Propaganda: Glittering Generalities

Propaganda: Glittering Generalities

"The gods in a world of takthir (as opposed to tawhid) are legion. To mention some of the more important ones would be to list the defining myths and ideologies of our times---freedom, equality, evolution, progress, science, medicine, nationalism, socialism, progress, Marxism. But perhaps the most dangerous of the gods are those that are the most difficult to recognize. They have innocuous names like care, communication, consumption, development, education, information, standard of living, management, planning, production, project, resource, service, system, welfare."

                                                                                   William Chittick

“If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”                                              Philip K. Dick

The power to define is the ultimate power.      (A general postmodern wisdom)
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Propaganda is part and parcel of the modern social and political landscape everywhere. Since the early years of the twentieth century when its potential as a “public relations” exercise was first recognized, courtesy of pioneers in the field like Edward Barnays, who was Sigmund Freud’s nephew by the way, it has become more and more sophisticated and subtle over the years, especially with the rise of digital media and SNS etc. But its common or essential techniques have, for the most part, remained the same ever since Nazi Goebbels, the Fascists and company perfected the dark art. One of the early critical analyses of propaganda techniques was carried out by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). Established in 1937, the IPA lists these common techniques as follows:

• Word games (name calling, glittering generalities and euphemisms)
• False connections or associations (transfer and testimonial)
• Special appeals (plain folks, bandwagon and fear)

The propagandist language of name calling, fear mongering, and the use of glittering generalities serve demagogues and political extremists well. This much is well understood now. Through the pernicious practice of name calling, the “other” (the target individual, social/political/cultural/racial group, country etc.) is vilified and dehumanized. A culture of fear is created, convenient bogeymen are created, frightening and discomforting metaphors and imagery are used to disorient and disarm the gullible masses and make them ready for control and manipulation. The result is a sense of vulnerability in the people. Immigrants, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims in the USA, Muslims and Africans in EU, and certain sects, ethnicities and minorities in Pakistan are examples. In Pakistan, for example, once an entire sect is named and declared, “kafir”, the way to the “final solution” is paved---the total annihilation of the named and the re-defined is the logical next step which would then be carried out with an urgent sense of obligation, as a pious religious duty that must be carried out with a jihadi zeal. For example, this particular modern propaganda technique of vilification and dehumanization through toxic acts of naming and (re)-defining, so beloved of nakedly ambitious and vile little men and women of this world in general and of the ones in Pakistan in particular----the tyrants and bigots of all shades and orientations but especially the booted duffers----was very effectively used in the numerous decades-long violent “targeted” purges, the sectarian bloodbaths and ethnic cleansings, in a place like Quetta (the hometown of yours truly).
 

This act of name calling, or naming, is, therefore, a potent tool. For example, for the ancients, the very act of naming something or someone was an act of power, of control. To know someone’s name was to have power over them. After all, the ultimate name giver is the Creator Himself. When God told/taught the first being, the archetypal Adam, "the name of things”, He thus gave him power over all creation, made him the ashraf al makhluqaat, the khalifa, the noblest of all creatures. The difference in the modern acts of naming, however, is that since modernity lacks any sense of the sacred, is in denial of transcendence, is a totally negative theology of skepticism/cynicism, where everything is sheer “power” in this world, most, if not all, naming eventually boils down to reduction(ism), limitation, quantification, diabolism (as opposed to symbolism) and eventually to dehumanization. Modern man, after all, wants to be god himself in the absence of the Sacred.

In short: calling someone evil---and doing it repeatedly, day in day out, 24/7, 365 days a year---is, in a sense and for any special purpose and many people, turning that thing into evil. Goebbels the Nazi knew it well . Think of “India” and “Indian” in Pakistan and of “Pakistan” and “Pakistani” in India. On both sides of the border, it is now almost impossible to imagine evil without thinking about one of these categories. In fact, and this is especially true for certain ethnic groups in Pakistan---especially for the people of Punjab, or for the majority of Punjabis---it is not even possible to have a sense of the self, to have a confident identity, without at the same time thinking of the evil “other”, the evil Indian: for these people, the self has been thoroughly defined negatively, as something that exists because, and only because, it is opposed to another entity, the “evil other” (more on this issue later. For now, interested readers may wish to read a related blogpost here).
   

The evil "other"

As a propaganda technique, glittering generalities play a very important role in our current political milieu, both local/national and global. What is a glittering or glowing generality? This is how Wikipedia defines it:

“A glittering generality (also called glowing generality) is an emotionally appealing phrase so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that it carries conviction without supporting information or reason. Such highly valued concepts attract general approval and acclaim. Their appeal is to emotions such as love of country and home, and desire for peace, freedom, glory, and honor. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. They are typically used by politicians and propagandists.”

As vague words, phrases and expressions with loads of (positive/negative) connotations, glittering generalities are what the IPA calls “virtue words” or expressions. Strongly appealing to our emotional faculties, they disable our critical faculties and make us susceptible to all kinds of manipulations. They are constructed and constantly and regularly reinforced through jingles, songs, images, dramas and movies, and catch phrases etc.: think of ISPR sponsored and produced dramas and Noor Jehan, Amanat Ali Khan and now the many Coke Studio patriotic songs. Glittering generalities are words like science, rationality, development, progress, civilization, motherland, fatherland, security, democracy, freedom, human rights, peace and love, sustainable, international community, civil society, community development, grassroots, empowerment, poverty alleviation, LGBTQ, religious, army/fawj/fawji, wardi, The Idara (institution) and so on. These are all abstract in nature, meaning different things to different people and, therefore, amenable to manipulation.
 

Let’s take one of these concepts, sustainable development (SD), a darling concept of the noisy secular missionaries everywhere but especially in Pakistan (the NGO mafia), to see how it works. Sustainable development as a “buzzword” is one of those concepts which are widely (ab)-used by all sorts of individuals and interests, from the ecologically destructive industrialists to slimy politicians, from NGO and civil society jihadists, social justice activists, opportunist environmentalists to compromised (lifafa) journalists, intellectuals, writers and artists. I think nobody has improved upon Lele’s early critique of the concept. He wrote way back in 1991,

“SD is a ‘metafix’ that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk minimising subsistence farmer to the equity seeking social worker, the pollution-concerned or wildlife-loving First Worlder, the growth-maximising policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat, and therefore, the vote-counting politician.”

These noble sounding, fix-all words, these magic wands, are all suspect. In our times, they have become like sacred cows, as their particularly constructed and propagated meanings are vigilantly guarded by the powerful and the influential. Nobody can challenge them without suffering some form of retribution. Exhibit: in recent years, the USA has destroyed at least four countries in the Middle East / West Asia with the help of mere three or four, although very powerful, of these glowing generalities: "democracy", "freedom" and “women’s rights” or "human rights." To challenge these is to invite the scorn and ridicule of the Western and westernized secular-liberal mobs everywhere. Often, these are like empty vessels into which are poured the desires and the interests of the powerful, the oppressors and victimizers. Following campaigns of fear mongering, glittering generalities are then employed to give the frightened, the bamboozled and the vulnerable, a sense of security and often that of superiority. All false, of course.

The avatars of "democracy", "freedom", "human rights"!

Glittering generalities are conversation stoppers. They are thought opium, narcotics that numb and dumb people down. They work in many ways, sometimes in a very subtle manner, subliminally reinforcing the established names and definitions, keeping the domination in place, maintaining the violent and unjust status quo. The whole idea of employing glittering generalities is to stop critical thinking, mostly by discrediting or by outright hiding alternatives. In one commonly practiced version, they lock the victims into simplistic “either/or” dualities, both of which are often the two sides of the same coin. Remember George W. Bush after 9/11: “you are either with us or against us”?

In this series on glittering generalities, I will try to unmask some of the more prominent glittering generalities that are now all around us, polluting the very cultural air we breathe and thrown around by everyone without a second thought. I will try to cast a critical gaze on them and try to see what they mean and try to show their deceptive nature. What I will say will, of course, reflect my own “prejudices”. Think of it as an alternative reading/understanding of these terms, an inversion (or inversion of inversion). The first one is the term “entrepreneur”. Read on in the next post.

