Adil Najam
This rather striking picture, taken by Associated Press in Peshawar Pakistan is remarkable just for it captivating composition. But I have no doubt that our readers will not disappoint in making more of this than probably needs to be made!
Dear Readers,
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP. While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
We hope you will continue to find ATP a useful venue to reflect upon and express your Pakistaniat. - Editors
Hats off to Adil Najam, he knows his audience well
Woh baat sarey fasaney mein jiss ka zikr na tha
Woh baat unn ko Bohat nagawar guzri hai
I’m with Moiz on this, I would have liked to see this discussion go in the direction of Identity, or lack thereof in our society. I don’t have an issue with a western holiday related to Love, but we need to ask ourselves why a native cultral construct is not (developed) enough to celebrate love.
Why can’t we celebrate a day for Sassi PunnooN or Sohni MaheNwal etc? If the point is to celebrate Love? IMO it points at the culture war stalemate that has been reached in Pakistan and which has created a cultural destitution and a vaccum such that internal cultural icons and concepts are not acceptable, but external (Arabic, Western, etc.) Cultural norms are accepted as “Fait Accompli”.
Dance is ghair islami, painting is ghair islami, singing is meeraSi pooNRaaN, cinema is ghair islaami, expression of Punjabi, Balochi, Sindhi, PaKhtoon identity (via native poetry, legends, stories, singing) is “aSbi’yyat pasaNdi” if it goes out of the realm of “oh look, how cute, yet crude”. Striving for an imaginary and un-achievable cultural norm (Some Lukhnau based thingy apparently) was the end-all be-all of our “official” culture that all of us were supposed to “progress to”.
The result is that no-one bought in to the culture pushed down from the top, and at the same time, all these cultural wars left us wounded and bleeding. And now our children know more sanskrit than persian or punjabi words. Our “intelligentsia” can’t finish an Urdu sentence without using English words. Our cinema has been decimated, but people still watch.. except that they watch Indian and English cinema..
What we have ended up with is a vacuum, and therefore a mongrel culture. Mongrel not in the sense that it is a hybrid of native sensibilities (we should be so lucky). But a culture in severe identity crisis, a “PAKenstein” constructed out of external parts, as native parts were not acceptable to powers that (used to) be. Where wearing an abaayaa is OK, but wearing a “luNgi” is unacceptable, retrograde and “uncivilized”. Where adding useless and grotesquely out-of-place tongue twisting words from Arabic into Urdu are okay, but incorporating Punjabi or Sindhi vocabulary etc is taboo and uncivilized.
No wonder we see objections regarding taking the pictures of a woman, but the very same people don’t even seem to have cognition of the fact that this is a major (and psychologically deep rooted) Christian event, and therefor any cohesive and cogent response to _that_ !!!
To me (and I’m no Islamo NUT) it is more offensive that we have to import an external cultural construct to celebrate love when we have many examples of such things in our own culture with much deeper roots in the land.
Atif–the sentence should go, “Das war sehr lustig”.
Rafay–You clearly feel very strongly about this. The holiday is not a major one, and has sort of a sweet and kindly meaning esp. for young lovers. It’s also the most completely non-religious holiday in history. So I wouldn’t get so very worked up about it.
Something to get more upset about is how the “V-day”, like “Halloween”, is promoted heavily by advertisers just to sell tons and tons of sweets and junk. Whole fields of flowers in Central America are grown only to be harvested/sold on this one day and they are thrown away the rest of the year! So the flowers and candy become the “must-have” item even for multiple people, highlighting the whole sad orgy of waste and consumerism.
But not to worry, I don’t think the majority of Pakistanis can afford to participate in this side of it, and who cares how the affluent blow their extra money? If not on Valentine’s Day red velvet teddy bears and candy hearts, they will find some other useless and thoroughly noticeable way to spend their dough, won’t they now?
VALENTINE WISHES FROM SHOAIB MALIK
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http://www.vidpk.com/view_video.php?vid=8769
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@Mr.Ishaq, verses the damn fools of Medias
You jumped on the photo, too fast.
The ” idea” was to prove that the flipping Valentine crap
can be islamic by simply putting hijab on a girl. Paradise
for Pakistani educated illitrates. You see, you missed
the point ! the “genie” of all the pendoos on one side and
the less pendoos on the other, this is the ” projected ”
Pakistani society today !
@The commentators are deviated by the, detoures
only around the photo of a Hijab-yafta girl
(probably Pakistani) !! but we should condemn
the foolish, idiotic subject which is the source of
moral corruption in a relatively vulnerable
muslim society of Pakistan only respecting the
minorities !
Now, “logically, attacking Ishaq for his
brusque critisim on just a photo, deviates, once again,
our attention from the cheap infiltrating corrupt
commercial filth in our society.
Let me try to explain, !!! you all have CNN, BBC, French
German, Belge TV etc, I have 140 channels, NOT ON ONE
SINGLE CHANNEL I HAVE SEEN THE KITCH AND
CHEAP DECORATION AS YOU CAN SEE ON PAKISTANI
FREE CHANNELS, GEO, AAJ AND OTHER MUNKEY,
IMITATORS OF RAJ’S DAMN FOOLS CELEBRATING
COLONIAL RITUAL IDENTIC TO HELLOWEEN
With Public money,
Indeed, Jehalat has no religious or social frontiers.
@ATP
If the admis. informs us all gently that they are working
only for the promotion of minorities and their religious
rituals, we can decide whether or not, to continue wasting
time on imbecilities like these.
Are these Pakistani festivities ?????