The Cry of Karachi

yes, Morni my city has suffered, and that is what will bring us together again -- this suffering.

Thanks for the comment -- every person counts, every moment too. : )

معرآج

If any one can see,its the histry with love,beautiful and heartbreaking. Morni,

Once you do that, then you can't escape differences.

Meira, now that is just not right.

Why have I been on chowk for years and never been able to express my own view so clearly?

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And it's not just about conversion. It is about making religion an issue of existence. Once you do that, there you can escape differences. Take religion out of the mix completely, we can all be interesting or uninteresting together much more easily.

14 - Quin -- maybe because the discussion here is different from the one that you are referring to. Its difficult to maintain 'company' when you are dealing with mere words in an online spectrum [which, by the way, adds to the reason why i like it]
Eklavkya and I seem to agree that going on and on about "God exists and please convert" is a futile and un-interesting way to lead one's life. --After we have gotten rid of that, it seems there are 'other' things one may do with one's life -- that is, write poetry, travel, read up on philosophy, Science, actually you 'get' a life, to do very many things with it.
And what we had established between ourselves, was that there were separations.

----
Poetry, like any other discipline, requires destruction of anything that falls short of a scientific cohesion that is maintained within it.
Its a fight against corruption. [like in any other area of life]



معرآج

Fatima .... you CAN write poetry (whether someone can understand what you write is a totally different matter! ... another topic for another time)...

..... we can either sweep it under the carpet and coccoon ourselves in our own little worlds (new OR old) or we can actually think and attempt to provide realistic solutions to the problems ..... and that only comes with acknowledging the "problems" and facing/fighting them with courage .... including the appropriate use of liguistics such as poets/writers etc have done through the ages ... especially in our part of the world (perhaps because they had so much to talk about! ... another digression, sorry)

on the other hand, if the purpose of poetry is merely a collection of nice (and polysyllabic) words that rhyme well together .... than that's probably OK too ... only let's not use it for any "purpose" but for the linguistic beauty herein

will talk soon ..... Khuda Hafiz for now

This is a fine discourse happening here. I am missing it for now, will come back to it later at some point.
Just one small point for now: Arbitarily dictating what poetry should be or should not be sounds a very suspect proposition; unless I am missing something.
Eklavya, the depth you are showing here was lacking in questions you posed in discussion with me. Maybe it is MeiraJ08's company. (said praisingly - must keep misunderstanding away) I am so glad to see it like that.
We will talk more later.

-- and you have made a distinction that is clarifying some pretty knotted concepts...the clearer it gets...the better.


معرآج

In short, I am unwilling to let my natural love and instinctive respect for poetry and music and such divine paths be put to the service of 'religion' unless religion and actual religous assertions themselves make sense on their own terms, independently. :)

Meira, we have no disagreement AT ALL.

So long as a person comes to others as a real, sincere poet, without baggage of "full faith" (in this book or that book, this god or that god), unke qadam sar aankhon par.

And nothing against "full faith", really, even if that faith is based on good internal logic entirely different from mine. But faith that rests or is built up merely on 'not thinking,' just 'experiencing' is either unnecessary (peotry and music can do the same job much better) or downright dangerous and ultimately, destructive. A bit cynical, perhaps, but give me real, soul-transforming poetry or music or even philosophy over such fake 'religion' any day.

(If I wanted to discuss Islam or any other religion I would much rather discuss it someone who does not simply wave hands like a magician.)

No of course it does not 'offend' me Eklavya -- I am a student of philosophy for years now, we just argue and learn how to argue relevantly. Is God there? Whats all the fuss about -- these are questions you confront, and you can't come to a philosophy discussion with fixed beliefs. As they say, "if you fix it, you destroy it."

Growing up in Pakistan, for many of us, not just me, is where the 'hatred' begins towards religious dogma, and believe me, its taken me a few years to get rid of all that, and start to look at things the way I want to see them This is the freedom I wish to be enabled ..you can't tell children (or anyone else for that matter): "THIS IS RIGHT" and shove it down their system, they will reject it, or they will become tamed idiots.

Where is THE SPIRIT, is what I want to know. I met a 'famous musician' last I was in Karachi, and was surprised to hear of his fears on the topic of woman and purdah -- the gentleman could not grasp the idea of 'but isn't that the good woman?"

The Spirit, matters to me Eklavya, and in social, societal and religious settings, it is all but slowly dying out.

As far as "sufis" are concerned, there is no 'generalization' anywhere -- I can take it work by work. I can approach it one piece at a time. What one writer has written in say, "Conference of the Birds" is not everyone's heritage, who happens to say the word 'Sufi.' It is more yours, actually, if you read it the way you read things!

