Karachi erupts as it does, without forewarning for those who turn their eye to it selectively, with complete forewarning for those who watch it everyday
Sunday, 17 July, 2011
The story of the city of settlers must be retraced to look for answers to the current violence By Hashim bin Rashid ”I do not have a magic wand to put an end to violence but I have the stick of love and I know how to make peace with it.” Mansoor Wasan, Newly-appointed Sindh Home Minister
And thus it is in this context that one is able to contextualize the politics of the 2000s in Karachi – where the MQM, faced by a Pakthun political challenge to ‘its’ city, began to label Pakthun settlement a ‘Taliban invasion.’ In the early days, the MQM found resonance with Sindhi nationalists, who stood side by side against Pakhtun immigrants, if only for their fears of further cultural marginalization. The rise of the Awami Nationalist Party (ANP) as a political force in Karachi also comes as crystallization of the settlement processes of the past 25 years. From being marginal to the city, the ANP became entrenched within unions, mafias and monopolies and the Pakthun-Mohajir tussle now plays itself on the political turf of their two representative parties. The current conflict comes following a number of political moves. The PPP-MQM-ANP alliance ruling Sindh collapsed after the MQM pulled out. The MQM purportedly pulled out over the PPP’s consistent
Illustrated & Designed by Javeria Mirza
Reading the present from the past
wrangling over the date of the next Local Body Elections. The MQM was aware the PPP was attempting to play smart on the political chessboard. Local government in Karachi had meant an MQM Nazim. This translated into the day-to-day socio-politics of the city. Who gets a particular contract? Who gets favours? Whose houses get demolished? Who gets fired from work? Who can accrue their electorate the most benefits? This is not a judgment. It is just a recollection of the politics of patronage that symptomises electoral politics in Pakistan. It is in this context that the strategic reversion to the Commissionerate system is being read by the MQM, and may also be by outside observers. Yes, it is correct to suggest a single party Nazim has acted as a node of diffusion for the myriad of ethnically organized communities that form Karachi. But, no, it is not correct to believe that a bureaucratic re-division of the city into five administrative parts shall solve Karachi’s woes. It is clear that the MQM’s resentment against the shift comes due to fears of the loss of its administrative monopoly over Karachi under the local government system. But it is also clear that the violence in Karachi has been mishandled at both the local and the federal level. The PPP is attempting to strategically dislodge the MQM from its pole position in Karachi politics at a stage when it is too late. Flirtations with MQM (Haqiqi) head Afaq Ahmed are unwelcome and more a reminder of an attempt to recreate the Mohajir infighting of the 1990s. Only that Afaq no longer holds as great a sway. In this complex mix, the ramblings of an increasingly incompetent federal interior minister who first declared, ‘Taliban responsible for the violence,’ and then downplayed the violence saying, “wives and girlfriends kill more people than target killings in Karachi.” However it be put: Karachi’s present is a symptom of the lack of integration produced by its past. The problem does not lie in half-baked, halfthought experiments. It begins with bringing all groups to a negotiating table and serious re-thinking in urbanization paradigms. It must also be said with clear intent that no military operation in Karachi is welcome and the Orangi operation by the Rangers is condemnable. Calls from a number of quarters came as anticipated – due to the serious lacks in political thinking by these groups. But it was Nawaz Sharif’s call for an army operation that came as most uncalled for after five weeks of military critique by him. It appears no one has learnt anything. And therefore, Karachi erupts as it does, without forewarning for those who turn their eye to it selectively, with complete forewarning for those who watch it everyday. So in the end, when over a 100 people are killed in target killings in a week, the entire history of Karachi smiles cynically in the background. And it becomes clear that the city known as the melting pot has stirred a brew that hasn’t mixed with no possibility of changing the ingredients.
