As a TV anchor, I'll readily admit that our electronic media neglects covering Pak-Afghan relations. Why? Because it will not bring in ratings.

This is also part of the reason why Pakistan’s biggest TV channels have few to no correspondents in Kabul or other cities in Afghanistan.

In fact, it is not even considered ‘newsworthy’ to report on our neighbour unless either of the two states (always better when both) indulge in a blame game on the security front.

I decided I would address this gap by visiting Kabul myself. I wanted to learn more about the perceptions of Afghan people. I also wanted to meet with politicians and social workers to understand the trust deficit between our two countries.

Landing

First impression: the Kabul International Airport looked like a US air base. I was immediately approached by a member of the airport staff who started conversing in Urdu; this put me instantly at ease. Unfortunately, this welcome was short-lived as I reached the security checkpoint.

I said I was Pakistani. They said I should remove my shoes. My luggage was carefully scrutinised. And there was a very, very long list of questions. This was repeated at all subsequent security checks.

And this was just the start. I stayed in Afghanistan for eight days. My time there consisted mostly of short interviews, off record and on record interactions, and some rather alarming exchanges with sources who requested anonymity, of course.

Each call that I made to coordinate my scheduled interviews carried an often hostile undertone.

‘…I am a Pakistani journalist.

No, I am not an ISI agent.

I am in Afghanistan for work.

I am a journalist…’

A specific hatred

The current mood in Kabul is quite anti-Pakistan, or to be more precise, anti-ISI. Most Afghans do not hate Pakistan per se, but the ISI, they staunchly believe, supports the Afghan Taliban and has vested interests in destabilising their country. While the ISI was berated by many, whenever I asked for specifics, I only got half-stories, hearsay and no evidence.

Examine: ISI officer involved in Kabul parliament attack, claims Afghan intelligence

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) and the government of Afghanistan blame Pakistan for almost every security dilemma.

Explore: At UN, Afghan leader calls on Pakistan to crack down on terror outfits

Indian intelligence, on the other hand, has close relations with Afghan intelligence. I learn that being on good terms with the Indian embassy in Kabul can really help you gain the trust of the Afghan interior ministry.

On the condition of anonymity, a senior politician (a jihadi in the past) told me that the national unity government in Afghanistan did not understand the importance of 'good relations' with the ISI. He stressed that Afghanistan needed to prioritise its relations in the region, which just wasn't happening.

In his view, Pakistan was not handling the matter of talks very well either. What they are doing under the table must be stopped, he said cryptically, before adding that the NDS and the government did not trust him and that he openly admitted to being pro-Pakistan.

This politician told me about his private meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He said, “Ghani panics a lot,” and that the president could not bear pressure. He further said that the MOU between Afghan and Pakistani intelligence was not impacting the trust deficit between the ISI and the NDS. For him, the solution lay in the policies and decision-making power of the Afghan government; the frequent change in diplomatic and political inclinations was damaging to foreign policy.

The Afghan journalist

I met a few Afghan journalists who wanted to work in Islamabad, but security clearance procedures were proving too troublesome.

Afghan journalist Farid speaks to the author about the presidential elections in Afghanistan. — DawnNews screengrab

A journalist is considered an agent in both states.

Afghan TV channels do not have any bureaus in Islamabad, and proposals for their establishment are lying in the dust. Officials from the Afghan foreign ministry told me that they had thrice requested Pakistan’s Minister for Information, Pervaiz Rasheed that they wanted to work with Pakistan's state TV on positive image-building (an effort which could be extended to private channels), but they have yet to receive a response.

The journalist community in Kabul is of the view that the two countries should build better relations with each other. In their view, miscreants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are actively working to prevent this.

I was told that whenever journalists from Pakistan come to work here, they are harassed by the NDS. I believe Afghan journalists must face the same problem in Pakistan.

Security and military reasons aside, I discovered another dimension of Afghanistan's tilt towards India when I learned that over 150 Indian journalists are currently working in Afghanistan. You will hardly find any Pakistani journalists working on important stories.

With this kind of people-to-people contact, no wonder Afghans trust Indians. For my own security, I was suggested not to reveal my nationality while interacting with the local public, though I did not follow that advice.

The Afghan social worker

I also met Afghan women social activists, who wanted bold decisions from their government. They did not believe in enforced brotherhoods and wanted a globalised, progressive and modern Afghanistan. They did however think that a pro-Pakistan attitude was never useful to them and that Pakistan had actually used them.

