And when it rained in old Quetta...

 And when it rained in old Quetta…

“The rain surrounded the cabin…with a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, or rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside. Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, the rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.” 

                                                                                     Thomas Merton
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“You will get wet!…You will catch a cold!...It’s cold outside in this pouring rain… Are you mad? …You have got to be crazy to go out in this weather and do so without an umbrella!” And, so on. These are some of the things they say to me whenever I decide to go out for a walk or for a run in the rain. And almost always, I respond with, “I’ll be OK. I am from Quetta. I am not mad or crazy at all. It’s just that you don’t understand what rain means to me, to someone born and raised in Quetta.”

Like most people of the time, we grew up in an old style tin-roofed house in Hussainabad, Quetta. Up until late 1970s and early 1980s, these houses could be seen everywhere in Quetta. I think they were called “ 7 type houses”. If I am not wrong, the structures became part of the landscape of Quetta after the devastatingly “great” earthquake of 1935 when the city was almost razed to the ground. When it was rebuilt, the rationale for the new materials used in the construction of the structures and especially for the use of the tin based alloy (metal) sheets for roofing was, obviously, their lightweight nature. Although it made sense from the perspective of safety in the event of another calamity, the corrugated metal sheets were not the best choice when it came to insulation, especially against the biting cold in cruel Quetta winters and against the scorching heat in the usually dry summers. But there was one thing about that metal roofing that has endeared it forever to this Quettawal: the almost magical sound---the sheer music---that it produced every time it rained in the old tin-town. Just like the ambrosial smell of the parched earth after it got wet with the first few drops---unique, to be experienced nowhere else in the world, believe me---the sound of the rain drops hitting the metal, starting with a “ting” here and a “tang” there and picking up a rhythmic pace, first slowly and gradually and finally building up into what resembled the beat, roll and rumble of drums that seemed to be emanating from some heavenly percussions festival, was nothing if not inspiring, if not “divine”.
 

A 7-type house in old Quetta 

But there was something about those old 7-type houses themselves, and it was not just their tin-roofs that always became the venue for the ecstatic entertainment scripted, directed and produced by nature itself. There was something about those structures that even now, particularly now, forces one to reflect. Like many other things then, they were inconvenient in many ways, some of which I have already mentioned above. But then we need to understand that convenience was not a principial dogma of a die-for-kill-for worldly cult with irreparably propagandized, thoroughly narcotized and numbed followers who nowadays disregard and sacrifice every other value and virtue at its modern altar. Just observe how our lives have become impoverished in many significant ways as everything has increasingly become “convenient”, "comfortable", "easy" and “efficient”. The ever multiplying modern gadgets and technologies---the tricknologies of distraction, disorientation and eventually of destruction---brazenly encroach, trespass and trample on human dignity and commit subtle acts of vandalism to desacralize, colonize and devour our inner worlds as they rapidly make us slavishly dependent on them. They are like permanent filters between us and reality. They now mediate most, if not all, of our authentic experiences of the world. And we surrender to them happily, only because they are “convenient” and “efficient” and “practical” etc. This irony seems to fall flat on many, especially young, people these days. 

If anything, the old 7-type structures were a reflection of the values of those who built them and lived in them. Those values and virtues, in turn, were the acknowledgement, the affirmation, of the transient nature of this world, of life itself. They were, therefore, the affirmation of Truth/Haqq. Or in other words, there was an acute awareness of the distinction between permanence and transience, between what is Eternal and Essential and what is a mere accident of time and place. For example, in the old times, a village or a town could be destroyed and rebuilt several times over without leaving any destructive ecological footprints. Apart from their ecologically sustainable nature, that in itself was a profound commentary on the impermanent nature of this world and everything in it: earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

They were built with “soft” and humble material (often mud and straw, or wood) because our hearts were soft then, because of genuine human humility viz-a-viz the Absolute. That same humility that was the result of a correct understanding of our fitrah (our primordial nature) and that required that people see their short time here in this world as a moment, see themselves as beings merely “passing through” and not here forever, as created guests who are here to be “tested” by their Creator and Lord, and not as lords themselves. Nowadays, the concrete structures, the brick-mortar-and-steel houses “built to last”, are a reflection of our concretized, hardened hearts. They are monuments to our modern egos, erected with the sole purpose of appeasing and praising the inner idols, the pseudo deities to whom all we obediently genuflect. After all, our living spaces, our houses and homes, are a reflection of who we are and what we cherish and value. They are the embodiments of what we think and know of our origin and end, what we think of ourselves and what we think of others. Just like inside, so like outside, as the old saying goes.

