is truly akin to appreciating art, and in that sense, it becomes divorced from the experiences described above. Sometimes, we watch not for who is playing, and who we want to win, but rather to watch something incredible unfold.

We watch to see limits being challenged, to see previously someone breach what is considered possible. We watch to see roles being changed, new interpretations being created, new ideas brought to life. We essentially partake in a supremely creative process, where the appreciation comes not from our own affiliations and prejudices, but rather our desire to watch new possibilities, new meanings to emerge.

Truly great performers are like great painters creating new styles, great writers discovering new forms of expressions. A Messi dribble, a drive from Lara, a shot from Federer is watching a new form of expression being created, and in such a moment, narrative and emotions matter little.

Sports as transcendental experience

It was 2004, and I was in a concrete cauldron in Karachi. By all accounts, me and 30,000 other people should have already headed home. It was lunch, and India had just posted the highest total the ground had ever seen. In the days before mammoth chases were common, and the fact that this was Pakistan’s notoriously hollow batting doing the chasing, the target of 350 seemed like an impossibility.

And yet somehow, the crowd hung around, ignoring the initial parts of Pakistan’s chase and amusing themselves with shouting out obscene comments to the outfielders, and buying copious amounts of food from the stalls nearby. Somehow, they resisted their usual penchant for stoning the opposition captain, or rioting in the stands.

And somehow, even more improbably, Pakistan starting making a fist of the chase. Somehow, the boundaries kept flowing. Somehow, that glorious saviour Inzi kept shuffling his cards and producing aces. Somehow, the most impossible of chases, against the most fiercest of rivals, began to materialise.

And it was there, in the last few hours of that match, that I suddenly lost myself. The entire stadium began to pulsate as one giant beastly cacophony of sound. Bottles were relentlessly smacked against plastic seats, Mexican waves cascaded continuously upon themselves. Roar after roar after roar continued to be emitted. It didn’t stop for dot balls, it didn’t stop for over breaks or drinks breaks. It didn’t stop for fall of wickets.

And when the match reached its climax and Pakistan lost in one blink of an eye, the roar stopped for a moment, before beginning again. The stadium’s relentless noise transformed into applause for a team which had been pelted with rocks the last time it had played there.

And when it all ended, I realised that for the past few hours, I had no awareness of my self, my individual self. The entire experience had felt otherworldly, eerie even in retrospect. There had been no concept of individuals, no concept of political feuds and human follies. No concept of victory or defeat even. It had been a sustained moment of pure exhilaration.

And every sports fan who tastes such a moment, who participates in that obliteration of the self and the connection with all of humanity around them, who experiences emotions beyond those that can be described by words, keeps coming back for more.

For all its faults and pretensions, sports remains one of those mediums where we can experience something truly beyond the ordinary. Something which affirms our belief that there is more to life, if only we choose to embrace it.

And out of all the reasons, that is the most noble one for following sports.

Keeping It Real

2010-11-28T19:41:00.001+05:00

This blog was originally published in the Express Tribune Magazine. It was meant to be published in the Dawn blog, but someone there felt it wasn't relevant. My special thanks to a great fan of the blog who had my back, and to @Nadir_Hassan for offering and succeeding at publishing it at ET.

According to this article, bestiality is a rite of passage in parts of Pakistan. Considering that sexual depravity, even in innocuous terms is no stranger to young, virile Pakistani men, I am reluctant to dismiss this claim as another journo out to malign the image of Pakistan.

Rites of passage after all, are essential to human life.

Take for example the rite of passage involving young bloggers in Pakistan. At some point in their blogging career, all of us write this post.

This post?

You know, the one in which we deride, mock and seek to humiliate the ‘elites’ of Pakistan, their obsession with material goods and facebooks, their cluelessness regarding the local transport network, their obliviousness to the rampant poverty faced by the unclothed majority, their contempt for our local vernacular.

Inevitably, these rants exhort the elites to pacify their ‘liberal extremism,’ to nullify their ‘western-boot-licking’ to pop out of their ‘bubbles.’ Words like ‘reality’ ‘common man’ and ‘masses’ litter these posts like plastic bags in Clifton Beach.

Let us lay aside the implicit irony of English speaking, computer using bloggerati railing against people who are essentially their own friends and family.

Let us look instead, at something far more intriguing.

What makes someone a ‘real’ Pakistani? What makes something a ‘real’ Pakistani experience? From what these posts imply, being rich and privileged strips you of the ability to be real.

What a fascinating idea!

It appears that the venerable Defence Housing Authority is no more than a figment of my imagination, that the Fez nights at Sindh Club are merely a mirage concocted by misfiring neurons in our elitist brains, that those of us going to ‘dance parties’ and ‘social clubs’ are merely computer generated holograms, created to incense the fevered blogger and implode Pakistan from within.

On the flip side, it also implies that the poor are one coagulated mass of noble, wretched, helpless, nameless limbs and faces whose entire destiny depends on whether or not we stop watching ‘Jersey Shore’ and sipping skimmed milk espressos.

What a load of bull.

For starters, while there is no reason to defend the oblivious and corrosive actions of the elites in our country, pointing the fingers at people essentially from the same background as yourself displays stunning self-delusion.

Secondly, holding up the ‘poor’ as some paragons of virtue, as being common or part of an undifferentiated mass, robs them of their individuality, their diversity, and only further intensifies the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

And most importantly, defining some things as ‘real’ and others as not only deludes us from taking responsibility of the fact that every action, every moment, every experience is as real (or not) as any other. Eating out in Burns Road or Anarkali is not more any more ‘real’ than the same activity being done in Zamzama or MM Alam Road. Spurning the advances of nefarious corporations might be healthy for your wallet, but falling to their embraces does not cloak you in a halo of ‘unreality.’

So much like young men allegedly deflowering unsuspecting four-legged mammals, bloggers railing against the elite is one rite of passage we can all do without.

Middle Class Canines

2010-11-23T21:47:00.000+05:00

it seems strange to base your world view on a music album, but if the album in question is animals, and the band is pink floyd, you can at least premise an argument around this far-fetched concept.

the album consists of three epic songs titled 'pigs' 'dogs' and 'sheep' based loosely on george orwell's animal farm.

i used to listen to this quite regularly while i was a student at a curious university in pakistan.

why was it curious?

well mainly because it seemed to incorporate an evolutionary process within its students that i had not observed elsewhere.

to put it simply, when you joined you had a very high probability of evolving into one of three distinct archetypes - the mullah, the commie and the charsi.

of course, there were those who were unaffected by this process, but those were either day scholars* (non-hostel students), extraordinary variants, scholarship students, or nerds.

*(since day scholars by and large had the rest of the lives and social circles accesible as soon as they left the university, they were less prone to this evolution. the hostelites on the other hand, whose entire universe was the university were a lot more vulnerable)

no one necessarily entered the university as any of the types i mentioned. the existential transformation seemed to strike after a year or two into the four year program, and once the student became hyponotized by one of the three types, it was often irreversible during the entire period at the university.

the transformation would be violent in nature, necessitating a drastic change in outlook, clothing, hygiene and sleeping patterns.

i was myself a fully paid member of one of these variants, and during the time, the vast gulf between each group seemed insurmountable. sure you had friends who crossed over - charsis would often be with commies until they became insufferable, and both commies and mullahs could link up on the moral decadence and decay symbolised by the charsis.

each group reserved infinite scorn and condescention for the others, each was completely committed to their belief, and each group was relentless in its zeal for conversion.

commies would be found arguing loudly over obscure texts which they would reverentially quote. mullahs would often hunt in pairs, forcing people to get up and join them when the azaan rang out. charsis would enter a room on the pretense of asking for a cigarette, and end up questioning entire moral systems while forcing someone to have just one puff.

yet for all their chest-thumping bravado, they were also extremely testy and defensive when questioned over the apparently obvious contradictions inherent to them.

how can someone holding meetings in colonial mansions claim to feel the pain of the proletariat? how can buying expensive foreign made mobile phones be reconciled with the spiritual austerity you preach? how can you claim to be ridding yourself of all pretensions and hypocrisies when you can't even admit that you are addicted to what you just smoked?

in response, the archetype being questioned would eventually shake their head and leave you to your apparent ignorance.

once i graduated, these variants were at first ornaments of my nostalgia.

slowly, as we all started earning and making the salaries our fancy-pants university guaranteed, one would hear of deviancies amongst these archetypes. the charsi who one day broke his family television set and started growing a beard. the commie who decided to take up the corporate job because they wanted to change the system from within. the mullah who decided that he would shave off his beard for his the sake of his promotion, because religion is a private matter.

but i never really understood why we all became those archetypes in the first place.

the epiphany that led to this blog happened last week.

i recently found work as a producer for a tv channel. however, i didn't mention this new job either online or to any of my friends. the reason being that it was for a 24 hour Muslim channel.

i knew i wasn't completely ashamed, and i wasn't exactly proud. i was definitely confused.

then i met perhaps the most intriguing muslims i've ever come across - mohammad sulayman - a convert from st. kitts who works with troubled youth, speaks in an amazing rasta accent, and quotes both the quran and malcom x with liberal abandon. his ethos continues to be 'if i find that there is something in islam i don't agree with, i'll leave this religion.'

the reason i had went to him was because i was doing a story on whether young Muslims in britain are getting radicalised through the internet, and he told me something quite fascinating.

a host of recent headlines grabbing stories - such as the underwear bomber, the times square bomber, the MP stabber - all had protagonists who were not the downtrodden, marginalised, poor muslims from the ghettoes, but rather university educated middle class muslims.

and according to sulayman, they were driven to those acts because of their socio-economic situation. this is how he explained it:

a middle class child is brought up in a culture that places great pressure on achieving a good education, finding a stable and succesful foothold in society, managing to provide and support the family.

but for all these essentially material aims, the middle class provides its children with lofty ideologies as justifications.

do this to be a good person, do this to be rewarded in heaven, do this to live with honor etc. all these things which are essentially subjective and unknowable are sought to be validated through decidely material and objective goals.

when the middle class child, especially a talented or high achieving one, enters university or the workplace, they get a chance to be away from their middle class culture and become exposed to a greater spectrum of ideas and expereiences. and at this point, the chasm between the material aims they strive for, and the ideas that are meant to supplant them, become glaringly obvious.

