flying kites, playing flutes

I see that Romair is asking temporal to quit criticising Pakistan because he does not live there, whereas he usually tells me to quit criticising murderous US policies because I live in US. He calls me a hypocrite, whereas I think temporal got off easy. Romair you have double standards. If you are going to call me hypocrite then you should call temporal hypocrite too:)

... chess and pigeons ... ``let them eat cake`` ... mink and sable ... diamonds and rubies ... jubilees in sumptuous style ... blood and empire ... then there were none ...


dL

Romair the Fauji-Lover:

“Protest has to have more substance behind it than long-distance poetry or long-distance jihad...............”

Please man, quit the lecturing. For someone who supports a regime of chowkidars and who thinks its great to have puppets as prime ministers, and thereby denounces any system from taking root, it sounds retarded lecturing others to ‘do something’. If foreign based Pakistanis protests are weak, your pretentious calls for ‘action’ and encouraging the military are totally lame. Why do`nt you just go and support Musharaf!

(long post)

wajahat:

The point is that that we have as a nation become desentised enough to not feel anything. We are all complicit in that rape in the simplification of non action...it is our inaction and inability to do anything about it that is the most ironic thing of all. Writing a poem on a board full of expats may stroke our ego, no bounds, but what did any of us do about it, that is the question we need to ask..... And we will forget pretty soon and will be celebrating next basant soon enough.

yes i am angry...o brother do let me be angry even if for a short while...

yes, we will forget about dr. khalid`s rape as we have forgotten about the abuses and death heaped upon saimas and mukhtaran bibis...

yes, the clever will find the fine points of zina ul haq`s hudood ordinance and let the guilty go free

earlier today kat was trying to calm me down...we joked...things will change in our blasted land only when women are empowered...the power (arms, knives) taken from men and given to women...we laughed...then she seriously mentioned a few things...education being one of them...the women should be educated and be supported to stand on their feet...small home based industries...(read the following article)...work in schools, hospitals, offices, banks...if we are men and have children we should inculcate respect for women in our children...should show respect to maid servants if lucky and if a man somewhere insults a woman then we should firmly point it out to them...small things that when undertaken collectively will embark on a journey of thousand miles that will eventually make a difference...

..women are smart and they know all this...it is mostly us men that do not pause and think about these issues...

yes, i could have written another love poem or a poem on bird gliding effortlessly in mid-air...but i did not...instead i chose to air some unpopular views at a popular time...

yes, a deliberate and regular mention of injustices would keeep the issues on the front burner...and some good will come out of it...this is my humble effort on this front...let them cast stones who.......

...and i sincerely hope this anger does not die in me...i don`t ever become desnsitized as you suggested...because if it dies then something in me will die alongwith it...thanks for your thoughts...and welcome back

rgds

t

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allow me to share my friend`s article:

Kaaarvan Crafts

Deserts lie in hushed slumber; wind embraces sand as it floats in the dizzy wisps of its elaborate dance; far away, just over the horizon something rouses, something breathes. The desert stirs. A first camel appears, its gaze travels from still-point to still-point, before settling on an unfathomable direction. With deliberation it surges forward, its bold steps marking the way for those who trustingly follow its steady gait. And, in the midst of the impregnable desert, a vast treasure appears. Clear over the horizon now, a multitude throngs to places unseen carrying the glories of their civilization. Pockets full of riches they trundle to lands of promise, selling wares, teaching cultures, sharing secrets. Such is the nature of the caravan…

Finding familiarity between unknowns, creating bonds between separate lands, forming ties, building relationships, a caravan moves ahead. It is a difficult thing to cross borders on nothing save hope. But this is what the caravan always set out with, and time has shown that the trusting heart was not without a reasonable head. Aysha Baqir, founder of Kaarvan Crafts, an NGO which styles its mission as one “promoting fair trade across boundaries” has set out with a vision steeped in tradition and a rich Islamic heritage. She says, “I dubbed my project Kaarvan because historically we have strong middle-eastern links. I wanted to establish at the very outset that my company aspires to principles of fair-trade. There was the concept of the caravan but coupled with the figure of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as a businessman who managed a traditional trade-caravan, I found the perfect image”.

Earning a Bachelors degree from “Mount Holyoke College” in International Relations and Development, Aysha went on to secure an MBA degree from “LUMS” in 1998. Academic qualifications in hand, she started work at the prestigious “Kashf Foundation”, an institute that is geared towards female empowerment and provides micro-financing facilities to women in rural communities to this end. While at Kashf, Aysha realized that rural women need more than just monetary help in order to raise their status in their households and communities. After procuring loans, not only were they still at the mercy of fathers, husbands and brothers who often became the ultimate end-users of these loans, but even when un-chaperoned thus they were also at a loss about “what to do with their karza?”