Back to rain. In the old days, rain in Quetta always brought with itself a change in mood, an atmosphere of festival for all ages, from the very young to the old. The young would rush out in the open, play in the rain and get soaked to the bones. Just as the land was always dry and thirsty waiting to be quenched, so were the people of Quetta, waiting and praying for the blessing that came in the form of rain. The falling water from above was nothing if not a blessing, a “rehmat”. In fact, this particular element, water, is one of the most potent symbols used in world literature, especially in sacred scriptures, and nowhere else more frequently and more eloquently than in the mother of all books, the Holy Quran. The Quran compares water, rain in particular, as “life-bestowing Grace”, as “Mercy”, as “Knowledge” (Gnosis/Hikma) and so on. Because rain falls from above, there is in it the element of verticality meaning that “it symbolizes vertical enlightenment coming down directly from Heaven” (F. Schuon). Just like Revelation (wahi) is sent down as an act of Mercy, rain also symbolizes that Mercy. There is a beautiful remark of the great Muslim sage (hakim) Al-Ghazali on the Quranic verse “He sendeth down water from heaven, so that valleys are in flood with it, each according to its capacity" (XIII: 17). Commented the great scholar: “The commentaries tell us that the water is Gnosis (hikma) and that the valleys are Hearts.”

One of the greatest Muslim scholars of twentieth century, Martin Lings (Abu Bakr Siraj al Din) has a very profound chapter on the symbolism of water in the Holy Quran in his book titled Symbolism and Archetype. I can’t resist quoting in some length from that chapter. He writes,

“In the Qur’an the ideas of Mercy and water—in particular rain—are in a sense inseparable. With them must be included the idea of Revelation, (tanzīl), which means literally "a sending down." The Revelation and the rain are both "sent down" by the All-Merciful, and both are described throughout the Qur’an as "Mercy," and both are spoken of as "life-giving." So close is the connection of ideas that rain might even be said to be an integral part of the Revelation which it prolongs, as it were, in order that by penetrating the material world the Divine Mercy may reach the uttermost confines of creation; and to perform the rite of ablution is to identify oneself, in the world of matter, with this wave of Mercy, and to return with it as it ebbs back towards the Principle, for purification is a return to our origins. Nor is Islam—literally "submission"—other than non-resistance to the pull of the current of this ebbing wave.” (Martin Lings)

In the Quetta of old days, although not everyone could comprehend the depth and breadth of the meaning of this sacred element that is a symbol for Mercy and Hikma, among other divine attributes, sent down upon the creation from above like a Revelation, let alone express it like great scholars, everybody could intuit some aspect of the Heavenly Grace and Blessing “each according to his/her capacity”. And that intuition also got expressed accordingly. Rain was a blessing, as I have said. Water, rain, also purifies. This symbol and function of rain, as purifier, is also well understood across cultures and religions. Just as in Islam, so in the old Japanese religion of Shintoism, it has a particular significance. But apart from all these profound metaphysical meanings, rain is also fun and merrymaking. In the old days in Quetta, rain was chai, pakora and samosa. Rain was long walks with friends. Rain was the reason for good company, for conversation and for meaningful time with family and relatives, and so on. I wonder how things are nowadays.

I started this post with an observation of the trappist monk Thomas Merton. Let me end with another of his equally insightful observation. Says Merton,

"Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By ‘they’ I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even the rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.”        (Thomas Merton)

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)

Life in LGBTQSF+ KaliYuga

Life in LGBTQSF+ Kali Yuga

“Your sickness is from you—
but you do not perceive it;
your remedy is within you—
but you do not sense it;
you presume that you are a small entity—
whereas within you is enfolded the entire universe. You are indeed the evident book, by whose alphabet the hidden becomes manifest; therefore you have no need to look beyond yourself, what you seek is within you, if only you reflect.                                      Imam Ali (AS)

“If your ultimate concern is yourself, if you have spent your life building a monument to yourself, then in biblical terms, that’s idolatry. I think we live in an idolatrous society…I think it is extremely difficult for people to achieve a moral life without community.” 

                    Chris Hedges, TheDecline of Morality and the Celebration of the Self

“Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.”   Samuel Johnson
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The Satanic Inversion of Everything: Life in the dark days of LGBTQSF+ Kali Yuga.

Secular modernity inverts. It is first and foremost a thoroughly profane worldview that reprioritizes everything, thereby making the trivial, the secondary and accidental the primary, the essential, and vice versa. It defaces the Eternal, the Sacred and the Transcendent (but, in reality, which it cannot), and elevates the mundane, the temporal, the corporal, the blasphemous. It displaces, even “murders”, God and stands “man”---modern Western (read, white) man and all his pathological imitations in the colored, darker corners of the world---in His place. Once wisdom meant that we be passive viz-a-viz the Transcendent, the Heaven above us, and active against, in constant struggle with, what was below. Modernity has inverted that: now men are passive towards what is beneath them---the hells of the nafs, of the lower self---and at war with what is above. The result? "When you reject a heaven you open up a new earth and many new hells. " (S.H. Nasr)  In traditional parlance, secular modernity is a philosophy of fittna, and, therefore, no philosophy at all but a miso-sophy (hatred of wisdom and not love of it). In its late form as (post-)postmodernism---as the new pornographic jahilliya of 21C---secular modernity as fittna is particularly good, first, at widening and deepening the age-old fissures and fractures in traditional societies and then turning them into the main preoccupations and concerns of those societies. Because it is an utterly cynical weltanschauung with its own caste system at the top of which are its “priestly” opinion makers, an army of beastly “prophets of skepticism” who see only arbitrary power everywhere and in everything, traditional certainties based on and reflecting the perennial values and wisdom are reformulated through intentionally misleading, ideologically motivated re-interpretations which are then promoted and imposed on societies around the world mostly through the local uprooted and deracinated entrepreneurs of those societies----the comprador, the native informants and so on about whom the overtly racist British imperialist Lord McCaulay once said in his notorious speech / minutes on Indian education the following:

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation….[Accordingly,]We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect"."