they become exceedingly frustrated that their entire lives were premised around contradictions and as a reaction, they embrace a certain set of ideals with unwavering ferocity (which as i saw at my alma mater translated into the three archetypes i mentioned above.)

if we return to the pink floyd reference, the middle class child begins to see himself as different from both the pigs above and the sheep below.

and so he starts to growl at the pigs to protect them from the sheep, and then he barks viciously at the sheep to get them to rise from their slumber. he doesn't want to be a pig, but he doesn't want to be a sheep even more.

the problem is that the middle class child never quite realises that he is, at the end of the day, a dog.
now, there is nothing wrong with being a dog.

but if one never realises that fact, they get caught up in a web of frustration. and when they do so their venting can get quite dangerous.

all too often, the middle class vents their vitriol at the excesses of the rich, but when the poor eventually take up arms and respond to their calls, the middle classes are the first to shirk away.

all too often the middle classes decry the illiteracy of the poor, and yet when they are asked to accomodate their needs, they decide to hide elsewhere.

unfortunately, no matter how noble or base the intentions, dogs can't transform themselves to become either pigs or sheep, and neither can a dog save the pigs or the sheep.

it just doesn't work like that.

what does work is shedding your preconcieved ideologies, and accepting those held by others.

what does work is reserving judgement, yet having the guts to call out right from wrong.

what does work is focusing on your own biases, your own failings, your own impotencies before railing at others.

in other words, o children of the middle class, if you want to stop being a dog, start being a human instead.

Once upon a khabarnama...

2010-10-31T17:51:00.001+05:00

when mushie chacha turned off the channels in november 2007, many journalists took to the streets. in karachi, one particular protest was shut down by the police, and the participants arrested. later, they would quote the experience when they spoke of being 'hardened journalists' who bore the brunt of 'a repressive military regime as they fought for the freedom of speech while rocking out to rage against the machine.'

what most of them failed to mention was how their stay in jail for a few hours involved being brought over pizzas and cans of soft drinks as well as untold cartons of cigarettes.

the point being, that sometimes things aren't what they seem.

so when dawn.com had issues with my second consecutive blog because of things i was saying about their other employees, i decided to put it on my blog, which is only beholden to me. this doesn't stand as an example of censorship or any such malarkey, for several reasons. the most important one being that in both cases, the references to dawn employees was not an indictment of them personally, nor was it a personal vendetta against two popular and well respected men. instead, it was an attempt to contextualise their words and actions.

so, without further ado, here it is.

Before disney took over the job, fairy tales were the realm of the spoken word.

instead of animation, grandmothers, or audio cassettes, usually took upon the role of reading out elaborate tales of fantasy, adventure, bravery and magic. each tale was embellished with fascinating characters with pretty one-dimensional personalities.

the brave prince, the wronged princess, the devious churail, the friendly giant, the mischievous gnomes, vengeful pirates, bashful fairies, scheming sorcerers, generous djinns, 40 crafty thieves - you get the picture.

for the story teller, the liberating aspect of this exercise was the ability to create a whole world, populate it with characters, and trust that the listener would take that on face value.

there wasn't any necessity to provide context. the evil king was evil because that's what the story said - no one asked to hear about his human rights record, or his control over his kingdom's sovereignty.

a few days ago, one of pakistan's most respected journalists wrote a rather curious article, in which he spent a long time dissecting the life and times of Angelina Jolie.

the inquest resulted in a lot of wink-wink, nudge-nudge innuendo, and some outright tamachay on the wisdom and choices of Ms. Jolie.

now several blogs took apart this approach on the interwebs, and i'll leave you to judge for yourself. but personally, the basic question that arises upon reading this column is why unleash this maelstrom of mense on the actress, who after all was working recently for flood relief victims in pakistan?

a quick glance at the article reveals the answer.

the article's conclusion was related to ms. jolie's complaints about the excesses of the Pakistani government. according to the scribe, this was how low the government's stock had reached - that even a person with morals as allegedly dubious as Angelina bhabi looked down upon the rulers in islamabad.

now, if we step back, and ignore the spicy gossip strewn all over this column, a more primeval reaction arises - 'huh?'

what is the point of all this?

well, pyare bacho, the point is that in order to provide context to a story, to an event, to any scrap of news, one has to create a narrative.

a narrative requires certain characters, certain events and their consequences in order to provide a conclusion.

narratives help provide allegories, examples and advice on how to make sense of the world. to provide a beginning, middle and end. and the simpler the narrative, the flatter the characters, the more emphatic its message becomes.

in pakistan, where we are saturated by news and nothing but news all the time, it appears that we have put our grandmothers to sleep and turned on the television for our fairy tales.

and so each day, we stare agog at our screens, as wise men narrate epic tales of evil plotters, court room intrigue, daring heros, corrupt rulers, oppressed masses, wanton destruction, foreign hands and local bodies.

unfortunately, while our grandmothers would end the fairy tales when we started to fall asleep, the modern story tellers just don't let up. and so if our attention begins to waver, they conjure up even more exoticised characters, whose benign actions become symbols of societal malaise. they start weaving together completely unrelated fantasies and present them as a cohesive whole.

like the amorous, brazen queen of the heathen tribes of the west, who visited this fair kingdom, and even she, this insatiable devourer of men, was left ashamed by the excesses of the evil king and his supporters.

i wonder who disney would get to play the role of the grand vizier?

Smokers Cornered

2010-10-23T20:59:00.000+05:00

A few days ago i posted a blog on dawn, which was ostensibly aimed at NFP, but not really. it appears that people are having trouble posting their comments on the page. So, feel free to speak your mind here.

Smokers Cornered

One of Pakistan's most famous columnists recently wondered aloud on these pages, as he so often does, 'how its no surprise Pakistan's current generation is so"conservative and intransigent."' The former student activist and veteran 'surkha' delved in subversive, philosophical and political contexts, and traced the problem back to his favourite hunting ground - the Islamization policies of General Zia-ul-Haq.

I'm talking, of course, about NFP.

Now, before I begin, I am at pains to stress that I don't wish to ignite a flame war here. I apologise in advance if it feels like I am resorting to petty and personal attacks, because I have no intention of doing so.

Disclaimers done, let's move on to this hit-mongering argument.

NFP, if I am correct, seems to be upset about the political leanings of the most young people of today, or rather their blatant lack of political concern amongst the rest. The current situation strikes a discordant note with his own past, those heady days when young people chose (and choose they did) the Left or the right with great fervor.

Now it seems, the youth has no interest left in politics.

At the face of it, this claim sounds preposterous. Young Pakistanis of all stripes are obsessed with politics, and the youth with their politics-based blogs, the politics-obsessed tweets and facebook statuses seem to be no different.

But this is confusing the reality.

If there is any sort of politics being professed by today's youth, it is the politics of individualism.

immediately, this sounds like a dirty word. individualism means selfishness and greed, it means consumerism and strait-jacket capitalism.

thats all probably true.

but lets try and understand why this came about.

for starters, our generation grew up during a time of the collapse of collectivism.

in a strictly political sense, this was a time when both the Left and the Right collapsed upon each other.

ideologues on the left were reduced to hacking each other into factions. witness the fact that the pakistani left split into possibly as many factions as the PML.

but in a social sense, the right was equally undermined.

a lot of this had to do with technology. our generation saw television channels morph from the ubiquitous PTV to a cacophony of hyperbolic hosts, vengeful saas-bahus, and 24/7 hungama.

we saw the esteemed familial tradition of the telephone landline, so often an extension of patriarchal authority, become fractured into individual mobile lines for everyone, including the woebegone "common man."

we saw the already defunct system of household postal services replaced by the ravenous onslaught of the internet with individual mail addresses, and individual profiles and statuses galore.

we saw the VCR give way to the personal computer and youtube. the one dayers give way to t20s. the cassette to mp3. radio pakistan to FM 100.

the one common thread to all these changes was that they were all about being catered to our own individual needs. which is why men like zaid hamid and imran khan, so frequently the source of NFP sahab's ire, are so popular amongst people of our generation.

because unlike ideologues of that past, with their rigorous demands for unflinching devotion (anyone from thatcher to mullah omer, from mao to imran khan the cricket captain) these guys offer their followers choice. the choice to wear jeans and jackets, but still spout anti-western rhetoric. the choice to speak in english and yet denounce the english speaking world.

and that is also why their popularity can never translate into actual feet on the ground. because when they switch from offering choices to making demands, their very appeal gets eroded.

witness the damp squib that was mr. hamid's takmeel-e-pakistan rally, or the number of seats won by the PTI. because even while our generation of individuals enjoys echoing the thoughts of these men, they don't allow them to subsume their own individual self. whenever the call goes out to follow an individual, the generation of individuals decides to choose its own path instead.

and its within this individualistic ethos that our generation finds its redemption as well.

it is why while the older generations respond to natural disasters by bringing out the begging bowl and fretting about pakistan's 'image' abroad, our generation focuses on doing what we can on our own, setting up camps and relief teams.

it is why while our elders cry themselves hoarse over whether our president is the dajjal or misunderstood, whether our cricket team cheats because of structural reasons or a few bad apples, our generation finds the roots of both evils within ourselves.

it is why while you criticize us for being politically apathetic, we continue to populate the internet with some of the most incisive political debates in recent pakistani history.

and it is why, Sir NFP, i take umbrage to your thesis: because it robs us of our context, and reduces it to your own.

Plugging My Holes

2010-10-15T01:41:00.000+05:00

Khatmalites, where are you looking at?

perhaps over to the right? you see that facebook badge thing, right there... yeah. i have a movie out.

it kicks ass.

don't believe me? judge for yourself.

Copy Pasting Copy Paste

2010-09-03T04:51:00.000+05:00

"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research."