For more, please click: Stray crumbs, Bumper Stickers

Overqualified in Balochistan,   Harf e Dervaish #6 (Urdu)

Quetta (a lament)

Counsels of a Wise, Old Woman

 

Aaja marhoom

Counsels of a wise, old woman

(Some words of my great grandmother, our Aaja. In her memory. Khudabiyamurza (RIP))

"No time cometh on you but is followed by a worse."   (A Hadith)

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“Kibr destroyed the first transgressor Iblis (the Devil/Shaitan) and the haughty pharaohs; it eventually destroys every forgetful and heedless man, too. Observe the worst form of kibr in a heedless man especially when he sits down to eat. ”

(Kibr, in Arabic and other Islamic languages, means: ingratitude, arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, feelings of superiority)

“If a man complains about food and always finds fault with food that is served to him, he is not really hungry. A hungry man finds everything delicious.”

“Never leave the dastarkhwan (the dining or table cloth, the dinner table or the entire meal setting) with a full stomach. Most, if not all, sins have their roots in overeating and/or gluttony.”

“The wise man is a healthy man because for him, wisdom means to know when to eat and, more importantly, when to stop eating.”

“A natural appetite for fruit and yogurt is a sign of good health.”

“A weakness for food and eating is a sure sign of an inferior man.”

“Nobody ever washes the face of a lion in the jungle.”

“True happiness is never talked about, is never sought, and it is always qualitative in nature. It is not about what or how many and how much you have; happiness is not about filling up some void, but it is about remembering and keeping pure the natural, primordial void in us.”

“Happiness that result from insignificant things and acts---small happiness(es)---are long lasting.”

"The difference between a simple person (سادہ) and a simpleton (احمق) is that the former knows that a tree is both roots and branches; the simpleton sees only branches and leaves, that which is visible to the eye but which totally depends on, is only alive because of that which is hidden and invisible, like all real things in life and in nature. So, be simple but not a simpleton. God loves simple people because they cling firmly to one virtue that trumps every other: sincerity." 

“The invisible, the ignored---the "worthless" things in this world----are often the richest sources of meaning in life.”

“One’s character is defined by the way one uses one’s eyes, ears and mouth. The more a person uses the first two of the three, the greater the chances are of him or her becoming a better, wiser person.”

“Observe the world more than talk about it. And do the same for people, too.”

“Always get your priorities right in this world: never confuse the essential in life with the accidental, and vice versa. You can gain this discriminatory intellectual/spiritual skill by always remembering one and only one thing: death.”

“Make sure to pay a weekly visit to the graveyard, preferably on Thursdays. There is nothing in this world that can make a man humble, cleanse his soul and soften his hardened heart than the sight of an old, dilapidated grave and the thought of death.”


For more, please click: On Simplicity, On Noise and Solitude

Illuminations #5, Traditional Food, Overqualified in Balochistan

Zari Gul, Inversion: The rule of the Shudra, Harf e Dervaish (Urdu)

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Toghi Road, Quetta

  

Sahebi Store, Toghi Road, Quetta ( late 1960s or early 1970s)

Toghi Road, Quetta (some snapshots only)

"There is more required nowadays to make a single wise man than formerly to make seven sages, and more is needed nowadays to deal with a single person than required with a whole people in former times."

                                                                                   Baltasar Gracian

"If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are."

                                                                                      Wendell Berry

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I was not happy when they changed its name. In fact, I was angry. Why do they do such things? They have even changed the names of buildings, hospitals, museums, events, of schools, colleges, universities and of entire towns and cities, for example, from Lyallpur to Faisalabad, from Fort Sandeman to Zhob, Hindu Bagh to Muslim Bagh, Temple Dera to Dera Murad Jamali, from Montgomery to Sahiwal and so on.  What was wrong with all the former names? What exactly do they want to prove: to remove all signs of our ugly colonial past?  Or to tell the world that we are no longer a subjugated people, a colonized people, and that we are now in control of our destiny, free to write our own history the way we want to? These are noble intentions indeed, but after 75 sordid years of so-called “independence” or azadi, all of these remain vacuous, ridiculous and outright hypocritical gestures in the light of the ugly realities of the country that is Pakistan, and especially of the disgustingly subservient attitude of its criminal ruling classes with their bankrupt culture and decadent lifestyles. Real freedom does not start with, or reside in, symbolic gestures only like changing event, street or city names; it starts, first and foremost, with breaking the shackles of slavery within, with freeing our minds and hearts of the old bondages first. Decolonization, if it means anything, is “decolonization of the mind” above everything else, as the great Ngugi Wa Thiongo and other post-colonial thinkers and activists articulated the notion in the second half of the twentieth century, a period of rapid decolonization in most of Africa and Asia.

As I write this piece, the so-called leaders of the country, that notoriously ill-bred cabal of shameless thugs ---civilian as well as the booted, khaki bloodsuckers---- are roaming the globe in planeloads from the Arab Middle East to EU countries and to North America, begging bowls in hand and on their knees pleading in front of everybody and anybody who they think can throw them a penny. In huge numbers, they travel first-class, are chauffeured around in limousines in world capitals---Geneva, Brussels, New York, London, Paris---- and stay at plush hotels where, like a pack of voracious wild boars, they greedily devour the best and most expensive food and alcohol. The tab for these perverse binges is, of course, picked up by the impoverished Pakistani people---the perennially brutalized, eternally damned masses called the bechari awam. Expert after expert is warning us that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy, teetering on the edge of total collapse. The entire international community is gossiping in disgust, both in private and publicly, about this obscenely brazen-faced vulgarity of these clowns, the rotten-to-the-core ruling “elites”.

I digressed. As I was saying, I was not happy at all when they changed the name of the iconic Toghi Road in Quetta to Sardar Essa Khan Road. Why change something so simple—just two syllables, so simple that it rolls off the tongue so effortlessly, and is even musical to say and listen to----to something so ridiculously long, so stupidly pompous ? I have nothing against this sardar sahib, but why do they honor these people at the cost of someone/something else that is immensely more meaningful and important, at the cost of so much history, tradition, of memories, stories, myths and legends? Toghi Road was, is and will always be so many things to so many people, to thousands if not millions of people: people who were born and who died on Toghi Road; people who were raised and went to school on Toghi Road; people who got married and had children, had grandchildren on Toghi Road; people who made and those who lost their fortunes on Toghi Road; and, people who have never visited but who have heard so much about Toghi Road. Do you see what I mean? What exactly does Sardar Essa Khan Road mean to all these people, if anything at all? 

Gulshan Karahi, Toghi Road, Quetta

One can say that Toghi Road starts at one end with that old medical store, itself of iconic status, Barkat Medical Store and extends all the way to one of the equally old and iconic educational institutions of the city, St. Teresa’s Middle School, going in the direction of Koh i Murdar. The school is no more but Barkat Medical is still very much there. Next to the medical store was another old landmark of Quetta: Sahebi Store. The grocery (provision, as they say in Quetta) store, one of the biggest, if not the biggest (there was also Quddusi Store, perhaps its only rival) closed doors some years ago, in the midst of the state-sponsored, state choreographed murderous pogroms: the booted, wardigardi genocidal purges that have plagued the internal colony of the violently rogue Pindi-Islamabad-Lahore axis of evil. I am talking about that unfortunate, plundered colony euphemistically referred to as “the province of Balochistan" in all official propaganda. The tyrannized people of the land have suffered tragedy after tragedy, on all levels, because of these directly or indirectly state orchestrated "strategic" ethno-sectarian bloodbaths started in the 1970s but with special, systemic,  “targeted” violence meted out to one community in particular, the Hazaras, in the capital city of Quetta. (A member of the Sahebi family, the owner of another famous store, Ahmed Store on Prince Road, was brutally gunned down in broad daylight.)  

Barkat Medical Store, Toghi Road Quetta

As we move uptown, or up the road, there are the many old businesses of Quetta City that I still remember. I recall some: Nigar Photographers, Dr. Hashim Khan’s Clinic, Delight Cinema, Mehmood Stationary Mart, Gulshan Karahi Walla. Delight Cinema is also gone and on its grounds now sits a glitzy glass and concrete shopping mall with the same name, Delight Mall. Yet another ugly consumerist monstrosity that now stands tall mocking the traditional sense of ecological scale and moral sanity. These casino-capitalist cathedrals of greed that are now popping up everywhere in Quetta not only radically clash with the traditional architectural aesthetics of the place---they always look so out of place, so totally disruptive--- but, sadly, they openly and brazenly celebrate the demise of the old virtues of simplicity, contentment, empathy and humility. Gulshan Karahi is still there I think. Mehmood Stationery I am not sure about. Many years ago when I was there, it had transformed itself into a printing press. Across from the cinema, in the corner, was a cigarette and paan kokha, a stall or kiosk. That’s where I usually bought my father’s Saleem beedi (and S, in later years) and Dunhill cigarettes. Next to the cinema was a sweets shop, a mithai walla or a halwai, where they used to sell those bright orange sticky jalebi, a favorite evening snack for many, especially for athletes who would usually eat them soaked in bowls of fresh, hot milk. I never liked them. The halwai place, I believe, was owned by a Mr. Jadoon, whose son Amjad was our senior at college. 