2 Nothing to offer but blood and rage 8 Noah’s shipwright
I
t would be run-of-the-mill to begin this article quoting the number of deaths and the scale of violence that has erupted in Karachi’s urban sprawl over the past two weeks. So I shall not. Karachi is the city of settlers. Conflict and growth are the two consistent features of Karachi under Pakistan. The city mushroomed from a population of only 350,000 in 1941 to over 15 million in 2011. The first set of conflicts originated when Karachi was settled with migrants after partition. Sindhi resentment grew as residences and businesses emptied by migrating Hindus were transferred to incoming settlers from (mostly) the United Provinces. These settled, distinct in culture, also believed in their cultural superiority. They refused to assimilate into local culture. And, hence, it is argued, were laid the ethnic roots of the tussles over socio-economic capital that would mar Karachi subsequently. The 60s saw the first set of Sindhi-Mohajir tussles. In the 1960’s, it was the Sindhis who represented themselves as oppressed. Thus – it was One Unit that triggered anti-Mohajir resentment that had built up over the Sindhi’s socio-cultural displacement from their own province and city. The 1970s came and Bhutto took the scene. He attempted to reverse the perceived ethnic bias. The quota system was introduced for Sindhis and the Sindhi language was made part of curriculum. Now Mohajirs took to the streets and the All-Pakistan Mohajir Students Organistaion (APMSO) was formed. The organisation contained a set of aggrieved degreeholding Mohajir youth who increasingly turned to violence to voice a collective cause. It was in the sprouting of this organization that the origin of Altaf Hussain and the bud of the Mohajir ethnicity erupted. In the 1980s this bud matured. The political landscape was dominated by the PPP (Sindhis) and Mohajirs (JI). In the lack of mohajir politicization, the PPP remained politically dominant in Sindh and Karachi. Thus – as a covert policy, the military armed the APMSO, which had become the MQM, and during the period the MQM became the gangster. In the same period in which the MQM was rising and the Mohajir identity being shaped, the Afghan war and urbanization trends meant mass Pakthun settlement. While the MQM was rising politically, the Pakthun was carving out economic space for himself. In the next decade, the Pakthun took hold of Karachi’s urban transport and construction. A fissure that had become between the Sindhi and Mohajir on socio-economic domination had first reversed itself to produce the Mohajir ethnicity. With Pakthun settlement, the
fissure shifted to Pakthun-Mohajir. And the first Mohajir-Pakthun riots in the mid 1980s took place over a Pakthun public transport driver killing a Mohajir child in an accident. In the 1990s, however, military interference in Karachi increased. A party that it had helped grow and helped lord over Karachi, it deemed to have gotten out of hand. The military attempted to manufacture a break-away faction in the MQM, the MQM (Haqiqi) under Afaq Ahmed. The tussle of the 1990s began between the MQM (Altaf) and the MQM (Haqiqi) but soon the army itself entered the picture. The 1992 operation and 1995 operation were targeted at the MQM. It weakened the party physically then but strengthened itself recourse to a victim narrative. The attempt by the military to restore ‘law and order’ itself failed. Karachi did not rise from the military operations without fissures, it arose with more. In the 2000s, the military flirted with the MQM again. Under the local bodies ordinance and the Nazim system, it practically handed the MQM all control over Karachi. In 2007, the government changed and political parties, the PPP and ANP re-entered Karachi to find its political layout entirely changed. The next four years were an attempt to win back the space that had been previously ceded. The current return to violence is a part of the complex tale of Karachi’s urbanization and an articulation of its peculiar processes of settlement. Why do I tell this long, selective story of Karachi? The memory of most of us is short. They evaluate the present in terms of the present. In fact, the present must be evaluated in terms of the past for it to make any sense. And this cursory account is to remind that the process of settlement of outsiders, the processes of accumulating economic capital, the processes of monopolizing political capital and the process of the interference of the deep state combine to produce the eruption of violence that we see in the present.