These are individuals and groups who are always ready to make instrumental Faustian deals for any minimum worldly gain offered them by the highest bidders in the globalized marketplace operated by the lords of humanity according to the dictates of ruthless casino capitalism.

Ideology trumps nature: "I am a beast trapped in a human body."

Woke-ism is the new incarnation of this postmodern jahilliya and nothing is more important to it as the violent promotion and full-spectrum marketing of LGBTQSF+ everywhere round the world. Among other things, it is yet another manufactured ideology of the profane worldview of fittna meant to deal a final blow to that most important bastion of traditional societies: the family. In “liquid modernity”, to use Zygmunt Bauman’s term, anything that guarantees stability, continuity, permanence and certainty is the greatest sin of all and must, therefore, be destroyed completely.  

The Great Postmodern Mindfuck

Says my wicked friend, Sardar Kharkaftar of Helsinki: “In this new iteration of the age of jahilliya, make sure that your child (especially male child) sees what is between his or her legs on a daily basis. You may as well encourage them, from time to time, to actually touch and play with what is there so that they know that those reproductive organs are for real. This way, as they grow up, they will not be “confused” as to who they are, sexually speaking. They must be reminded, time and again, that sex is not the ultimate marker of our being, of our identity; it is what human beings do and not  who we are, as the contemporary barbarism of “identitarianism” coerces everyone to believe lest they want to face the violence of its cancel culture! Show them the rainbow whenever it appears in the sky. Explain to them what the rainbow means, what it has always meant, both literally and figuratively as used in traditional literature before the arrival of this new jahilliya, the LGBTQSF+ Kali Yuga. And that the rainbow, first and foremost, appeared up there, in the sky and not on some social activist movement flag promoting hedonistic nihilism.

For more, please click: The System: Inversion, Illuminations #5

 

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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The System: Inversion

Kaliyuga: Inverted reality in Pakistan

"The triumph of mediocre man brings down the elite." Imam Ali (AS)

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which established authorities are wrong."    Voltaire

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In Pakistan everything is inverted. In 2023, down is up. Back is front. Left is right. Bad is good. Chaos is order. Ugliness is beauty. Falsity is truth. Stupidity is genius. Scoundrels are saints, fools sages, criminals are dispensers of justice and betrayers and traitors are protectors and guardians. Hate is love. War is peace. It’s Kaliyuga in Pakistan.

The Shudra are the unchallenged rulers of the country, enjoying it big time at the top of the heap. Inversion. Quantity is quality. Low is high. Where the head should be, the feet are. These Shudra---the Cheema, Bajwa, Sharif, Chatta, Mian, Chaudhry, Dar, Khwaja, Sheikh, Butt, Kayani, Janjua and the rest of the lowly caste----rule violently and with impunity. The Brahmin and Kshatriya have fled the country. Those who were unlucky have either been disappeared or butchered by the murderously crude Shudra, or are in hiding and practicing one or the other kind of dissimulation. The Shudra have turned the entire nation into an unruly, but always obsequious, herd of casteless untouchables over whom they have been lording it out for more than half a century now. The nail that sticks out quickly and violently gets hammered. That is "quality control" for the Shudra dullards. The diabolic is the symbolic now. Devolution is evolution. Hell is the new heaven. Mediocrity is the highest virtue and bigotry is the noblest. It is 1984, Brave New World and Kafka all rolled up in one in Pakistan of 2023: “Khaki uniform and boots good; everybody else bad, traitor, evil, conspirator, Indian and Yehudi agent…”, is how the Shudra pigs indoctrinate the children and the youth at the rote factories called schools, colleges, madrassahs and universities. 

These lowly, inbreeding parasites are like Midas-in-reverse. Whereas the old King Midas of the ancient folktales turned everything into gold by merely touching it, these nitwits, the boors in boots, do the reverse with their mere touch: they turn gold into dirt. In their seven-decade long period of misadventures reeking with oppression, violence and gore, they have turned a resourceful land into a big garbage dump and its equally resourceful people into a huge rampageous swarm of anomic bigots and murderous fanatics. Inversion. Kaliyuga. Says my old friend Sardar Kharkaftar of Helsinki, "The Shudra half-wits, these khaki usurpers of power in Pakistan, conceived in, and born from, the 'womb of evil' mostly, nay predominantly, in rural Punjab--the Chatta-Chaudhry, Bajwa, Janjua, Mian, Khawaja, Kayani and so on---have turned Pakistan into the insane asylum of the world."

For more, please click: BumperStickers, Traitors, Illuminations

Harf e Devaish#8 (Urdu), Overqualified in Balochistan

Harf e Dervaish#1 (Urdu)

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
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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