The journey has only started for PTI

The elections are mostly over and the final verdicts are pouring in, sealing a decisive victory for PML-N and sufficient seats to put PTI down as a significant opposition player. Where lion-bearers are very joyous, vowing to bring back the glory days of Pakistan, PTI supporters look utterly saddened and dejected.

However, now is not the time to pout or be sad. Now is also not the time to deny the fact that PTI did not get a sweeping majority. Rather, it is time to gracefully admit defeat, hail the 30+ odd seats that PTI has secured and learn a few critical lessons from the voting season.

What PTI achieved?

PTI has emerged as a political force to reckon with. At the same time, Imran Khan can be given the absolute credit for prompting the youth of this nation to become an active part of the political process. I was a part of the D-chowk jalsa on May 9; I actively engaged in political discussions with others of my age group – and the sheer hope and optimism they expressed and the renewed vigor of nationalism that twinkled in their eyes and in their conversations, was absolutely awe-inspiring.

This was the first time in Pakistan’s history that such a huge portion of youth has gone out on the streets, stood in lines for hours and cast their votes. This is also the first time in this country’s history that expat Pakistanis have flew back in such huge numbers to stamp the ballot paper.

Finally, PTI is currently the second-largest political party in Pakistan. The struggle that started 17 years ago, at the hands of a single man with no hopes but a rock-solid ambition, has now turned into a huge force. This is the time for celebration of a really good start, not that of disappointment.

What PTI needs to work on

However, it is also time for the party to look inwards and discern its short-comings. The chief among these is the fact that PTI has turned out to be a party that is primarily focused on the urban middle-class youth. This objection is true to a certain extent – the detachment of the party from rural pockets is what decisively turned the tables against it in Punjab. Then there’s also the issue that PTI didn’t really do any ground-level mobilization in Sindh or Baluchistan – both are critically important for this country and are becoming increasingly so. PTI needs to reach out to the population at large and go beyond urban dwellings.

Secondly, PTI must use the next five years to mature itself as well as its supporters. There are those amidst PTI who refuse to discern the critical importance of democracy and tend to undermine it at times. There are also such who tend to dwell on the negative, call the mandate of others a fraud or useless and similar other bold statements – PTI leadership needs to communicate to their young, hot-headed, yet politically active voters, that such ideas are terribly adverse to the democratic process in Pakistan at large.

Youth in Pakistan is here to stay and will form a majority of the population until 2052 or so. And this youth vote will become an increasingly dominant phenomenon in the coming years. Although this youth seems to have kicked into the political arena, it is undergoing disorientation. One can understand that to carry out a huge election campaign, you need to have a foe you can cite as a failure. So PTI’s criticism levelled towards PMLN was an election strategy.

But elections are over – a huge populace, comprising of the youth, is waiting for Khan to show them the way now. This path must not be that of hatred, intolerance or destructive criticism. It is high time for PTI to rally the youth around someone more grand and more inclusive – namely, nationalism. I have seen the hopes in the eyes of those who have been utterly disappointed in their country; I have seen the so-called mummy daddy kids stand on streets for hours, in blistering rain and under rains. This passion, this fervor must be used to fuel a nationalism and reinstate our pride in being Pakistanis.

Fallen men

‘Your smile is the sun, ma chère.

And fallen men, we need the sun.’

Valentine’s Day, Birthdays, Cricket, Music, Pants And Phones Are Haram‏

So you think Valentine’s Day is haram and shouldn’t be celebrated? If so, it is very likely that you also condone forcefully stopping people from celebrating it. From the fiery patriot-cum-pan-Muslim-cum-anti-West-cum-pro-vague-notions-of-glory crowd, we have seen many exclamations against the Valentine’s Day in the last few days.

To these passionate Muslim patriots, I have a few queries, merely out of curiosity: are birthdays halal or haram? I’m confused since they weren’t celebrated 1400 years ago. Is music halal? If yes, which one – the one Junaid Jamshed produces now or the one he produced a few years ago? Is cricket halal because according to the awesome scholar of Muslim world, Dr. Israr Khalifa, cricket should be banned because it incites immodest sentiments in the viewers and waste their time.