‘Greed is good’
the review
‘Bush Agenda’ lays bare how this philosophy of ‘greed is good’ was acted upon by the invasion of Iraq by George W Bush’s government By Basharat Hussain Qizilbash
I
f you think greed is bad, you are wrong. Is it good, then? Well! Ask the 1986 graduating batch of California Haas BusinessSchool, which was told by Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur that “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” Is this how America has made itself wealthy? Seems so! But what is the underlying philosophical principle? Very simple! Shift the sources of wealth from the have-nots to the haves. The rich would generate more wealth out of these transformed resources which in turn would trickle down to the rest of the
The underlying philosophical principle is very simple: Shift the sources of wealth from the havenots to the haves
society making everyone better off in the end. Antonia Juhasz’s ‘Bush Agenda’ lays bare how this philosophy of ‘greed is good’ was acted upon by the invasion of Iraq by George W Bush’s government. Did Iraq pose any threat to Americans in any way? No! But they had the ill-luck of possessing world’s second highest proven reserves of ‘black gold’ – 200 billion plus barrels of it. As you can’t invade a country just because it possesses precious resources on which you have set your greedy eyes, so you come up with a ‘lovely’ justification. Suddenly, it dawned on President Clinton that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a bloody dictator; so on Oct 31, 1998, he enacted the Iraq Liberation Act that required US government to replace Saddam with a ‘democratic’ government , and in the process distributed a largesse of $99 million among a CIA-managed Iraqi opposition to do the job. If you think, I am just cooking up, ask Michael Scheuer, an ex-senior CIA al-Qaeda expert, who admitted in ‘Imperial Hubris’ that ‘the US invasion of Iraq was… an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages.’ The economic advantages were more of a windfall because by Oct 2000, US was sucking a record 734 thousand barrels of Iraqi oil per day. The invasion of Iraq was to satiate the
biggest American addiction as one out of every seven barrels of oil in the world is consumed on the highways of the United States. And this oil is sold by the US multinational companies. So, they had a feast in Iraq. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy passed his Order No 17 that granted US companies full immunity from Iraq’s laws. In fact, the Bechtel Corporation was quietly granted huge contracts by the US government for loot and plunder, even a month before the invasion of Iraq. After oil, the second most precious Iraqi resource is water as it has an extensive river system in the Middle East: the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as well as the Greater and Lesser Zab rivers, and Bechtel wanted the privatization of Iraq’s waters? But weren’t the Iraqis promised a good government, once Saddam was removed? It was their fault if they did not know that promises are meant to be broken. While the rivers of Iraqi oil flowed to the US, the Iraqis were made to wait in long lines to buy expensive gasoline. Consequently, more than half of the Iraqis began to feel that their life was worse under the US political dispensation since the overthrow of Saddam. Just take the example of water, a basic source of sustaining human life. Even the World Health Organization pointed out that during Saddam’s rule, almost all Iraqis (precisely 90 percent) had access to an abundant supply of
The Bush agenda By Antonia Juhasz Published by Harper Collins, New Y Pages: 387; Price: US$26.95 safe drinking water but a May 2004 UN survey highlighted that 80 percent of the Iraqis in the rural areas had to use unsafe water. No matter, how much Saddam is cursed, Iraq was a better place when compared with the mismanagement under the US.
Freewheeling, combative but n He’s the most controversial and commanding figure to have emerged since Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa began issuing mature work in the early 1960s By Dwight Garner
04 - 05
Sunday, 17 July, 2011
“T
here is a time for reciting poems,” Roberto Bolaño w r o t e in his libidinous and word-drunk novel “The Savage Detectives” (1998), “and a time for fists.” His nonfiction prose, gathered here for the first time, demonstrates that the swashbuckling Bolaño could declaim and brawl at the same time. He was a lover and a fighter. The odd jobs and left-handed journalism that fill “Between Parentheses” – the superb title is one that Bolaño selected for one of his Chilean newspaper columns — matter because of the way his novels loom over the past half-century of Latin American fiction. He’s the most controversial and commanding figure to have emerged since Gabriel García
Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa began issuing mature work in the early 1960s. Bolaño died in 2003, from liver failure, at 50. A spectral sense of unfulfilled promise and martyrdom, of being slightly too good for this planet, hovers around his posthumous reputation. In this regard he is something akin to Latin America’s David Foster Wallace. (Both were cerebral, unshaven, uneasy in big cities and under bright lights.) Bolaño’s masterpiece, the novel “2666,” first published in English in 2008, was never quite completed. It, like his career, will be forever pinned with an asterisk. The excellent thing about “Between Parentheses” is how thoroughly it dispels any incense or stale reverence in the air. It’s a loud, greasy, unkempt thing. Reading it is not like sitting through an air-conditioned seminar with the distinguished Señor Bolaño. It’s like sitting on a barstool next to him, the jukebox playing dirty flamenco, after he’s consumed a platter of Pisco sours. You may wish to make a batch yourself before you step onto the first page. “ B e t w e e n Parentheses,” which has been adroitly translated
How do you recognize a true work of literary art? He asked. His answer: “Easy. Let it be translated. Let its translator be far from brilliant.” Genius can survive even this indignity
by Natasha Wimmer, covers a lot politically correct version of the author of acreage. There are crunchy bits of ‘Valley of the Dolls.’ ” of autobiography, political laments, He had a baroque, seriocomic disquisitions on food and soccer and scorn for Latin American professors women and exile and keeping airplanes at American universities. “To attend afloat with your mind. But books were dinner with them and their favorites,” what mattered most to him, and this Bolaño wrote, “is like gazing into one is stuffed with his unruly opinions about world literature, from Twain, Borges and Melville through Philip K. Dick, Walter Mosley and Cormac McCarthy. Bolaño was a master at shooting spitballs from the back of the classroom, and he made his share of enemies. About the Argentine writer Osvaldo Soriano, whom he calls “a good minor novelist,” he added, “You have to have a brain full of fecal matter to see him as someone around whom a literary movement can be built.” He flicked the novelist Isabel Allende repeatedly behind the ear, observing Between Parentheses “the way her writing Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003 ranges from the kitsch By Roberto Bolaño to the pathetic and reveals her as a kind 390 pages. New Directions. $24.95. of Latin American and
York
Consider these UN statistics: Iraq ranked 15 out of 130 countries on the 1990 UN Human Development Index. Before 1990, it had the highest percentage of college educated citizens in the entire Middle East. A 1991, WHO report stated that 97 percent of Iraqis in urban areas and 78 percent in rural areas received health care while the infant mortality rate was below the average for the developing countries. I n s t e a d of bringing better life, the US invasion devastated Iraq. The first order of Paul Bremer fired 120,000 Iraqi civil servants, e n g i n e e r s , s c i e n t i s t s , professors, doctors and skilled labourers from their jobs. And the second order of this American viceroy threw out of work half a million Iraqi army when unemployment in the country was estimated at between 50 and 70 percent. Instead of providing jobs to the two million skilled but
unemployed Iraqis in 2004, Paul Bremer awarded a food services contract to the multinational Halliburton that shipped in workers from Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, and particularly the American workers that were paid four times the amount that they could earn in Texas. For example, the Americans driving oil trucks were offered $8000 per month. This is how the philosophy of ‘greed is good’ works. But it works to only enrich the Americans. This is how Americans become wealthy and the country as a whole prospers. Mind you, Iraq is just one case study investigated by Antonia Juhasz. The whole of the Middle East is on the American menu. The writer is an academic and journalist. He can be reached at qizilbash2000@yahoo.com
As you can’t invade a country just because it possesses precious resources on which you have set your greedy eyes, so you come up with a ‘lovely’ justification
no self-portrait a creepy diorama in which the chief of a clan of cavemen gnaws on a leg while his acolytes nod and laugh.” He made plain his lack of regard for the American writers John Irving, Chuck Palahniuk and Michael Chabon. Some of the crispest writing in “Between Parentheses,” however, is from the newspaper columns in which he appraised those American writers whose work he clutched to his chest. These included genre masters like Dick, Mr. Mosley, James Ellroy and Thomas Harris. Mr. Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels may be mass-market best sellers, Bolaño said, “but I wish most contemporary novelists wrote this well.” His riff on Philip K. Dick included this sentence: “Dick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream.” Bolaño was only rarely an insightful critic. He too often went for blunderbuss overstatement, ignoring fine distinctions. In these pages he calls Nicanor Parra “the greatest living poet in the Spanish language.” Enrique Lihn is “the best poet of his generation.” Leopoldo María Panero is “one of the three best living poets in Spain.” Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s short stories are “the best of my generation.” Javier Cercas is “one of the best writers in the Spanish language.” You begin to tune this static out. Bring a machete as well as a cocktail to “Between Parentheses.” There’s underbrush to be slashed. Writing on deadline for a fast paycheck, Bolaño could be windy, and whimsical to the point of absurdity. Sample sentence: “In this uncertain future, our children will watch as the poet asleep in an armchair meets up on the operating table with the black desert bird that feeds on the parasites of camels.” More often there’s a soulfulness that cuts against his fancifulness and bile. “To a great extent,” he confessed, “everything that I’ve written is a love letter or a farewell letter to my own generation.” How do you recognize a true work of literary art? He asked. His answer: “Easy. Let it be translated. Let its translator be far from brilliant.” Genius can survive even this indignity. Bolaño’s buzzing mind is a pleasure to dip into. Open this book anywhere and you’ll trip over observations like these: “One is prepared for friendship, not for friends”; “I enjoy vegetarian food the way I enjoy a kick in the stomach”; “Maybe she’d only been Miss Santiago or Miss Burst Into Flames”; “Editors tend to be bad people”; “He had a mother who was less a mother than a gypsy curse.” The editor of this volume, Ignacio Echevarría, notes that these essays and speeches are entirely from the last years of Bolaño’s life for a simple reason: before 1998, when “The Savage Detectives” was published in Spanish, few had heard of him. His phone did not ring. Mr. Echevarría makes the case that “Between Parentheses” may be the closest we can get to an autobiography of Bolaño. This may be so, but the self-portrait in this freewheeling and combative book is as distant and blurry (and as hairy) as the supposed footage of Bigfoot. The man behind Bolaño’s masterful novels remains an evocative smudge.
Revisiting a Classic
‘A drama of inaction’!
Written in a scholarly but lucid style, the book is a compendium of authentic academic as well as critical information on Beckett’s supreme classic
By Syed Afsar Sajid
P
rof. Ira Hasan, an acclaimed
educationist and literary critic, has authored this commentary on Samuel Becket’s (1906-89) famous play Waiting for Godot ‘with the mature Pakistani student in mind, providing access to latest criticism and developments on the theme of the play’ alongwith ‘an easy to follow explanation of the text’. It is a new kind of play categorized as absurd drama wherein its author has achieved ‘a theoretical impossibility – in which nothing happens, twice’ notwithstanding its ‘second act being a reprise of the first’. (Vivian Mercier) The play was actually written in French (En Attendant Godot:1949) later translated into English by its author with subtitle – a tragicomedy in two acts (1954). It came to be considered as an example of what critic Martin Esslin later called “Theatre of the Absurd” which discards traditional plot, characters, and action to encumber its audience with ‘a disorienting experience’. Characters indulge in apparently
meaningless dialogue or activities and as a result the audience perceives what it is like to live in a universe that doesn’t ‘make sense’. Waiting for Godot is a classic example of this form of drama that can ‘generate considerable suspense and dramatic tension in spite of being a play in which literally nothing happens, a play designed to show that nothing can ever happen in human life’. Despite its peculiarly facile surface, it is one of the most important dramatic works of the preceding century revolutionizing the theatre as it did and opening it to ‘possibilities that playwrights and audiences had never before imagined’. The author of the present book presses the argument thus: ‘After Godot, plots could be minimal, settings unlocalized, characters contradictory, exposition done away with, dialogue unpredictable, one actor could talk for several minutes, another remain absolutely silent -- the possibilities were suddenly inexhaustible.’ Religious interpretations hold ‘Vladimir and Estragon as humanity waiting for the elusive return of a saviour’. Political interpretations stipulate ‘the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky as that of a capitalist to his labour’. Albeit its existentialist undertones, the play seems to be ‘primarily about hope’ --- the two protagonists pitifully awaiting hope to arrive. At times in the play it (hope)
is constructed as a form of ‘salvation’ in the personae of Pozzo and Lucky, or even as ‘death’. How to pass the time in a situation which offers no hope, may also be deemed to be a subject of the play. One would readily agree with the author that “Great texts in literature share a universality of application beyond time, creed, colour or place. Though expressed by two individuals, Vladimir and Estragon’s concerns are universal --- and the response to such texts remains always new because they are capable of absorbing new ideas. Texts like Waiting
for Godot are ageless.” Prof. Ira Hasan’s Commentary on Godot comprises six chapters dealing with some useful but relevant information on its author Samuel Beckett, structure of the play, an in-depth critical evaluation of its contents and model questions and their answers followed by a select bibliography. Written in a scholarly but lucid style, the book is a compendium of authentic academic as well as critical information on Beckett’s supreme classic Waiting for Godot.
