How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Mullah

(NOTE: There are some truly historical pictures here, and I don't just mean the old Dawn images. I would highly recommend right-clicking and viewing them in full. i lack the tech know how to get them to fit within the margins.)

a pakistani born in the 1980s, and beyond, lives with an acute delusion.

it is not his fault. the country he grew up in had a monolithic response to his questions about history.

we are muslims.
we have always been muslims.
muslims are the best.
we hate india.
indians=hindus=non-muslims=evil bastards.
we are muslims.

this ethos made it the gospel truth that our entire culture, language, history, experience, knowledge has always been proudly muslim, proudly pious and proudly righteous, and nothing else.

thus when the average pakistani confronts questions about his past that seem to make no sense with the monolithic view - such as why was bangladesh created, or why ghalib was an alcoholic - his brain is confronted with nothingness.

nothing that he has been taught accounts for such questions. so he is left with a blank, inoperative mind which he inevitably fills up with delusions.

i used to blame this phenomenon on having just one tv channel, lack of education, lack of access to alternate opinions and a reactionary megalomanic dictator poisoning the country. but the advent of a smorgasbord of news channels, liberal and illiberal politicos, democrats and dictators and even the fucking internet has done jack all in countering these delusions. in fact, it has made monolithic view even stronger, thanks to constant repetition, and shame.

salman rushdie had it right - we are a nation built out of, on, around, within and comprised of shame. i guess the terror we feel of a vengeful god ready to obliterate our sinful asses makes us so ashamed of any action we commit that even if we felt it was ok, we repent it anyways.

one of the joys of being young of course, is that you can get away with not giving a fuck about doing things which you might feel ashamed of later. one of the sorrows of being old is that you often have to face up to the actions of your youth, and try and deal with them.

if you are equipped with a sound knowledge of yourself, of what you believe and your place in the world, you can perhaps deal with such things. if you are someone who has no tangible idea of their identity, and suffers from shame, guilt and amnesia, you become...

a middle aged former pakistani rock star.

exhibit A, of course, is JJ aka Junaid Jamshed. Tazeen has done a great job of ripping into him of late, and as such there is little need to do so here. but JJ, for those of you not in the know, was pakistan's first pop music superstar.

i mean the chicks loved him like he was paul AND john rolled into one. he sang songs about how it was an era for white chicks, how dark chicks were hotter, how his name was written with yours in some random jungle on a tree. he had his hair long, his eyes wide, and fame all around.

then he became fundo. but not just any fundo. he arrived as the messiah of the "Ashamed" - those who live immorally, have acquired wealth immorally, treat their daughters and their wives and their servants immorally yet want to feel like they're good people.

anyone in pakistan who has money, and access to the internet, has immoral stuff going on. like me - my household practices child labor. my ability to speak english gives me access to opportunities others with the same skills minus english speaking ability are barred from. the AC i run, the car i drive, the text messages i send are a massive waste and misallocation of resources, as the inequities in my country are so vast.

the Ashamed are just like me. we suffer from massive delusions. we wish to have something to make sense of their lives, to have an identity. unlike me, the Ashamed find this identity most conveniently in what passes off as religion in this country.

now the prophet, whose ankle lengths, mustache designs, ittar brands and holding-hands-during-prayer examples you all love to mimc was also a dude who roamed around in tattered clothes and lived in a hovel. which can be a bit problematic because we love our AC and our cars and our big house and our servants and our designer clothes and our imported accents.

so what do you do?

you turn to your Messiah. you say, look at him, he is rich, he runs his own boutique of overpriced, ugly clothing. he rakes in the cash for trumpeting potato chips as holy. and yet, he lives the life of the pious. i mean, he must be pious - fucking look at him. he has a beard and he sings naats right before iftar time on geo. that's proper pious. and if he says that being wealthy, and not giving a fuck about the poor, and using charity drives to cleanse your guilt is ok, then it's fucking ok, ok?

ironically, JJ himself turned to this life when confronted with nothingness in his mind. according to NFP, once the signs had become massive, JJ started getting lonely, confused and directionless. it didn't stop him from milking his fame for all it was worth, but you know, he was lost.

He went about as a man tormented by a sense of burdensome guilt; a guilt about something no-one, not even himself was able to define

and perhaps when he grew older, and felt ashamed at his sexual liaisons, his youthful abandon, his lack of responsibilities, he felt the need to make up for it. if he was normal, he might have done something worthwhile. instead he became who he is.

and he's not alone.

exhibit B, najam shiraz is a proper skitzo - at one time he was making videos showing severed penises, then he became a spokesperson for the vaguely cultish Ar-Rehman-Ar-Rahim. then he became a musician again. then a mullah. then sang a shit song whose melodramatic video tamely discussed rape and incest.

then there's Ali Haider, whose entire career was based on songs which had the gravitas of a sugar-free souffle. all his songs had him doing vaguely suggestive dance moves and singing about vaguely suggestive romantic dalliances. it was enough to get him laid, and little else.

when he grew up, he felt ashamed of the absolute shit he had put out in the world. had he been from somewhere else, he would have sought to redress it with better artistic output. in the land of shame, he came on alim-online to announce he was now a mullah.

so what does it mean? all pakistani rock stars, and all pakistanis, are doomed to being born again muslims who are at the cutting edge of hypocrisy.

NO.

there has been one badass mothafucker who has been rocking out ever since this whole shit began. he fronted the greatest paki band ever. and then when it became shit, he reinvented himself as a solo artist who actually put out music that was good.

ali azmat fucked them models, snorted that coke, spewed the bullshit, acted like a dick, took the money and ran - but he always kept rocking, and he never sold out.

wait a minute.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!