Fatana Gilani speaks to the author about empowering women through education. — DawnNews screengrab

Fatana Gilani is a famous social activist who has been working for women empowerment for 30 years. She runs more than 50 vocational institutes for women; empowering Afghan women through education.

She said, "I love the women of Pakistan. We share the same culture. We live so close. But what about the role of the Pakistani government? Why does Pakistan support Taliban? Who created the Taliban? My efforts for women will not stop, but at the same time, I cannot ignore the factors which hinder our progress. Pakistan should not support the Taliban."

I even got access to the Afghan Taliban, though it wasn't easy, as they avoid talking to women. The aged man spoke of the Islamic State, the threat it posed, and how Pakistan may resultantly lose its influence on strategic policy in the region.

When I spoke to Afghan government officials, they avoided the camera, and the reason was straightforward: “It won't be right to give an interview to a Pakistani journalist right now.” I got diplomatic (empty) answers to most of my questions.

For the Afghan government, a porous border is not the bone of contention; it is the alleged sanctuaries of Afghan Taliban in Pakistan which are unacceptable. My observation is that they have no solution for border management, and it’s not even a major issue for them.

Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta, former foreign minister and national security adviser to former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shared the same sentiments.

Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta, former foreign minister and national security adviser to former Afghan President Hamid Karzai. — DawnNews screengrab

“Pakistan is interfering in the internal matters of Afghanistan,” he said, citing a serious concern regarding Afghan Taliban crossing over from Pakistan. The ex-foreign minister further said that he was aware of the operation being carried out by the armed forces of Pakistan, but he believed it was not against the terrorists who attack them.

I asked him if Pakistan was indeed stabbing Afghanistan in the back, how would he explain the millions of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan? To this, he responded with surprising gratitude, thanking the Pakistani nation and the government for keeping and facilitating the refugees.

Take a look: Afghan refugees ‘all praise’ for Pakistan

Pakistani ambassador in Kabul Ibrar Hussain believes Pakistan cannot open so many fronts at the same time as the country is already fighting the internal threat of terrorism in Pakistan. — DawnNews screengrab

Meanwhile, responding to Afghan allegations like the above, Pakistani ambassador in Kabul Ibrar Hussain was of the view that Pakistan cannot open so many fronts at the same time, as the country is already busy fighting the internal threat of terrorism in Pakistan.

Pakistan is committed for peace and prosperity in Afghanistan, he said, which is why various landmark projects funded by the Pakistan government, like a hospital (US$60 million) and a boys hostel/school (US$ 10 million), are underway.

An under-construction hospital funded by Pakistan. — DawnNews screengrab

Pakistan and Afghanistan are losing valuable time and energy in their altercations against each other. Ufortunately, all this is happening at a policy-making level, and the effect is trickling down to innocent citizens, which in turn fuels widespread suspicion and hatred.

To sum up my sojourn, I would say that the ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan are complex, but can be overcome with rationale rather than emotional responses based on the past. Those in Kabul, and those in Islamabad need to step outside of the bubbles they have decided to live in.

I turned my head away for merely a second and that was enough for a woman to sneak in front of me at the Immigration Counter at the Islamabad Airport. "Welcome to Pakistan," I whispered.

Her brazen disregard for discipline and order was surprising. Only a few hours ago, she had diligently lined up at the security desk at the Pearson Airport in Toronto.

She generously exchanged smiles and pleasantries with the gora security staff. She sipped Tim Horton's coffee and munched on donuts as she kept swiping her face with napkins ensuring crumbs were not stuck to the corners of her mouth.

But, that was Toronto, this is Pindi. All bets and fake veils of courtesy are off.

At 46, I am wise enough to know not to remind a woman of her civic responsibilities in public, especially after she had deliberately jumped the queue. But the British-born young man of Pakistani heritage standing right behind me was less forgiving.

"WTF!", he exclaimed loudly.

The woman ignored the protesting young man. Her teenager daughter, who had also appeared from nowhere, turned around and gave us a dirty look. For a second, I felt it was our fault, and being a middle-aged married man, I was ready to apologise. But the young British behind me was relentless. He preempted me from apologising and officiating the transgressions by the mother-and-daughter team.

The woman official, sitting across the counter, witnessed the commotion, but still chose to entertain the mother and daughter, who produced their green passports for inspection. That mistake, my young British friend was not willing to ignore.

"This counter is for those travelling on foreign passports, you can't take their green passports," he screamed at the immigration official, who only then – and very reluctantly I must add – asked the mother and daughter to relocate to the next counter.

