Breaking is the new black

This blog is an original work. all the politics are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to politics, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

i didn't spend all my life in the big city, as my name would suggest. i was born there, 

but i grew up in another area, a very wild, frontier like place.

it was known as mirc. 

everyone there had names you had never heard of. panty-utar-di, sinn3r, xcalibur, iNsAnE, 2hip4U etc.

but if no one knew who you were, you could be anyone. it was wonderful. 

but then the area become a bit run-down - there was a lot of violence there, and lots of dangerous, angry people started coming there.

so we had to move.

my parents got jobs in the city, and we moved there.

it was a simple, fun neighborhood - anyone could go anywhere, everyone's gates were always open. 

i spent my youth in orkut. it was a great time to be young. we roamed as we pleased, did what we wanted. 

but then things became bad. people started finding out things that were best hidden. and pictures started appearing. it was no longer safe there.

fortunately, things improved. for us.

we moved to a new place.

it was, finally, a chance for us to move bridge ke uss paar.

we moved, to facebook.

it was a very clean, organized area. and you decided who to meet, and who could see what.

finally, we were living in a safe area, where others could not harm us.

so everyone was happy there. always.

in facebook, every one was very happy, excited, going to new places, liking new things. 

and since you know everyone, they are free to always be there - going through your walls, and digging out your pictures.

and you are always happy.

i started hanging out this cool place, which had the best burger in town. it was called blogger. 

i really loved it. the burgers there were so delicious - especially the roast beef burger.

but then, they expanded, and added three family sections, and all the people who worked nearby would come for lunch. 

and sometimes get angry and scream in CAPS LOCK.

if i want burgers now, i go to this other place - wordpress. its got these lovely things no one else has, and the blogger clientele still haven't heard of them. 

of course, gangs of trolls still operate around these areas, but if they chase us we can run back to facebook.

so yeah. 

there, is this other place i have heard of.

its like in a place the british used to be at, but now its desi as well.

they have these amazing nights, which i wish to go to one day. they also have epic bitch fights, which i could do without. 

its like in the part of the city that used to be the elite area, until it got unsafe till it got super duper safe.

so now even i am one of the people who are deemed unsafe, and i haven't been there ever.

i can look out from the broken hotel across to it.

and maybe one day i'll be able to get in and live in twitter.

Burger ya Bun-Kebab

A blog I read recently showcased the behavior of young Pakistani males at a concert.

Some might find the scenes described as reprehensible, disgusting and downright creepy.

It also wouldn’t matter which side of ideological divide you found yourself in – men dancing suggestively with one another would offend both the self respecting liberal and mullah.

But to be honest, it is a bit of a rampant problem.

During my time at Pakistan’s premier business school, and alma mater of our previous Prime Minister, this was a recurring occurrence.

There would be post-exam “parties” and post-convocation concerts and beach plan parties and the ever present break time “dholkis.”

During these spontaneous celebrations, women were not allowed to dance. There was no ruling against it; instead, it was a social consensus. The way it worked was that if any girl got up to dance, all the others would shame her into sitting down, and if she dared continue, she would be labeled as ‘loose’, ‘gushtee’, ‘kunjaree’ ‘bay-sharam’ ‘bay-hayah’ etc etc.

Strangely enough, the lack of female presence on the dance floor lent an unbridled sexual explosion to the men. Perhaps to make up for the lack of women, the dancing men would become spectacularly unabashed. There would be vigorous chest wiggles, multiple partner grinding, one partner sliding his open palms slowly down the front of the other, grabbing hold of one’s own body and emitting loud hissing sounds while impersonating a snake slithering along the ground, coordinated thumkays, cat calls, whistles, drooling, licking, kissing, baring, sharing and everything else in between.

I am not making this up.

The question that arose repeatedly in my mind during these sweaty, testosterone choked extravaganzas was: Why?

After much mulling over the facts, there is a simple answer.

A dearth of entertainment.

I mean, what the hell is there to do?

(I think this problem of not having anything to do is fuelling two epidemics at least – the insane use of drugs by Pakistani youth, and the rise in religious Puritanism and so-called extremism. if you don’t have a range of activities, you find one and just go ape-shit with it. But I digress, unwillingly this time.)
The one source of entertainment most of us have access to is eating out.

(The form of entertainment everyone has theoretic access to is sex. But as the starved gyrations made clear, and as I argued in a previous blog, that form is also not available to everyone in the country.)