I attended a New Atheists' seminar in Toronto, [and there is much, much I like about Atheists] -- but only when it is equated in a literary way, here's the catch. I praised their work, but I asked them one question as well:
"So what will happen to language, once it is stripped bare of all these 'religious' words, which poets use to their own purposes"
[If language, in ten years, stops using many words, they will become archaic]

But I think something is going to have to suffer drastically, for SPACE to be created for NEW WORDS.

As Khayyam says:
"Were we to change this sorry scheme of things entire,
would we not shatter it to bits, and remold it nearer to heart's desire"

Again, Eklavya, great ideas on poetry. You restore 'sense' and that is quite a work.

معرآج

Meira, I wish I could ask all these 'religious' people to please NOT use poetry. Religion should (or not) make sense at its own level, but it shouldn't appropriate poetry's power.

Poetry, music - all these are/can be THEIR own, independent, means of reaching/experiencing/realizing the divine (or for those who object to music and poetry, reaching the devil). People from ALL backgrounds, whether they believe in any religion or not - atheists and Muslims, and Hindus, and Sikhs, and Animists - can ALL feel the power of good poetry - which, as I said, has its own power beyond human and ordinary.

So when a poet challenges us ordianry people to experience the power and the thril beyond the mundane, one's heart resonates. But if a person of faith wants us to 'experience' faith (whatever that faith may be) - not based on logic but power of poetry, or music, or even constant whirling - one wants stop and ask - what one is being asked to agree to.

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Those are my preliminary thoughts. But I will definitely look up what else you may be suggesting. See, I have no problem AT ALL accepting real divinity in poetry. I am far less sanguine about "sufism" - and all that it stands for, all that reverence it provides to various 'religious items.' Unlike poetry which is absolutely liberating, sufism seems like the surest way to get sucked back in slavery, and that too, thoughtless one.

Apologies, I know some of this MIGHT hurt your sentiments/prior beliefs. That's not my objective at all. Believe me, "denying" the power and the value of experience and feeling is the last thing I wish to do before a poet. I am just totally unwilling to give the same status to religious people, with deep faiths (even if they use 'nice poetry' for their purposes.)

Eklavya, in the time when the common assumption is that poets are not real thinkers, as you say:
"
And of couse, based on nice "poetry" that everyone should "feel" rather thank think about." on the God Delusion post,
Its a difficult battle, from all sorts of angles. Precisely because too many people are using words and labelling themselves 'poets' and getting appreciated as such as well.

The mind reaches strange blocks, when this is the one thing that happens to matter to you, in that very acute clinical and painful way.

About religion, you do have a distanced approach, and with such a mind, one may begin a decent conversation. Affected either way, doesn't leave much room for discussion or analysis.

I'd like to bring to your attention a play by Peter Shaffer:
"Equus" -- and by it explain to you some of my areas of interest in this rather huge episode of man's existence on earth. -- Precisely this:

Psychology and its inter-play with human freedom: doesn't the mind begin to suffer in any kind of entrapment, be it social, religious, or anti-religious?


معرآج

Finally read through this.

Meira, your words were bullets of pain striking the reader's heart in a deathly rhythm. I don't understand karachi, although have read much written about it on chowk. This was simply the best.

...which was a surprise, given that I would normally just not read anything on chowk so long. Now I am glad I did.

Yes Quin, and also 'one less psychiatrist' -- its alarming to me that the 'psyche of Karachiites' in any field whatsoever, can be navigated whilst divorced from the crime and incidents that have shaped and changed allour lives.
The "public" and the "private" don't take too long to start mapping each other out.

Why I say this here? Well, Art offers many therapeutic alternatives, which Pakistani Psychiatrists need to confront and make use of. "Music Therapy" is a Grad. level course at the University of Michigan.

I,myself, have worked *through poetry* (Yes!) to relieve ailments of society, and not just has it worked, it has also made me realize that the *de-mystification" of Science and its 'hard facts' as far as this particular field of medicine is concerned, is as required in our society, as the *de-mystification of religion.

The "psyche" of Karachi has suffered.

معرآج

"....I grew irises in my garden.
Strange choice? We are all in need of a new world"

most beautiful.

One "Iris-poem" and one soul "affected" is all this universe needs, (as said on your iLog.) - one Rumi and one Shamas suffices the universe, it keeps flowing forever.
re: #4, "when you 'are' karachi" - well said, that's the whole point of art ...