I read this quote today on a friend's facebook status. when i started to write this blog, i googled the phrase, and found this:

The quote "If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research." has been attributed to playwright, raconteur and entrepreneur Wilson Mizner. The exact wording to which you allude has been widely attributed to comedian Steven Wright. Did he plagiarize Mizner?

it was an interesting example of fate stepping forward and stealing my punch line.

you see, when i saw the quote, it managed to provide a pithy summary of why i had decided to name my blog "copy paste material." the decision had come a year of being a journalist, and three years before that of being a student at LUMS.

what i had come to see was that in both cases, one needed to essentially plagiarise in order to be credible.

as a student, i often felt that i had read and seen enough to hold certain views. but in order to be taken seriously, i had to present it in light of what others had said or done.

as a journalist, i was starting out as a copywriter on the international desk. so yeah, i covered three wars - i'm a regular robert fisk. anyhows, being on the international desk meant sitting around, reading the wires, and - wait for it - copy pasting them into your story.

in both cases, the mark of quality was demonstrated by, amongst other things, a variety and depth of sources. in fact, an out right copy-paste was inacceptable. but reframing et al the stuff constituted quality.

hence the title - copy paste material.

why do i bring up this now?

i read a blog recently, which ended thus:

"undeniably, and unfortunately, there is a little bit of Zardari in all of us."

which reminded me of this:

"Asif Ali Zardari did what every Pakistani does – he looked at how the game was being played, sought out its soft spots, and then cut it to pieces. Its why he’s here. He does what all of us do. It maybe at a different scale, but it’s the same scene.

You have to admit - we all have a little Zardari within us."

yesterday, i came across this:

Every time I bribed a policeman, ignored the traffic signals, sent gifts to judges, made phone-calls to those in power to seek favors, I kept this in mind. Every time I willfully weakened the justice system for my benefit, I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what kind of crop I was sowing. Some other people did too, but I don’t want to name any names.

a sort of like this, i wondered:

"Every day, as we break red lights and jostle with vehicular madness, as we consume tainted water and questionable food, as we bribe and barter, we live in existence where the possibility of the consequences of our actions can not hope to be considered, because perhaps we know of no other way."

now if you are getting my flow, i suppose there are two ways i can go with this. i can get all egoistical, and claim that people are copy-pasting my ideas. or i can face up to what i believe myself - that these are signs of people waking up to the massive contradictions that lie within us.

moreover, i could make sense of the 'copy-pasting' being employed in academia and journalism - because in a society overflowing with ideas, their repetitions and their regurgitations, the only way of making sense, the only skill is one of bringing together references that your audience can relate to in order to create a narrative, or an opinion that makes sense.

a part of me wanted to believe that i was being plagiarized, but it would be egoistical folly. surely i was not the first person to realise that pakistanis can often be in denial about themselves, that change lies within us all. moreover, a lot of my own blogs have been basically copy-pastes of my wife's ideas and thoughts. so it would be hypocritical.

but what provides irrefutable evidence of the fact that all these are original works is when you step back and read all of them in their context. the second link for example, works the same motifs i used to examine afridi into a haunting account of the sialkot lynching. i doubt if he/she had ever even come across what i had written. the reason both ideas work is that they allow their readers to make sense of their society using examples of their own experiences - the bribing, the bartering, the wheeling and dealing.

to get a much better example than all of this, take a look at this magnificent video. umar sharif, in about a few minutes, weaves together references from silent-era Hollywood to post-Cold War geopolitics, from one style of qawwali to the next, from one generation of sub-continental romancing styles to an eerily prescient version of another (i am referring to the line about giving out phone numbers.)

(thanks to tazeen for the link)

and it gets even more interesting. there is for example an indian version of this song currently out:

according to twitter user @Mehmal, both songs are versions of an older song, known as "Launda Badnam Hua, Nasiban Tere Liye." an indian website meanwhile says that the song was a "famous Bhojpuri song "Launda badnam hua naseeban tere liye", which was sung by Rani Bala"

Soon enough you come to realise that there might not be anything original in the world. so what?

each idea flows from somewhere, and flows on to somewhere else. attributing your sources is always great, but you can't very well put footonotes in a song or a movie.

the whole point is to make what ever you do your own. you're going to be copy-pasting whether you like it or not, whether you realise it or not. but you do have the choice of making it in your own style, in your own image.

A Quick One While You Were Away

2010-08-24T07:38:00.000+05:00

why do we - pakistanis - discuss politics non-stop? before you perform some vigilante justice on me, hear me out.

a few hours ago there was a lot of anguish over politicians and journalists baying for another coup. i realise the need to speak out against this. yet i can't help but feel a great futility in such practices. to me, they seem like a way of venting frustrations. since we on the internet are not concerned with the next meal, our drowning lifestock or our dying, starving children, what is the basis of this frustration?

a hopeless future? a poor national image across the globe? a desire to feel superior and important? a reflection of our own personal conflicts - which we have failed to resolve, so we turn to battering the politicians, the generals, the journalists?

there are those who will dismiss this as another example of our elitist chattering class professing disdain for the downtrodden masses. you will paint my rants as belonging to a fiddling feudalistic nero.

i don't give a shit.

because i personally believe that at the end of the day its a question of intelligent. an intelligent society can be trusted to find intelligent answers, and not just those that think-tanks and pol-sci textbooks deem correct. and i don't think people discussing politics are not intelligent - its just that discussing the same old shit repeatedly is an insult to said intelligence.

but ahsan at fiverupees has an interesting point. perhaps my grievances are down to the fact that i don't know the right places to look. there may well be amazing blogs out there discussing non-political stuff, or at least a non-nauseating amount of it and are also written by intelligent people who aren't resorting to copy-pasting whatever the Big Blogs are currently discussing.

so here is my clarion call - do we have intelligent, articulate people out there talking about pakistan, but not about whats on the news, whats in the papers and whats in their faces?

post recommendations and suggestions in the comments below.

3 Days in Karachi

2010-08-09T17:32:00.000+05:00

if there's one thing i truly hate about abbas, it's his bhenchod paan. every time he has it in his mouth, which is all the time, he's constantly letting out these poisonous pichkaars.

when he does that, it produces this repulsive little sound, like a sharp hiss or a brief puckering sound, which rises during that brief moment when his lips tremble apart slightly, and a sharp sting of spittle pierces through the crevices within his teeth.

to be sure, if there is one thing i hate about that choot, its his paan.

now, this is no fanciful statement. abbas is a truly despicable human being, so there is a lot to hate about him.

to begin with, he is ek dam kala bhujjang - black as sin. i mean kala. but i don't mind that.

his heart is much darker than his complexion. he was the child who would use elfy on the cats and shut their eyes. he was the boy who would slap his sisters for fun. he was the son you kept your valuables hidden from.

and on top of that, there was his bhenchod bharham. i mean obnoxious level bharhams. constant bataein chodna. constant bravado. he was a spindly little lund, but he talked as if he owned the bhenchod city.

and as he kept talking and slurping his oral cesspool, he kept pissing out those pichkaars.

II

there are two boys, and they are standing under a tree. there is a thin dark one who keeps pacing and spitting pan, and waving his assault weapon in the air. the more muscular one remains silent most of the time. i cannot be sure if he is saying anything at all, because i'm too far, and the thin one doesn't look like he's stopping.

abid thinks that we should move. i know we can't get a good shot of them from here, but if anyone were to come by that road, we'd have a kutta shot of the whole scene. i tell abid to be patient.

the thin one has not put his gun against the pavement, and is using his free hands to make crude gestures. he accompanies these mathira grabs with thrusting his pelvis. soon, a simple narrative emerges from this dance.

the thin one seems to be saying that someone with large breasts encourages him to adopt a slow, languid pace during intercourse, so that he concentrates on kneading. but a lover with smaller breasts compels him to pinch and squeeze with wild abandon, a luxury which necessitates that he perform the act with a furious vigour.

abid tells me he didn't have time to re-charge the spare battery.

III

Asim thinks he's some bhenchod poet, some udaas aashiq who's going to take this randi world and hide all her oozing warts and fix her up so that he can marry her and take her to his gandoo village.

Saala lund.

he thinks like he's the guy who's on some mission to rid us of our sins, like he is some bhenchod avenger, like he's that gandu baazigar.

and oh how he loves to give me this chutia smug look. how he loves to takes these deep, meaningful breaths which he uses to cover up the fact that he's got lund to say. and then there's his taliban routine every juma, where he makes this big show of going to offer the only namaaz he does all week. but oh no - somehow that makes him some bhenchod philosopher.

fact is asim is just as much as a gandoo as the rest of us, but he's decided that he's going to ignore that. he's going to ignore the fact that he's a third class ghunda with mobile snatching as his primary vocation. he's going to ignore the fact that he is just as khwaar as all the rest of the qaum. because he is asim bhenchod ashiq. asim bhenchod hero, asim bhenchod leader.

Saala lund.

IV

The two boys now descend
Into a fight that never ends
Between them.

They speak of women they'll never see
Of how they would seduce them in their sleep
One Day.

One speaks of the goddess Katrina
Another extols the virtues of Kareena
Ad Nauseam.

Screaming, straining, pulsing
Throbbing, lashing, excreting
Screaming, screaming, screaming.

V

EXT. EMPTY ROAD, DAY

   [We track across a wide, empty road in Garden, stopping bang
   in the middle of the road. there is a slight haze, and its
   cloudy and cool. The two boys are on the extreme right of
   the frame, under a tree. we hear them talk, but not
   audibly.]

   CUT TO:
   CLOSE UP of ABBAS:

   [Abbas suddenly whips his head around. We can hear the faint
   sound of a rickshaw in the background.]

   CUT TO:

   CLOSE UP of ASIM:

   [Asim follows suit, and instinctively, grips and squeezes
   the gargantuan gun he holds.]

   CUT TO:

   [We return to the original shot. The boys are now getting
   animated, and we see a rickshaw chugging slowly towards them
   in the vast empty road.]

   ABBAS:
   Chal bhenchod! Aaja beta asim teri
   baari aa gayee hai! Chal gushtee
   kay shurroo ho ja (lets out a
   stream of paan spittle)

   ASIM:
   Lun Pay aa...

   ABBAS:
   (screaming)
   Kya ho gaya hai lun ke siray? Chala
   goli madarchod yeh wali Katrina kay
   liyain! (breaks out into maniacal
   laughter)

   CUT TO:

   [We now split the screen, with close ups of both boys. We
   see Abbas screaming as a rush of emotions wash across Asim's
   face. The background music, and general sense of chaos
   continues to rise, until...]