But even eating out has its controversies. In fact, in true Pakistani fashion, eating out has become a method of class differentiation.

Now I know people with intelligence would argue that no, eating out isn’t about class in Pakistan alone – there are swanky and rundown eateries all over the world.
But what makes us unique is that we use a particular gastronomic term to help establish differences in class – Burger.
To the uninitiated, burger is meant to define… well what does it define?

Is it a social and class difference, or is it a cultural marker?

In essence, burger is meant to signify someone who has burgers. Since the term has been around for donkey’s years, I am guessing that it originated during a time when burgers were a new-fangled concept in Karachi* and therefore referred to people who could afford to have them.

* (I switched from talking about Pakistan to Karachi because I now remember that burger is used generally in Karachi. During my time in Lahore I don’t remember it having the same level of usage, or acceptance.)

But defining who is a burger and who isn’t is notoriously tricky.

For starters, the opposite of burger can be logically understood as a bun-kebab. But it isn’t. The appropriate antonym is in fact ‘maila’ which translates into dirty. There is also “mummy-daddy” which may or may not be synonymous to burger. But the point is that the dichotomy of ‘burger-maila’ means that there is a difference beyond class that signifies who is a burger and who isn’t.

So we understand this difference to be cultural. Thus being a burger means employing a certain attitude towards life, having certain habits, speaking in a certain language, or in a certain accent, living a certain lifestyle etc.
But cultural definitions are notoriously difficult to outline. For some burgers are those that drink expensive brands of bottled waters, for others those who drink any form of bottled water, and for others still burgers are those that know why drinking bottled water makes a difference.
It is also difficult to demarcate it according to where you live – there are as many people who can fit a definition of burger in Gulshan and Nazimabad as there are those who can be described as mailas in Clifton.

And every time you set a certain definition, someone who falls victim to it will cry out against it.

So if burgers are people who studied abroad, you will have a lot of foreign educated folks claiming that it’s not true, they’re not burgers. Fine, so we will make it about those who eat out in Zamzama, until you hear that eating at Pizza Hut or for that matter Copper Kettle is really not the same as eating out at Okra.
Speaking in English can be a sure shot way of defining who is a burger and who isn’t. But even that got me thinking – only 8-10% of the country has Urdu as their mother tongue. So if we expand our definition, Urdu speakers would also be burgers.

Why?

Because ultimately a burger is a way of pointing out someone who has more than you, someone who is part of the exclusive elite parasites we all hate.

Now maybe you find the Urdu argument above weak. But it would mean that you would also be known as a burger then, because this blog ain’t written in Ghalib’s language.
But I know for a fact that people detest being labeled as burgers.* In fact, most of the people I know go to great lengths to point out that they are not burgers. They will point to the Indian movies they watch, or the desi eateries they frequent, or the fact that they are friends with their menial laborers, or drivers or cooks, or that they know dirty jokes in Urdu, or that they don’t have an aversion to eating ‘un-hygienic food,’ or that they don’t live in Defence, or that they got into fist fights, or that they don’t listen to what their parents tell them all as evidence that they are not burgers.

*(One example of bucking this trend was the ‘street-gang’ BUDDOK, which allegedly stood/stands for Burgers-United-Dopers-Drinkers-Of-Karachi.)

Yet I have spoken to others, not in our strata of society, who would define burger simply as someone who wears pants, or studied in a co-education school, or gave their O’ levels, or drives a car.

And friends of mine who refuse to be known as burgers are people who have their own personal room in their houses in a city where 60% don’t even have formal shelters, let alone a house. They have their own TV and AC while most of their city-mates find the cost of rotis unbearable. They don’t ever vote, and generally support the army. They have, and know how to use, computers beyond the level of signing onto MSN. And even if they didn’t study abroad, they did study at universities which are the most exclusive in the country, even if they were full of hip-shaking homeboys.

So does it even matter?

If you think it does, consider this fact.

The best burgers in Karachi are at Chips and Mr. Burger - Desi outlets.
So therefore, does defining someone as a burger serve any purpose other than ripping open cleavages within our society?

Do we really need to pull apart, especially at this time in our history?

No we don’t, but the reason I wrote this blog is this.

WE ARE ALL BURGERS.

You, me, and everyone we are friends with.

Because in a country with 70% of the population living below the poverty line, we who have access to computers and are literate are the burgers. Even if you traveled in a bus, or have relatives in Baldia, or like cricket more than football, you are a burger.