Are western dresses halal? Are cars, computers, products made by the capitalist-Western world halal because I am concerned – they take billions from us to their pockets which help them buy nukes, eat pork and a lot of other haram stuff. So perhaps the phone you are using, the laptop you preach people on, the tablet on which you speak Islam on Twitter, all of them send money away to Kafir companies for haram purposes. I shudder even to think about it.

That is not the end of it. TV is itself haram, most authentic hadiths will tell you. So is loudspeaker, if we are to believe the Mullahs of days gone by. Photos are haram and thus, photo studios should be haram. Identities must be limited to thumb prints perhaps – a Muslim country must have no place for the haram practice of photography. It is safe to state that 90% of our lifestyles today are haram in the light of orthodox Islam.

The big question is: what should we do. Should we start telling each other what sorry bunch of kafirs we are, start criticizing each other’s western dresses, houses, cars and laptops, demanding that government arrest everyone who is clean-shaven or wearing pants, and call on terrorist Islamist organizations to kill those who indulge in such Kafir practices (yes some ‘peaceful’ believers did that on Twitter on Valentine’s day – this was their ‘peaceful’ protest against a few people waving banners).

Should we put death bounties on each other’s heads because quite frankly, I can call you a non-believer for any of the aforementioned practices and find the excuse to chop your head, courtesy the freelancer Mullahs which are a dozen a dime in our land of pure.

Or should we let it be; stick with our notions, try to tell others what we think is right and listen to what they hold as true; argue peacefully, without calling for each other’s deaths, without slitting throats, without giving death threats, without branding each other Kafir, without jeopardizing each other’s lives on tiny issues.

Should we do this as a civilized nation, live and let live, be tolerant and accept all mindsets without letting anyone violate the basic human rights – or should we become the rabid dogs that rip each other’s throats and turn this nation into a pit of madmen?

The choice is yours.

Adding meaning to rhetoric

‘In a country where thinkers are assassinated and writers are considered infidels; where mouths are shut, books are burnt, thoughts are forbidden and to question is a sin, I beg your pardon, My Lord….’

Just saying, rhetoric needs to be meaningful. And it must question the real issues – sadly, all declamation speeches I’ve listened to during my brief debating career tend to pander to populist rhetoric and dwell on jingoistic religiosity or patriotism. And the worst part is that the jury seems swayed by that. Save one or two occasions, the guy who appeals to the so-called ‘Ummah’, cites the false tales of our glorious history and embellished narrations of past victories, always wins. Not.Cool.

Notes From The Fiction

The table wore a solemn look, in part due to the scarcity of what it was beset with, and despite being fairly modest in all his desires, he felt a sudden pang of anger surge through him, as if to burn through the indifference that stood in the middle of the table like a regular third course. He moved his arm ever so slightly, awkward in the awkwardness of his former pause and determined to shift to a new stance, even if that was to add to his discomfort and embarrassment, both of which were unwarranted and his own doing, and undoing. He gently tugged at the tiny portion of his shirt’s sleeve, protruding from under his coat, suddenly aware that it may look very strange from the other view and determined not to be made a target of any of the author’s nefarious plans.

-But the view shifted ever so quickly and there he was, sitting in the chair opposite, wondering how stupid the sleeve of the person across looked like. He dwelt on the thought for a moment, musing inwardly and then threw out a meaningful sentence to strike conversation. Before he could fit himself in the new shoes, the view reverted and he was back with his former being.-

Thus, he stirred up, in himself, a look of apathy and tried to wrap his arms around each other, clearly avoiding the attention of those that handled the keys to his existence, and its lack thereof, and thus, and because he suddenly was, cognizant of the fact, he had to try and act normal by reaching out for the spoon on the table. The host charmingly invited him to start. ‘Them bloody whims’, he muttered under his breathe, knowing well that if the word of it reached beyond his being, it could be the death of him since, no matter how he performed, the tiny little things, a false thought, an irregular move, a flick of the eyes, even an uneven breathe, could but suffice to inform on his fickleness and lead to his ouster from the few pages that he had somehow managed to be on.