I moved ahead triumphantly. I had, thanks to the Bradford-born and Mirpur-bred young man, prevailed in the war of nerves and preserved the dignity of a queue in Pakistan.

Pakistanis of all creeds, castes, and political persuasions are unified in their disdain for queues. Airports, banks, bus stops, hospitals, Nadra outposts...Pakistanis do not hesitate to jump queues at any of these places.

Also read: In line, out of line?

But this grassroots movement manifests itself even in the highest echelons of power, when parliamentarians start agitating against the incumbents within months of a fresh election. Waiting for their turn in opposition has been too onerous.

How is it possible that children in Pakistan are able to clear the primary grades without learning to form a queue? It is not something you learn at a university. In fact, if you have not learnt the art of waiting for your turn and sharing in the kindergarten, you have probably missed the opportunity to learn a life skill.

While Pakistanis burden their children with ideology-laced curriculum from a very young age, they ignore teaching them how to be good citizens.

In Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, my children learn the basic lessons in civility at school. Their teachers are not consumed by a two, or three, or a four-nation theory trying to explain how Canadians are different from Americans. Instead, the children are taught to walk in a line as the four-year olds trek around the school.

When they visit a farm or a library, they are taught to be quiet, observant and patient, as they take turns reading a favourite book or observing a favourite animal. By the time the children in North America and Europe graduate from high schools, they have already mastered the very art of waiting for their turn.

No wonder, even on the congestion-ridden arterials in the developed world, we witness long lines, but not chaos.

It might look simple, but it will require a concerted effort by the ordinary folks at the ticket counters, and the politicians in the Parliament, to get in line with civility and wait for their turns.

http://images.dawn.com/news/1173996/misogyny-and-sleaze-how-jpna-heralds-a-naya-pakistan

The annihilated

Many of his concerts usually fell apart and turned into drunken brawls. Aziz Mian would purposely work up the audience towards a state in which many in the crowd ended up losing all sense of order and control.

He would often explain this as being a state of mind from where the brawling men could be hurled into the next state; a state from where they could leap to strike a direct spiritual connection with the Almighty.

A journalist reviewing one such Aziz Mian concert in Karachi in 1975 (for Dawn Magazine) described him as ‘the Nietzschean qawaal!’

By the late 1970s, Aziz Mian had risen to become an iconic qawaal in Pakistan. More so an iconoclast qawaal rather, because of the way he often shattered various long-held traditions of the Qawaali music genre. In the process, he developed and honed a style that was uniquely his own.

Qawaali in South Asia was inspired by devotional music of Sufi orders of Persia and Turkey in which the beauty and power of the Almighty and his creations were sung to the tune of hypnotic and repetitive music and whirling dances.

The genre came to be known as Qawaali when, from the 12th century onwards, it came into contact with the classical music traditions of South Asia and the devotional music of the dominant religions found in the region.

Here, it adopted the many musical instruments developed by Amir Khusro, the brilliant 13th century musician and poet in the courts of India’s Muslim Delhi Sultanate (12th-15th century CE).

A 13th century miniature showing Amir Khusro teaching pupils music that evolved into becoming the Qawaali.

In Persia and Turkey, it had a tradition of being restricted to expressing the inner workings of Sufi orders, but by the 16th century (in South Asia), Qawaali also began to reflect the emotional and devotional dynamics of the populist culture and milieu that had begun to develop around the cults of living Sufi saints, and more so, around the shrines of the saints who had passed away.

These shrines, that today can be found across both India and Pakistan, were (and still are) visited not only by the region’s Muslims, but also by Hindus and Sikhs.

There was a history of conflict between Sufism and the more orthodox strands of Islam in which Sufis rejected the strict ritual and doctrinal regimentation of orthodoxy, accusing it of divorcing faith from its spiritual core and soul.

The orthodox ulema retaliated by condemning Sufism for introducing ritualistic and philosophical innovations (biddat) in the faith.

They also scorned at the culture that began to develop around Sufi shrines in which common peasants and homeless men and women indulged in music and drugs.

The Sufis responded by suggesting that the shrines were the only places in the realm where men and women of all creeds, castes and classes were welcome, and where the poor could find some food and shelter.

Devotees performing the ‘dhamaal’ outside a Sufi shrine in Sindh, Pakistan.

Muslim empires of the region, from the Delhi Sultanate to the Mughal Empire, employed a number of Islamic scholars and ulema. But knowing well the influence and the popularity that Sufi saints enjoyed among the masses, the Sultans and Emperors were more inclined towards favouring the saints.