MDS Toghi Road. These impersonal, rootless monster stores with total disregard for local ecology and community values now increasingly occupy the places where once stood many small community rooted provision stores owned by the local people, the uncle-ji stores, or the chacha-mamoo general stores.

Speaking of halwais, there was another one further up the road, just before we reach the side street which leads to the Quaid e Abad Police Station. I don’t remember what it was called but one thing I very clearly remember: the owner. He was a balding tall man, slender and dark complexioned. What I remember most clearly about him, however, was his eyes. A reticent being that preferred the use of gestures and facial expressions for communication than words, he had the softest and the kindest eyes I have ever seen. I think initially he started that business as a halwai, selling the traditional mithai (sweets) like jalebi, laddoo, barfi, gulab jaman and bondhi etc., but the place soon became popular for its samosa and pakora and mithai became the minor product, eventually disappearing from the oily wooden shelves at the back. The man who I believe was either a Saraiki speaking or a Punjabi originally from South Punjab usually sat erect on a low stool with the huge, coal black karahi containing the hot, simmering oil in front of him into which he would gently slip the diced onions, green chilies and sliced potatoes covered in thick pakora batter and the aloo-filled samosa. To me, to the eyes of a child, the triangular dipping and floating samosa in that huge, wide oil filled pot always resembled little boats in a lake or an ocean at night. To the eventual query of a customer, “How much?”, the man would either use his fingers to answer, or just whisper, “Paanch rupay” (five rupees). And as soon as he was done with the money business—receiving money and returning the change---he would go back into that erect position (like someone in the midst of Zen meditation) and start the gentle poking and flipping process again with his long strainer type flat ladle, his whole attention fixed on the little samosa boats and pakora dumplings in that dark ocean of oil in the huge karahi. Those eyes, those pacific eyes with tranquilizing, nay, healing powers.

On the corner of that side street, there used to be a small bakery. If I am not wrong, it was a sub-branch of the famous Imperial Bakery of Quetta. The bakery, just like its parent store, sold the best pound cake, rusk and the two kinds of plain biscuit: sweet and namkeen, or salted biscuits. I especially liked the namkeen variety which in appearance was only slightly different from the sweet type in that it had non-symmetrical pin prick patterns on its flaky surface. Further up the road and less than 50 meters from the bakery was the Eid Gah. It is still there. The biggest Eid prayer congregations in Quetta used to be held there. I am not sure if that is still the case. A few meters up the road and across the Eid Gah, is the Hussaini Imam Bargah… 

(…to be continued)  

 

For more, please click: On Traditional Food, Hanna Lake: A Drowning, Social Media: A Response (Urdu), Bumper Stickers

Music Centers of Quetta, On Solitude , Indians , Zari Gul

Overqualified and Underqualified in Balochistan

Social Media: A Response (Urdu)

 

Social Media: A response to some readers

 کچھ معزز قارئین نے اکثر مجھ سے ان کے فیس بک گروپس میں شامل ہونے کی درخواست کی ہے۔ ان میں سے کچھ اتنے مہربان اور مہذب ہیں کہ وہ سمجھتے ہیں کہ سوشل میڈیا پر جا کر شاید میں اپنی گپ شپی تحریروں سے کچھ لوگوں کو فائدہ پہنچا سکتا ہوں۔ ایسا سوچنے پر میں ان کا تہ دل سے شکریہ ادا کرتا ہوں۔ یہ وضاحتی جواب ان تمام پڑھے لکھے اور مہذب قارئین کے لیے ہے۔ بلخصوص یہ ان تمام قارئین کے لیے بھی ہے، جن میں سے کچھ باخبر اور مہذب ہیں اور کچھ نہیں، جنہوں نے مجھ پر اور میرے دلائل پر اکثر صرف تنقید ہی کی ہے ۔

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السلام علیکم ۔ آپ کو میری تحریریں اپنی فیس بک سائٹ یا وہاں اپنے گروپ میں پوسٹ کرنے کی مکمل اجازت ہے۔

اگر آپ کو لگتا ہے کہ کسی کوان سے کسی بھی قسم کا فائدہ  پہنچ سکتا ہے، تو براہ کرم جہاں آپ کے خیال میں مفید ہووہاں انہیں پوسٹ کریں۔

جیسا کہ آپ جانتے ہیں کہ میں فیس بک یا کسی دوسرے سوشل میڈیا  پلیٹ فارم پر نہیں ہوں۔

 سوشل میڈیا پلیٹ فارم پر نہ ہونے کی وجوہات میں نے کئی بار اپنے مضامین میں بھی  بیان کی ہیں۔

میں ایک کمزور آدمی ہوں۔ میرے پاس اس ضروری اخلاقی یقین اور ذہنی مضبوطی کی کمی ہے جو ان سوشل میڈیا پلیٹ فارمز میں سے کسی ایک پر بھی بامعنی شرکت کے لیے ضروری ہے۔

 ہم جیسے لوگ ہمیشہ یہ خوف محسوس کرتے ہیں کہ ان شیطانی سوشل میڈیا پلیٹ فارمز میں سے کسی ایک میں شامل ہونے سے ہمیں نقصان پہنچے گا، کہ ان میں سے کسی ایک کے لیے سائن اپ کرنا ہم جیسے کمزورانسانوں کو کرپٹ اور تباہ کر دے گا۔

آپ یقیناً کہہ سکتے ہیں کہ ہم  بہت سادہ لوح ہیں اور جدید ٹیکنالوجی سے غیر ضروری طور پر ڈرتے ہیں۔ آپ کو ایسا سوچنے کا بالکل حق ہے، حالانکہ ہم سادہ لوح لوگ اس قسم کے اعتراض کو جلدی سے رد کر دیں گے اور معقول وجوہات کے ساتھ ایسا کریں گے۔

 ویسے وہ تمام دلائل اور وجوہات آپ یہاں اس سائٹ پر دیکھ سکتے ہیں۔ وہ میرے لکھے ہوئے بہت سے مضامین اور بلاگز میں اس بلاگ سائٹ پر بکھرے پڑے ہیں۔

ہمارے رویے کے برعکس جسے آپ سادہ، پسماندہ، دقیانوسی، غیر معقول، غیر سائنسی اور توہم پرست کہتے نہیں تھکتے، میں یہ ضرور کہوں گا کہ ہمیں آپ کے رویے پرکچھ رشک  بھی آتا ہے۔

آپ کا رویہ واقعی بہت ترقی پسند، عقلی سائنسی اور اعلیٰ ہے۔ اس میں تو کوئی شک نہیں۔

اس کے ساتھ ہمارا مسئلہ بس صرف یہ ہے کہ ہماری خواہش ہے کہ آپ ان الفاظ اور فضائل جن کا آپ سب دن رات بلند آواز سے اعلان اور تشہیر کرتے ہیں  ان کے روایتی معانی کوبھی سمجھیں اور ان تعریفوں اور معانی کو غیر تنقیدی طور پر نہ مانیں جوان سامراجی قوتوں کے ذریعہ فراہم کی گئی ہیں۔ وہ جدید شیطانی فکری نوآبادیاتی قوتیں اوران کا وہ نظام تعلیم جنہیں آپ اس قدر مذہبی جوش و خروش کے ساتھ قبول کرتے ہیں، بدقسمتی سے۔

آپ اپنی تنقیدی صلاحیتوں کو صرف ایک سمت میں ہی کیوں استعمال کرتے ہیں، اپنی تاریخ، ثقافت، مذہب اور تہذیب کے خلاف؟