   CUT TO:

   [We see Asim face on, screaming loudly. He opens fire, and
   holds the gun with both arms between his legs. We see
   bullets pulsing out of the weapon, with Asim's body
   convulsing with each release of a bullet, each burst of fire
   coalescing as an other-wordly experience on his face. His
   mouth hangs open, his pupils dilated, his entire being
   sublimated into the gun he holds between his legs, the gun
   which continues to spit out bullets...]

   CUT TO:

INT. RICKSHAW, DAY

   [The camera is now within the rickshaw, which is a
   smouldering, burning, bleeding carcass. We see both boys in
   the background, with Abbas gesticulating wildly, while Asim
   stands there, spent, in a daze.]

VI

Holy shit!

I turn to Abid and ask him if he got it, and he has. And although we both know its not going to run on-air, the confirmation has me elated. i was already nursing a semi having witnessed that first hand, but this is too good.

The boys continue to stand there. The psycho who completely ravaged the rickshaw continues to stand still, while the other prances about the rickshaw. I keep wondering whether I should move or go in, but Abid keeps me in check. I want to send a message to the assignments desk, but I have no idea whether to call this one ethnic or not.

I realise that they might have the same problem too. The rickshaw driver is fair, ruddy type, but his passenger, an old woman, looks much darker. The dark boy continues to run around their smoldering bodies.

Suddenly, the killer speaks. He seems to have made up his mind and barks instructions to the other. They grab the woman, and carry her corpse to the nearby gully. The fair one then returns alone, and stands by the rickshaw which he now begins to douse in petrol.

VII

More die as violence and arson continue in Karachi

KARACHI (Staff Report): The death toll in the city rose to 85 this morning, as raging gun battles continued through out the city, with the authorities continuing to be missing from the action...

... In Garden, at least two bodies were recovered early on Saturday morning. Aasia Ahmed, a 55 year old local resident, was found dead in an alley near her home, having been shot multiple times in the head and torso. Aasia's son was an activist in the MQM, and police confirmed that her death was a target killing.

Police also recovered the body of Asfandyar Khan, a 42 year old rickshaw driver from the same vicinity. His remains were found within his rickshaw, which had been set on fire. The authorities confirmed that they were treating his death as a target killing, pointing out that several bus drivers and rickshaw drivers had been similarly burnt alive due to their ethnic origins.

why coke studio matters

2010-08-05T02:15:00.001+05:00

no one in pakistan has any convictions, but everyone has an opinion.

the great joy of opinions is that you can change them with the wind. convictions require standing by your faith while others heckle you and throw half empty yogurt packs in your direction. opinions require you to be loud, and have an inflated estimation of your own self.

the kind of opinion pakistanis excel in is the one which finds faults in others. it doesn't matter if the opinion they currently hold completely contradicts everything they said yesterday, or exposes their hypocrisies. as long as it makes someone look bad, everyone's in on it.

all societies create heroes only to rip them apart. i know that. look at the brits and jordan. but in pakistan, we skip the hero part, and start directly from the ripping apart business.

and i know that coke studio is already facing all this. everyone's got a million fucking gripes with the whole show.

this is where i answer them. because pakistan can't afford to have assholes with opinions destroy everything we have worth believing in .

(i) How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Cola

Before we had the Islamic Republic of Blogistan, desi opinions were voiced at a place called chowk.com. In 2004, someone named asif memon wrote a seminal piece with the same title as above, detailing the exploitation and destruction of pakistan's greatest ever rock band, Junoon. those of us who went along till the horrible ride knew the story well - a band that had defied governments and invented its own genres was eventually reduced to dishing out half-assed 'Best of' albums, and shitting out what was easily their worst album ever - Dewaar; an album which graced a large coke logo on its front.

but if Coke only epitomized the sloth that accompanied the once-glorious junoon, Pepsi's channeling of a bloke named Machiavelli throughout the entirety of the Vital Signs career was an even greater sin.

before he became a paranoid politico harping endlessly about military governments from a generation ago, NFP was the authority on music in pakistan. he had an even greater article, also in chowk.com, which traced the whole history of the Signs, including the role of Pepsi. NFP tells of how Pepsi tried to influence the kind of songs the band made, how they forced them to tour endlessly and release albums faster, of how they tried to leverage their position by siding with a band named Awaz instead, and how they eventually led to the destruction of the legendary band.

those of you too young to have spent broken-hearted summers listening to "Chalay thay Saath Saath" may not realise this, but at their peak, Junoon and Vital Signs represented the last line of the kalima. to fuck with that was a sin far greater than blasphemy, and both the cola giants had blood on their hands.

there will be idealistic numbnuts who will exhale whatever their smoking, clear their throats, and wheeze out that "that's what you get when you sell out maaaan..." such assholes have no idea what it means to be a musician, or an artist in pakistan. when the people refer to you as kanjars, they plan to treat you like them too. take a look at the last days of mehdi hasan to get a feel of what i mean.

this is a land without record deals, without agents or record labels, without royalties, without any way of making any living off your work. work which the whole fucking country would love to pieces, listen to and gain inspiration from, and use for their own commercial purposes, without ever bothering to treat you anything better than a kanjar. so if some young kids decide to make some money off the back of releasing a debut song which would win a shady BBC prize as the greatest song EVER, can you blame them? if an aging band decides that they have nothing to show for their years of building up a fucking industry on their own, so they might as well take the money and run, can you blame them?

any true fan couldn't. they had to accept the demise of both these monoliths. but they all could, and did, begin to despise the cola kings. them they could hate with all their might. capitalism had destroyed art. end of.

but this is pakistan. where the greatest socialists are feudal lords, where the greatest writers are penniless drunkards, where the greatest sportsmen are chinese coaches and tory cheerleaders. where the maulvis sell heroin and the kuffar save lives. pakistan is that point where the past and the future collide, and you're never quite sure which one you're living in. so it makes sense that the most seismic event in this era's music has a cola sugar daddy which has radically changed the whole rules of the game. as we say, only in pakistan.

what coke has done is not what people think it's done. the whole concept, its equipment, its vision, its outlook, its feel, its music had been planned up, conceived by a man who is the Godfather of Pakistani pop - rohail hyatt.

what coke did was find an (almost definitely temporary) solution to a problem that the industry has faced for a long fucking time now. you see, music, like much else in this country, survives on patronage. people are loath to pay for music, and as such musicians have very few options. in the past, the national TV and radio would prove to be a modest source for most. but post-80s, the problem has exacerbated. during the 90s, amazing bands would put together the money for a video, then hope to get enough support to put out an album. but it would rarely be enough. which is why any act which manages to put out a second album in pakistan with the original line up automatically enters the hall of fame.

as time passed, the profligacy of piracy and the rampant spread of downloading meant that money had to be made through endorsements (see Strings, Haroon et al) through sub-standard indian film songs (see Atif Aslam, Jal, Strings) through dubious charitable and religious causes (see Strings, Najam et al) or by pimping out your music fame for any and everything you can (see JJ, Nadeem Jafri)

in recent times, a strange 'improvement' has come about. a record label owned by a media house which loves to get down and dirty has taken on piracy, and started giving out proper deals. only, the kinds of bonded labor shit that the artists are being put through under their watch means that signing up with them is probably akin to artistic and financial suicide.

so when coke came up with the brilliant idea of giving out, handing out, fucking rewarding the whole country with awesome fucking music for free - nay, paying them to run it - it marked a radical departure from what the whole country or even the whole world had so far come up with.

and then coke did something even better. they decided not to fuck with the sound, or make it commercial. they let it be, or even if they did meddle, they didn't do it enough to ruin the music.

capitalism and art in a win-win situation. only in pakistan.

(post script: in case some of you decide the pepsi is still evil, think of this. the current wave of music, of which coke studio either represents the peak of, or the final hurrah of, began when bands like Aaroh, eP, Mekaal Hasan, Messiah, Schehzad Hameed etc suddenly hit the scene. the reason they all came to the forefront at the same time was because of an event known as Pepsi Battle of the Bands.)

(ii) "Man, this year's Coke Studio has been a huge downer compared to last year..."

after the first episode this season, safieh came up with the golden rule of Coke Studio. sure it's nice to watch it, but you really need to listen to it to get it. the first time is like many other first times - a disappointing preview of whats to come. now you may think this is obvious, but she was speaking to a group which thought that the Arif Lohar song they'd just heard was too long, and Meesha was underused and off-beat. the song you now know as the official song of the summer.

which is the whole point. most people who were excited about the show this year weren't even bothered with last year's season. in fact, most of the people who did watch last season never got past the blockbuster first episode, which had atif and ali zafar, and noori collaborating with some faqeer dude. so when season three rolled around, there was a lot of hype because of a particular breed of pakistani - the bandwagoner.

bandwagoners are a dime a dozen in this land. whenever they realise something is obviously cool, they jump on and pretend they were always there to begin with. in order to hide their pagan pasts, they become over-zealous about their bandwagon, eventually turning everyone else off. at which point they disembark and bitch to their heart's content. those are the people who were so fucking excited about coke studio because they knew it was cool. and those are the people who fill blog spaces and twitter spaces and youtube spaces with lamentations that the episode sucks.

well fuck you.

to begin with, the songs are being produced by a guy whose last band came out while most of you were still sperms and eggs, and still rumors of its comeback mark a frenzy. rohail hyatt KNOWS how to make timeless music. so if you think that you're the prick who's figured out his music a few minutes after hearing it, you deserve to die.

if anything, the whole program has taken on an even riskier route this season, and a far more nuanced one. gone are the superstars of pop. their place has been taken by people on the verge of breaking out, people who are already massive on another musical plane, and a couple of true blue legends. there is more genre hopping, and a lot, lot less virtuosity, especially for vocalists. this season has been about moods and spaces a lot more than the last one. and the music continues to get denser and richer.

this is not stuff you can digest overnight. its the kind of music you can walk away from and forget for a decade, until one day it suddenly comes rushing back through the smell of a biscuit soaked in brandy.

mark my words - as the time passes, this season will follow its predecessor in continuing to rise in people's estimation. and by the next season (if there is one) the same people who were bitching now would be harping on about how season three was the one that changed their lives and prompted them to create greater space for spirituality in their drawing room paint color choices.