However, not all Sufi orders were always entirely copious, pluralistic and accommodating.

Nevertheless, the popular memory in this context is still more about Sufi saints who had abandoned the world of material well-being and power politics, and isolated themselves to acquire a unique spiritual link with the Almighty.

Thoughts of most ancient Sufis reach us through the poetry that they wrote and then composed with the help of certain ragas. This points to the fact that these Sufis were mostly poet-musicians.

Some of their thoughts are clearly subversive and anti-establishment.

Many of them claimed to have had a special spiritual connection with God. It is often believed (by their devotees) that they struck such a link by roaming among the masses and then after transcending regimented religious rituals, they retreated inwards to touch those parts of their mind and heart that were not so well known or explored.

From here, they claimed, they could actually experience the presence of the Almighty – a presence whose power and beauty may render a mortal man senseless, and annihilate his ego, but also (or thus) make him one with his creator.

The annihilation process in this context (fana) was the price the saints were willing to pay and often (in their poetry) described the procedure as passion-play demonstrated by a lover willing to annihilate his lesser self to be close to his elusive, pristine beloved.

Sufi musical and literary genres (such as the Qawaali) are abundant with such narratives. This narrative, when it became a centerpiece of Qawaali, also suggests that after transcending conventional religious ritualism, the faculty used by Sufi saints to make that ultimate link with the Almighty was about an ‘inner spiritual knowledge’ heightened by beautiful poetry sung to the tune of passionate music.

According to the same narrative, the Sufis who had made that link, seemed intoxicated by their distinct, all-encompassing love of the Almighty; like a man drunk on wine and (thus) unhindered by the inhibitions imposed by those who limit a man’s potential to fully realize the spiritual and intellectual faculties that the Almighty has bestowed upon him.

This is another aspect of the Sufi narrative that the Qawaali enthusiastically embraces. But this aspect of the Qawaali purposely and teasingly remains ambiguous.

For example, a verse of such a Qawaali that directly praises the consumption of wine, is then followed by a verse that treats the act of this consumption (and its effects) as a metaphor of an uninhibited love for the Almighty.

Spirits in the material world

The Qawaali remained to be a popular musical genre with the masses in South Asia, but its first real manifestation as a modern and commercially viable art-form emerged in Pakistan in the 1970s.

Its popularity in this respect was squarely based on the rise of two qawaals: Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers.

These two not only aroused a keen interest in Qawaali across the classes, but also became two of the most commercially successful qawaals, whose exploits were later matched by the mighty Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the 1990s.

Their greatest achievement was to ignite a passion for Qawaali among urban audiences who had largely abandoned the traditional Farsi (Persian) Qawaali of the Muslim imperial courts, and the Punjabi Qawaali of Sufi shrines in rural and semi-rural areas of the Punjab province.

In this regard, what Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers also did was to fully form Qawaali sung in Urdu – Pakistan’s national language.

Qawaali was already a popular music genre in rural Punjab. It was mainly performed at Sufi shrines. Moving ahead, the Sabri Brothers and Aziz Mian created an urban audience for Qawaali. The audience they appealed to belonged to the metropolitan middle and lower-middle-classes.

The first to experiment with the idea were the Sabri Brothers, led by Ghulam Farid Sabri and Maqbool Ahmed Sabri. They recorded Mera Koi Nahi Hai Terey Siwa (‘I have no one but you’) for EMI-Pakistan in 1958.

Sung in Urdu, the qawaali is an intense ode to the Almighty. The qawaali was an instant hit and was received well by urbanites who were reintroduced to a genre of South Asian music that (over the decades) they had been largely divorced from.

At the time of the release of the Sabri Brothers’ first famous Urdu qawaali, Aziz Mian was a 16-year-old school boy with the knack for always getting into trouble and indulging in acts of petty vandalism and brawling. His family had moved to Pakistan from the Indian city of Meerut after the creation of the country in August 1947.

He came from a musical family and was already learning eastern classical music when he arrived in Pakistan with his family. Whereas the Sabri Brothers had settled in Karachi, Aziz Mian’s family lay its new roots in Lahore.

Aziz Mian’s parents became regular visitors to the city’s famous shrine of Sufi saint, Data Ganj Baksh, and Aziz Mian would often accompany them.

But Aziz Mian had a troubled youth. At an early age, he had begun to drink and smoke and became hooked on chewing tobacco-laced paans (beetle leaf). He would also often get into trouble for committing acts of vandalism and hooliganism as a teen.

