Yaadish Bakhair: Sadiq Ali

Sadiq Ali of Hussainabad, Quetta

Sadiq Ali (Kaka Sadiq)

"The best things in life are not things."                           Ann Landes

It is early morning in mid-summer in Baleli, some 30 kms out of Quetta City in the direction of Kuchlak, Pishin district. It’s a Sunday and we are all in the middle of the lush orchards in the heart of this Pushtun farming region outside Quetta City. There are more than a dozen of us from Hussainabad, mostly young Hazara men in their early 20s. I am the only one who is not in the same age group. 

The reason why we are here is swimming, to be done in the “pool” which is actually a brick and mortar reservoir that the local farmers use for storing water for agricultural use, a talaab as they call it in the vernacular tongue. It is commonly known as “Panj Foota” by the patrons who have gathered here today. Translated into English, that means a 5 feet deep pool. Brimming with clear, blue (tube)-well water, it is smaller than a standard 25 ft pool but is large enough to function like one. Two have already dived in as the others get ready to jump in. Suddenly there is loud noise, at first not clear but which soon becomes clear as a litany of expletives shouted out by one of the two swimmers inside the pool. He has just resurfaced right in the middle of the pool and is screaming, “It’s shit! It’s real, stinking shit, a big, long lump of turd! ^%#)*&^%#...It’s shit! Yuck, it smells bad! #&^%$#F&…it’s sticking to my ear…!” As he says those words, he disappears underwater and resurfaces again next to us, near the edge of the pool. We all freeze for a few seconds, not sure how to respond to what has just happened. The shouting swimmer springs out of the pool and starts running wild in the orchards, constantly slapping his right ear with his right hand. Suddenly everybody bursts into loud laughter and the guy starts screaming his profanities at us. Upon close observation by the others, it is discovered that somebody had used that pool----the popular Panj Foota talaab----as his private toilet the night before and, given the size, shape and hardness of that lump of fecal waste, he had been constipating for quite some time! Precious Sunday spoiled, all return to the city, dry and without a good day’s swim. On the way, some of them tease the poor guy who had the honor of discovering the smelly brown lump floating on the surface of the water in the middle of the pool. If I am not mixing this particularly memorable day with another Sunday visit to Panj Foota, I was with my uncle Sadiq Ali, my Kaka Sadiq.

Hanna Lake, Quetta

My uncle Sadiq Ali was the second youngest among his brothers, my father being the eldest of the five brothers. Swimming was one of his passions and it was he who taught me how to swim. Apart from the Panj Foota Sundays, he would also take me to Hanna Lake which was the other popular place for Hussainabadi swimmers. He would pull me behind him or swim me on his back to the deeper sections of the lake and then leave me there all by myself to swim back to the shore. That is how many of us boys learned to swim then. In Quetta of those days it was rare, a matter of shame actually, for a Hazara boy not to know how to swim. Swimming and Hazaras were things synonymous.

Sadiq Ali (wearing yellow cap) with friends

But it’s not just swimming that I remember when I think of Kaka Sadiq. First of all, he was a man of many friends, and all very good friends. He always had ample company, be it the swimming excursions, the movies, the picnics in Pir Ghaib or Ziarat, or any other social occasion in the community. Talking of movies, he was also the uncle who often used to take me along with him to watch Hollywood westerns at the iconic Regal Cinema of Quetta. All the well-known westerns and war movies I watched at that cinema with him and his friends: McKenna’s Gold, Shane, High Noon, Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Death Wish, The Poseidon Adventure, to name just a few. 

Kaka Sadiq loved movies, not just Hollywood movies but also Bollywood productions. And what an age it was, the 1970s and early 1980s when Bollywood churned out some of its greatest movies starring superstars like Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachan, Jeetandra, Sanjev Kumar, Dharmendra, Shatrugan Sinha, Pran, Shashi and Rishi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Sunil Dutt, Danny, Amjad Khan, Rakhi, Zeenat Aman, Parveen Bobby, Neethu Singh, Poonam Dhillon, Hema Malini, Mumtaz, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore et.al. When the age of VCR dawned in Quetta, Kaka would have these great movie watching gatherings in the evenings, with half the mohalla (neighbors) seated on the rooftop and in the open backyard of his house on Samad Ali Shaheed Street. The old top-loading, bulky Phillips VCRs that ate the brick sized tapes bootlegged from Germany, Denmark and the U.K. by returning Hussainabadis, needed constant cooling with two pedestal fans running at full speed to keep them functional in the sweltering Quetta summers then. The movies were blockbusters of the day: Sholay, Don, Qurbani, Yarana, Dostana, Lawaaris, Amar-Akbar-Anthony, Qarz, Muqaddar ka Sikander, Anand, Deewar, Zanjeer, Gol Maal, Pakeeza, Amar Prem, Kati Patang and yes, Kabhi Kabhi and Bobby. Those last two movies in the list above were Kaka’s favorites and it was the songs of these movies that were always playing in his Mazda Luce. Songs like “Hum tum ek kamray mein band hon…aur chabi kho jaaye….’ And then there was the Kishore song from the 1975 movie Julie that he used to hum all the time: “Bhool gaya sub kuch, Yaad nahi abb kuch oh ho, hmm hmm, ek yahi baat na bhooli, Julie I love you…” He just loved that song, so much so that he even nick-named his eldest daughter Julie. What a time it was!

                                                     

Oh Yes, the Mazda. First, it was the Mazda Luce 1500cc, and then the navy blue 1800cc one. Those were beautiful cars about which I have written previously on this blog. Although he changed cars later on in his life, he loved those Mazda models the best and would never stop talking about them. My love of cars comes mainly from my uncles Sadiq Ali and Sikander Ali.

