Adil Najam
Sepoy, of Chapati Mystery fame, sent me this picture before. It is a crude sheyr (verse) crudely written at the back of a bus.
Girls these days are so proud of their beauty
They don’t know the first kalma, but speak in English
Sepoy said it made him chuckle. It makes me chuckle too. But it also makes me shudder a bit. And not just for the (lack of) poetic skills displayed here. The verse and its display probably says more about the way we view women – especially young women – than it does about the state of poetry in the country.
Notwithstanding the fact that not just rhyme but reason is also missing here and the first and second misras have little connection, the verse does suggest what is viewed good (knowing the pehla kalma) and what is not (speaking in English).
All too often people will presume that a certain behavior correlates to certain moral positions. I remember how we wrote on ATP about an Ad in Dawn’s classified section for
Thinking about the ad and all the societal assumptions imbedded in it still makes me mad. As did this interesting post from ATP friend Mansoor on Metroblog Karachi, where he writes about a new way of stealing cellphones that as practiced in Karachi.
A girl is standing at a bus stop, waiting to catch a bus to go home and talking on her cellphone. There are quite many people around and its daytime.
Two guys on a bike pull up in front of her, the guy on the back gets off the bike, comes in front of her, and without warning, plants a loud slap right on her face! The girl is stunned, cant even utter a word. He then shouts (for the benefit of whoever is listening) “kitney dafa bola hai! Abba ka cellphone nahi lay kar nikla karo” (how many times have i told you, not to take dads cellphone out), grabs her cell, gets back on the bike, and they both drive away.
The girl is too shocked to say anything and just stands there, her hand holding an imaginary cellphone to her ear. People around ignore the situation thinking its just some family tiff or the other…. till she screams out “ye mera bhai nahi tha!!!!!!!” (he was not my brother!!!!!)
What I found notable is that even though the post generated intense discussion it was mostly focused on crime prevention and law enforcement and very little about what – to me – was the most shocking line of all:
People around ignore the situtation thinking its just some family tiff or the other…
Wait, wait, wait. Please. It is OK if someone comes and slap their sister or wife or daughter in public? Or even in private? And the rest of us will say, ‘OK, its a family tiff.’
I must confess that I am shocked most because in my heart of heart I know that many people will, in fact, do exactly that. And, that, is the tragedy of it all.
Ghalib, u r rite az fr az i cood c it.
Thank you Aziz Akhmad. You are right too. We all are right from our respective vantage.
P.M. Alvi Sahib,
The incomplete she’r that I had quoted earlier goes actually like this:
Kalaam-e-Mir samjhay aur zabaan-e-Meerza samjhay
Magar in ka kaha yeh aap samjhain ya Khuda samjhay
This was said about Ghalib by one of his cotemporaries. However, the context in which I quoted the she’r is clearly still relevant.
P M Alvi
isaid tht not in the context u have taken it into! all i meant was that our people i dont know y think just the negative abt ones own roots “kawa chala hanss ki chal apni bhi bhool gaya”that everything in america is kool!Ghalib even dint curse his motherly land even but our community here jus thinks pakistan stinks an everything there is bad!coz its not bad!wats bad is not the country its just that law is followed here and not there! coz of whom coz of us!we shud take the blame an not ruin a countries name that is an identity for all of us!an adopting the country i know that this lands traditions arent the ones that r we brought up into we can have along discussion but will not happen!if it will happen it will be at the cost of the value that our society has!
Aziz Akhmad: Mirza Ghalib’s grand parents were Uzbek (Uz Baig for you and me) and they came to Delhi from the Central Asia. Could he had said some thing like this about his adopted land.
“im a born US american trust me this land is foriegn for us even if we live here for 100 years!”
Pervaiz Alvi sahib,
How is that verse?
“In ka kaha yeh aap samjhaiN ya kuhda samjhay”
I believe it is one of Ghalib’s lines. How ironic?