Worried by his behaviour, his father encouraged him to learn Qawaali from a group of established qawaals who regularly performed Punjabi qawaalis at the Data shrine. Aziz Mian agreed, but also decided to join a college in Lahore where he continued to get into trouble. Though a rabble-rouser and an extremely restless personality, he was considered a bright student by his teachers.

In 1963, he joined the Punjab University from where he bagged a master’s degree in Urdu literature and also studied Arabic and Persian. It was here that he decided to become a dedicated qawaal. He later told an interviewer, he saw singing qawaalis as the only way he could have fulfilled his restless quest to find some spiritual meaning in his riotous existence.

He began to perform in front of small crowds at private functions. Visitors at the Data shrine would often see a young man with long, unkempt hair, colourful kameez-shalwar and wild eyes, pacing up and down. It was Aziz Mian.

To them, he could as well have been one of the many faqeers (spiritual vagabonds) that are often found at Sufi shrines in South Asia. But of course, he was different. He was articulate in his speech, and could speak fluent Punjabi, Urdu, Persian and English.

In those days (mid/late 1960s), Aziz Mian was mostly singing traditional folk qawaalis in Punjabi and in Persian, but after listening to the Sabri Brothers sing in Urdu (on radio) and then seeing them slowly gathering a whole new audience, Aziz Mian became restless again.

He didn’t want to sing traditional qawaalis anymore. He received qawaali lyrics from some lesser-known Urdu poets, but he rejected them, suggesting that the lyrics did not reflect the nature of his quest.

He tried to get in touch with the poets who were authoring Urdu lyrics for the Sabri Brothers, but he wasn’t taken seriously. Then in 1970, while sitting at the Data shrine, Aziz Mian began writing lyrics himself.

A decade later, while performing the qawaali that he had written at the shrine, Aziz Mian told the audience: ‘It was an evening just like this one. I was sitting at the Data shrine and conversing with God. I was praying for my well-being, when suddenly I began to be showered by a burst of words. I forgot what I was praying about and started to write down the emerging words right there …’

Thanks to the growing popularity of the Sabri Brothers, EMI-Pakistan had already given Aziz Mian some studio time to cut an album. But it would be the qawaali that he wrote at the shrine and then set to music that would go on to become his breakthrough moment.

The qawaali was titled Mein Sharaabi (I am a drunkard). On Sharaabi (first released in 1973), Aziz Mian also discovered and stamped a style of writing, composing and singing that he would retain for the rest of his career.

He embraced the approach of the ‘quarrelsome Sufis’ of yore, who, in their peculiar states of mind, would hold brassy passionate dialogues with God, punctuated with a series of paradoxical questions.

Aziz Mian would start slowly, break into a catchy chorus with his ‘qawaali party’ (qawaali group), and then suddenly break out with a series of argumentative verses in a blistering display of speed-talking. He would address God, complaining how he loved Him but felt that he wasn’t being loved back; or why such a perfect entity such as God would create such an imperfect creature like man!

Aziz Mian was a heavy drinker, and like various famous Sufi poets, he often used the state (and concept) of drunkenness as a metaphor to exhibit the inexplicable effect the love for the Almighty had on him. But he would also praise alcohol on its own terms.

With the success of the Mein Sharaabi album, Aziz Mian rose to become one of the region’s leading qawaals.

Cover of Aziz Mian’s breakthrough album, 'Mein Sharaabi' (1973)

As mentioned earlier, many of his concerts used to disintegrate into becoming drunken brawls when Aziz Mian would work up the audience to such a frenzy that many among the crowd would lose all sense of order. Aziz Mian saw the commotion as a reflection of his inner self and/or of a state of turmoil that eventually leads a man to annihilate internal and external inhibitions and pave the way for him to construct a special bridge that connected him with the raw beauty and power of the Almighty.

Both Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers also benefited from the cultural policies of the populist regime of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971-77).

The policies instructed state media to regularly telecast folk music and Qawaali on TV and radio, especially during a weekly show (on TV) called Lok Virsa, which became a huge hit.

Lok Virsa was also responsible for introducing (to mainstream audiences), folk musicians such as Mai Bhagi (Sindhi), Faiz Mohammad Baloch (Balochi), Tufail Niazi (Punjabi), Allan Fakir (Sindhi), Reshma (Saraiki), Pathanay Khan (Saraiki), Zarsanga (Pashto), etc.

Brawling giants

Compared to Aziz Mian, the Sabri Brothers were a lot more melodic and hypnotic in their style. Soon, a rivalry began to develop between them because both were catering to the same market. It was a brand new market made up of new Qawaali fans in the country’s urban areas.