Sadiq Ali, his friends and the Mazda Luce

But it was something else----more than the movies, the cars, the Panj Foota and Hanna Lake swimming excursions-----that make up my most vivid and enjoyable memories of my years with Kaka Sadiq: kites, or patang/guddi baazi. Kaka Sadiq was a great kite flyer, a connoisseur when it came to guddi baazi. During the freezing months of late fall and early to mid-winter, I would be on the roof with Kaka, I holding the charkhali loaded with the finest and the most expensive manja of the season and he flying the kites, doing pechaow battles with the master kite flyers---the khaar baaz kite flyers, or the cool dudes----of Lodi Maidan and Tel Gudaam, an old neighborhood off the main Toghi Road. And how exciting all of it was for me. Lips dry and chapped, all the extremities of my body like ear and nose tips red because of the extreme cold weather, fingers with cut marks filled with half-dried, jelly-like blood clots because of the excessive use of razor sharp manja, but none of that mattered as long as the wind was good and the sky full of kites. Kaka had an expert’s eye when it came to manja and kite and his favorite kite was the graceful Paan Chobi, a special type of kite that was made with a seamless, single sheet of kite paper, no stripes, designs or patch work of any kind. The paan chobi had match stick sized, finely cut wooden strips glued to the paan, the bottom part of the kite. This special paper and stick combination in the paan gave the kite stability and strength in strong winds and it was one of the best attack kites in a pechaow, save the split-framed curvy patang.

The Paan Chobi kites

 And then Kaka suffered a terrible stroke. That ended many things for us, including kite flying. The left side of his body became almost completely paralyzed and he had extreme difficulty remembering and doing things. It was devastating for the family, for all of us. Our time together took a new turn: regular visits to Dr. Manaf Tareen’s clinic, the only properly qualified heart specialist and surgeon in Quetta then. I would take him to Dr. Manaf’s clinic twice, and sometimes, three times a week. Kaka’s children, my cousins, were still very young, all of them of school going age. Sadiq Ali also had a unique sense of humor, his satirical remarks were sometimes acerbic and his wit, darkish. At times he would say things that one was not sure what to do in the way of response. One day, on one of our regular visits to the cardiologist Manaf’s clinic, while sitting in the waiting room for his turn, he whispered in my ear: “Is this man really a doctor or is he pretending to be one? I think he is a pretender.” He then turned his face away and himself started pretending, as if he had said nothing and I had heard nothing. He sat there for a few seconds like that, keeping me confused, and then suddenly looked my way and smiled and while he was doing that the buzzer rang: it was his turn. “Lexotonil”, he murmured as we got up to move from the waiting room to the doctor’s room. Lexotonil was the drug (some kind of anti-depressant I think) that the doctor prescribed to him every time we visited his clinic.

Click:  Julie Song Link: Bhool Gaya subh kuch, yaad nahi abb kuch...

Sadiq Ali and friends

I listen to the great Mukesh song Kabhi Kabhi now and then, and often to songs by Kishore Kumar, my favorite singer, and when it is either Mukesh’s “Kahi door jab din dhal jaaye…” (another of Kaka’s favorite from the movie Anand) or Kishore’s “Bhool gaya sub kuch, yaad nai abb kuch…” I cannot but think of Kaka Sadiq. As the great Kishore sings this beautiful song, all the bits and pieces of the images and events of the past flash inside my head, some of which fragments I have tried to put together as sketches here: Panj Foota, Hanna Lake, the VCR Bollywood movies with house-full rooftop, the Hollywood movies at Regal Cinema, the drive in Kaka’s beautiful Mazda Luce with his good friends and then the visits and the long, long waits at Dr. Manaf “the pretender’s” cardio clinic, only to get more of the same drug: Lexotonil. Perhaps Sadiq Ali, my uncle, knew better, after all.

Yaadish Bakhair.

Note: Manja = glass coated kite string, also called dore or taar.

Charkhali = wooden spool with extended support sticks on both sides used for winding kite flying string, called manja or dore

For more, please click:  Cars of Quetta in the 70s and 80s: 
And here: Regal Cinema Quetta: The Old Turkey Buzzard
Please visit: Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

Yaadish Bakhair: Nasim Ahmed Asadi

Nasim Ahmed Asadi of Nauabad, Quetta.

"Where you were born is less important than how you live."
                                                                                  Turkish proverb
Nasim Ahmed (Mama Nasim)

“Alao, goda pakoda! Tum kaisa hai? ", he would greet me every time I visited him in Nauabad, an old Hazara neighborhood off Alamdar Road in Quetta City. And he would almost always be in the middle of carrying out some chore, making or fixing something. Long before he bought his car, he had a 1973-74 Honda 110cc motorcycle commonly known as Benly. It was a red machine which he maintained meticulously, paint bright and shiny under a thick coat of the finest wax and chrome----with which that particular Honda model was loaded-----glittering in the sun. Nobody ever saw that motorbike dirty. Yes, meticulous is one of the better adjectives to describe him. Just like his bike, then his Vespa Scooter and finally his car, he himself was also well-maintained: always dressed in clean, starched and well ironed shirts and trousers and wore polished shoes that would make the best TV commercial for Kiwi Shoe Polish. He was a relatively tall man with long flowing hair like that of the young Robert Redford in his 1960s movies. In the latter years of his life, he had grown a salt and pepper beard which added the layer of age and the grace that comes with it to his already attractive personality. That welcoming smile never left his face: even when he was in a bad mood and angry, the smile would soon return and it would be all good again. This was Nasim Ahmed Asadi, my maternal uncle, or our Mama Nasim. 

