Life on the Periphery in the Absence of Humanism

Maha grooms her three daughters for the trade. In spare, eloquent prose, she explains the harsh rules of the game… Unless her daughters rise to the occasion, she could very well wind up in Tibbi Gali, the discount sex market, where older women sell themselves for as little as 20 rupees.

It says something about the character of a nation when it’s able-bodied men contrive to bring all-female marathons to a standstill, set cars ablaze in frenzied indignation at events across the seven seas, and sneer at the bane that is beauty pageants, all in the backdrop of women continuing to sell themselves for little more than the price of a bottle of coke.

An equally damning indictment is provided by an examination of the leading elements of free thought and cerebrality within society, each consumed to the point of near oblivion by their quest for panacean ideals – education without enlightenment, self-administration without self-moderation, and equality without empowerment.

It is hard to arrive at the precise moment when this transformation took place; the defining instant at which, unnoticed by the clergy and the intellectuals alike in their blinkered debate to resolve the meaning of Pakistan, the land of the pure regressed into an oasis of tawdry peripherals. Pity, for either alternative might yet have proven to be superior to this Buridanesque middle ground of impotence and moral atrophy.

Arise then, to the filth of wakefulness. Take that spanking new twenty rupee note and head to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts. Extract it from your wallet, unfold it ever so earnestly, and seek ownership of the gastronomic incarnation of our beliefs; sweet and chocolaty on the outside, with a gaping emptiness in the middle. Somewhere along the line, we perfected the art of focusing on realisable margins, while pushing the core into a vortex of forgetfulness. We acquired the skill to passionately debate minutiae, sinking irreversibly within a blighted medium of subconscious suppression

The traces of this depravity are all pervasive. With every dawn, a series of pathetic masquerades and charades assails the mind; from scrawny kittens outside butcher shops with soiled red plastic strips twisted untidily around their necks into bows, to cake-faced girls huddled motionlessly at the backs of trucks, clutching loose-limbed children hard to their bosoms and gazing vacantly at the heavens through the whites of their eyes. Instant after instant, eternity after eternity, all merged together into a continuum of consciousness, sensation and suffering. An unending sea of images, each sharing its festering core with countless others.

It is one thing to crusade against a social evil, quite another to condone it, and an altogether different proposition to celebrate collective failures by other names. Certain elements of human behaviour are easy to amend. Others metastasize unchecked. In the absence of an easy fix, a palatable dignification of the shame takes root. For yesterdays phajje ke payey, today’s upscale cafes. A festering sore festooned with colourful band-aids in the hope that all will be well the morning after.

Lament, then, life on the periphery; the tragicomic equivalent of continuing to walk on air, seeking high-profile tinder kegs, till a cursory glance down at the foundations reveals the absence of substance. An existence dedicated whole to grandiose schemes riddled with point-solutions and self-contradictions.

The milk of human kindness stands in every breast, curdling upon itself in frustration.