In identifying a major problem Aysha created a niche for her organization whose goal became to provide women with “access to markets and design trends” so that they could find meaningful employment that did not lie at the behest of their patriarchs. She says, “My mission became to provide fair-wage employment to women in low income communities. The rural woman is well versed in the art of embroideries and is quite adept at crafts-work as well. But she is also the one who is cut-off from the market. At Kaarvan Crafts we work to create two-way market access for her: we inform our (all women) workforce about current design and color trends, and then offer the work that ensues to the public. So, I see us as a mirror between the market and the village women”.

Bridging the gap has entailed the launch of a retail outlet for the 3 branches of the organizations operations, namely Candles, Crafts and Textiles, as well as the procurement of orders from companies abroad. Aysha explains, “Locally we only have one store in Lahore on M.M. Alam Road, but we expect to launch another in Karachi by November and in Islamabad by next year. Internationally, we have clients such as Baby Gap who have placed phenomenal trust in us and in our workers by placing orders for high-end stitching and embroideries. Of course the intricacies of such orders place a frightening challenge to begin with, but the women embrace it and work with our personnel to meet order requirements. Opportunities like these allow the women to develop their understanding of market demand and us to expand our operations by including more women area-wise and by branching out into a greater number of villages”.

In 1998, the project began as an effort that included only 5 women from Guru Mangat, a village roughly 50 km outside of Lahore. Today, the NGO accommodates employment for 300-600 women and this number is still growing. Rabia Raja, Manager Operations for Kaarvan Crafts explains the standards under which the NGO operates, “We follow international compliance requirements under which we managed our first order from ‘Baby Gap’. We offer our workers ‘flexi-hours’, which means that they only have to come to work 3 – 4 hours a day, and they can choose their hours as per their convenience. To ensure against child labor and accidents from needles and scissors, we strictly prohibit the women from taking their work home.” And to make the point about just how specific Kaarvan is about maintaining a work environment that is in line with international regulations Aysha adds, “We even keep fire extinguishers at hand and this is unheard of even in our urban workplaces!”

Kaarvan Crafts has long term goals that are designed to uplift the lives of their rural women workers, including a healthcare system and a day care center for those with young children. Rabia continues, “Often the women themselves become our motivating factor. They are the ones who push us into finding new clients and innovative crafts projects with their insistent cries of ‘baji aur kaam tau le ke ayen’. Since our work is ultimately about them, this eagerness is in itself very rewarding”.

Fashion wise, Kaarvan Crafts has experimented with accessories including bags and key chains and is now dabbling in handloom textiles, scarves, kurtis and ponchos. Heading the Marketing Advisory Services department that handles product development is Sehyr Anis, also a LUMS graduate. She explains how “the organization wishes to cater to market demand on a wide scale in order to generate work for the rural woman but also wants to remain exclusive” in order to satisfy the vanity/individuality of the urban woman. Given that all work is done by hand, the scales of demand and supply could not balance the urban with the rural better. And handiwork is always one-of-a kind, even when a design is repeated because the very nature of handicrafts and hand-embroidery does not allow the creation of replicas.

But how exactly do 3 women who have no background in fashion or textile design, successfully run an NGO that creates fashionable clothing, accessories and textiles? There are two answers. First, every woman is a designer – or thinks she is, and Aysha, Rabia and Sehyr have done their share of banging their heads against walls to explain what market response is all about to their workers, without shattering their already fragile confidence. Aysha remarks, “It takes years to convince them that suggestions of colors or motifs are not meant to undermine their huner or compromise their creativity. But ultimately they do understand that teamwork and their personal skills can (very literally) go hand-in-hand”. Which means that what is finally created fuses the traditional arts with trendy looks, and becomes original fashion.

Second, Kaarvan Crafts is less about designing a new style and more about designing to respond to market demand. “We always follow the market”, says Aysha and to do this the team considers color forecasts, identifies market trends and conducts market surveys, before beginning production for any line.

Sehyr explains how the accessories currently available at the Kaarvan Crafts store are designed keeping international fashion trends in mind, “for our handbags we’ve made lots of clutches, used snatches of fur, bags with wooden handles and floral accents to cater to women with different style preferences; now we are making kurtis with gishti embroidery (the design and tankas are set keeping the fabric’s thread-count in mind), which is very traditional but we are stitching these on more stylized cuts that make for a modern look. So a lot of it is fusion, but the work is always mindful about what the consumer wants”.