The Brothers would often mock Aziz Mian for being vehement and lacking melody. But Aziz Mian went on honing his unique style.

Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers both stood for the same Sufi traditions and narratives that had developed in the region. But the Brothers disapproved of Aziz Mian’s open praise of intoxicants in his qawaalis (even though alcohol was often consumed at the Sabri Brothers’ concerts as well).

The Brothers thought Aziz Mian was uncouth and exploiting the Qawaali genre for quick fame.

The Sabri Brothers

The rivalry between Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers took a more aggressive turn when, in 1975, both released their biggest hits to date.

Aziz Mian extended Mein Sharaabi by adding another 30 minutes to the qawaali until it became an almost 50-munute epic called Teri Soorat / Mein Sharaabi.

Teri Soorat/Mein Sharaabi – Aziz Mian (1975):

The album, released by EMI-Pakistan, sold over a million copies (LPs and cassettes) within a matter of months.

The same year, the Sabri Brothers released Bhar deh jholi ('Fill my bag') that also became a massive seller, especially when it was chosen as a song for a 1975 Urdu film Bin Baadal Barsaat, starring famous Pakistani film actor Muhammad Ali and actress Zeba.

The Brothers also appeared in the mentioned film, singing the qawaali at a shrine where Ali’s character is shown with his wife (Zeba), pleading the Sufi saint buried there to ask God to grant them a child.

Bhar Deh Jholi – Sabri Brothers (1975):

The Pakistan film industry was hitting a peak in the mid-1970s. So Aziz Mian too appeared in a film called, License. In it, he could be seen performing an abridged version of Mein Sharaabi.

In early 1976, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, invited Aziz Mian to perform for him in Islamabad and share a drink. Aziz Mian gladly obliged.

The same year, while commenting on the Brothers during a concert, Aziz Mian lamented that the Brothers were too conventional and that their spiritual connection with the Almighty was not as stark as his.

Slighted by Aziz Mian’s comments, the Brothers released a thinly veiled taunt at him in shape of a qawaali. They titled it, O sharabi, chor dey peena (‘‘O’ drunkard, stop drinking’’).

The qawaali became an immediate hit, sung in the typically steady, controlled and hypnotic style of the Brothers, and then varnished with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour aimed at Aziz Mian.

In a live bootleg recording of the qawaali, one can hear one of brothers poking fun at ‘drunkards’ (Aziz Mian). He is doing this in a tongue-in-cheek manner because he’s clearly conscious of the fact that the audience was also enjoying their drink, the other brother laughingly suggests, ‘but, of course, no one drinks here (in this hall).’

O Sharaabi, Peena Veena Chor – Sabri Brothers (1976):

Aziz Mian was quick to retaliate. He wrote and recorded Hai kambakht, tu nein pe hi nahi (‘‘Unfortunate soul, you never even drank!’’). In it, he derided the Brothers for being deprived of understanding and experiencing the ‘spiritual dimensions of being drunk.’

The retaliatory qawaali starts with Aziz proudly owning up to liking his drink, then suggests that those who didn’t drink and gave lectures while indulging in other misdeeds at the same time, are hypocrites. All the while, he continues to taunt the Brothers for never having experienced intoxication.

In the long climax of the qawaali, Aziz Mian’s taunting turns into angry sarcastic jibes at the Brothers, as he dismisses them for not understanding his intoxicated love for the Almighty because they have no clue what it meant or felt like.

According to EMI-Pakistan, which released both the records, together Aziz Mian and Sabri Brothers, sold over two million LPs and cassettes in 1977 alone!

Fans of both the camps would often throw words and verses from the two qawaalis at each other.

Hai Kambakht Tu Ne Pi Hi Nahi – Aziz Mian:

Pakistani Qawaali had reached a commercial peak and then went global when Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers began touring outside Pakistan, enthralling audiences in various countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Iran.

Aziz Mian performing in the USA (1977).

Then, Aziz Mian suddenly fell on the wrong side of the law when, in April 1977, sale of alcoholic beverages (to Muslims) in Pakistan was banned. In July 1977, the Bhutto regime fell in a reactionary military coup orchestrated by General Ziaul Haq.

During the Zia dictatorship (1977-88), Aziz Mian’s concerts were often raided by the police and people there arrested for ‘drunken behaviour.’

In 1980, Aziz Mian began adding more conventional qawaalis to his set, but he always wrapped up his concerts with Mein Sharaabi.