Honda 110 Benly

The “goda” in his greeting meant a horse, a pony, and the “pakoda” just an added term to rhyme with the first. “Pony” he also used to call his eldest son and my cousin Haider. Also, there hung a painting of a pony on one of the walls of the verandah in his house, done by the famous Hazara artist Ramzan Shaad. So, there was obviously something about the animal that he loved. 

National Bank of Pakistan, Quetta

Nasim Ahmed was the second youngest among his siblings. By profession he was a banker. At the end of his illustrious career at one of the country’s oldest financial institutions, the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), he retired as a vice president. Even in retirement his former colleagues, friends and juniors would consult him on the finer and more complex matters of banking law and bookkeeping etc. That is how good he was at his job, just like his other brothers, all of whom were model government servants: Station Master Abdul Baqi of Pakistan Railways, Abdul Hadi who retired as Assistant Commissioner Quetta, Abdul Mehdi of Pakistan Telecommunications (T & T) and Insp. Abdul Rahim of the Police Department of Balochistan. Professionalism of the highest caliber was a family thing for the brothers.

It was this uncle who taught me how to ride a bicycle, my first bicycle, a red 18” Sohrab, and then a motorcycle, my Yamaha YB 100. The love of motorcycles was something we shared. We would go for rides together. I would follow him to Hanna Lake and Urak Valley, he on his spanking clean Benly and I on my Yamaha. Often, my cousin Misbah would also join us on his Kawasaki. He also taught me the finer points of bike maintenance. He was a handy man, very good at making and fixing things. An amateur carpenter, he had many other skills as well such as electrical and mechanical, not to say anything about masonry and gardening. When he was not doing banking stuff----he always brought work home, his room had piles and piles of files and ledgers from his office---- he was either making or repairing something or reading religious books, which filled the shelves of his bookshelf. He just did not like sitting idle and doing nothing. 

A religious seminary

Religion was very important for him and nothing animated him more than a mention of certain religious personalities, ideas or issues that he held very dear and in high esteem. For example, he often got very excited and emotional during religious discussions. His attachment to certain pious figures of Shia Islam, both classical and contemporary, was absolute and he would often brook no difference of opinion about, and certainly no criticism of, certain revered figures of the faith and of potentially controversial issues, including the politics of religion. It was not a heartless and irrational (sectarian) extremism that has come to define the landscape of Quetta, and of Pakistan in general, in recent decades. But rather, it was the love of faith in a sincerely devoted man who, despite all the displays of emotionalism and even righteous anger at times, never failed to see and understand faith in its entirety, with both eyes so to speak: the eye of mercy as well as the eye of justice, with the eye of jamal (beauty) as well as with the eye of jalal (majesty), immanence as well as transcendence. His Thursday nights and Fridays (Sundays) were often spent in the nearby religious seminary called Jamia e Imam Sadiq (AS) on the main Alamdar Road where he would engage in long religious discourses with the resident religious teachers and senior students. All the local mullahs and zakireen knew him well because of his regular attendance at the Imam Bargahs and the seminaries. The month of Muharram had a special place in his heart and he often went on pilgrimage to Iran. Such was this man, our Mama Nasim. The son of a well-known and respected religious scholar, Mullah Ghulam Ali (my maternal grandfather), he was the most dedicated to religious causes among the brothers.

The "goda" on the wall

Professional banker, skilled handy man, kind to both the elderly and especially to children, and always curious about gadgets, itching to do something useful with his time and skills, Mama Nasim left this world in 2009. Among us siblings, my elder sister was his favorite. She also had a special affection for this uncle of ours. He was a frequent visitor to our house and often brought us things that we loved--- mostly our favorite toffees and biscuits. The red Benly and that painting of the pony on the wall are etched in my mind forever, just like Mama Nasim’s warm and welcoming smile.

Yaadish Bakhair

For more please check out: The Bikes of Quetta in the 1980s

Please visit:                    Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

Our Post-Pandemic World: Some reflections

Our Post-Pandemic World: Some Reflections

"If we don't do the impossible, we will be faced with the unthinkable."
                                                                          Murray Bookchin

As I write this, the global number of people affected by COVID-19 and the deaths caused by the virus are 3,644,841 and 252,366 respectively (Source: Worldometer). In Pakistan, the numbers are 21,044 and 476 respectively (Source: Dawn.com ). In many places the lock down has been extended till the end of May. In some places, however, such as Australia and some East Asian countries, governments are relaxing the social contact restrictions and allowing firms and public facilities to re-open for business. Schools remain closed in many places. This pandemic is now considered as the most devastating affliction that has befallen humanity since WW II in the last century. No living memory can recall anything like it. While the political bickering and blame game continues to identify the cause and origin of the virus (Trumpola the Racist Buffoon and his Christian evangelical fundo Secretary of State Mike PompousPeo increasing their anti-China vitriol by the minute), there are now more urgent and important speculations as to what will come next. Importantly, there are debates about what will be regarded as the new “normal” in a post-pandemic world. 

"Chinese virus! Chinese Virus!"

This virus has punctured many myths the world over (myth as in the modern sense of something untrue and non-factual, and not in the traditional sense of something that is higher or “truer than the visible truth”). The biggest of these has been the one about the no-holds-barred neo-liberal globalization. It seems that the almost religious belief in the truth and goodness of neoliberalism has finally been shattered. There are now calls for the return of the state, all essential organs of which have been the focused target of attack by casino-capitalism that is the neo-liberal globalization project. Listen to what Financial Times, the biggest and the loudest of the cheerleaders for neo-liberalism and globalization in the past four decades, is saying in its editorial entitled “Virus lays bare the social contract”: 

“Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.” (FT, April 4, 2020 editorial Source: FT.com).