 کہاں ہے آپ کی تنقید جب اس کی سب سے زیادہ ضرورت ہے؟

جہاں آپ بلا جھجک اپنی تحریروں سے ہم جیسے سادہ لوح اور غیر سائنسی لوگوں پر حملہ کرتے ہیں، وہیں آپ جدید سائنس کہلانے والے علم کے شعبے کے بارے میں کوئی جامع اورذہانت پرمبنی فہم ظاہر کرنے میں ناکام رہتے ہیں۔ ہمیں انتہائی افسوس کے ساتھ کہنا پڑتا ہے کہ آپ جدید سائنس اور اس کے نام پر بکنے والے تمام واضع طور پر نقصان دہ ثقافتی نظریے اور پروپیگنڈے اورحقیقی علم و حکمت کے درمیان واضح فرق کرنے میں مسلسل ناکام رہتے ہیں۔

 آپ (یعنی ترقی پسند تنقیدی ٹولہ) اس غلامانہ ذہنیت رکھنے والے مسلمان کی طرح ہیں جو جب یہ سنتا ہے کہ پانی کا فارمولا دو ہائیڈروجن ایٹم اور ایک آکسیجن ایٹم ہے تو نماز پڑھنا چھوڑ دیتا ہے۔

مثال کے طور پر، آپ  میں سے شاید کسی کو بھی اس قسم کی قابلِ تعریف آگاہی نہیں ہے کہ جدید سائنس کو خود جدید مغرب کے بہت سے مشہور فلسفیوں اور مفکرین نے پوری طرح سے بے نقاب کیا ہے۔

انہوں نے واضع طور پر یہ دکھا دیا ہے کہ جدید سائنس اور جدید نظام علم سب سے پہلے ایک ثقافتی پیداوار ہیں اور محکومیت، کنٹرول اور استحصال کا ایک بہت ہی  طاقتور ذریعہ ہیں۔

سب سے اہم بات یہ ہے کہ انہوں نے اس کی حدود اور خاص طور پر اس کے ثقافتی اور نظریاتی استعمال اور افادیت کو واضح طور پر اجاگر کیا ہے۔

آپ جدید سائنس اور اس کا نقصان دہ ثقافتی نظریہ جسے علمی زبان میں " سائنٹزم" کہا جاتا ہےکو ایک ہی چیز سمجھ بیٹھےہیں۔

یہ ایک بڑی اور خطرناک غلطی ہے۔ اور یہ فکری کوتاہی آپ جیسے لوگوں کو ذہنی غلام بنا دیتا ہے۔

یقیناً ہم جدید سائنس کے خلاف نہیں ہیں۔ ہم اسے سمجھتے ہیں اورسب سے اہم بات یہ ہے کہ ہم اس کی حدود کو بھی پوری طرح سمجھتے ہیں۔ ہم " سائنٹزم" کے خلاف ہیں۔

ترقی کے بارے میں آپ کا بچکانہ شور شرابہ ایک اورقابل اعتراض نکتہ ہے  

انسانی تاریخ کی سب سے ترقی پسند صدی (بیسویں صدی) سب سے خونریز اور قاتلانہ بھی ہے۔ اس دستاویزی حقیقت کے بارے میں آپ کی لاعلمی ہمارے لیے بہت پریشان کن ہے۔

ہیروشیما، ناگاساکی سے جرمنی تک، روس سے چین، کانگو اور روانڈا، سریبرینیکا سے چیچنیا تک ، یلو نائف کینیڈا سے تسمانیہ تک  ، مردہ انسانی لاشوں کے اونچے پہاڑ۔ آپ جیسے ترقی پسندوں کے علاوہ تمام مہذب انسان جدید انسانی تاریخ کے ان ظالمانہ حقائق سے واقف ہیں۔

لیکن میں دہرانا چاہتا ہوں: ہم سادہ لوح اور توہم پرست لوگ آپ کی اخلاقی یقین اور فکری پختگی پر رشک کرتے رہتے ہیں۔ وہ یقین اور وہ ہمت جس کے ساتھ آپ سوشل میڈیا پر جاتے ہیں اور ایک سیکنڈ کے لیے بھی سوچے بغیر اسے دلیری سے فتح  کرنے کے دعوے کرتے ہیں واقعی ایک حیرت انگیز کارنامہ ہے ۔

 ہم آپ کی اس بے وقوفانہ معصومیت پرمسکراتے بھی ہیں۔

(درویش، کوئٹہ والا)

ترقی پسند

For more, please click: Traditional Food, Hanna Lake: A Drowning

Illuminations#1 (Urdu), Bumper Stickers, Illuminations #2 (Urdu)

Uncle Marx, Education: Old and New, Harf e Dervaish #1 (Urdu)

On Traditional Food

 

Traditional Food and Modern Lifestyles

“The main cause of disease is eating one meal on top of another.” 

                                                            A Hadith of The Prophet (pbuh)

"Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character."                         Eric Hoffer

"People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food."                                              Wendell Berry
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What has surprised me most during my recent trips to Quetta in particular and Pakistan in general is the proliferation of eateries, of restaurants and cafes that have sprouted up everywhere. Every street corner now has a snacking place, a chaikhana or a BBQ joint. There are “food streets”, “food courts” and even “food towns” in every town and city, in shopping malls and even in mohallas. Same is the case with the TV channels with their glittering cooking shows, not to say anything about Youtube, Instagram and TikTok---nothing sells like food and sex online. Every TV channel has a cooking show, some even more than one. Chefs and cooks, of both the sexes, are the new celebrities, the new demi-gods of the silver screen. For someone of the old school like yours truly, these are really amazing developments that have radically modified the cultural landscape there, especially of the traditional food culture.

That wickedly witty old man Gandhi used to say, “You are what you eat.” Indeed: what we eat---not to say anything about how and how much we eat--- has deep effects on and implications for our personality and character. And not just on our physical health and well-being, but more profoundly on our moral and spiritual wholeness and integrity. I say this not because of some sentimental reaction but because in traditional cultures food and sanctity have always been tied together. As a gift of mercy from the Creator, the preparation and eating of food have always had sacred contexts, have been heavily ritualized, from the initial act of preparing the land to growing and harvesting, to the sacrificial rites of slaughtering animals and all the way to starting and finishing a meal with prayers. For traditional people, food has never simply been a matter of utility or about nourishing the body. It has always meant much more in the traditional, pre-modern universe. This was mainly because the very conception of reality and of man as a microcosm (anfus) reflecting the bigger macrocosm (aafaq)---as body, soul and Spirit/Intellect---differed from the modern understanding of homo sapiens as merely the Cartesian duality, body and mind. With the pornification of food and eating, as with most other things in the modern world, all these symbolisms are now lost to the modern mindset. (Observe the perverted food fads and fashions, the unrestrained quantification and rampant commodification that turns everything into material for all sorts of sensual, carnal indulgences---instead of offering grace, people nowadays first take filtered pictures of what they are about to eat and then quickly upload them on Instagram!),

Says the critical traditionalist writer Rodney Blackhirst:

"The health food movement is a profane reaction to the obvious inadequacies of the modern diet; it thinks in terms of chemical constituents and vitamins. In the traditional mind “nature” is, more importantly, Creation—foods are evidence of God‟s mercy and bounty, and the natural order reflects a sacred design with an exact relation to the human being….When modern man sees a traditional Chinese meal being prepared he may think no more than “Yum! I love stir-fry!” The health food enthusiast may take stock of the meal’s protein content, minerals and enzymes and feel satisfied, in a sentimental way, that it is full of “natural” ingredients. But a traditional man sees the bowl of the heavens in the smooth, black concave form of the wok, and he sees the grains of rice as stars and the vegetables—parsnips and carrots cut as half-moons or hexagrams—as representatives of the planets. He sees the stirring and agitation of the ingredients as mimicry of the swirling courses of the heavenly bodies and the whole act of cooking as a cosmological process in miniature. It is an act that participates in the processes of a divine and intelligent creation. Traditional approaches to foods place them within a wider cosmological context."