However, he would usually launch into the said qawaali by first jokingly addressing the crowd (in Punjabi): ‘I’m about to sing Mein Sharaabi (the crowd would roar). But you guys don’t have to worry. They’ll arrest me, not you!’ (Crowds would burst into laughter).

Amateur video of Aziz Mian performing Mein Sharaabi in Lahore in 1982:

On a number of occasions, Aziz Mian was approached by anti-Zia student and political outfits to release a qawaali against Zia.

He shied away. Instead, he decided to add extempore lyrics to his famous qawaalis that spoke about how men intoxicated by their love of God and justice stood up to tyrants who had no understanding and appreciation of this unique kind of love.

In 1982, during a small concert in Karachi where Aziz Mian had been invited to perform, he noticed some policemen inside the venue.

Believing that they would begin harassing the gathering the moment he launched into his 'Sharaabi' qawaali, he decided to test the patience of the cops by singing what became to be the longest qawaali recorded in the history of the genre!

Beginning the concert with his 1979 hit, the passionate Allah Hi Jannay Kon Bashar Hai (‘Only God knows who is human’), he then launched into Hasshar Kay Roz Yeh Poochon Ga (‘On the Day of Judgment, God shall ask’) – a qawaali that went on for 115 minutes.

Recorded at the venue and then released, the epic qawaali talks about God inquiring man about his (man’s) hypocrisies. Aziz Mian taunts the puritans who call him a drunk. He suggests that in reality, they were the ones who were drunk on things that were far more sinister than alcohol. Things like power, hypocrisy and prejudice.

Allah Janay Kon Bashar Hai – Aziz Mian (1979):

Eclipse and end

By the time the Zia dictatorship ended (August, 1988), Pakistan’s ‘Golden Age of Qawaali’ was at an end. Frustrated by not being able to play enough concerts and record a lot more albums in Pakistan in the 1980s, Aziz Mian’s drinking problem worsened.

In the late 1980s, the supremacy of both Aziz Mian and the Sabri Brothers was successfully challenged by a little known qawaal who would (for a while) go on to regenerate the Qawaali genre in Pakistan, and once again turn it into a popular global phenomenon.

Nusrat Fateh Ali had arrived in urban Pakistan.

Nusrat Fateh Ali

Immensely talented, Nusrat took the melodious dynamics of the Sabri Brothers and the lyrical spiritual paradoxes aired in Aziz Mian’s qawaalis and fused them into a style that was flexible enough to be adopted and related to on a more universal level.

Nusrat Fateh Ali’s 1993 epic, Tum Aik Ghorak Danda Ho adopts Aziz Mian’s style of arguing with God and fuses it with the Sabri Brothers’ hypnotic melodicism.

But unlike Aziz Mian, Nusrat did not write his own lyrics.

Nusrat Fateh Ali dominated the qawaali scene across the late 1980s and 1990s, selling albums and playing to packed audiences around the world. But like Aziz Mian, Nusrat too had a deep ‘love affair with drink.’ He died of liver failure in 1997.

Gorak Dhanda – Nusrat Fateh Ali:

In 1994, Ghulam Farid, leader of the Sabri Brothers, passed away. Aziz Mian continued to perform throughout the 1990s, but the rise of a new batch of qawaals led by Nusrat Fateh Ali never allowed Aziz the space to make his comeback and regain the popularity and commercial success that he had enjoyed between 1973 and 1982.

Exhausted and ailing with a failing liver, in 2000, he agreed to honour a contract to perform concerts in Iran. However, halfway through the tour, he passed away. He was 56.

References

• Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali: Regula Burckhardt Qureshi
• Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India: Peter Manuel
• Qawwali Jam. Islamic Gospel: Mehar Ali and Sher Ali

The Shiv Sena is back in the news. I guess it's been a while since they made it to the front pages. They've gone back to the politics that gave them their oxygen all those years ago: intimidating the state into submission by targeting a familiar enemy.

They have ensured that a concert by Ghulam Ali concert scheduled for Friday has been banned in Mumbai because their leader Udhav Thackeray vetoed it.

Also read: Modi a fan of Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali

This despite the fact that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had reportedly promised full protection to the Pakistani singer. Are we to then understand that the chief minister and the state machinery are subordinate to Thackeray's diktats?

We are told that Ghulam Ali is not welcome in Mumbai because its citizens have not forgiven Pakistan for its alleged role in 26/11.