Hospitals are in a mess in the most advanced capitalist countries such as the UK, Spain, Italy and the USA. Medical supplies are running out. Firms are going bankrupt. State support for the most vulnerable institutions and sections of society in these model capitalist countries is not forthcoming. Interestingly, countries like China and Cuba, the most reviled nations by the neo-liberal Western elites, are sending medical personnel and supplies to places like Italy and Spain. Oh, the irony!

The rot began in the 1980s, for example, with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, that vile wonder woman of cannibalistic capitalism who notoriously claimed that “There is no society; there are only individuals” and who often repeated the mantra, along with the B movie actor-turned-president of the USA, Ronald Reagan who would chime in with, “The government is the problem" and "There is no alternative” (TINA) to this inhuman form of casino-capitalism. As these dedicated followers of Ayn Rand, the godmother of nihilistic individualism, and of the grand daddy of slash-and-burn economics, Milton Friedman (of the “Chicago Boys” fame), destroyed the most important organs of the post-WW II welfare state in the Western world such as health, education, transportation etc., they elevated a culture of unrestrained avarice, mindless consumption and smugly celebrated inequality everywhere. “Structural Adjustments” were touted as the cure for all the ills of economies. Their most sacred word then was "efficiency". Their policies essentially meant privatization (selling off public entities to favorite private businesses and corporations), downsizing (getting rid of workers in order to maximize profits), breaking trade unions (divide and rule), relocating manufacturing and also many essential services to places where labor was cheap and environmental regulations lax or non-existent among other measures, the effects of all of which are now becoming visible. “Trickle-down economics” it was called by both the ivory-tower theoreticians of neoliberalism and their neo-colonial shills in the media (exemplified by the NY Times’ imperial messenger Thomas Friedman and others of his ilk). The logic was that the rising tide that produced the uber-rich elite in every country, would also lift the poor and the vulnerable. In other words, there would be enough crumbs falling off the table of the greedy corporate CEOs, presidents and the like for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. 

"Capitalist neo-liberalism: Greed is good!"

The same policies were enforced on the Southern world (the so called “Third World” or the developing countries) through the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and IMF, the two deadly tentacles of the imperialist monster). In Pakistan, for example, both the Sharif and Benazir governments, and before them the regime of the dictator Zia ul Haq (of the West-funded Afghan Jihad, “Koray, Pansi, Martial Law” and Jabra Chowk fame) were dedicated neo-liberalists. Begging bowl in hand and kneeling down in front of their masters in IMF, World Bank and their other Western overlords, and always playing the double game in a country where nothing seems to be as organized as hypocrisy, the decades of 1980s and 1990s Pakistan were marked with unprecedented corruption committed by them. Benazir, and especially the wily husband Zardari (the irremediably corrupt Mr. 10 percent) and the rogue Sharifs took turns to loot and plunder the economy as they built their own family empires in the Gulf and EU countries. Pakistan’s opportunity to be a sufficiently self-reliant, mid-income country was squandered by these criminally inept politicians and equally corrupt, double-dealing military generals. Today’s Pakistan is very much a product of the unwise policies and blunders of the past three decades. One is not sure whether Mr. Ego Man, PM Kaptaan Insaaf Khan, has corrected course, his bombast and grandstanding notwithstanding. After all, he sits in the lap of the very decadent forces of status quo that are the cause of all the mess that average Pakistanis find themselves in right now. 

In the White House: Yesterday's freedom fighters, today's terrorists!

This digression was to provide a necessary background. Let’s get to the reflection part about our post-pandemic world.

Welcome to the age of quarantine economy

First: what is the new normal going to be like? Will there be a normal to go back to? Will there be a fundamental change, a worldview or paradigm shift, in the way we live, conduct business, do politics, engage in all sorts of public activities like sports, entertainment, even personal conversation, etc., or will it be business as usual? The majority opinion is that most things will change, for example, businesses, education, health and transportation, international travel and tourism, social interactions and so on. The way we interact with each other will be transformed in many ways. For instance, what will become of handshakes and kisses on the cheek, two popular forms of greetings in many countries around the world? What about hugs? Will we invent new ways of greeting like waving, head shakes or even adopt something like the Japanese bowing? Will the mask become a permanent daily accessory, say, like a shirt and a pair of trousers, or like a shalwar kameez? Expect big changes in lifestyles.

More importantly, now that there are widespread calls from influential quarters for active state intervention and involvement and for taking into account the plight of the vulnerable and the neglected in society, will there be serious focus on social justice? Will the pathological inequality that is the most visible gift of neo-liberal globalization of the past three or four decades be addressed? Equally, if not more importantly, will there be a course correction with regards to environmental degradation and climate change? In short, will we overcome our collective madness and stupidity and move towards a socially just and ecologically sane world or will it be the same deadly status quo? Admittedly, there are more questions than answers at this point.

One thing seems to be certain: this pandemic will force a radical reform, if not the total end, of speculative casino-capitalism. The world economy that has been transformed from real manufacturing and provision of real services into pure speculative financialization (derivatives and all) in the past few decades will need a radical restructuring if we are to move in the direction of sanity. Not just costs, but profits also will have to be socialized; not just benefits, but harms also will have to be privatized. Since economies are now deeply and tightly integrated in the global system of finance and information, these will be the biggest challenges faced by the national and world leaders. Any level of de-linking or decoupling will be very difficult, if not impossible.

There is also a good chance that we will see the end of uni-polarity in geopolitics, what’s left of it anyway. This will essentially mean the end of US imperial power and reach, a power which was already showing signs of decline before the virus hit the world. For example, everything that Trumpola utters is a sign of the crumbling US Empire. Although it seems that China is already taking a leadership role by sending supplies and experts to all corners of the world, including the EU, there will be increasing tensions, both internal and especially external on the country threatening its stability, and that will be the greatest test of the China of Xi JinPing. 