In fulfilling the needs of both disenfranchised rural women and a whimsical market, Kaarvan Crafts has a challenging task at hand. It has so far, proven to reflect these complementary needs to each other, as per Aysha’s initial desire, and continues to work at bettering its current efforts. Like all hard-working people, Aysha claims, “we still have a very long way to go if we want to better quality standards”. And she is frank about the market that she wants to cater to, “we want to be where the money is so that we can earn and give back to the community”.

Her intentions are noble, and her vision broad. Her work speaks for its immeasurable contribution towards the emancipation of the rural woman: Kaarvan Crafts workers have begun to command more respect in their homes by getting larger portions of food and are now served their meals alongside their male counterparts. For the girl-child, this is a giant step. The Kaarvan to female empowerment is underway, and it happily sells the comfortable urbanite all of its treasured dreams.

Temporal,

I def. appreciate what you are aiming for here.

temporal,

.... may she smile upon you ......... the world is one heck of a terrible place and pakistan is probably the armpit, but life must go on .......

T bhai

I can read and feel the anger that you have tried to manifest in your work. However we are using basant as an excuse. They had basant when that woman was gang raped a few years ago because her brother was hanging out with an upper caste ``Muslim`` family. The point is not that its basant and a few very rich people get together in a town and fly kites, giving ample livelehood to the kite makers and also keeping the heera mandi revenues up. The point is that that we have as a nation become desentised enough to not feel anything. We are all complicit in that rape in the simplification of non action. We blame the Army Autocrats, the baloch feudals, the intoxicated upper classes as much as we want, but it is our inaction and inability to do anything about it that is the most ironic thing of all. Writing a poem on a board full of expats may stroke our ego, no bounds, but what did any of us do about it, that is the question we need to ask.

Hearing Dr Shazia`s account of her ordeal in Balochistan breaks one down. The question is not whether we would have felt the pain if it was our wife or sister there , the question is that we didnt feel anything except a passing disgust or a moment of sadness, all over by a shake of the head. The Politicians, the Balochi Separatists are all trying to make political capital out of this. Soon this will be forgotten, Shazia will either live in some remote corner hiding from everything and everyone or hang herself to death. This is the fate of wretched in our land. And we will forget pretty soon and will be celebrating next basant soon enough.

to add to my earlier post, if masses have transformed a festival into an excuse to wallow in `debauchery`, it is not the festival`s fault. it is the atmosphere of the state. people need these to get out of the smothering they receive at the hands of that state/religious impositions.

t Mian,

S S Akal


I don`t think it is right to use Basant and Sui/Bangla in the same poem. Rang ch bhang.

Whats wrong with wine and tharra? I think the anger should be vented against all culprits, not a symbol or an identity or religious cultural celebration. I perceived this as anti Pbi rant. Why is she your sister only? Because she is krachiite as you?

If you are angry and bitter at the injustices of the Punjabi dominated Pak army, I am mad as a rabid dog at the injustices of the world. But please don`t correlate an innocent and happy festival of Basant with atrocities of Pak army.

correct me if i am wrong.

hamidm: READ THIS

thanks veeru, ferozk, centaur for your posts

rozaiba:

harsh? yes...agree with you in the sense that there is indeed so little to celebrate...but my friend i could not help it this year...as i wondered in the ilog linked above...perhaps if the rapists had killed her maybe...just maybe i would have held my peace...

romair:

Just out of curiousity, have you ever thought of going to Pakistan and doing something for Pakistan?

yes.

Are you doing anything for Pakistan, at the moment?

yes

Or are you, like so many on this site, just a long-distance protestor?
the affirmative answer to the earlier query negates this.

...and just in case you ask, i`d refrain from elaborating on what i do there...take your pick from the following...i can plead the fifth...or the hadith: do not let your left hand know...

rest of your post was..er...self-aggrandization...however, good luck to you in your endeavours...now if you have anything positive/negative to contribute re: the subject under discussion please feel free...

rgds,

t

temporal:

Just out of curiousity, have you ever thought of going to Pakistan and doing something for Pakistan? Are you doing anything for Pakistan, at the moment? Or are you, like so many on this site, just a long-distance protestor?

The reason I ask this is that I have found long-distance protesting to be the easiest form of self-aggrandization. It kills two birds with one stone: one doesn`t have to actually go live in the urine-infested mohallas of Pakistan, with electricity going down half the day, yet one can declare one`s dedication and disgust at the, ``System,`` and thereby score brownie points on the patriotic scale.