My great grandmother who died at the ripe old age of 95 used to tell us about the types of food using the old, traditional taxonomies or categories. For example, she would describe some food as hot (garam) while others as cold or cool (sard). Moreover, certain food were not good for men to eat, or not good to eat them in certain seasons; the same applied to women, especially when they were undergoing pregnancy and childbirth. Eating too much onions and coriander were considered not good for men. Certain legumes or lentils were not to be eaten with certain other foods at the same time. Foods, especially vegetables and fruit were good if they were eaten in-season, during their growing season and not out-of-season as people do these days because post-harvest technologies have made it possible to do so. When we had some injury, we were not allowed to eat vegetables such as eggplants because doing so would prolong the healing time and would make the wound worse. A natural craving for yogurt was a sure sign of health. Then there were the many mysterious qualities of garlic, olive oil, turmeric, black pepper and cloves. To the university educated moderns---the linear-thinking souls with flattened, shrunken intellects and dull, monochrome imaginations----who find any kind of traditional symbolism ridiculous and often laugh them off, these all now seem nothing more than old wives’ tales. But all those observations were based on a cosmology and metaphysics that held to the traditional understanding of man and his reality; the cosmology that always reminded us that “man does not live by bread alone” and that the bread that he did consume was not just bread in the ordinary, visible sense. “In fact, these systems were aspects of a profound sacred science transmitting the wisdom of an ancient contemplation of nature rooted in metaphysical principles.” (Blackhirst)
     

Then there were the special methodologies for preparing or cooking food. Not just the ingredients, their seasonality, the amounts to be used and their complex and complicated combinations, but the time needed to cook the dishes. Time was of the utmost importance in traditional cooking. Traditional cooking meant time, lots of time: slow food, as opposed to what we now universally call fast food. Rodney Blackhirst in his work on traditional food, from which I have already quoted above, thinks that it was an “alchemical” process. He argues:

"Time was considered an essential factor in nutrition. This is still recognized in the case of foods like cheese and wine, which mature over time, but it is no longer recognized as important to the preparation of grain and vegetable foods. Traditional methods, found throughout the world, typically take a whole grain such as wheat berries, cover in water or broth, add a little salt, and seal in a heavy pot cooked over a very low heat overnight or for several days. Other ingredients may be added at particular stages of the cooking. Jewish cuisine knows several dishes cooked for seven days, including the proverbial Chicken Soup where a whole bird, head to feet, is boiled slowly for seven days until it is reduced to a gelatinous liquid. This is indeed a type of domestic alchemy….Traditional long cooking methods seek to transmute food, not just warm it through. These methods of food preparation…transform the essence of foodstuffs, not only their crude constituents."
  

Soulfood: The Hazaragi dish kocha

Those readers of this blogsite who know about the Hazara dish of kocha can confirm what he is saying. Kocha is made with different kinds of grains, lentils and some meat, especially meat from a cow’s tail and backbone. The ingredients are added one by one and it is boiled and cooked for hours, left overnight on low heat until morning. Now, the purpose is not just to soften the ingredients but to transform its "essence", to “transmute” it in a process that is akin to alchemy: something raw, ordinary, base and inferior is turned into something special, noble and superior. The low heat and time do the magic to the ingredients and the end product is nothing short of miracle. Every traditional culture has these dishes which we can call “soul food”. This particular dish of kocha is eaten with much relish by all ages in different parts of West and Central Asia, especially on cold days and nights.

I want to end this piece with a word on gluttony, perhaps in the way of a layman’s exegesis of the hadith I have put at the head of this post as an epigraph. Also because gluttony is a typical modern malaise with all those fashionable but inherently harmful and fraudulent dieting techniques, the eating disorders, food wastefulness, imbalances in food production especially in the industrial production of meat and in the overall ecology of food. Modern, industrial food processing techniques are now one of the main causes of the planetary ecological imbalances: extremely resource exhaustive and unsustainable practices that have pushed all life on the brink of irreversible collapse. Many forms of depression and anxiety disorders are now closely related to modern food consumption patterns. Bulimia, anorexia and so on, all have an undeniable food connection. Meat especially needs mentioning. What was once a side dish, only prepared and eaten at rare and special occasions and that after the carrying out of strict rituals of sacrifice and prayers with the blessings of the highest religious authorities, is now the main obsession of many people the world over. No surprise here since modernity---a cynical theology of utter negation logically culminating in nihilism---has this diabolical cunning for inversion of everything: it turns what is trivial and secondary into something essential and primary and vice versa. Walk around anywhere in Quetta nowadays, or in any city in Pakistan, in the evening and the smell of grilled, charcoaled meat is the first thing that will fill your nostrils. No wonder that diabetes, high BP and heart failure remain the top killers in the South Asian region.

In his excellent books, especially in Ihya Uloom e Deen and in Breaking the Two Desires, Abu Hamid Al Ghazzali identifies gluttony (excessive desire of, or hunger for, food) and lust (sexual desire) as the two paradigmatic desires that often result in the destruction of the heedless and the forgetful (ghaflah). From these two carnal desires stem all the other sins of pride and arrogance, the craving for worldly status, for pelf and power, and the vices of envy, hoarding, hatred and oppression (zulm) and so on. The belly is where it all starts, he reminds us. If one is not mindful about what to eat, how to obtain one’s food (the question of halal and haram earnings), how to eat (the manners of eating, the adab of food consumption) and especially how much and how often to eat, the great Ghazzali tells us that one is bound to commit all the other sins listed above. And we cannot be mindful, cannot be aware if we do not have the right attitude of gratitude and humility towards food and especially towards our Creator who is also the All-Provider (Ar-Razzaq) of everything. Let me recall the wise words of my great-grandmother, an illiterate woman who had, obviously, not read any of the books of the great scholars, but what she used to say to us always carried the same kind of profound wisdom that we find in the words of sages like Ghazzali. In one of her typical exhortations she would say: “Eat what is in front of you. If you are a real man, a mard, then don’t complain about food because real men are not obsessed with food and desire less. Offer shukr and abstain from takkabur. Naan piaz, qaash waaz.” It meant that one must be content with what one has (as in food but also with one’s other worldly possessions). This was especially required of men and this attitude was considered noble, a true sign of culture and even of chivalry in males (she would give the examples of The Prophet of Islam, of the wise and righteous caliphs and imams, especially Ali ibn Abi Talib). Be content with what is available even if it is just some slices of raw onion and plain bread. With food in particular, show gratitude and not arrogance or ungratefulness.

For more, please click Hanna Lake: A Drowning, Quetta Chawni

On Simplicity, Illuminations #4, Harf e Dervaish#6 (Urdu)

Uncle Marx, Education: Old and New, Harf e Dervaish #1 (Urdu)

On Solitude

Hanna Lake: A drowning

The Shashmaina of Hussainabad, Quetta

Hanna Lake: A drowning

It is mid-summer in early or mid-1970s in Hussainabad, Quetta. I am sitting on a charpai in the shade of our old, gigantic shahtoot tree eating my share of the freshly picked shahtoot (mulberries) from that tree. The doorbell rings and I run to see who it is. I open the door and see our neighbor’s youngest son standing with two uniformed men, army people, sentry types. One of them asks, “Is this Sikander and Sadiq’s house? Are they home?” I reply, “Yes, it is. What’s the matter?” The other uniformed man picks up the conversation from there and says to me, “There has been another drowning in the lake, in Hanna Lake. We have failed to retrieve the body after three hours of search. We need the swimmer guys to help us find the dead body. We were told to ask for Sikander , Sadiq, Kako, Saadat and Jaffer in Hussainabad. This young boy brought us here. Are they home?” I ask them to wait and rush back into the house, to my uncle Sikander who is busy washing and waxing his car. I quickly explain the situation to him and he runs with me back to the door. Within minutes we are on our way to Hanna Lake: the two army men in their old Willy’s jeep followed by my uncle Sikander’s Toyota Mark II with four people inside and behind it another car, a jeepster, carrying the other young men from Hussainabad.
  

Hanna Lake, Quetta

We reach the lake, that iconic landmark of Quetta famous for its colorful pagoda like gazebo perched on a hillock and jutting out right in the center of its turquoise water, visible from miles away. It is the very first image that comes to mind when one thinks of Quetta. What Big Ben or London Bridge is to London, the Statue of Liberty is to New York, or Champs-Elysees is to Paris, Hanna Lake is to Quetta. Anyway, we reach the lake and see a small crowd gathered near the water. There is murmuring and even some wailing. Eyes turn to us as we all run to and then through the crowd to the water where some more army personnel are standing, two of them in swimming gear. My uncle and the other Hussainabadis---shash mainas as they were called then---quickly strip down to their over-used, faded Speedos and jump into the water. Some get on the small motor boat with the army men and are quickly taken to the exact spot of the drowning. Others don’t bother and quickly swim to the spot. Jaffer, Saadat Agha, Kako, Ramzan, Mohd Ali, Shaukat, Ishaq, Nouroz and some others from Hussainabad and Hajiabad are part of the search party (see note below). In and out and in and out they swim and dive as everybody waits and watches. There is a young boy standing not far away from me who just keeps on crying as another man tries to calm him down, saying things to him in Pashto. But he just keeps on crying, calling out the name of the drowned man. Faiz Muhammad? Faizullah? I think, or some such name.