There is even the possibility of a violent conflagration between a rising China and a declining US Empire, a possibility that has been there in recent years but which will become more marked in our post-pandemic world. Trumpola and his neo-con, evangelist Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are already beating the drums of war against China, just like George Bush did twenty years ago against the Muslim world. Clearly, China is now seen as the new enemy of the West (there is always a need for one, the modern West has historically defined itself in that manner, the eternally-Good vs. "the Evil One") and all the organs of imperialism, from think tanks to media to Hollywood are being activated to prepare the ground and prepare the Western public for a new confrontation. 

In short, we will see new re-alignments and re-groupings as globalization will come under skeptical scrutiny and may undergo radical transformations as a result of that scrutiny. As words like "global" and "globalization" increasingly becoming dirty, also expect a rise in nationalism, populism and demagoguery. Populists and ultra-nationalists everywhere are calling for de-globalization and re-localization.With protectionism as the ever-present alternative rushing in to fill the vacuum left in the wake of the collapse of liberal- globalist myths, these forces of reaction are the most visible candidates to provide support and justification for that alternative of the world turning inward. 

The sheer proliferation of conspiracy theories and disinformation on the internet is already overwhelming, and which brings into focus the role of the big digital technology firms, the Big Tech, especially the MAGFA giants (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon). Almost all of these giants have seen their shares rise in the wake of the pandemic. Power is accumulating in their hands and with that, as the old saying goes, comes the possibility of absolute corruption. In any change that we will see in the post-pandemic world, these giants will play crucial roles. A big question that many technology critics are raising is the question of their accountability. Governments everywhere are already seen to be helpless in dealing with them. For example, legislation is lagging behind or is absent on many new developments in the field. Technology writer Kara Swisher has warned us about the power of the Big Tech as to “what (their) unlimited power, Midas-like financial might, minimal oversight and very few actual consequences might mean for the rest of us.”. Writing in the New York Times she identifies some of the downsides of the accumulated, absolute power of Big Tech:” It’s not good that we have set up an epic system of haves and have-nots that could become devastating for innovative ideas and start-ups trying to get off the ground. Not good because too much of our data in in the hands of fewer. Not good because these fewer are largely unaccountable to those they serve and hard to control by governments that are elected by the people.” (The New York Times, International Edition, May 4, 2020). 

These are some reflections on our post-pandemic world. What will happen in a country like Pakistan? Since Pakistan is well integrated into the world system, the repercussions of any or all of these changes, in whatever degree, will be felt in Pakistan, as well. One important issue that I have not touched upon in this short piece is the role of religion in our post-pandemic world. What has the response of world’s major religions been to this crisis so far, and how will they cope with our post-crisis world? That in itself is a big issue, and will require a separate article which I intend to write in the coming days.

For more, click: The American

And:                   Who is COVID-19 ?

Please visit: Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

Yaadish Bakhair: Muhammad Hussain (Mamo)

Muhammad Hussain (Mamo) of Hussainabad, Quetta

Muhammad Hussain (Kaka Mamo)

"The noblest form of mercy is to protect others from yourself."
                                                                           Abdal Hakim Murad
"The love we give away is the only love we keep."   
                                                                                    Elbert Hubbard

“And that’s how this tragic story ends. Having lost his “Kilander” (cleaner/assistant driver) in that gruesome manner, Neko, the veteran truck driver, never again made a stop at that dilapidated road side shack for chai, especially when he was driving by that cursed spot after midnight. The upper deck of his old “rocket” (pronounced "raakit", the bonnet-model of the classic flat-fronted Bedford truck) still has the brownish stains of the unfortunate Kilander’s blood, despite all the scrubbing. To this day, two years after the tragedy, he is haunted, and gets into fits whenever someone mentions that patch of highway near Jacobbabad, or the name of his dead Kilander.” Sitting in a semi-circle---- all ears, eyes wide open, mouths agape-----we, my siblings and I, would then slowly return to reality from the trance-like state into which we had been pulled in by this story-teller who was none other than our Kaka Mamo. “Kaka” means uncle in Persian, and in some other regional languages of Balochistan such as Pashto. His real name was Muhammad Hussain but for everybody in Hussainabad, Quetta, he was just Mamo.

A Bedford "rocket"

Long before I got introduced to master story tellers, both from the East and the West, especially in the genres of crime, true crime, horror and psychological-terror, we children would get our entertainment from family elders like Kaka Mamo. Years later, when I first read and then re-read Stephen King’s The Duel or watched the blockbuster movie The Hitcher, I would recall Kaka's stories with which we had our imaginations soaked during the long winter nights of Quetta. His road stories were the best. You see, he himself was a truck driver for many years. My grandfather, who was a coal man, had put him in charge of the trucks that used to transport coal to far flung places in the Punjab province and beyond. But he was not made for any kind of desk work. He preferred the seat behind the wheel to the one behind the desk in some dingy office in Mach Town where the coal mines were and where the business of coal was conducted.  His first love was the “rocket” (pronounced "raakit") truck. These were heavy duty lorries that were made by the British automobile maker Leyland-Bedford. He was a rocket fundamentalist and knew about every nut and bolt of that heavy road monster. He reluctantly started talking about Hino and Isuzu brands during the latter years of his life when these Japanese trucks were introduced in Pakistan. But his love for the rocket never died. Rarely have I seen someone so passionately attached to a vehicle. 

