Letting Off Steam

I would wish to believe that an awful completely forgettable week, certain disturbing patterns of behaviour and a broken foot are excuses enough to allow for a mini-rant. I'm pretty sure this would seem to be terribly uninteresting (if at all coherent) reading. I am usually against blogs which end up resembling personal diaries/ letters to Agony Aunt, etc. But things have bothered me enough now and I need this to get them out of my system. What makes a doctor believe he has the right to lecture a patient in with a broken foot about sabhyata or Indian culture simply because they prefer to hop across to their office on their own? 'Self-help' apparently is a western concept (or so I was told). Our (making the usual 'us' versus 'them' division and making the grand assumption that I'm ready and willing to be included in any such collective identity) sanskriti teaches us to help others, and consequently taking help from others as well. The above, as far as I can see, is especially important for a young woman to understand in order to be cultured.** And, of course, a concept such as 'self help' is western (and synonymously a corrupting influence). For wouldn't it go against, for instance, the traditional conservative rhetoric behind helping pati-parmeshwar and letting him accept help? Wouldn't 'self help' actually then imply that women are not denied a sense of 'self' to begin with, which traditional roles of housekeeper, sati savitri seek to efface? What also gives people the right to discredit someone on the basis of their subject of interest? (Something incidentally which this particular doctor seemed to do. Missing classes is apparently not that big a deal if one doesn't happen to be a 'sciencie'.) Why must Humanities be considered inferior to the Sciences? Why must Art and Philosophy be so sidelined? Why must being a good student in school always imply potential for becoming a good engineer or doctor?

Perhaps so that doctors can make regressive statements on culture and such like? Or perhaps it benifits power structures and power hierarchies? Maybe if there are more doctors, engineers, software professionals, technicians, management consultants than thinkers, artisits, writers, philosophers, then the nature and existence of such structures os not contemplated, which perhaps implicitly perpetuates such structures? Artists and thinkers then are more important - not because they help build the world, like engineers do - but because they help explain what sort of world is being built. ^{___________________________________________} ** For the record, some bacteria are more cultured than I may ever be. I happen to be awfully proud of that fact.

Q & A

Sometimes asking questions is more important than answering them. Sometimes answers are urgently required. Sometimes the need is to find the adequate question; the appropriate 'Why?' Sometimes questions answer more than answers do. Sometimes answers can be questions. Sometimes there are no easy answers to simple questions. Sometimes difficult questions may have the easiest answers. But sometimes there are no answers. And sometimes - no questions.

On Manto and ‘Other’ Things

[I haven't yet been able to write what I'd originally intended to post. The following is something I wrote quite a while ago. I don't particularly subscribe now to everything said below, but I'm still somewhat attached to this piece. It is, of course, not a critical analysis of the writer’s work but, among several things, a personal response which was evoked by a re-reading of some of his writing.]

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My association with Sa'adat Hasan Manto began, unfortunately, only in a classroom. As an undergraduate student of literature, it was compulsory for me to study Partition literature and Manto was one of the prescribed writers. One lecture on, I was completely submerged into Manto’s world of thieves, madmen and prostitutes. His Toba Tek Singh was most tragic, his Thanda Ghosht most horrifying.

He is often set apart for his ‘objective’ characterisation. And what struck me most about him was his complete abstinence in delineating his characters in a particular manner solely on the basis of their religion/nationality. In class, the professor had passingly remarked about how ‘Manto stays with you forever’. She could not have been closer to the truth. Each side, in Manto’s work, mirrors the other, and questions the ‘reality’ of the Indo-Pak border.

Contrast this with what the children of this country are taught about the Partition at school. Notice how the history textbooks construct a story quite different. We, according to them, were “the good guys” and they (used on separate occasions to imply the British, Pakistanis, Muslims… ) were “the bad guys”. They were always responsible for all the 'bad, evil things' that happened to us. This difference between us and them is created at such a deep-rooted, intrinsic level and is accepted so passively that it becomes difficult, virtually impossible to unlearn this “truth”. Despite everything, there still remains a sense of mistrust of ‘the other’.

***

A few years back, among my list of internet friends included a Pakistani girl my age. We frequented the same discussion boards. We got talking and found we had much in common. We liked the same books, listened to the same music, cribbed about the same things. She, like me, had pre-occupations any teenage girl would be expected to: school, friends, television, movies, books, parties…

I was quite amazed how easy it was to talk to her. Inevitably, the Partition came up. We exchanged noted on how differently history was constructed on either side of the border. I toldher India’s Independence Day was on the 15 August, a day after theirs. She’d had no idea. It hadn’t been important. She told me about how they celebrate their Independence. (We discussed them as though they were different events.) I’d never before given it a thought.

All my life, I’d been conditioned into believing how all Pakistanis were ‘evil, twisted monsters’ whose sole purpose in life was to destroy our peace and ruin our happiness. And then I’d read her latest e-mail asking how school was, what movie I’d last watched, whether she’d be able to complete Anna Karenina within the next lifetime…

It was only this one-on-one interaction that initiated a change in my sensibility. I’m sure it was the same for her too. I’m aware that I can’t expect the same response from every Pakistani, just as it would be too idiotic to expect the same from every Indian. It did, however, teach me an important lesson. Instead of believing a ready made opinion, I discovered that I’d rather make up my own mind.

***

The fundamental point I’m trying to make (after a whole lot of digressions) is an old established one. It is the state machinery which relegates Pakistan(in this case) to the position of ‘the other’ in order to aid their self-definition, and thereby retain their authoritorial position. In other words, they are responsible for constructing Pakistan as ‘different’ from India - for if they both were ‘the same thing’, what point would it be for the state to exist?

[EDIT: I have managed to locate Manto's Toba Tek Singh online. It's a terrible translation though. But it was sadly the only one I could find.]