Hussainabad, late 1970s or early 80s

Some thirty minutes pass. The army men constantly talk on their walkie-talkies, most probably updating their superiors. The weather is hot and dry, the usual Quetta summer. The shadows of the surrounding barren hills keep stretching on the ground as the afternoon progresses. The orange glow engulfs the whole place and the light on the calm surface of the water seem to dance to a hidden and mysterious tune that is not audible to the human ear. I gaze at the gently undulating waves, now moving in and then peacefully receding. Soon it will be sunset time, will be dark. And then it will not be possible to continue the search for the unfortunate guy, for Faizo, I contemplate. I quickly look at the boy whose wailing has now turned into whimpering, and pray that the search is successful. As I am doing that in my heart, I see Kako coming out of the water and our eyes meet for a few seconds. He says to me, “We will find him. This is not the first time, after all.” I just look at him without saying anything. He returns to the water after a few stretches.

Indeed, it is not the first time, after all. I don’t remember how many times these Hazara swimmers from Hussainabad retrieved dead bodies from Hanna Lake. Often it would be the body of someone who had strayed away from the shallows and drowned in the deeper sections of the lake where the dense and deadly underwater weed usually grew in abundance. Once a boat had capsized and more than ten perished in the lake.

It was at Hanna Lake where these boys and young men first learned how to swim. It was either the lake or the “Panj Foota” (five feet deep) in Baleli (or was it in Samungli??), a small talab or pool that stored irrigation water for the orchards of the local growers just outside Quetta City going in the direction of Pishin. I learned to swim at the lake, too. In summer, Hanna Lake was the place to be for us swimmer Hazara boys. I was lucky to have uncles and male relatives who were excellent swimmers. My uncle Sadiq, a smooth crawler (freestyler) and one of the better underwater swimmers, in order to break my fear of water, would first push me into the water and then come after me and help me learn to float and use my limbs. Although I learned how to swim, I never had the heart to dive, or even jump off the top of the high dam wall on the west side of the lake. When the water was high enough, all these swimmers, challenging and daring one another, would dive off the top of the dam embankment whose side facing the lake looked like a menacing barren cliff.

I hear something. Someone is calling out loudly, screaming, “Here, here. Come, come here”, in Farsi. All the swimmers rush toward that spot. The small army motor boat also speeds in that direction making a puny roaring sound. There is some noise among the crowd and, in the midst of it all, I can hear the small boy crying out loud again. The drowned man’s body has been found, at last. It is late afternoon and there is still light. The unfortunate man, Faizo or Faizullah, is a laddish twenty something. He is a handsome guy with a big, bony chin and thick black hair whose face is now pale blue, especially the swollen lips. He is dead. Completely dead. The small boy leaps forward and throws himself on the cold corpse lying on the floor in the gently fading afternoon light. He just screams and screams… 

Hussainabadis at Hanna Lake

Note: I may have got some of the names wrong in this blogpost. For example, some of the people mentioned here may not have been present on that day even if they were all swimmers and had been involved in similar searches at other times. I apologize in advance for that failure, for the unintentional act of omission and commission. Time, as we all know, is not the best friend of a man's memory.

For more, please click Hussainabad, Zari Gul, Regal Cinema

Quetta: A Lament, Underqualified in Quetta, Music Centers of Quetta

Illuminations #5, Harf e Dervaish#8, Harf e Dervaish#11 (Urdu)

Illuminations #4, Education: Old and New

Harf e Dervaish # 11 (Urdu)

Harf e Dervaish #11

"Modern civilization, by its divorce from any principle, can be likened to a headless corpse of which the last motions are convulsive and insignificant."

                                                                 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy 

"The more he blasphemes, the more he praises God."    

                                                                                 Meister Eckhardt

Progress? What Progress? It's all "committing the oldest sins in the newest kind of ways."

                                                                             William Shakespeare

جدیدیت میں جو کچھ بھی اچھا ہے وہ صرف حادثاتی ہے، ورنہ وہ بنیادی طور پر شیطانی ہے۔

مثال کے طور پر، جس چیز کو ہم انٹرنیٹ کہتے ہیں اسے انسانوں کو ایک دوسرے کے ساتھ بات چیت کرنے میں مدد کے لیے تیار نہیں کیا گیا تھا۔ یہ جدید دنیا کے حکمرانوں اور مالکوں کی مہربانیوں کی وجہ سے وجود میں نہیں آیا جو چاہتے تھے کہ ہم سب ایک دوسرے کی ثقافت، مذہب اور طرز زندگی وغیرہ کو سمجھیں۔ یہ امریکی فوج کا ایک خفیہ منصوبہ تھا۔

اس کا واحد مقصد یہ تھا کہ دنیا کی سب سے زیادہ نسل پرست اور سامراجی طاقت کے قتل کی مشینوں اور آلات کو کیسے بہتر اور مکمل کیا جائے۔

اس خفیہ منصوبے کے پیچھے پورا خیال امریکہ کو زیادہ موثر لوٹ مار اور قتل کرنے والی میگا مشین بنانا تھا۔

 اسی طرح، جسے ہم مسافر طیارے کے طور پر دیکھتے ہیں اور اسے جمبو جیٹ ہوائی جہاز کہتے ہیں، وہ تھوڑا سا تبدیل شدہ تباہی پھیلانے والا بمبار طیارہ ہے۔

اور میں اس طرح کی اور بھی بہت سی مثالیں دے سکتا ہوں۔

جدیدیت اور جدید تہذیب کوئی پانچ سو سال پہلے وجود میں آئی۔ اس کا بنیادی اصول جو کچھ بھی مقدس اور روایتی ہے اس کی نفی ہے۔ بلاشبہ یہ صرف ایک فضول کوشش ہے کیونکہ جو کچھ بھی مقدس ہے وہ ابدی ہے، زمان و مکان سے قطع نظر۔ جو کچھ بھی مقدس ہے وہ آخری وقت تک باقی رہے گا چاہے اس کرہ ارض پر زندہ آخری انسان اسے بھول جائے اور بالکل اندھا ہو جائے یا اسے دیکھنے سے انکار کر دے۔

جدید تہذیب سچائی، اچھائی اور خوبصورتی کے تمام روایتی نظریات کی نفی کرنے کی پرتشدد کوشش ہے۔ یہ خدا کو تمام وجود کے مرکز سے ہٹانا چاہتا ہے اور خدا کی جگہ نئے، جدید انسان کو خدا کے طور پر رکھنا چاہتا ہے۔

جدیدیت کے تمام جھوٹے پیغمبروں، مارکس، ڈارون، فرائیڈ، کانٹ اور ہیوم سے لے کر دورِ حاضر کے مابعد جدید کے دھوکے باز دانشوروں کے نظریات کا واحد مقصد یہی ہے۔

اور یہ سب بری طرح ناکام ہو چکے ہیں۔

یہ تمام دانشور جوکر روایت کے ابدی سورج کے سامنے سے گزرتے بادلوں کی مانند ثابت ہوئے ہیں۔

برسوں سے، بہت سے حکیم ہمیں بتاتے رہے ہیں کہ جدیدیت بوریت کے بے معنی سمندر میں ڈوبنے کے سوا کچھ نہیں ہے۔ بیوقوف بننے کا یہ سب سے ذہین طریقہ ہے۔

یہ ہمیں سکھاتا ہے کہ جو چیز معمولی اور ثانوی ہے، ہمیں ان کو ضروری اور بنیادی سمجھ کر قبول کرنا چاہیے۔

یہ ہمیں تعلیم دیتا ہے کہ جو عارضی ہے وہ مطلق اور ابدی ہے۔

مختصر یہ کہ یہ فتنہ کا سب سے مکروہ فلسفہ ہے۔

جدیدیت کا فلسفہ اور جدید طرز زندگی اور سوچنے کے طریقوں نے اب زمین کو مکمل اور ناقابل واپسی تباہی کے دہانے پر پہنچا دیا ہے۔