Dilip Kumar

His love for the rocket was matched only by his great affection and admiration for the Bollywood superstar of the day, the one and the only Dilip Kumar. It was Dilip who deeply inspired him and informed his sense of style, and even of person-hood. This was pretty much visible in the way he wore his hair: jet black, amply oiled, tidily trimmed at the back and curled-up in the front. He was also very particular about his shoes, especially the hand made chawwat  (locally made leather sandals). These sandals were of the special type—made-to-order----ones that made a rather musical squeaking noise when someone walked in them. Another feature of the chawwat was that they were worn in such a way that the heel would protrude half way out, as if one was wearing a two sizes smaller shoe. That was the style and fashion then and nobody exemplified it better than Kaka Mamo. He knew almost everything about Dilip Kumar and his movies. He would recite the movie scenes with Dilip as the hero and his famous dialogues like a child would recite his or her multiplication tables. He was especially knowledgeable about the perennial rivalry between (the Muslim) Dilip and (the Hindu) Raj Kapoor, the other megastar of the Bollywood of that era. About that particular topic he was the Encyclopedia of Britannica. But what usually amused me was that after all the Raj Kapoor bashing that he would indulge in---and that was often-----he would utter something like this: “But yaar, we have to admit that nobody can play that role the way Raj Kapoor does, not even Dilip. Raj Kapoor ko salam hai!” 

Raj Kapoor

And to talk of Bollywood and not mention songs is like talking about South Asian curries without mentioning spices. For Kaka Mamo, the spice of the curry was, of course, Muhammad Rafi, the great crooner and balladeer of Bollywood for more than three decades. Rafi “the king” as Kaka would call him. Rafi and Dilip made the best pair then---Dilip the uber-actor and Rafi the super-playback singer-----just like Rajesh Khanna and Kishore Kumar would in the 1970s and early 1980s. While listening to Binaca Geet Mala on the radio (popular late night Radio Ceylon broadcast that played Bollywood songs) he would tell us the movie name, producer, director, the lyricist, the composer, the year the movie was made and especially the scene in the movie that was the background for that particular song. His knowledge of movies was immense, just like his knowledge of the rocket trucks. 

Muhammad "the king" Rafi

A short man with a solid body set on a solid frame, Kaka Mamo was not a loquacious man. A simple man, he was quiet, rather shy in some ways. In fact, he had a sort of serenity about him. I would even say that he still carried that innocence about him that many of us lose on the way to adulthood, as we embrace, wittingly or otherwise, the ways of the world and lose ourselves in worldliness: a sort of repose that one sees not just in children but also in God’s loved ones, those who are near and dear to God. We must recall the saying of Hazrat Isa (Jesus Christ, may God's blessings be upon him) that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven we must be like children. Muhammad Hussain Mamo kept to his business most of the time and was always ready to help out, especially in the community that was the Hussainabad of then. People knew him and he could be seen at most of the community events, be it weddings or sad occasions like funerals. After I left Pakistan, I hardly had any contact with him and then he left us all for his final abode. I was in the U.K. (for my studies, or maybe it was Canada) when my mother informed me of his passing away. The story-teller to us kids, the lover of old rocket trucks-----those perennial mechanical mules on the decrepit and deplorable highways of Pakistan----the admirer of the great Dilip Kumar and of the equally great Muhammad Rafi, and the man of style especially when it came to hair and footwear died while I was away from Quetta. I was not able to attend the funeral of Kaka Mamo but he is always with me whenever I read a good story, especially a scary road story, or when I listen to my own old collection of Bollywood songs, but above all, when I see a Bedford truck. 

Yaadish Bakhair.

For more, please click:  Hussainabad, Qta: The Place, the people and their values
And here:  Regal Cinema Quetta: The Old Turkey Buzzard

Please visit:  Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

Stray crumbs #1

Stray crumbs #1

"So this is the white man's strange wisdom", he exclaimed. "He cuts down the forests which have stood in pride and grandeur for centuries; he tears up the breast of our mother the earth and befouls the streams of clear water; without pity he disfigures the paintings and monuments of God and then bedaubs a surface with color and calls is a masterpiece."

(The reaction of a Sioux (Indian) chief on being shown an art gallery with lots of paintings on its walls, quoted by Charles Eastman)

"The earth is bleeding from wounds inflicted upon it by a humanity no longer in harmony with Heaven and therefore in constant strife with the terrestrial environment."

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

"How we see the world depends above all upon how we see ourselves. Our model of the universe---our worldview---is based upon the model we have of ourselves, upon our self-image....Having in our own minds de-sanctified ourselves, we have de-sanctified nature  as well.
Philip Sherrard

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Perhaps the famous simile of the Buddha applies most appropriately, aptly, to contemporary "de-sanctified" humanity than to that of any other era: "like children asleep in a burning house."

Modernity and modern people: the quantity and matter worshiping tribe of beings who insist that their shrouds also have pockets and who never tire of lecturing others about the wonders of their reductionist knowledge system (scientism) and philosophy (euphemism for miso-sophy), about how only they see and comprehend all of reality through their bamboo tube visions (to put a spin on old Yiddish and Japanese proverbs). “I can’t jump, therefore, there is no such thing as the sport of basketball!” said Immanuel Kant (not exact words, but his philosophy in a nutshell), one of the founders of this dying worldview upon which the entire juggernaut of modernity rests. These are Plato’s cave dwellers, the neurasthenic creatures who dwell in the dungeon of the lower self--- that suffocating cage of the corporeal self----creatures who gaze at the sky from the bottom of that dark well of nafs, and utter such inanities as, “There is no God!”, “Where is your God?” or, “God is dead!” 