You and I are part of the people who wield all the power, who have all the money, who live the good life, who have what so many others don’t. Yes, you know people who are outrageously wealthier than you, but that doesn’t mean you are not a burger. You are. Don’t deny it. In fact, stop denying it. Even if you dream in Urdu and not English, you are a juicy, warm, luscious, cheese soaked garnished and spiced burger.
So please.

Every time you have a problem with the country, stop to think about how you’re part of the problem. Cuz you are.

Every time you are bemoaning about how corrupt and lousy our elites are, stop and look at the mirror. Cuz you’re bitching about yourself.

Every time you think this country is going to the dogs, check to see if you’re barking, cuz its all going to you.

No, you are not middle class. You are not upper-middle class. You are not middle-upper-middle-class.

You are a burger. I am a burger.

And we need to shut the fuck up and realize this fact.

Stand up, and take responsibility. It’s your fault. And you can put it right.

Queues of Circular Complaints

Many civilizations had created numbers, and methods of counting. But when the ancient Hindus introduced the number zero, it marked a radical shift in human understanding. back when mathematics was still intriguing enough to truly belong to the realm of mystics, the number zero offered a possibility at once frightening and mysterious.

for starters, numbers were symbols used to denote a certain sum of objects, regardless of the nature of the objects. two sticks, three bushels of wheat, five cows etc.

but what was zero denoting?

moreover, when you factor in division, which had been around since --- it gets even more forbidding towards comprehension. try and divide zero by any number, and you still get zero. try and divide any number by zero, and you get infinity.
infinity.

whoa dude.

i always thought the reason behind zero's mystique is partly due to the fact that it is an oval - 0. as in its a circular shape. and because circles are the grand daddies of symbols in relation to their contribution towards understanding a conceptualization of reality.

Circles go a long way towards explaining the most mysterious of humanity's thoughts. Circles are the best examples of divinity. for the plebians, consider Lion King, the song circle of life.What brought me to circles was when i was considering classes - it seems that if you view classes as a spectrum ranging from

absolutely fucking poor - really poor - poor - middle class - upper middle class - rich - super rich

then you have the following range of classes. now if you take this string and make it into a circle, the first thing you will notice is that the super rich and the absolutely fucking poor come next to one another. in other words, the same point marks the end of one category and the beginning of another.

for the bottom of the barrel, access to any entertainment which doesn't involve sex is the realm of the well off. the situation improves very slightly as you move up, accentuated ever more by the fact that the Islamic Republic offers very few avenues of entertainment as it is.

but when you do move up, eating out becomes the primary entertainment source.
in fact, you need to jump up quite a few more notches to arrive at the strata which can afford forms of entertainment that are not based on eating.

one such popular outlet is being the member of a 'club.' like most things pakistani, this is a colonial endowment.

now in karachi, there are several clubs. maybe you belong to kda officers club, or the kw&sb club near karsaz. people who are at such clubs probably tell their neighbors, friends, relatives with great pride about the facilities available at their club. the people they tell are usually not part of such, or any club.

but then those who belong to maybe sunset club, or dha club in phase II, can smugly look down upon them. because after all, those clubs are literally no more than one pit of water posing as a pool, several dilapidated machines pretending to be a gym, and precious else.

but sunset, dha, beachview types are something much better. these clubs came around in what were at varying times the hot, exciting new localities in karachi. they had tennis courts, and courteous waiters, tambola nights, bridge clubs, and for some, the presence of retired generals and brigadiers which certainly afforded a sense of respectability.

but they, even at their prime, could not really penetrate the aura of something like karachi club, or its immediate superior, the gymkhana. these are genuine heirs to the claim of genuine, having of course been around for so damn long, and being gestated in the ideas of the white man, and having long flowing generations within their membership lists. so people from beachview, sunset etc could look down upon the KDA types, but certainly not on KG. and so the ladder of snobs added a few more rungs.

anyways, eventually the KG types were dying a slow death, primarily because 'certain' ethnicities began dominating their clientele. and the problem with that was that those ethnicities had displayed great social mobility - they were not part of the glorious people who had formed the initial crust of the pie that had afforded Gymkhana its prestige. when this anomaly began to exist i.e. exclusive clubs that had lost their aura of exclusivity, a new swathe of clubs arrived, mainly in newer parts of defence - phases V-VIII. these clubs were part of the military's resurgence, were big and promised all sorts of new entertainment, such as enormous domed pools where women constrained by the perils of morality could swim in peace. later, newer, more exclusive clubs also opened up in the hinterlands of the city.