وہ دنیا جو ہزاروں سال تک روایتی لوگوں کے ہاتھوں محفوظ تھی اب جدیدیت کے ہاتھوں صرف پانچ سو سالوں میں ٹوٹ پھوٹ کا شکار ہو گئی ہے۔

اور ہم اس بربریت اور تشدد کو "تہذیب" اور "ترقی" کہتے ہیں۔

جدید انسان نے ایسی مشینیں بنائی ہیں جن کو چلانے اور کنٹرول کرنے کی اس میں اخلاقی صلاحیت نہیں ہے۔

روایتی آدمی کے پاس ایک حقیقت تھی جو عمودی اور افقی دونوں تھی۔ عمودی طور پر، وہ ہمیشہ اپنے خدا کا بندہ (عبداللہ) تھا۔ افقی طور پر وہ خدا کی تمام مخلوقات، انسان یا غیر انسان کے لیے اپنے خدا کا نائب (خلیفہ اللہ) تھا۔

جدید انسان ایسی کوئی چیز نہیں ہے۔ اس کا وجود صرف چپٹا اور افقی ہے۔ صرف دو جہتی۔ اس کی وجہ یہ ہے کہ اس نے خود کو ہمیشہ کے لیے باور کرایا ہے کہ وہ قدیم گندگی اور کیچڑ کی سب سے اعلیٰ اور حتمی پیداوار ہے جو برسوں پہلے کچھ پراسرار طریقوں سے اکٹھی ہوئی تھی۔ اس کے جھوٹے نبی ڈارون اور ڈارون ازم کے زہریلے نظریے کے دیگر تمام رہنمائوں نے مسلسل انسان کے اس غلط تصور کو جدید انسان کے سکڑے ہوئے دماغ میں ڈال دیا ہے۔

جدیدیت کے جھوٹے نظریے کو سمجھیں۔ انسان کی ابدی روایتی اقدار کو یاد کریں اور ان کو زندہ کریں۔ انسان کوئی ڈارون یا مارکسی جانور نہیں ہے جس کا صرف دنیاوی وجود اور ضروریات ہیں۔ انسان کے اندر مقدس روح ہے۔ وہ اس زمین پر ابدیت کی تصویر ہے۔ صرف انسان جانتا ہے کہ اس نے ایک دن مرنا ہے۔ اس کی جسمانی ناپائیداری کا یہی علم اسے یہ دیکھنے اور سمجھنے پر مجبور کرتا ہے کہ وہ لافانی ہے۔

For more, click: Illuminations #5, Bumper Stickers, Indians

Harf e Dervaish #8, The Hollow Men, On Belief

Underqualified in Balochistan, Zari Gul

Quetta: A Lament, Harf e Dervaish #10 (Urdu)

Uncle Marx

The Music Centers of Quetta

The Music Centers of Quetta

Before there was MP3, there was TDK. Before there were Spotify and iTunes, there were Sangeet Palace and Odeon Music Center, Quetta.

Next to books, music occupies a huge space in my life. It also gets a significant chunk of my free time. And as in reading, so in music: I am an omnivore. I read across the genres and listen to many kinds of music. In this post, I am going to reminisce about some of the more popular and well-known music centers of Quetta, places that unfortunately no longer exist in reality but are very much present and alive in the minds and hearts of the music aficionados of the city’s old cassette tape sub-culture of the 1970s and 1980s.

I give the pride of place to Odeon Music Center. Others may disagree but as far as I can recall, this store had the largest Indian (and maybe Pakistani) music collection. Situated in the rather obscure and poorly lit Lalazar Market in the middle of Liaquat Bazaar, it used to be a double-sized corner joint with dark glass panels always adorned with huge, colorful posters that depicted famous Bollywood movies and actors: Sholay, Deewar, Dostana and Yarana with Amitabh Bachan; Anand, Amar Prem and Kati Patang with Rajesh Khanna; and, Aandhi and Mausam with Sanjev Kumar, and so on. And yes, the posters of the ubiquitous, lovely Zeenat Aman, the “sex symbol” reefer queen of the era dressed in hippy rags with her dazzling, alluring smile. Her posters were always among the big selling items of popular culture and her images could be seen everywhere, painted on the backs of auto-rickshaws and trucks and gracing the walls of college and university dorms. Even now, a predatory capitalist behemoth like Apple (the iPhone and iPad maker) cannot resist using her images for the promotion of their products. Odeon music center was equally impressive from inside, with wall-to-wall racks brimming with LPs, tapes and other music paraphernalia. It specialized in high quality stereo and echo recording and did not sell cheap pre-recorded tapes then. It had some of the finest recording equipment, big brand names like Teac, Kenwood, Onkyo, Sansui cassette decks, amplifiers and equalizers and Kenwood, JVC and Technics speakers. My father and my uncle Nasim always got their tapes from this store. All my father’s TDK and Sony Lata tapes carried the shiny silver and gold stickers reading “Odeon Music Center” on them. Recording of one’s favorite selections on a tape of one’s choice would take at least a week and sometimes even more.

Dum Maro Dum!
Zeenat Aman: The Poster Queen of the 1970s

Tip Top Music Center was in Fateh Khan Market on Jinnah Road. Although not as impressive as Odeon when it came to history, reputation and authority, it had its own charm and place in the music culture of the city. First of all, it was situated in a rather strange place, in a market that nobody then identified with tapes, music and colorful movie posters. Unlike the old and established arcade style markets in Liaquat Bazaar, the old Anderson, or maybe “Under the Sun” Bazaar---the “three big” being Liaquat Market, Hashmi Market and Sunehri Market---Fateh Khan was a relatively newer place with shiny shops selling cheaply produced shiny goods---fake copies of big brands---imported (smuggled) from the then newly emerging economies in South East Asia, places like Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore etc. This music center also had a different décor and atmosphere: no dark glass panels and especially no scent of vinyl mixed with the unmistakable mustiness that was a heady cocktail of tobacco, tea leaves, old carpets and aged timber. Or, in this place music not only looked differently, but it also smelled differently. But it was music nevertheless, good music. Like Odeon, Tip Top was also famous for its good quality recordings and it too boasted a huge collection of Indian/Bollywood music. But unlike Odeon, it sold pre-recorded tapes as well. My uncle Nisar was a regular customer, and so was yours truly.

Most of the pre-recorded tapes that I used to buy, and still have with me, were bought at Sangeet Palace on Abdus Sattar Road, Quetta. The owners of this old music store were three brothers, one of whom, Javed, was my class fellow for a while at Balochistan University. These pre-recorded tapes were the cheaper items. They were mostly manufactured in Karachi, Saddar Karachi to be precise, and sold all over the country, including at the music centers of Quetta, of which Sangeet Palace was the largest and the most famous. For a long time they were fixed at Rs. 25 per cassette. The tapes were mostly “Asahi” brand, and they were most probably Hong Kong or Thailand copies of the original Japanese Asahi. In the beginning, their recording quality was poor but over time they got better and better. Carrying miniature-poster pictures of Bollywood stars on the tape jackets and wrapped in cellophane, they weighed far less than the TDK, Sony, BASF and Scotch tapes. All cheap plastic, including the tiny screws that held the tape body together! For me, Javed was also a good source of information about music, about the ever-evolving music technology and what was new or latest in the industry then. Our Google then! Sangeet Palace did not deal in on-demand recordings. They only sold pre-recorded items but during the later years, in the early and mid 80s when VHS appeared, they expanded into the video business selling in mass quantities to smaller businesses which were mostly in the rural areas of the province. Sangeet Palace and other music stores like Bambino on Archer Road that sold the affordable pre-recorded tapes made music accessible to the masses. Not everybody could afford the high-quality Odeon Music, Disco Music and Tip Top merchandise.