But what exactly does such protest do? If I am truly concerned about my ugly neighbor, whom I was destined to marry, then I should go marry her. Or I should, at least, ask her out on the date. If I go and marry her prettier sister instead, then what right do I have to sympethise about her lack of marriage proposals....If I sympathesize with her the whole day, while living with her prettier sister, then I am doing nothing except satisfying my own ego and conscious. I am not helping her......

This is no different than people who spend their whole lives pushing the jihad in Kashmir and other places, yet will never go and volunteer to fight there, themselves. They are much more comfortable living in the USA. There is nothing wrong with living in the USA, but then one should accept the choices one has made........

A pre-requisite of, ``protest`` should be that one is, at least, willing to do something to change the situation. Not just talk. ``Lahoo lagaa kay shaheedon mein shamil hona.`` is a liability not an virtue.

I am in the process of trying to set up an office in Pakistan. I have met with some extremely accomplished individuals there, including those with Ph.Ds (both in the miltiary and in the ciivlian sphere) from the best universities in the world. These guys could settle down anywhere, in the world. Yet there they are, roughing it out in Pakistan. When they drive me around, they complain and abuse Pakistan`s traffic, its system, govt. etc., and what not. Yet, when push has come to shove, they have made the choice of marrying the ugly sister, rather than the prettier one. They have, thus, earned the right to protest.

Protest has to have more substance behind it than long-distance poetry or long-distance jihad...............

in the interest of public service will share a thread from unplugged --t

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Started by omar_r_quraishi on February 7, 2005 1:40am PT

(lest I be accused of acting in a jealous rage or out of envy, this is more out of surprise and astonishment)

1. write a rambling (mostly) nonsensical poem on Basant
2. have your chowk nick or user name start with a `t` or a `v`
3. be above 50 years of age (chowk eds seem to obviously equate age with the quality of one`s writing)
4. have all the airs of an accomplished writer/critic/literateur despite having none

Temporal

Points well made and to add to your words, Sui and Waziristan were not even a concern at Basant and the victims of tsunami were just bits of old news.

I think, it would have been better had you avoided bringing a touch of politics into this event. In fact, Basant is the antithesis of politics, because the celebration is more about a vocalization of a popular protest against the excess of state`s morality and its guardianship of national morality. There is a papable dearth of entertainment in Lahore and Basant is one of the few events, when the majority of the people of Lahore can forget about the tedium of daily life and reconnect with their usually surpressed sense of humanity. There are too few events of such sort to lessen the sense of frustration, amongsts the people, and Basant, despite all its distractors (which includes me), does offer an emotional outlet to the people, which allows them to keep some semblance of sanity in their lives.

My only comment on the event is that, I wish it would not be so destructive in the loss of human lives. The manner in which Basant is practiced, though I can truly understand the sentiments expressed in the festival, it still needs to be regulated and coordinated better so that it does not cause annoyance to those, who chose to opt out of its celebrations. I do not support the view point, which seeks to put a religious tint over the event and likewise, I do not support those who wish to subject every one to its daily headaches of power trippings justified as a celebration.

There has to be a balance and as a nation, we have to learn to be tolerant, because if we force one view of over the other, regardless of which side of the argument one stands on the issue of Basant, we will be as gulity as those who assume an extreme position of rigidity on the meaning of the festival.

Ciao

a harsh review:

the poem tries to be too much. it negates the simplicity as well as the evolution of the festival.

perhaps i was out of place, but despite being a fauji-hater, i forgot to hate them this basant. secondly, basant is now an urban lahori festival. sarsoan ka saag and maki di roti may be great and all, but poems on basant (in this day and age) would be far more resonant if they contained in them lyrics of urban grandeur, sprawl, congestion, etc.

Well well well- i can so very well relate to it. If the society hasnt much to be happy about that doesnt justify the activties at basant. I was really pissed off to see so many cars from isloo and other parts in lahore in these two days and had it just been kites it would have been ok. people just dont feel and think about anything else around them. may it be sui or tsunami or anything else. I wonder whats wrong with us. I guess its the mind set

.... poets and party-poopers,

........first it was the bearded imbeciles and now the poets ......... temporal mian, for god`s sake, lighten up!.....

........... what does sui and waziristan have to do with having a grand old party ?........... god knows there is not too much to celebrate in that joyless land of poverty, god, misery and pestilence - so let the people of lahore have their few days of laughter without raining on their roof tops .........

let the wine and the tharra flow under the minarets
for they are brewing a fresh batch in ghoray shah
nuch ni! let the mujra go on till sun rise
let the ghunghroo drown out the rooster and the muezzin