(iii) "Abida doesn't sound so good - how could Coke Studio fuck that up?"

i realise that most of this can be answered by the rant above. but since this is abida we're talking about, i also realise that she deserves a whole section to herself. i concede that the two abida parveen songs weren't quite what i had hoped for, and in the case of the first, the situation has so far not improved with time. i realise that this is still too early, but there is another explanation.

you see, abida parveen is far bigger than the whole sum of coke studio - all the artists and people behind the scene and all the buzz and everything. she's been a global legend for some time now, she's worked with everyone, she's been covered in every genre, she's been produced a million different ways. while the level of technical and aesthetic production at CS has been unprecedented for most musicians, AP has already had that and more. that's why her songs have not been obvious so far, rather layered around her.

moreover, sometimes the greatest things coming together doesn't work. there is a bootlegged mp3 of jim morrison singing while jimi hendrix plays guitar. its pretty shitty.

(iv) "Why I'm proud to be a Burger"

one of this year's participants, Omer Bilal Akhtar had recently published an op-ed in the Dr. NewsPaper/Mr Blog Aggregator Express Tribune recently by this name. it was pretty shit, and was absolutely crucified by commenters. the ADP frontman eventually wrote a hilarious and heroic defence of his piece, but it was too little, too late.

he had a point though - if burgers keep feeling ashamed and aloof, they'd keep being called out for living in a bubble. and since its assumed that those living in a bubble can't communicate with their society, they should and would be ridiculed.

but if anyone sits through the behind the scenes clips on the show, they'd see long haired, american accented, weirdly dressed, farangi influenced, clueless burgers talking very intelligently about music. and they'd see those same burgers being accorded tremendous respect and love by musicians from the other side of the bridge, the other side of the divide, from the 'real' part of pakistan. all goes to show that if you embrace your talent AND your identity, being a burger is no impediment, and even an advantage for creating something remarkable.

and the ADP song had one of the most vintage pakistani freak out leads in recent history. so stop bitching on them.

(v) "Fuck yaar, they're just ripping off the originals..."

i could spend a long time on this, but a few lines should do. 'copying' someone's music and lyrics and calling them your own, ala Anu Malik, is cheating. paying homage to greats while composing something original is not cheating of ripping off.

there were a lot of people who did, and continue to, hate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. these were qawwali connoisseurs who hated his cheap remixes, and resented the fact this his fame was not anywhere in proportion to his ability or talent when compared to his peers and predecessors. and i'll be the first to say it - there are some truly terrible nusrat remixes out there. but the whole point is, if it wasn't for those dishkum-dishkum songs, an entire generation would have been alienated from one of their most significant art forms. because without nusrat, there was no one who was able to make the conditions which allowed pop-music and casual listeners into the world of qawwali. who allowed us to discover his influences, and love it so much that we began to listen to the unremixed, unedited versions of his own qawwalis, and those of others. the man, on his own, resuscitated the entire goddam form.

that's what coke studio is doing now. sure, you have these snobby friends who will show you the original version of "Chori Chori" or "Chambey di Booti" and piss all over the covers. but what these music puritans and fundamentalists don't realise is that without these cover songs, this conversation about which Reshma version of Chori Chori is the best would have probably never happened. these songs are allowing us a way back into our own pasts, our own identities and selfs, which we would have otherwise lost in the morass of unseen youtube videos.

(vi) "Oooohhhh, so they're not ALL reactionary, jaahil, media-obsessed, heads-in-the-sand, clueless, greedy, selfish miserable chootias..."

the greatest thing about coke studio is that it proves that if you do something with the best people, with the best intentions and the best efforts to create something according to an aesthetic ideal, it can be popular and widely accepted in pakistan.

this is no small thing.

there is such little hope for people trying to not dumb themselves down, trying to avoid being popular for popularity's sake, for people interested in saying something meaningful, for people who lack the energy and bitchiness to find a savage way to the top.

so when you see something that brings together the best people and works brilliantly, you know that its possible. if we put aside our bullshit, if we lay down our ideologies, if we shed our inhibitions and our insecurities, we can do something that stands the test of time.

and that is why coke studio matters.

my final post ever...

2010-05-31T05:03:00.001+05:00

i will be speaking about my films and the cinema in general at the t2f this sunday from 1730 hours. if you are in karachi, or know someone who would be interested, please come by and spread the word.

Taking back Lollywood, one screening at a time!

A year ago, Ahmer Naqvi decided to leave the megalomaniac world of the Pakistani media, determined to find something better to say, using another medium - film. For the past year, he has been making short films as a Masters student. He now comes to the T2F to talk about his own work, its relationship to Pakistan as well as the state of cinema within the country. He also brings with him vague pretensions of beginning a movement of young Pakistani artists - sick of obsessing about the country's politics and its image abroad - but eager to explore the dramatic, breathless reality which is life in Pakistan. Join us for a screening of his works accompanied by a wide ranging discussion on everything from Maula Jutt to Jean-Luc Godard, and whatever comes in between.

Breaking is the new black

2010-05-03T21:20:00.001+05:00

This blog is an original work. all the politics are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to politics, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

i didn't spend all my life in the big city, as my name would suggest. i was born there,

but i grew up in another area, a very wild, frontier like place.

it was known as mirc.

everyone there had names you had never heard of. panty-utar-di, sinn3r, xcalibur, iNsAnE, 2hip4U etc.

but if no one knew who you were, you could be anyone. it was wonderful.

but then the area become a bit run-down - there was a lot of violence there, and lots of dangerous, angry people started coming there.

so we had to move.

my parents got jobs in the city, and we moved there.

it was a simple, fun neighborhood - anyone could go anywhere, everyone's gates were always open.

i spent my youth in orkut. it was a great time to be young. we roamed as we pleased, did what we wanted.

but then things became bad. people started finding out things that were best hidden. and pictures started appearing. it was no longer safe there.

fortunately, things improved. for us.

we moved to a new place.

it was, finally, a chance for us to move bridge ke uss paar.

we moved, to facebook.

it was a very clean, organized area. and you decided who to meet, and who could see what.

finally, we were living in a safe area, where others could not harm us.

so everyone was happy there. always.

in facebook, every one was very happy, excited, going to new places, liking new things.

and since you know everyone, they are free to always be there - going through your walls, and digging out your pictures.

and you are always happy.

i started hanging out this cool place, which had the best burger in town. it was called blogger.

i really loved it. the burgers there were so delicious - especially the roast beef burger.

but then, they expanded, and added three family sections, and all the people who worked nearby would come for lunch.

and sometimes get angry and scream in CAPS LOCK.

if i want burgers now, i go to this other place - wordpress. its got these lovely things no one else has, and the blogger clientele still haven't heard of them.

of course, gangs of trolls still operate around these areas, but if they chase us we can run back to facebook.

so yeah.

there, is this other place i have heard of.

its like in a place the british used to be at, but now its desi as well.

they have these amazing nights, which i wish to go to one day. they also have epic bitch fights, which i could do without.

its like in the part of the city that used to be the elite area, until it got unsafe till it got super duper safe.

so now even i am one of the people who are deemed unsafe, and i haven't been there ever.

i can look out from the broken hotel across to it.

and maybe one day i'll be able to get in and live in twitter.

Yeh Lolly-Lolly Kya Hai?

2010-04-22T10:36:00.000+05:00

My latest post over at sasti masti is a behemoth. but rather tasteful, and it foretells of a post coming soon here.

i would have posted it here, but the videos have to be embedded in a different way, and, well, fuck that.

Nawaz Sharif Mujra Scandal

2010-03-31T16:38:00.001+05:00

its the season of the IPL and the season of T20. as i have argued previously, this event is a wonderful example of post-modernism, which, in the timeless words of Moe means "weird for the sake of being weird."

of course, for many T20 is an abhorrent, vile, abominable bastardisation of cricket. and many people have expressed such thoughts on twitter, missing the delectable irony of it all.

i started frequenting twitter recently after one of my regular reads migrated there. apart from the grotesque picture which adorns his page (seriously, you couldn't find a better messi picture?) it does provide an interesting insight into the evolving dynamics of this micro-blogging phenomenon.

as far as i can tell, its a bit like facebook for famous people, with the various castes defined by the level of fame.

so for example, there is a clutch of pakistani bloggers who communicate with themselves. and then there are journos, who talk to themselves, and the occasional politicians. who follow themselves, and bigger fish. and it goes on. my favourite sighting was ImranKhanPTI following Jemima on twitter. cue the laugh track.

but it was during this forage into twitterdom that i came across a certain account. the backstory for this was perhaps the greatest story to hit the news media since Nawaz Sharif remembered who butters his bread - the impending nuptials of Sania and Shoaib.

i found this page, which is Shoaib Malik's twitter page. its pretty ordinary, and quite what i expected - shoaib can be seen trying to contact yuvraj and warne, much in the vein of the upward social aspirations of all twitterati.

his recent tweets thank his fans for the goodwill surrounding his wedding, and previously he talks about trying to find a legal team for his PCB troubles. and before that he celebrates the win for Sialkot Stallions etc.

then, i found out, from his future wife, that his twitter page is fake.

WTF?

firstly, we have to believe this, since hopefully she would know better than anyone else. moreover, as someone mentioned, shoaib can never be expected to be this articulate.

having conceded that, we now must wonder - WTF?

try and understand this. there is someone out there who meticulously imagines the feelings shoaib malik goes through. more importantly, said person makes sure to write them within the time frame when they happen. so he makes sure that any important event in shoaib's life is updated asap.

what makes this even more intriguing is that there is no whiff of scandal, of aggrandizement, of mirch-masala here. all the tweets are of the typical mundanity that twitter tweets are comprised of. nothing here that makes you think, hang on, this is fake. and the internet, other than for porn, is meant for people to shout out FAKE whenever they get the chance. we are conditioned to spot fakes.

but... where is the fakeness, fake shoaib malik? what has compelled you to give up your life and your time and devote it to creating a shrine for someone not quite compelling (not until the Sania bombshell anyways) why have you not chosen your position to create mischief or abuse? how are you such a restrained fake personality, that you have actually managed to come across as more respectable than the real person you pretend to be?

perhaps the truth lies in believing in your own hype. in thinking that what you are doing is so right that you forget that your basis was baloney. perhaps when you start believing your own bullshit, you forget the lies you created and accept your own cocoon as the only bastion of reality.

and perhaps you can even make such a charade last forever.

until... until you begin believing your own batshit craziness so much that you decide to hold a grand rally where you promise to proclaim the greatness of your message. and your deluded followers decide to honor your much awaited rally with a rather slickly produced amateur video.

until the day your grand rally to end all rallies, the moment of truth, the launching of the invasion of the infidels, the realisation of existential islamic philosophy, the birth of the United States of Islam, the call of the army of Truth, the greatest moment of history in all histories arrives.

and, like, no one shows up.