what was different about these clubs was that every year there was a new club that was more exclusive than the last. marina, creek, golf, country, arabian etc etc. each club's exclusivity was determined mainly by the price of its membership, and consequently the clientele was of a more agreeable nature in terms of their affluence and place in society.

people who were members of this club could gleefully sneer at everyone else, because their club was where it was at. they could benignly, maliciously, explicitly or implicitly look down upon each and every other member of the club going heathen. all except one group.
members of sindh club.

when general napier captured the province for the brits, he sent a brief telegram, allegedly because telegrams were priced according to the word count, but i find it unlikely to think that napier was such a stingy little fellow.
his brief telegram was limited to one word - peccavi. its latin, meaning "I have sinned." geddit?

that's a good way of understanding sindh club, because it represents the most exclusive facet of a reality forged primarily out of the idea of exclusivity - the idea of the social club. and the reason peccavi goes well for it is because in any society, the most exclusive of the elite are associated with the most extreme varieties of debauchery and decadence.
i have no statistical studies to show whether that is actually a fact, especially where members of sindh club are concerned, so i will leave that to the reader.

the reason i spoke originally about circles is that when you come to this most exalted of levels, you are out of people to look up to. you can only look down. which of course has many advantages, but gets boring after a while. it also means that the plethora of entertainment available to you loses its luster and sex, which each preceding class had sought to replace as the sole provision of entertainment, is once again back on the menu*.

at the risk of extreme generalization, it stands to reason that the super rich society is where there is the most unabashed hedonism. and from there we arrive at the fact that the only two classes in karachi enjoying the most sex are the top and bottom classes.

moreover, the ones having the least sex are the middle classes, the ones most removed from the point where the best and worse meet.

so now you, the reader, has begun to digest what i was saying, and you are now mentally refuting some of the points i have made. there will be some who will argue that the implication that hedonism equals the super rich is completely, or mostly wrong. however, since this is the blogosphere, i don't expect that sentiment to arrive.

instead, most people would agree. they would also focus on the level of clubs directly above the ones they are members of, or are able of becoming members of, and rail against them with great abandon. they would mock them as the bourgeois, the burgers, the blissfully unaware, the bane of our society. they would all deride how class driven our society is, and proclaim with great scorn and disgust that this is why our country is in the state it is in.

what would escape most is that the fact that they are somewhere amongst the hallowed classes, as their access to the internet, and their ability to come this far on this post implies. and as such they are an extremely integral part of the problem they have just complained of.

but pakistanis will never see that. they care far more about making sure that they have someone to bitch about. someone to hate. someone to complain about. which is why they will always find someone below them that they can look down upon, and someone above them which they can direct their derision towards. the only way that is possible is if we find ourselves in a circle. because a liner path will always have an absolute end, but a circle has no end or beginning.

what pakistanis would hate is if they had no one to complain about. because to be able to complain about someone indicates that the person on whom the complaint is being directed upon has the responsibility to make things better. or to make changes. you can not sit all day complaining until you are at the mercy of someone else. if you are not, then you won't be complaining all day because rationality would dictate that you do something to change whatever you are complaining about.
it is why we love to sit and blame the feudal landlords, the Army, the US or India, or the CIA, or Israel, the Shias, the Wahabis, the Taliban, the Memons, the Bengalis, the Jews, the Jews, and of course, the Jews.
because if someone whispered to us that we are our own masters, it would immediately mean that we have the responsibility to clean up our own shit, and stop complaining.

you can not complain if you are in control.

and that is something that no pakistani would ever want. we are far more content to be part of the order, neither being at the absolute top, or at the absolute bottom. because being at the top means no more complaining.

but what about the bottom? why avoid that? doesn't it allow freedom of unbridled complaints?

well, complaints arise out of spite. otherwise they are just lamentations, such as those that come out of mourning. you lament a death, you can't really complain about it much.

and spite can not survive if you have no one to look down upon. because spite and conceit must drink from that same cesspool of shit.

so you can't be bottom, and you can't be on top.

we're pakistanis - we're glad we've got our own country, but please rule it for us so that we can bitch about you. please.
*(it is for this reason that many of this class complain tirelessly about the country, and wish to move abroad, but never do. mainly because most of them would lose their exalted status in another country, and as such are infinitely more content to be here. if they were to ever stop complaining, they would immediately stop belonging, and if they don't belong to their class, then their class loses its value to them, and they become empty of all meaning, because their humanity died a long time ago.)