-I found myself holding out the spoon, digging into the distasteful dish of rich potatoes and empty words, retching inwardly at the necessity of having to eat it, a sentiment which wouldn’t escape even the most avid devourers. Then it suddenly hit me the damned author had given me the first-person garb, yet again. What a moron – couldn’t stick to a consistent narration. I grudged, but of course silently. Then I ate well, though I could no longer discern appetite form the sense of fulfillment, feeling swayed from a void to a void. The second and the third courses arrived and departed, my hands moved without my will or consent and I ate. I tried gathering the recollections of my memories from the third-person stand-point but that was already a page past and blurry.-

The dessert was a rice pudding. ‘A poor choice even for a rustic setting’ he strangely felt like laughing out loud. Then the pudding reminded him of his village, ‘already two chapters past’, he quickly calculated, without wavering in his dutiful self-dosage of the pudding, reaching out for a second helping to simply buy a few words and soothe his nerves before the next stage was set. But that proved futile as a gentle flick of wind and words, contours and ink and parchment and distance pulled him into the garden of his lover’s house. He had thought the habit of astonishment would have withered away at the frequency of such happenings but he was still to get used to it and yet he never had a respite for such transitory meditations within his grander transitions. He rose from his seat, alarmed by the loud creak of the bench and wondering whither he be led next when he turned to a gentle noise on his back and the door to the house stood ajar, barred by a thin shadow of adequate fullness and frank, almost familiar, invitation. Normally he would have taken a few moments to consider but this wasn’t his call – along he trod, gently brushing his hair to a side and bringing his gaze to lock into hers and before he could offer a sentence or two (as was the wont in the last book), he felt the moist fullness of a gentle breeze against his lips. Then the sky grew a pale shade of purple for a second and he thought he was hallucinating; he tried to wrench free during the next few syllables but the author put down his foot and that was that. He pulled away and then, was not. The chapter had ended.

‘Tis My Say: 2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 34,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

The flawed argument in favor of reserved seats for women

Imran Khan recently kicked up yet another melee in Pakistan’s media when he declared that he would have women contest elections rather than enter the National Assembly on reserved seats. Before weighing the plausibility of the argument, many were quick to jump the bandwagon of unqualified criticism simply because it was Khan who said so.

For the uninformed, women in Pakistan’s National Assembly currently have 60 reserved seats. How exactly are these seats filled in? Well, since the seats are allocated to each political party based on their proportion in the legislature, the said political parties have the sole authority to figure out who will fills these seats.

The result is simply that the wives, daughters, sisters, relatives of the bigwigs of each political party smugly position themselves on these seats, clamouring out about women rights yet being utterly incompetent to launch the least effort to that end. Seats are allocated purely on political connections with nary a thought spared to any merit or qualification.

There are plenty who dished out a tab bit intelligent criticism to Khan’s proposition by stating that letting women contest elections is nearly impossible in a conservative country like Pakistan. The argument is quite valid and yet it is utterly inadequate to reach the conclusion that the reserved seats shouldn’t be tampered with.

In my view, yes women contesting elections still seems a remote possibility. However, things are on their way to change with ECP pushing for a greater number of party tickets given to woman candidates. Meanwhile, what we CAN do is to ensure that at least the women who find their way to NA on reserved seats merit some minimum qualification.

Just like I would never vote Hamza Shahbaz for being Shahbaz Sharif‘s son, I wouldn’t want a woman to represent Pakistani women simply because she is the wife of an eminent politician. Is that principally wrong? No. Is that too much to ask or somehow impossible? Absolutely not. So why the mindless ruckus then?

Rather than expending their energies in rabidly attempting to defend the reserved seats, I would suggest that the women rights activists can do a far better job if they tried to coordinate with the authorities and somehow devise some kind of minimum qualifications for the women who get to be appointed on the reserved seats. A proven record of working for women, some political insight into policy-making for the said gender – anything tangible that may make sense for a person who gets to be on one of those reserved seats. And I really don’t think that is too much to ask for.