Pre-recorded tapes from Sangeet Palace, Abdus Sattar Road, Quetta

Of all the recorded English tapes that I ever bought and still have, the majority are from Disco Music Center. This music house, situated in one of the smaller markets called Zulfiqar Market in Liaquat Bazaar, was the only one in the city that specialized in high quality English music recordings. It was a tiny, tiny place, so small that three people inside it would make it look and feel over-crowded. A kiosk, a cubicle, in fact. The owner was a mustached guy--a dandy who always wore strong perfumes---related to Haji Fateh Khan of Lodi Maidan, Nichari. I think he was his son-in-law. His younger brother owns and runs some kind of an adventure or sports club in Quetta, if I am not wrong.  Almost all of my Pink Floyd, Neil Young and Bob Dylan music is on Disco Music recorded TDK and Sony tapes, some on the more expensive Chrome and Metal tapes. English (middle-of-the-road-)rock and folk music---the two genres I mostly liked and often listened to in those days--- but especially the music of the 70s’ big rock bands like The Eagles, Jefferson Starship, Creedence Clearwater Revival, America, Toto, Led Zeppelin, CSNY, Cream, Journey, to name a few, required a different kind and level of recording skill on the equalizer and the amplifier. I mean a different use of settings than those required for the recording of Bollywood music. Since it was the age of vinyl, most of the famous bands and singers were originally produced on LPs from where they were transferred onto individual tapes and that required some very specialized equipment and recording studio skills. There were no programmed presets on the equalizers and amplifiers. They had to be manually manipulated and/or adjusted according to taste and demand. Tapes were recorded individually and it was a time consuming task. In Quetta of those days, Disco Music was one of the few places, if not the only place, where these tapes were made and sold. They cost a pretty penny then, more so when recorded on the high-end metal and chrome tapes for a more refined, sharper and bassy sound. My heartbeat would race, my mouth would always water, so to speak, as soon as I would step inside that rare, almost magical cubicle overflowing with the treasures of LPs and especially with the expensive equipment carrying brand names like Onkyo, Marantz and Nakamichi (amplifiers), Sansui and Technics (equalizers), Kenwood and JBL (speakers) and Teac and Denon (cassette decks). It was like stepping into a different world, a dream world.

Disco Music Tapes

Tapes from Off-Beat Music Lahore (TDK A Series)

In the early 90s a new music store opened in Shalimar Market, on Abdus Sattar Road. It was called Digital Sound. Like Disco Music, this store also specialized in English songs and music but its collection was limited. The owner, however, was very knowledgeable about Western rock and pop music especially about the bands and their legendary rock guitarists and performers: Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Santana and Mark Knopfler et al. He had spent a quarter of his life in Europe and had first-hand knowledge about some of the music icons of the day.

There was also Gulistan Music House which sat on the corner of Suranj Ganj Bazaar and Jinnah Road. A huge art-gallery of a place, it was a strange music store, perhaps even not really a music house but a front for some other, darker business. There were colorful posters of show business celebrities---from James Dean and Frank Sinatra to Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachan---all over the place, on the walls, on the wide and tall window panes and even on the glass showcases, but the place just did not look like, did not feel like, and especially did not smell like music. It was on the other extreme end, the barren end, of Odeon Music or Disco Music, if you know what I am mean. It was a ghost house of a place, a haunted exhibition hall, as far as music was concerned, or as far as what I thought then what a music center should have been like. There used to be a few LP jackets taped or nailed to the white walls, a few tapes in the wide showcases running the entire length and breadth of the store and no signs of the real things, the treasures of a good music house: the Kenwoods, the Sansuis and JVCs, the Onkyos and the Technics. I don’t recall ever buying anything from there.

The superior stuff: A TDK metal tape

Virgin Air, Lahore cassette tapes (TDK B Series)

Years later after I moved out of Quetta and went to Punjab for higher studies, I amassed tapes from music centers in Lahore and some even from Peshawar. Among the famous music stores in Lahore was, of course, Off-Beat Music in Fortress Stadium. I still have many of their tapes with me. Off-Beat had a nation-wide presence and anyone who listened to English music knew about it. Then there was, sort of its rival, Virgin Air Music in Liberty Market. But not really. Another small place, also in Lahore, was called Kin Electronics. I still have some Paul Simon tapes that I bought there in the early 1990s. Some of my tapes were bought at Teen Beat Music, Peshawar, which was the Off-Beat of that city.

Pre-recorded cassette tapes. Price in the 1980s: Rs. 25 each

The Tape: TDK

TDK was the king of cassette tapes. At least it was in Quetta. In fact, quality music, good music, meant TDK. Period. It was a solid, jet black product made of opaque plastic with simple designs. The most popular was the “normal bias” “D” series tapes, especially the one-hour duration D60 with the decal printed in red, and the 90-minutes duration D90 with the decal printed in green on the black plastic. The two-hour duration D120 became available late in the 80s, or maybe in the early 90s, but was not that popular. The D series was followed by the screen-printed, transparent plastic “A” and “B” series tapes, which were not bad, but didn’t quite feel like the real thing, the legendary sturdy black D tapes. The competitors of the mighty TDK were mainly Sony, Maxell, BASF and Scotch, the last two being non-Japanese products. I liked the Sony and Maxell tapes, too. Sony Chrome II was a fine thing. Maxell black had the same heavy and sturdy look and feel as the D series. They were quality products as well. I got my BASF and Scotch tapes from my late uncle, Sikander Ali, who had brought them from Germany. They were also good products but not as popular in Quetta as the Japanese brands like TDK and Sony. Only a few stores sold them. The BASF tapes with their yellow and orange stickers on black background were very attractive. To this day, they remind me of the 70s superstars like the reggae king Bob Marley and especially Al Stewart and his catchy guitar tunes and songs. I guess it is because the first time I ever heard an Al Stewart song ---“Year of the cat” and also “On the Border”, for example--- was on a BASF tape given to me by my uncle.

The Mighty TDK D Series D60 and D90 Tapes

BASF and Scotch tapes

In the year 1980, the British new wave/synth-pop band The Buggles announced the death of audio, or of “the radio star” with their hit song “Video killed the radio star”. The age of MTV had arrived with a big bang. Music became “video music” or "music video". The prevailing zeitgeist was that it, or at least popular music, was no longer an aural-only experience but also visual, or more visual than aural. Arguably, like the modern waves of fashionable theories, discoveries and inventions spreading like jungle fire in other fields of life that were fast coarsening ethical and aesthetic sensibilities, dulling intelligence and killing imagination, or simply rapidly infantilizing the thinking and feeling habits of many people then, a phenomenon known as "dumbing down"---for example, first only children but later adults too were no longer able to find text-only books interesting, they got “bored” easily and quickly and started demanding books with more visuals, with more pictures and illustrations, to which the publishing market responded positively with books, including textbooks, carrying pictures on almost every page--- the new format music videos were doing the same with until-then a purely sonoral and aural art form of music. "MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken!" as someone snapped then (Lewis Black??). 

Now, some may think that when the MTV/video revolution arrived, the cassette tape disappeared. Not really. It is true that some of the iconic music centers of Quetta closed shutters and vanished into history, but many of them diversified and started selling VHS tapes and movies as well. I have already cited the example of Sangeet Palace. In such cases, “music center” gradually but surely morphed into a business that mostly rented out pirated Bollywood and Hollywood movies, first on Sony Betamax and then exclusively on VHS tapes. However, the cassette tape was still very much there. I think what really killed the cassette tapes, the unique sound of music on them, and the equally distinct sub-culture that had formed around them over the decades, was the compact disc, or the CD. This new technology changed the game entirely. It literally did “kill” the tape and that had profound implications, not just for the singers and performers but also, and especially for the fans, the millions of music lovers. After all, as the guru himself, the great Canadian media critic and sociologist/philosopher Marshall McLuhan, has said: “The medium IS the message” or “It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.” Change the framework, the worldview, the way we see, understand and feel things, and you change the very nature of whatever is captured in that frame. The gullible souls---totally ideologized, thoroughly conditioned, completely bamboozled----of course, will keep on babbling the manufactured mythologies and falsities that come neatly packaged with every new gadget and technology nowadays, inanities like, "It depends on how one uses it". No, it doesn't: An AK47 machine gun is not a screw driver just like a B-52 bomber is not a bicycle. But this point for another post in the future.

Try buying a cassette tape from any of the “music centers” of Quetta today, if they are still around, that is. They will probably think you are a Rip Van Winkle, a mad man, a crazy woman. The current generation, now known as the iGen, has never seen a real cassette tape, let alone used one. For them, both the medium and the message have shifted radically and there is no way to make them understand what the cassette tape once was, what it actually meant to a whole lot of people in a place like Quetta.

For more on similar topics, please click:

Bumper Stickers, On Solitude

The Rental Libraries of Quetta

First Post: Welcome to the Blog

Regal Cinema Quetta

The Battle of the Kawasakis

Harf e Dervaish (Urdu)

St. Francis Grammar High, Qta

Overqualified and Underqualified in Quetta