The Picture
"The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable." Arundhati Roy“They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened in the laws. They died because money could be saved and made."
Ben Okri
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
Zygmunt Bauman
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“A picture is worth a thousand words”, says an old English adage. It is especially worth a million words when it depicts the extremes of human joy and, even more so, of human suffering. But words, after all, can do only so much: they are but just forms that “define” and hence, limit what they try to capture. Even the best of poets, the deftest and most elegant of wordsmiths, lament that unfortunate limitation of words. Every capturing is also leaving out something; every story told is also another left untold. There always remains the unsaid---the unsayable---that which escapes language or is left out intentionally. Politics is always there.
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“A picture is worth a thousand words”, says an old English adage. It is especially worth a million words when it depicts the extremes of human joy and, even more so, of human suffering. But words, after all, can do only so much: they are but just forms that “define” and hence, limit what they try to capture. Even the best of poets, the deftest and most elegant of wordsmiths, lament that unfortunate limitation of words. Every capturing is also leaving out something; every story told is also another left untold. There always remains the unsaid---the unsayable---that which escapes language or is left out intentionally. Politics is always there.
The picture here is an image that defies all attempts at a fair description. It is many things at the same time. It is a story. It tells of a history. It is a genocidal narrative borne out of ugly politics that is itself a manifestation of what is worst in the human soul. It captures a moment in time when tragedy befell upon old and helpless folks of a violently vandalized land like a thunderbolt from the cruel skies. It is a portrayal that hides within its every pixel a thousand sad tales. They are the tales of deception, of injustice, of wanton greed and undiluted corruption. They are the stories of those who swear allegiance to God, faith and country but who shamelessly serve and worship Mammon, both covertly and overtly. But above all, they are the tales of betrayal and of convenient Faustian deals entered into and endorsed by the sons of the soil who shamelessly abandon their land and sell its people, all to be defiled by the power-intoxicated marauders, of the uniformed variety or otherwise. For “nobody can enter your house until and unless you want them to” as the sages of the region have said.
But if images are stories, the stories have plots and characters; they have contexts.
These are, therefore, the stories of the sick and the deceived, horror tales hidden from the tranquilized, the bamboozled and captive audiences of the bread and circus technology of the demigods of the country. This obscene coterie of villains---these demigods, the bloodsucking ruling pack---through their “proactive” presstitude mouthpieces, the plastic talking heads on TV screens and increasingly in the clogged and toxic bowels of the Internet, has historically played the cannibalistic Center to the deceived and ravaged Periphery. It is a consciousness---a strange word indeed for this class of genocidals!---informed and sustained by a murderously instrumental worldview that binds the depraved master to the wretched subjects. The stories, therefore, are not just contemporary but also historical. They are hopeless serial episodes within the epic length tragic narrative for the comprehension of which one needs to update one’s understanding of (modern and postmodern) evil in South Asia, as the street fighting public intellectual Ashis Nandy has suggested.
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BLM: Balochistani Lives Matter
(A short tale, in verse, of The Sick and The Deceived)
Excluded and fooled
Divided and ruled
Plundered and colonized
Disappeared and demonized.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Center and periphery
An old tale of demagoguery
Deception the norm, the way of sophistry
The same old ruse, civilian or military.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Chaghi is copper, silver and gold
Cui bono?, Quare? we are never told
And there’s coal, gas and lots of oil
But not for the locals who drudge and toil.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Now it’s Gwadar, the jewel in the crown
That makes the mouth water of sahibs brown
“Don’t you dare cry, fume, or frown!”
Yell the neo-colonials of Pindi town.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Economic Corridor, BRI ‘n CPEC---a curse, a violent puzzle
Development and progress, taraqee---under a gun’s muzzle!
The Bajwas accumulate, the Sharifs load up as Balochistan bleed
Goes on and on this tragic tale of corruption and greed.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
To raise your voice is to dig your own grave
'Cause they buy the craven and butcher the brave
The tanks readily roll, the gunships arrive
The shudras wipe n’ waste the kshatriyas in caves.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
In the old Tin Town of this new Bengal
There’s the old new trick of divide-and-rule
Sectarian blood lust, and ethnic cleansing
Exposed n’ all crystal clear, save to the fool.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
The snaky talking heads on the idiot screen
They bend and bow, these bootlick, arse-lick filthy shysters
The gibber-jabbering, twiddle-twaddling wily vermin
The paid pied-pipers who shun the victims and serve the masters.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
The scoundrels scream “It’s Naya Daur" n "It's Naya Pakistan!”
It’s a bloody sham, nothing new in the rotten towns
“Insaf, insaf”, shout the trolls of the Ego Man--Hybrid Khan
It's the same old spoof, the same old sins of the criminal clowns.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
 |
| The context: the complete image, the other half of the story |
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BLM: Balochistani Lives Matter
(A short tale, in verse, of The Sick and The Deceived)
Excluded and fooled
Divided and ruled
Plundered and colonized
Disappeared and demonized.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Center and periphery
An old tale of demagoguery
Deception the norm, the way of sophistry
The same old ruse, civilian or military.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Chaghi is copper, silver and gold
Cui bono?, Quare? we are never told
And there’s coal, gas and lots of oil
But not for the locals who drudge and toil.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Now it’s Gwadar, the jewel in the crown
That makes the mouth water of sahibs brown
“Don’t you dare cry, fume, or frown!”
Yell the neo-colonials of Pindi town.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
Economic Corridor, BRI ‘n CPEC---a curse, a violent puzzle
Development and progress, taraqee---under a gun’s muzzle!
The Bajwas accumulate, the Sharifs load up as Balochistan bleed
Goes on and on this tragic tale of corruption and greed.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
To raise your voice is to dig your own grave
'Cause they buy the craven and butcher the brave
The tanks readily roll, the gunships arrive
The shudras wipe n’ waste the kshatriyas in caves.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
In the old Tin Town of this new Bengal
There’s the old new trick of divide-and-rule
Sectarian blood lust, and ethnic cleansing
Exposed n’ all crystal clear, save to the fool.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
The snaky talking heads on the idiot screen
They bend and bow, these bootlick, arse-lick filthy shysters
The gibber-jabbering, twiddle-twaddling wily vermin
The paid pied-pipers who shun the victims and serve the masters.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
The scoundrels scream “It’s Naya Daur" n "It's Naya Pakistan!”
It’s a bloody sham, nothing new in the rotten towns
“Insaf, insaf”, shout the trolls of the Ego Man--Hybrid Khan
It's the same old spoof, the same old sins of the criminal clowns.
Terrorized, targeted, tortured and killed,
Balochistani lives ruined, evil designs fulfilled.
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Balochistani Lives Matter
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