Samuel Beckett: Wordmaster Waiting for Godot - Text with Critical Commentary By Prof. Ms Ira Hasan Published by: Oxford University Press (2002), Karachi Pages: 187; Price: Rs.225/-
Last Man in Tower
The old and new Indias fight it out in an apartment block By Mark Sanderson
A
n apartment block provides the perfect plot for a novelist to explore. Its inhabitants – always varied in caste, class and character – are forced to rub along as best they can, but friction often results. A single building comes to represent not only a city but a whole country. Now, in his third book, Aravind Adiga, whose first, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize in 2008, has chosen to show what happens when old, respectable India clashes with new, getrich-quick India. The Vishram Society consists of two tower blocks in Vakola, under the flight path of the domestic airport of Mumbai. However, it is only the tenants of Block A that concern Adiga. Many of them have been in residence since it was built as an experiment in gentrification in the Fifties. The ceilings leak, and virulent nature invades the windows, yet its denizens consider themselves indisputably “pucca”. The mains water
may be turned off twice a day and the thin walls preclude privacy but, for the most part, they enjoy lives of quiet contentment. This is soon shattered by Dharmen Shah, a property developer whose corruption is symbolised by his lung disease. He plans to demolish both towers and build the Shanghai, which – “Gothic style, Rajput touch, Art Deco fountain” – will tell the story of his life. He offers to buy out the tenants for around £210,000 each. The average annual wage in India is £500. Everyone – Ajwani, the estate agent; Kudwa, the cybercafé owner; and the Puris with their 18-year-old son who has Down’s syndrome – is eager to accept. Only Yogesh Murthy, a retired teacher known as “Masterji” is uninterested. Recently widowed, haunted by the death of his daughter, who fell from an overcrowded commuter train, he has no interest in a new life. His neighbours, egged on by Shah’s thuggish “left-hand man” Shanmugham, attempt to persuade him to sell up by increasingly desperate means. Ancient friendships crumble like the concrete that surrounds them. The end is both savage, sordid
and ever so sad. However, Last Man in Tower, in its dizzying portrait of Mumbai, contains plenty of comedy and dark humour. One example will have to suffice. Shah’s mistress, Rosie, is summed up thus: “her voice always had its knickers down”.