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ILM and Riding the Tiger (of Modernity)

“Ignorance is the greatest tragedy.”                          Imam Ali (AS)

The great sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov once wrote that “if knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” The problem of modernity is essentially a problem of knowledge: it is an epistemological problem. Or in other words, it is about the conception, acquisition, accumulation and categorization, and application of knowledge. The correct ethos and attitude needed to live an authentic life in the modern world, therefore, is to possess ILM (hikma or wisdom) which means to know how to ride the anti-spiritual tiger of modernity that we all are mounting. By “authentic life” is meant a life that is rooted in humanity’s ancient (religious) traditions that are essentially True, Good and Beautiful, and only accidentally ugly and evil (to paraphrase Seyyed Hossein Nasr). In the modern world, where we are told day-in and day-out that God is dead and the Sacred nothing but delusional or wishful thinking of a child, or even a joke, an awake and aware person is like one who knows that he is riding the voracious tiger of modernity and is never complacent. One must learn to ride the beast because one cannot dismount it alive. This is an imagery that has its source in ancient Eastern traditions, also employed by the Italian critic of modernity, Julius Evola, but from a different perspective and for a totally different purpose. The “sophistication” of modern life can only be countered with the sophistication of the life of faith. Charles Upton pins it down when he says, “Simple belief, unless one is fortunate enough to retain a real simplicity of soul, to be among those we call ‘the salt of the earth’, is no longer possible for many today….The only remedy for the disease of sophistication is a greater sophistication, which finally returns to simplicity. Where religious relativism has destroyed faith, nothing but metaphysical understanding can restore it.” 
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Man is born to dominate and to transcend his own being, to go beyond himself. That is the goal, the purpose, the raison de'tre of existence. Therein lay the path to nobility and holiness, as Isa Nur al Din has repeatedly reminded us. That is the meaning of being Allah’s khalifa (vicegerent) and Allah’s abd (servant). That is what distinguishes us from animals and other creatures. The desire for transcendence is natural, since it is in our primordial nature (our fitrah). Says the poet Robert Browning: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” 
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"Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Then, only then,
Will you find that money cannot be eaten."

                                                                      (Cree Indian Prophecy)

The anti-ecological modern consumerist lifestyle: we are like the ever-thirsty people who drink water without ever thinking about the spring from which the water that quenches our thirst flows, ignorant and forgetful of the very source and origin of that which sustains our life. We cut the very branch of the tree of life on which we sit and from the fruit of which we get our nourishment. And we celebrate this madness, this stupidity as “civilization", “progress” and “development”!

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"There is nothing like deprivation to excite gratitude for small mercies" says an old Spanish proverb, an appropriate saying for the strange times we live in. Three things we must never forget and must never fail to observe: Sabr, Shukr and Tauba.

Wallahu Aalam.

Chief Seattle's Speech

For more, please click: Two Perspectives

Visit: Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Toutube)

Short, Short: On Belief

Short, Short: On Belief

"Credo ut intelligam."  ('I believe so that I may understand.')

                                                                             Augustine of Hippo

“The conspiracy theory of society comes from abandoning God and then asking: ‘who is in His place?’ ”                                Karl Popper

"Atheism is like excrement: when enough builds up in the body, it has to come out....The New Atheism is built on three pillars: human ego, priestly pederasty and  the Wahhabis of Mass Destruction (WMD).                                                                                  Abdal Hakim Murad

In the final analysis, there is only belief; we either believe in one God (tawhid or unity, oneness), or in Mickey Mouse, Taylor Swift, chicken biryani, Hollywood, Bollywood, progress, development, democracy, socialism, Marx, Darwin, Freud, evolution, science, nationalism, Gucci, Rolex, soccer, cricket, basketball, Ferrari and BMW, McDonald’s, iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and so on (shirk, takthir or multiplicity, the opposite of tawhid). Those who say “I don’t believe in God” are also believers of a kind; their contrary claims are nothing but a form of belief. Modern sentimentalism aside, "Humanly, no one escapes the obligation to believe in order to be able to understand" says Sheikh Isa Nur al Din (emphasis added). Given the limited and self-referential nature of human reason/rationality, the anti-God “non-believers” also end up with belief: eventually, they believe that there is no Creator of all that is created, including themselves. To the discerning, however, it is clear that theirs is nothing but an imitation religion with its own myths, idols and ideologies, its own pseudo gods and prophets. Said G.K. Chesterton once: "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything." 

Thinking never happens in vacuum. We don’t speak from no-where; we are embedded creatures. We are grounded in extra- rational, or supra-rational ontological presuppositions of one kind or another. Knowing and knowledge are but things in the foreground of much important, but hidden and unexplored, axiomatic background. Thought is always implicated and rooted in deep, metaphysical assumptions that are not the exclusive result of “objective” and universal discursive processes or, of them only. What is presented as utterly rational, universal and objective is but a kind of subjective will, a product of a particular paradigm, often arbitrary discursive formations of a mundane, power hungry and power driven cultural worldview or weltanschauung, as Foucault, Derrida and others have irrefutably demonstrated. Change the deeper, metaphysical assumptions---the profound, axiomatic (back-) ground of thought---- and you get a new, equally “universal”, “objective” system of knowing and being. Man, because of who he is, cannot live without an “idol” to worship, without a myth to give meaning and purpose to his life: what is destroyed, dethroned, demythologized or demystified by the ultra-rational mind is soon replaced with other myths and mysteries, often of inferior quality. Or, the pathology of irrationality is soon replaced by the pathology of rationality with horrendous consequences as recent human history has shown.

To the lost souls---the uprooted, the unmoored and disoriented, the bamboozled who fall for appearances and fail to see "things as they really are", the sarr gardaan---says the Sufi sage Fariduddin Attar in his Conference of the Birds:

"These thoughts have made you stray

Further and further from the proper Way;

You think your monarch's palace of more worth

Than Him who fashioned it and all the earth.

The home we seek is in eternity;

The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea,

Of which your paradise is but a drop.

This ocean can be yours; why should you stop

Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew?

The secrets of the sun are yours, but you

Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams.

Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems --

Which matters more, the body or the soul?

Be whole: desire and journey to the Whole."

And, he beckons them back to their Centre and Source:

"Come you lost atoms to your Center draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:

Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide

Return, and back into your Sun subside."

The step out of your "self"

For more, click: The Two Perspectives

Fun with modern philosophy, Uncle Marx

From quality to quantity

Bandagi

Visit: Dervaish's Quetta Channel (YouTube)

Who is CoronaVirus?

Who is CoronaVirus?

Strange question, you say? Not at all, I say.

The “what?” of CoronaVirus, now commonly referred to as COVID-19, is important and of interest to this blogger as much as it is to everybody else, but so is its “who?”, or in other words the increasing number of  identities that are now getting assigned to this new plague the origins of which remain hotly contested. The president of the USA, Trumpola the Racist Buffoon, continues to insist that it is a “Chinese Virus”. Many others of his ilk, the noisy demagogues, the populist charlatans in his own country and around the world, have called it the “Wuhan virus”, the “foreign virus”, the “Asian virus’ and even the “Yellow virus” (read “Yellow peril”).  Many Chinese----and Chinese-looking people-----have become victims of xenophobic abuse, some even physically attacked.  The plagues of fear and loathing follow them everywhere more viciously than the actual pathogen itself.

In our own part of the world, Pakistan, the discussions and debates, both in the corridors of power and especially in the country’s cacophonous electronic-digital media that is infested with an army of obscenely partisan talk show hosts, maskhara (comic) experts and script-reading, hired-gun  “anal-ysts” are not lagging behind in giving the new virus regional, ethnic and sectarian identities. It seems the blame game is in full swing in order to ascertain the irresponsible (the criminal and “sinful”) agents for importing and spreading the disease in the country. While the top authorities in the government (including the president of the republic) of the vindictive ego-man, PM Kaptaan Insaaf Khan, and the discarded, corrupt rabble-rousers in the dysfunctional opposition, tout, almost on a daily basis, that the Pakistanis infected with COVID-19 have no Chinese links, have no history of travel to that friendly country (CPEC, billions of dollars in aid, soft-loans and investments----all understandable), they don’t waste a second to target and blame other communities, peoples and even particular countries for the spread of the new influenza virus in Pakistan. They, these people in positions of power, may or may not have any chauvinistic intentions but in a country ridden with all sorts of inequities, where the nature of power relations between the dominant and the dominated, between the center and the peripheries is what Roger Garaudy once called "a relation of the sick and the deceived", the identities of these blamed people who are often from the minority and historically maligned and marginalized communities are bound to become nastily entangled with any such pathogen and the blame discourse bound to quickly morph into that of biological racism. Recent history is full of such cases, whether in the modern West or elsewhere in modern-(ising) Asia and Africa.

In one such toxic strain of this ugly discourse, the contestants are battling it out in public, one side arguing that the virus came to Pakistan from the Wahabi kingdom---the Saudi kingdom of clown prince MbS---and the other side arguing, equally if not more ferociously, that it was brought to the country from Shia Iran and spread by the returning zaireen, the Shia pilgrims, that frequent that country all year round. Khwaja Asif, a gaffe prone opposition stalwart from PML-N, has actually openly accused the special assistant to the PM for overseas Pakistanis (SAPM), the shady Zulfi Bokahri, for allowing these zaireen to return to their homes in different parts of the country without proper screening and testing for the virus at the Pak-Iran border town of Taftan in Balochistan province.  Bokhari has now sued the loud-mouthed khwaja for defamation and for endangering his life.  Like most other things in the country, ethno-sectarian bigotry has now been injected into this discourse, too. In Quetta, for example, the minority community of Hazaras, targets of decades long indiscriminate killing, victims of terrorism at the hands of both non-state and state-sponsored agents and who are already ghettoized in two neglected wards of the city, have strongly objected to the officially sanctioned policy that was announced by the rather gauche chief secretary of the province in a press conference a few days ago, a policy of quarantine and “social isolation” that the Hazaras see more as another act that will only exacerbate their economic, political and cultural marginalization and ghettoization than a reasonable precautionary measure in the fight against the new virus. As I write these lines, new groups are being identified and blamed as the super-spreaders of COVID-19, such as the Deowbandi Tableeghi Jamaat in Sindh and Punjab.

The CoronaVirus, or COVID-19, has no nationality or ethnicity. It is neither religious nor secular. It is not a Sunni, Shia, Deowbandi or Barelvi pandemic; nor is it Chinese, Iranian, Indian, American or Arab. Although some of my leftist-Marxist friends, with whom I have always disagreed on many things and this is one more of those things, have said to me that this virus does have a “class” in the sense that it will kill mostly poor people (the proletariat) than rich (the bourgeoisie), I think the facts so far are not completely supportive of their arguments, either. This virus is not a friend of some and an enemy of others. It is not some foreign enemy----the different, the strange and unfamiliar, the alien, fearful “other”----that has declared war on me, on my family, my sect, tribe, nation and people, or on “us” only. If we must use such militant or war-like terminology, then let’s try to understand that this essentially modern plague is a threat to, and the enemy of, the entire species, of all of US: us human beings. We are now increasingly using terms such as “social distance” and “social isolation”. The unfortunate thing is that the “distance” in these terms often gets filled with fear, hatred and prejudice----especially on what is called, ironically, social media. The real challenge for all of us, but especially for us Muslims, is to learn to fill it with understanding, love, care and wisdom. We can do it. We should be able to do it relatively easily because we are heirs to (and we never tire of  bragging about this!) a long and illustrious tradition of love, patience, perseverance and, above all, of hikmah (wisdom). 

Wallahu Alam.   

For more, click: America and the American

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                          Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)