Bombay Talkies

2010-03-28T00:57:00.001+05:00

(This is my latest blog over at sastimasti. I have posted it here, although the videos have not been embedded, and i'm too tired having battled with wordpress to repeat the process here. so it would be best if you just went over to http://sastimasti.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/bombay-talkies/ and read it there. thanks :)

as i have mentioned previously, i am not a film buff per se. yes i like movies, but i don't have refined taste in them. so when in class our professors say something like "ah, the pathos employed by haneke through the mis-en-scene" i am sometimes compelled to say "yes, but what about the mis-en-scene in the sex scene in the titanic?

the few occasions that i do know about a film, i tend to argue quite passionately, to make up for the intellectual shame felt otherwise. one such argument was about whether the film Amelie was exploitative or not. we both ended up arguing that the director had exoticized paris. he felt i liked that because the subject was paris, i replied that i believe films need to exoticize, because they need to be fantasies, they need to be wondrous.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oubWmUJjZPE]

there is one particular filmmaker who, among many, does this to such a unique, signatory, marvelous manner. and one of his films has come under criticism for exoticsing a country quite used to it. here is wes anderson's take on an indian funeral. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vYoCDKoK_w] (if the link is not working, try here)

the entire time, everything is in shades of white - flowers, clothes, smoke, rickshaws... now i love this film, and i love what some call it its exoticism of india. the politically correct part of me may concede that, but you have to watch a film. it mocks the western habit of coming to india to find 'themselves' and it presents india in a quirky, fantastical way that is true to those three americans' naive yet earnest take on india.

but a far better defense for this artistic liberty by the director was provided by an indian, who said that the fantastic mr. fox exoticises the forest, because animals don't talk, and they don't dress in clothes, and wes anderson was totally exploiting the forest and being all oriental about it. so i guess we can accept that exoticism is ok.

of course the liberal arts education section of our audience will ruffle their bob marley hair, and rub their che guevara beards, and log out of jstor and protest - no, it's dehumanizing, and like haven't you read Said? ok forget it then.

the beauty about wes anderson films is that even if you come across one randomly, you know its his. the look, the feel, the scale, the intricacy and the music. even though he never repeats, you hear a song and you think damn, this song is meant to be in a wes anderson film. i heard one such song in darjeeling limited, the movie posted above, and it was a completely desi song. and i thought 'wtf? how did the bastard get a song made that's totally desi and yet perfect for him?' [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkcVyNw-USA]

(if this link is not working, try here)

after some investigations, i discovered that it was from a film whose credit sequence was wes anderson's favorite sequence, evuh! without further ado, [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wMuYl_-ig8&feature=related]

now people will tell you that this film, bombay talkies by ismail merchant, is a 'realistic' movie, completely different from normal hindi movies - it even has kissing scenes! but in fact, this film retains the elements of melodrama, song and dance, bizarre sequences, action comedy romance etc in equal measures. the only thing done differently here is that while the elements of the content remain same, the form with which they are shown is either improved, satirized or both. it is a bollywood film made in a different cinematic language perhaps, but it tells the same story. IMP: this review contains spoilers. there is a link to a site where you can stream the film for free near the end of this post. so if you haven't seen it yet it might be a good idea to do so before you read on. but even if you don't it doesn't give too much away and you can still enjoy it whenever you do see.

but don't be fooled into thinking that the language is that of western cinema. in 1970, the new york times had reviewed this film, the review article adorned with the sarcastic by-line: 'Famous, Rich ... Nice Looking' the NYT enjoyed the film's whimsical scenes, but cringed at its drama. The reviewer wrote

"Bombay Talkie," however, persists in switching back and forth between this quite cheerful satire and the quite seriously intended, awkwardly defined emotional conflicts involving the novelist, the actor, the actor's unhappy wife and his best friend. I assume that this conflict between comedy and melodrama is meant to be its own metaphor, for contemporary India, for Indian movies, even for love. Though tactful, the metaphor is mixed.

Almost 40 years later, a renowned indian critic, filmi geek panned the movie as well. the complaint was its attitude, which

seemed to treat India (and Indian films) with a certain condescension that I found both offensive and inappropriate.

Filmi Geek was upset that the foreign audiences would look at the film's depiction of indian spirituality with mirth, with pity, writing that the female lead's Lucia's unease towards the religious scene is displayed not as "Look at Lucia, too inflexible to adapt to a different culture," but "look at this adorable weird little Indian spirituality, too primitive for a civilized person like Lucia."

those fears were confirmed before they were written, as the NYT felt the scene involving Lucia with the spiritual guru displayed Lucia becoming "restless, however, with the swami's little lectures about his social successes in Los Angeles, and her idea of recreation is something more than being allowed to fetch the swami's lost Ping-Pong balls"

of course, what both reviews betray are their writers political, intellectual and aesthetic bends. moreover, the tragedy is that such a gorgeous film is dissected only at the level of story and characters.

but even there, the two have missed out on something vital. if this film plays any politics, it is to denounce all strands of it. every character, every ideology is savaged in this film with equal determination. both Lucia and the swami she goes to are mocked, one for her naive assumption that somehow india would provide them some ready made spiritual answers, the other for having commercialized spiritual beliefs for misfit tourists like Lucia. and as for Filmi Geek's concerns about the attitude, here is what i have to argue - yes they are poking fun, but its not the oriental attitude of a foreigner finding the natives crude and pitiful but rather the insiders who are intimate with their own arts and culture, poking fun at what they know well. to prove my point, have a look at this

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqCjoFjIC34]

more importantly, the film retains the element of the bollywood film. there are several scenes where music being played within the scene, such as on a radio, is used to score the characters dancing and driving the story forward. stylistically, its worlds apart from the pantomime of the traditional musical, but it is serving the same purpose. and when the time does arrive for the blow-out bollywood song-and-dance, the number that comes on screen is far ahead of anything else that has ever been conceived. look at it yourself. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzC3GQn_TC0]

the film has some absolutely brilliantly shot scenes - in particular is a staircase shot that is repeated twice in the film. once its comic, the other time its tragic and both are done in such a magnificent way. what triumphs in each of these scenes, as well as the rest of the film, is the sound design. desi films rarely have such an accomplished use of sound. perhaps one of the best examples is when Lucia meets Vikram, the hero, and both of them hit it off. their eager conversation is heard as the camera shows us the face of Vikram's wife - its a superb scene, and it works because of the use of sound. another great part is the last shot, where the camera is too far to make out the actions of the servant, yet the sound of his tray shaking with his shivers conveys to us all that we need to know.

but from a pakistani perspective, the height of enjoyment is a chance to watch zia moheyuddin on screen. probably one of the most famous names in pakistan, few people under 30 have actually seen him do the thing he is famed for - acting. the word in the theater circle is that moheyuddin is an extremely demanding task-master - in french, he is an a**hole. well in this film, he is the ultimate bitch. i have rarely seen such a snide, bitter, witty character as Moheyuddin here. his looks and gait go form resentful brooding to cynical whimsy. and his obvious contrast with the pin-up looks of shashi kapoor accentuates his character even further.

*since i wrote this, my wife and i have had an almighty debate over Zia Moheyuddin's character in this film. for her, his obsessiveness and passion represents the most human characteristics of love. i argued that his love was 'fake' as his final act of vengeance was based on vikram's taunts, suggesting that his envy of vikram was greater than his love for Lucia. in response, she argued that it is illogical to separate the two feelings, or to ascribe ideals of truth and fake to love. i think we can safely say that the film's characters are great, and its tragedy is of a greek or shakespearian level. which means that people like the NYT columnist can find that to be melodramatic, but anyone well versed in the arts of the desi might not.*

you can watch the darjeeling limited online, and you can do the same for bombay talkies as well.

but before we leave, here is something i call conspiracy critiques. despite my disavowal for politics, i am pakistani and i can't run away from how i think. take a look at the following scenes (especially part two), and then ask yourself if this is not a metaphor for both india and pakistan's political history with western alliances, and how the fallout from those have affected pakistan's behaviour. remember also, that the jasmine is our national flower.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpP5fOLfcTE&feature=channel]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hHPBg6XEzU]

Pakistani Sex Scene

2010-03-17T11:12:00.000+05:00

nothing works better on the internet than a title with sex in it. i have experimented several times with this idea of using popular words in blog posts, and they always work like a charm.

this time though, it's not exactly a gimmick. this short film explicitly attempts to talk about sex on the pakistani screen. but the conversation itself is a strange one. so before anything else, have a look at the video itself.

Pakistani Sex Scene from karachikhatmal on Vimeo.
This is the third film of my Masters degree. this time around the rules were that the entire film had to be shot in one, continuous take - with no edits or cuts in between.

here is a link to my reflections on the film

http://sastimasti.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/pakistani-sex-scene/

thus, everyone is familiar with the ubiquitous cinematic convention of the hero and heroine in a tight embrace, their lips edging towards one another, their breathing hot and heavy - and just when the hero lunges forward, the heroine turns away her face.