Last Man in Tower By Aravind Adiga 421pp, Atlantic, £17.99
the review Sunday, 17 July, 2011
06 - 07
What’s in a language? The English Complex Our collective obsession with English transcends any functional or practical role it may play – we treat it as a social capital and status symbol By Mansoor A. Rathore
R
anting about an already much ranted about problem might invite the wrath of critical readers who yearn for novel ideas and observations. Yet, I feel compelled to write about this very important issue that besets Pakistan today, something I call the ‘English complex’. No, I have not coined the term nor is it a problem that has never been discussed before. The inferiority complex that countless Pakistanis suffer from when it comes to the language of our old colonial masters is a sad, old tale that we already know like the back of our hand. But every time I see the awe that sparkles in someone’s eyes whenever they hear a person speak impeccable English, I am reminded of the lingering presence of this colonial hangover. And so I let my sense of responsibility overpower my sense of originality and write on this issue to draw attention to its unabated existence. For till the day we are totally free from this linguistic indoctrination, we will have to keep on talking about this complex that continues to enslave us. I have to confess I feel like a hypocrite when writing this piece. Having studied in English medium schools all my life and having enjoyed the countless perks of being fluent in the language, I should be the last person to crib about this problem. Even more ironically, I am writing about the English language complex in English. Yet, I feel as a responsible member of the Pakistani society that we need to stop treating English as a status symbol and regarding the inability to speak English as a source of embarrassment and a mark of incompetence. My sense of responsibility was sparked by a shoddy television commercial, one of those many substandard television marketing efforts that litter the airwaves today. The product was a CD titled ‘English Guru’ that promised to help its users get acquainted and comfortable with spoken English after which they would be able to further their career prospects and educational pursuits. All this was fine because English is indeed a dominant world language and one that definitely boosts one’s professional as well as individual development. What really flared my temper were the continuous remarks of the stout “model” promoting the product in the commercial. He made repeated references to how English Guru would rescue us from social humiliation, help us get over our inferiority complex and increase our worth in the eyes of our friends. All the while I found myself baffled by what he was suggesting. How can one admire someone who speaks flawless English even if he/she is a complete idiot? And is this the ideal being propagated by our society? Trust me, I know quite a few people who speak perfect English and at the same time
cross all boundaries of stupidity and arrogance. And why should not knowing a language ever be the source of embarrassment? I am clueless about French and have never even tried to decipher M a n d a r i n Chinese. Do I feel humiliated because I don’t know these languages? No! Learning d i f f e r e n t l a n g u a g e s is highly commendable as a means to augment ones knowledge but feeling socially stigmatized because one doesn’t know a particular language does not make sense at all. Fine, English is a different case. We have a 150-year long history of British imperialism and indoctrination to keep in mind. It is still understandable to see our grandparents glorify and admire those who speak flawless English effortlessly; they were born in the subcontinent when the British were the rulers, and where subservience to the British and their language was the order of the day. But it is simply disturbing to see the generations that were born after partition staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at people who speak English fluently. I have heard people say entirely illogical things like “he seems really intelligent, his English is so good” and nothing frustrates me more than such comments. The drive to impress and intimidate others through English remains a psychological ailment for us all We all need to realize that English is just a language like all others; it is a means of self-expression but not a sign of intelligence. I am personally an avid reader of English books and revere literary geniuses like William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Yet the excellent works of Mirza Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz are no less laudable for their philosophical depth and poetic brilliance. In fact, my father always says that the philosophical lessons to be found in the works of Punjabi Sufi poets are truly universal and time-tested, the fruits of long years of contemplation and thought. Evidently, it is the knowledge, dedication and virtues
of an individual that elevates him or her, not language. Language is a medium of communication and expression, as well as an important facet of cultural identity. It should not be a source of hierarchies and a tool of discrimination by being used as a marker of competence and superiority. For all those who may misinterpret me, I am not writing this piece to vent out any anti-West frustrations. On the contrary, in certain things I am quite pro-West, and one of my greatest ambitions in life, like those of many other students, is to gain admission in a top Ivy League US university. Yes I say that openly, sue me if you want! I encourage everyone to learn English and succeed in life through their hard work. What I discourage Pakistanis from doing is feeling ashamed of speaking our own native languages and confusing a command over English to be the only and sole key to success and prestige. English is just a language and must be viewed as such. I was really encouraged to see a man on PTV (yes I still happen to watch the state-run channel occasionally) a few days ago. He was invited as a guest at a show and what impressed me about him was that
Every time I see the awe that sparkles in someone’s eyes whenever they hear a person speak impeccable English, I am reminded of the lingering presence of this colonial hangover the man had learnt around seven different languages including Urdu, Arabic and Seraiki. What amazed me even more was that the man was blind! English was not one of the seven languages he knew, but he didn’t seem to care. He quoted stanzas from Seraiki poems that he knew by heart, talked about his experiences in life and his struggles as a scholar despite his eyesight problems. Here is an obviously gifted and brilliant man, I thought to myself. And, he doesn’t know English! It is people like him who we should emulate and respect, not those with perfect English grammar and flawless diction.
“Remember when I walked past your desk this morning and didn’t fire you? In today’s economy, that counts as a raise and promotion.”
closing bell GARFIELD
aRIeS
taURUS
geMInI
Your spread indicates that travel plans may get postponed. Please avoid arguments and tiffs this week. You will have to work hard to maintain your position at work. Working women will do exceptionally well during this week.
Pensioners will get monetary relief. Family problem may solve amicably. Follow your intuition while making big plans. An angry friend, if any, will make you miserable.
You must safeguard your interests by focusing on routine work. A short journey towards west or south west could prove fruitful. Romantic plans come to the fore this week. Home life is quite blissful.
canceR
leo
vIRgo
You will allow fear or insecurity to dominate your perception, and then you could end up undermining your own position. You will probably be in a much better place to start making major pace forward again.
Some business tasks will suffer delays. You will be cultivating a useful contact with someone. Hectic work schedule is likely to keep you away from home and family. Sports persons are in the lime light.
Follow your own hunch in financial matters. This week you will be giving the finishing touch to your current task. Love life will blossom. Purchase of land or property is indicated. Mixed trends and emotions are likely.
lIBRa
ScoRpIo
SagIttaRIUS
This is the best period for bringing about changes in your work set up. Attend to money matters personally. Love life is rather exciting. Sports and other extra-curricular activities will bring you in the limelight.
For job-seekers, there are very good offers in the mid-week. Professional life is very bright in your spread this week. Home affairs will be satisfactory. Some stressful situation can disturb your work schedule.
Communications and meetings will proceed smoothly this week. Exporters or those in international trade will enter into collaboration with foreign concerns. This is good time to purchase property for house seekers.
capRIcoRn
aQUaRIUS
pISceS
Money position will be tight but the needs of life will be fulfilled. Some of you can suffer shoulder and back pain, consult your physician; otherwise you will deteriorate. Dairy products and a little exercise can help your health.
The completion of an important task will bring in substantial gains and happiness this week. Business proposals, which you might make this week, will be accepted. Housewives will visit their relatives, perhaps to call on ailing relatives.
Lovers are surely going to enjoy during the mid-week. A certain misunderstanding with a close relative will clear off. Work prospects will improve, domestic life will suffer. Due to some stress you can endure a headache.
SUDokU
By Sana
2. prosecute 3. prepared 5. bar 6. discharge 8. diplomacy 9. intimidate 11. novel 13. financial 14. disprove 15. oppose 18. ragged 19. irritate 22. respond 26. tidal bore 29. army 31. coalition 34. decline 36. taking place 38. toward 40. representative 42. sledge 43. crown 44. extreme 45. suffer 46. acronym. mode of operation 48. membrane 49. acronym. television 51. stoop 53. acronym. Extended play
BRIDGE
fill in all the squares in the grid so that each row, column and each of the squares contains all the digits. the object is to insert the numbers in the boxes to satisfy only one condition: each row, column and 3x3 box must contain the digits 1 through 9 exactly once.
Today’s soluTions
SILEnt MESSAGE
chESS BLACK TO PLAY AND MATE IN 2 MOVES 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
chess solution
1. Super Power 4. distress 7. slice 10. pot 12. awake 14. memorize 17. protest 20. female sheep 21. withdraw 23. auricular 24. craze 25. scorn 27. acronym. Left halfback 28. aid 30. sway 32. remind 33. fright 35. thus 37. cereal grass 39. acronym. Central intelligence agency 41. acronym. Garbage disposal 43. shock 47. emphasize 50. connect 52. dishonest person 54. capable 55. peculiar 56. graceful 57. type of snake
how to pLAy
UnIted StateS SaId It WoUld Hold Back eIgHt HUndRed MIllIon In a SHoW of dISpleaSURe oveR pakIStanS ReMoval of US MIlItaRy tRaIneRS
1...Re4+ 2.Kf2 [2.Bxe4 Qxg3+] 2...Qxd2+ *
DoWN
By Sana
sudoku solution
Across
woRD SEARch
crossword solution
cRoSSwoRD
DILBERt