: foiled again!

but in an increasingly sexualized world, those cultural conventions are being stretched in our part of the world for some time now and the logic of suggesting without showing has been radically transformed. one example being the song referenced in the film - Pyar Di Ganderi. i mean, come on!

this song wraps itself around the pillars of showing & suggesting, and pole dances on them. and the visual interpretation of this Naseebo Lal song by Khusbo really leaves you wondering if there is anything left to suggest.

but if we start to blame the song here, then we are really missing the point. its not about the song, or the dancer - it's about the society. too often art is blamed for creating immorality within society. what people fail to appreciate that art's purpose is to act as a mirror, as well as a guide. when we see ourselves in the mirror held up by art, we are able to break and change what we are. and then, we are able to form new thoughts and ideas, guided by the spirit of art.

whew... that got a bit heavy there.

my point was that the song and these attitudes of suggestiveness reflect our own society. the crucial thing here is the relationship between shame and lust - each seems to inform the other. this is because we get ashamed of something when our morals condemn it, but our desires don't. but if we keep reacting to shame by suppressing our desires, our lust continues to grow. and so we try and keep that in check through shame... and the cycle continues.

this was where my original idea finally arrived at. i wanted to show the irony of how an average pakistani male can be so sexualized and yet feel ashamed of that sexual lust. thus one of the earliest drafts of a script had envisioned the scene where the man would rush into the shower straight after the act.

i was unsure of where else to go from there though. i wanted to say something about the woman, but couldn't find any thing suitably authentic without being melodramatic. so i turned to the woman in my life - my wife. she was the one who came up with the aftermath of that scene, specifically because she realised that the casualty from this conflict between shame and lust is intimacy.

it made a lovely resonance with my own ideas. i have always felt that taking an interest in pakistani politics is futile. because everything in pakistan is extremely politicized, from choice of hospital to etiquette of urdu grammar, but the politics themselves follow a depressingly familiar, monotonous pattern. and just like we have politics everywhere other than in politics itself, we seem to have sex everywhere, other than in sex itself.

thus the film's body took shape.

it begins with a man who attacks his food with relish and passion, which he eats alone before entering the house. at home, he rejects the meal his wife had brought for the two of them to share. while she is away, he turns to watch an overtly sexual song, but switches to the news (which is always about politics :) ) when she comes back. he then leads her to the bedroom, and the camera doesn't show what happens. but he soon rushes out, covered in shame rather than lust, and washes it off in the shower. the woman is alone, bereft of all passion, or even motivation to clear up the room. she tries to eat, perhaps to partake in that pleasure her husband had alone, but she can't bring herself to do it.

but then came the actual shoot. and let me tell you, doing a single-take is probably the hardest thing to do. it works well in a live situation, but in a narrative it really wears down on your flow. and i think this is where the film's greatest challenge arose - it was not conceived as a single shot. it was conceived as a story that was then tacked onto a single shot. and so the story's pace and pivots did not account for the demands made by the single shot. this issue was further compounded by the fact that i am someone whose strength as a filmmaker lies within the edit. to be stripped of all editing abilities was something i was distinctly uncomfortable with, and so i didn't take to the idea of a single-take at all.

i made that even more challenging with my decision to have both actors only visible from the waist down. it was meant to further accentuate the ubiquity of this situation (so that it was a man and a woman, rather than this person and that person) as well as play up the idea of how everything about sex itself is so shrouded. and to make matters worse, i did away with all dialogue - there are only two grunts and one sigh which make up the entire film's dialogue. keeping all of that in mind, the actors did a wonderful job. their only tools were their lower bodies and yet they managed to convey their roles admirably. it could've been better though had i rehearsed with them, but then that is how student projects, and my own laziness, goes.

the day before i began my edit, i came across a bizarre and wonderful thing. in my audio-vision class, our professor made us watch an entire film, which was highly unusual since we always watch clips instead. it was 87 minutes of overwhelming cinema - its disturbing how difficult it is to view despite its stellar beauty. the film was called Koyaanisqatsi. Check out this stunning single take shot from the film - i can't believe this is real.

what influenced me with regards to this film was its soundtrack. check out the trailer below, and listen to the initial chanting, or just go up to 1:48 in the above clip.

i was convinced - i needed to score my film. but i wanted it to be haunting, and preferably bereft of lyrics because they could get too distracting, and impose their own meaning on the film. my wife suggested i check out rohail hyatt's work, and that was where i chose the song, Jaag Musafir.

when i had started the audio editing, i realised that the youtube page for the song also had an explanation for the lyrics and the song's message, which i later put on at the end of the film.

looking back at the choice of the song i have mixed emotions. on one hand i feel that it didn't help with regard to its intended purpose - which was to give life to the parts of the film where the one-shot parameters had left it dragging.

but then again, i was astounded by the happy coincidence that the song i had chosen had taken on the irony and cynicism of my views, and injected it with hope for salvation, for this wretched cycle to be broken. while my other two films were made with a sort of flippancy towards "messages" and "big ideas" this one was taking these things on. and i think that the song really challenged the sincerity of the film.

at the end, i feel that the critique of the film, and its ideas, were a lot more powerful than the actual film itself. still, i am happy with it, especially because of the visual style i managed to achieve with the editing. i didn't want to look like yet another student film, and while the camera lets that down, the lack of annoying sound jumps and the boldness of the scene's colors and boundaries take it beyond completely amateur stuff.

please let me know what you think of the film.

Naked Pictures of Reema

2010-03-11T10:48:00.000+05:00

some important news.

i have a new blog.

i am not sure where this leaves this current one, but in order to facilitate all seven of my readers, i will be cross-posting here as well. and perhaps once in a while i would put up something original here as well.

here is the first post.

But first, a word about copy-paste material.

it feels very weird leaving a blog - it's like moving out of your childhood neighborhood.

it also feels very self-obsessed to write about my own blog, but then again self-obsession and blogs go hand in hand. it was precisely because of that recognition that i chose never to write about myself (or too much about myself) on copy-paste material. instead, what that blog (thankfully) provided for me was a chance to develop an alter-ego.

alter-egos are not necessarily healthy things, but i think as an artist, it is important to cultivate one, because i guess the culmination of the artistic process is the merging between your self, and your created self. the union between the creator and the created. (zing! first pretentious reference to stuff i admire without having the courage to experience, or challenge)

and it was important for me to have an alter-ego i liked.

i started blogging the day they released a picture of BB's assassin. well, to be honest, that was the day i was truly intrigued by blogs. because the picture came from a journalist who had apparently found it on a blog. so i started discovering, and reading blogs - pakistani blogs.

what does this have to do with an alter-ego? its because i was a journalist at that point. a journalist comes on screen to tell you about something, why and how it happened, and then leaves you with either a direct or indirect idea of what he thinks should be done about it. fuck all the bullshit which claims journalism is about objectivity. its not that subjective journalists are lazy or sacrilegious - a journalist CAN NOT be anything but a preacher. you do a story on child labor, and you walk away with telling people about how its terrible and something should be done about it. or you do it on cancer victims, and walk away telling people how something should be done about it.

and at that point, the journalist lies back, content that he has done his service for humanity. and then at the next 'mimi' fun-bash, he/she goes on and on about how life should be lived and pakistan should be straightened out, the entire diatribe fed by the smug-self-congratulatory idea that the journalist knows all this because he/she is 'out there', 'making a difference.' the journalist is the alter-ego created by the person who works at that job. and almost all of these alter-egos, my own included, are shocking hypocrisies when compared to the person who dons them.

my favorite example of this was when the young boy who served tea to all the journos at our channel was banned from entering the main studio. the reason being that we were running a campaign against child labor, and having a child laborer pop up in the studio (visible through the glass doors behind the anchor) was just bad taste.

karachikhatmal allowed me to have an alter-ego i actually liked. it let me say things i believed in, and it allowed me to be critical, affording just enough distance for the 'self-criticism' to not feel too stinging. and for the two plus years i wrote there, it allowed me to develop my own style in terms of narration, my own set of ideas, and my own small group of people who thought it was great.

every time i wrote a post, i would obsessively check my e-mail, hoping for a new comment to show up. they would arrive very slowly, very rarely, and would often be complaints about how long the post was. yet perversely, i could later entertain fantasies about how i was so cutting-edge that the mainstream wasn't yet able to accept me. kind of like being the band radiohead was into.

but most of all i was determined for it to be about pakistan, but NOT about pakistani politics.

too much everything within pakistani society is about politics. our most popular songs, our most engaging comedy, our sport(s), our culture, our religion.

which would have been fine, until you realise that the reason everything is so politicized is because pakistani politics itself is so detached, so beyond change that it has become some sort of dogma which dictates everything else. everything about pakistani politics is nauseatingly repetitive and un-surprising. so copy-paste material steered clear of discussing politics for their own sake.

it was harder to write about pakistan without mentioning politics though. the only language i could write and express intelligently in is english. i was educated at the best schools. (not at KGS though - thank the Lord) i lived in an area owned by the army. and as such, i was part of a class which either feels it knows what is good for the rest of the unwashed masses, or wishes that it could escape the unwashed masses. having experienced the former at LUMS, and having lost interest in the latter post-college, i was a bit unsure. but as karachikhatmal i knew what to do. i wanted to bring to light the pakistan that we experienced and existed in, but were too ashamed, confused, or in denial to articulate.

i could have said that i wanted to 'create' a vision of pakistan i agreed with, but that would be false. i tried to write what i felt was true.

to this day, more people from the US read copy-paste material than any other place. and the blog on burgers is the most widely read of all. it is nowhere near my best, but i think it says something very original.

No, you are not middle class. You are not upper-middle class. You are not middle-upper-middle-class.

You are a burger. I am a burger.

And we need to shut the fuck up and realize this fact.

the reason this struck a chord is because burgers are either those who hate pakistan because they don't accept it, and don't feel accepted there. or burgers are people who deep down know they are burgers, but have been educated and been made aware enough to hate that label, and resist ever being called that. by saying that burgers are pakistani too, i was able to move beyond the inane polemics of pakistani conversation and move towards something substantial. too many people spend time on the blogosphere arguing about the NRO or the Army or whatever to confirm that they are smart, and that they care about their country. but arguing about such bullshit is a waste of time, and brain cells.

what we need is to start talking about ourselves, our societies, our families and friends, our cars and our languages, our tastes in music and shoes, our preferences of internet browsers. and by we, i mean pakistanis. we agonize so much about matters beyond our control because it allows us to feel like we are doing something, while at the same time abdicating actual responsibility. it allows us to feel like we care, even as we tell the child labor servant in our house to fetch us a glass of water. (i do that all the time) and it turns us all into those journalists i was talking about - people who delude themselves into thinking that they are making a difference, when all they are doing is blowing hot air.

of course, i then moved to london for my masters degree. once i was physically separated from pakistan, i found it hard to write about it. what made it worse was as my alter-ego, i expected a very high quality of blogs from myself. (despite two-plus years of going to blogs nearly every day, i only wrote about 30 posts. and their frequency kept decreasing.) the last post i wrote made me realise that not only my style had developed and changed, but i was now more interested in different things.

and so, finally, we come here.

to sasti-masti.

i never saw pakistani movies while growing up. the only time i ever saw any was to enhance the effects of inebriation due to their inherent bizarreness and outlandishness.

i never even liked bollywood, which most pakistanis prefer over the local produce. it wasn't anything against india, i just liked 'american movies' a lot more, i didn't like songs in the middle of movies, and i found it all very tedious and unbelievable. but then again, movies and cinema as a whole was not exactly a passion for me, like the way cricket is.

so when i joined film school, i was at a loss because i had never seen enough good hollywood movies, let alone the french new wave or the italian neo-realists any half serious film student would obsess about. for example, i had seen more of scorsese with dicaprio than scorcese with deniro. so i had a choice - i could start educating myself about all these film-student must haves, or i could start venturing into completely unknown territory - lollywood.

i have ostensibly chosen the latter. i say that because as yet, i still watch about 20 movies from the rest of the world compared to every 1 i see from pakistan. its not the easiest thing in the world to suddenly get into. but it does allow me to do something i had advocated at copy-paste material - to stop being ashamed and embarrassed of pakistan, and to embrace it instead. and just because doing that is hard doesn't make you more or less of a pakistani.

and so it begins.

i promise (to myself) to write here as often as i can, with a minimum of a post-a-week. of course this means a loss in quality, but i hope that the content would redeem that issue. not everything would be about lollywood, but that would explain itself as the process continues.

it has taken me a month to write this first post. i had a million different ideas about how to start, but finally, i have started. and i realise that despite all the grandeur, these words would probably only be read by me. but that's something karachikhatmal (and myself?) would have to learn to accept.

one last thing.

one day, people in my class were all talking about their own countries. its a small class, but with people from france, india, persia etc everyone could talk about globally acclaimed stuff from back home. i was very proud to show them this. i hope that you too can learn to love it.

The Room

2010-03-01T19:46:00.002+05:00

I had made a big deal of it when i had posted my first student film. I am going to be a lot more basic with this one.

The project for this film stipulated a 6-8 minute piece, shot entirely in one location with the location playing a central role in the film.

I personally think it's a better effort than my first one, and moreover this time around i did everything myself. which felt quite good. for those of you interested, there is no post-production work in here. no special effects either, unless you count animation as an effect. which no one does.

The Room from ahmernaqvi on Vimeo.

The Room was made as part of my MA in Independent Film Degree. This particular film was part of a project which decreed that the entire film had to be shot within a certain location, and the location was meant to be a key character within the whole film. Everything, from the story to the camera and the editing was done by myself, using a rig and a tripod.

let me know what you think. please, if there is anyone still reading here, don't be as silent as last time.

While i'm here, some fun facts. during the stop motion, i made some major blunders like leaving in glasses or my hands in some shots, which led to some really shoddy photoshopping i am sure the eagle eyed among you can spot. the scissors used in the final sequence also kept hitting the lens, so that some of the shots have stab marks over them. but my favourite bit was that when i was shooting the books for the stop motion, one book kept falling down and was completely unreliable. yes, it was the afridi book. gotta love it :)

This Post is Not an Elephant

2010-01-24T08:04:00.002+05:00

I

My wife has a Slovenian friend K who shares a flat with a man named S. S is coloured brown, and learnt his thickly accented English at St. Michael's but/and he assures all and sundry that he is British.

Till recently, S had the habit of hosting raucous parties which would end late, with S rendered comatose amidst an inglorious mess of pasta-encrusted dishes, half-empty beer bottles and bass-blasting stereos. However, after a three day New Year's blinder, S vowed to give up drinking and clean up his ways. As K awaited with bated breath, it appeared that S had changed his life around.

One Friday night, K arrived at home to find another party, with the alcohol replaced by a bubbling shisha. Without bothering to investigate the legality of the ingredients burning within, she went to bed. Saturday saw both flat-mates out of the house, and so came Sunday.

K was having breakfast that morning, when she noticed a black burn mark on the expensive carpet they had paid a 200 pound deposit for. Intrigued and incensed, she investigated further. The linoleum kitchen floor had a similar black burn mark, and the bin liner in the dustbin had a perforated hole the same size as the burn marks, while one of her kitchen towelettes was burnt as well. K would later discover that the size and shape of the burn marks in question closely resembled the circular shape of the specialized coals used for shishas.

And so she decided to confront S. When he came home, she pointed out the burnt carpet and asked him if he did it. And that was when K realised that despite all the distance S had put between himself and his past, despite all the calls with the 92 prefix he avoided, despite all his claims of being one with the west, there was a quintessentially P****tani core to him. And so to repeat, when K asked him about the burn mark, he replied with a straight face, without flinching:

"That wasn't me, I wasn't home last night. Maybe you did it?"

"If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that a dance is all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world

What he was thinking about the girl
Yeah, what he's thinking about the girl, oh

A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"
Just because she makes a big rumpus
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole

Just by playing a different role
Yeah, by playing a different role, oh"

II

O wondered, much like the Simpsons for episode 138 "...so, it has come to this."

In a strange little island adrift of a continent, he sat on a perch within a rustic colosseum, wondering how exactly he had ended up with all this toxicity overcoming him.

Hadn't he been the one constantly reminded of how lucky he was? Didn't they all rub him for not doing real work, and yet be green with envy that he was living the dream? Hadn't this been what he wanted to do, to be here, in this stadium, doing what he loved? That boy who would be out playing in the cruel relentlessness of the Jeddah afternoon would have killed to be where he stood today, so why did he feel so pissed? Precisely because he had never seen it purely as work, but as a way of keeping that boy alive.

Well fuck that boy, because all that was left inside O at the moment was pure bile.

Oh how he had hated the cynics! Those vultures who gobbled up the free travel, and the countless passes, and the cheap tickets to seedy venues. Those vinegary idiots who stewed all day in their vile conspiracies, unable and unwilling to experience joy for even a minute, because they were too caught up in their unending quest to spark a fuse, light a fire, twist a knife. He had vowed he would never be like them, never let his passions cloud his rationality, never become overcome with the sheer desire to be a fucking bitch like them.

Well fuck that now.

He couldn't take it anymore. It was one thing being infuriated, frustrated, dejected, resigned, crushed, defeated. He had blitzed through hope and trudged through hopelessness, he had been stoic and he done the 'hiding his pain behind bitter humor' thing. But this was a new low. This was...

30 catches in six Tests.

Fuck. That.

His laptop stared blankly back at him so he decided to stumble for a bit. Had he bothered, he might have gone to his home page, and read the feature by the senior statesman of gung-ho Ozzie-ism, who summed it up quite nicely for him.

Pakistan have long been the least willing of all the Test-playing nations to own up to their failings.

But he didn't check the home page. Instead, he thought maybe he'd try Smiling Buddha one last time. He had last spoken to him a week ago, right after the end, right when his stomach had felt like ripped up ribbons of meat in rancid acid - to put it mildly.

He hadn't the heart to rip into him then, so he had merely asked, why? Smiling Buddha had smiled sadly, and said
"What will a specialist fielding coach do? The same thing we are doing. This is a grassroots problem."

Smiling Buddha better have something different this time, thought O as he walked down the stairs to the field. Out by the boundary, crouched low, was the painfully slow Buddha in front of the Boy Blunder. Someone was tossing lollypops for SB to edge to BB. O stood there for 15 minutes, not saying a word.

When he had counted 50 throws, he turned back. The Buddha had managed to edge five.

O sat in front of his monitor, his by-line already formulated.

There is not a cricket-playing country in the world as backward and as resistant to not just modernity but simple, natural progression as Pakistan.

"The boat yeah you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
The boat yeah you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it

So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she could be so cold
So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
You need to spit it out, in a telephone booth
While you call everyone that you know, and ask 'em

Where do you think she goes
Oh yeah, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh

The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well you know she's still rockin' it
The boat well you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth yeah you know there's no stoppin' it

You recognize the effect and the wreck
That it's causin' when she rocks the boat
But it's the cause hittin on the Cardinal Laws
'bout the proper place to hang her coat
So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
She's been singing it all along

But you were hearin' a different song"

III

M stared at his tumbler. It contents were Amaretto, cream and scotch. They'd named a goddam cocktail after him.

His tumbler caught the sun's dying rays. That fiery bastard was going down amidst the hills on an island he owned, himself. His own goddam island.

There was a whole world out there that still, to this day, worshipped him. They swore by him in acting schools. They memorized his lines, sold his face on t-shirts, parodied and pastiched him, revered him. They goddam loved him.

So why did he still care?

He should do what Maria kept telling him to do - give up hope that they'll ever find her, get the scientists to make another one, another dozen ones if he goddam wanted, and live his life.

Why should he keep moping and hoping?

Because, M realised, there was nothing else he could do. Nothing could make him accept she was gone. Nothing left but to keep hoping.

Maybe they thought he was a fool, but what did he care? They'd been saying that about him for over thirty years now. So what that the Americans couldn't find her, the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese were all clueless, that even those Afrikaans mercenaries had given up hope of finding her in the thicket of the forest? He still believed, and that was why he had paid every last contender who promised to find his liger Tarita - his half lion, half tiger beauty that was perhaps every bit as monstrous and wonderful as him.

Maria knew that, and she looked out in to the jungle with a tear in her eye. She'd been through the good, the bad and the worse with M, and the worse was pretty hairy. But to see him, so desperate, so broken, so goddam sad - that was...

Suddenly, there was a rustle and a bustle, a bungle in the jungle...

M jolted up, and Maria looked with trepidation as figures began to emerge out of the bushes amidst a fearful commotion. Time froze as they waited, and watched.

And then...

A mighty elephant came roaring out, being beaten senseless by members of the Pakistani police, screaming "Haan main Liger hoon, main Liger hoon, Kassam Khuda ki main Liger hoon!"

Lyrics in italics for "The Denial Twist" by the White Stripes