So Ghulam Ali is welcome to sing in Delhi, he sings in even the prime minister's constituency in Varanasi, but he can't sing in Mumbai because of the collective outrage over the terror attack.

Are we to believe that only Mumbaikars feel strongly enough to stop a singer from performing while the rest of India embraces him?

And what of those who want to hear him sing, who may not subscribe to the view of the alleged majority, who may genuinely believe that music cuts across boundaries?

Do they not have a voice or is the Shiv Sena now the sole spokesperson for the city of Mumbai?

Also read: Kabaddi — Shiv Sena pressure forces Patna to bench Pakistani players

You could argue that it has always been like this: after all, didn't the Sena once dig up a cricket pitch ahead of an India-Pakistan series? And didn't the Congress government at the time timidly acquiesce to this act of thuggish behaviour?

The silent majority

When it did so in 1991, the cricket-crazy fans of Mumbai stayed silent. As many of us do today, even as a legendary singer is denied the right to play his music.

Is Ghulam Ali to bear the brunt of what Ajmal Kasab did, and is that the only way the so-called collective conscience of a nation seeking vengeance will be satiated?

Also read: Atif Aslam's concert in India cancelled after Shiv Sena threat

The fact is that this rising intolerance in India has now descended into goondaism of the worst kind.

One day, it leads to a man being lynched to death in Dadri, the next day a concert being cancelled in Mumbai: the mindset of using muscle power to impose a religious agenda under the guise of spurious nationalism is much the same.

And we stay quiet because we are too scared to speak. Or we have too much to lose by challenging the ruling class.

I hate silence and I love my music: so I shall listen to a Ghulam Ali song on my iPod before I sleep tonight. Surely the Shiv Sena won't come into my bedroom.

Or will they?

This article was originally published at Scroll.in and has been reproduced with permission.

Women have been giving birth since antiquity, and have been exiting the job market to do that since the past century. However, until recently, no one across Pakistan's corporate world bothered to pay attention and accommodate the primal need of giving birth.

Telenor, which is well-known for its Human Resource-focused policies, has adopted a 6-month paid maternity leave policy. This cannot be celebrated enough.

Now, maybe, these women won’t have to sit back on their sore post-birth stitches once they get back to work 10 days after giving birth, like I did.

I also know women who have had to mop the water that broke on the office floor after they returned to work. In their quest to use as little as possible of their one-month leave, most women, even in leading organisations, stay on at work right until they practically pop.

It is utterly tragic that the institution of motherhood, which breathes life miraculously into another being, should be treated in such a shoddy way by corporations.

Exploitative in nature, these organisations put the onus on women to prove that they are as far from the notion of procreation as they can be – they are hired less, they are promoted less and they are certainly appreciated a lot less as they waddle across cubicles as if it were a foreign object they carried in their womb, borne out of an act you’d rather not think about at the office.

Mothers should be able to return to work without the urgency to prove that they are not hormone-crazed and can in fact, type up a memo or lead a meeting.

They should also not have to choose between tending to the new life they made and having a career – each distinctly separate and necessary aspects of being both a woman and a two-legged social animal with an intelligence quotient.

See: Entitlement — On leave

The only other company that I know comes a close second is the Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC), which has a three-month paid leave policy with an additional three-month unpaid leave option. Being a mother does not end with cutting the umbilical cord; mothers need to also tend to their babies afterwards (in Pakistan’s case, almost always without any male family member’s help).

PTC also has arrangements for subsidised daycare facilities at the premises. The company is extremely gracious with work-from-home days in the event that a mother needs to soothe an ailing ear infection of a child or catch up on sleep debt of a colic-prone baby.

As for the rest of the professional world, the less said about them the better.

By far, the biggest tragedy of our country is the exclusion that women face when it comes to financial independence and control. Instead of working around the fact that women need flexibility in their employment terms during their child-bearing years, Pakistani organisations actually prefer to opt out of having to deal with them entirely.

Read: Why does big business hate maternity leave?

For those tough cookies that enter the market and find a way to stick through, they find that they are constantly on the defensive.

They over perform, over compensate and over deliver to stay in the game.

In the end, someone without a uterus and a breastfeeding job to do gets promoted despite women’s best efforts, often on double the pay.

In a world where companies with female-friendly policies lead HR practices, we may just have the world which Facebook COO and author of Lean In Sheryl Sandberg envisioned:

In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.

The problem is that these companies can be counted on one’s right foot’s toes. The other problem is that a lot of the Pakistani sole proprietorships or seth companies feel no pressure to have laws at par with international labour standards.

As a matter of fact, they don't feel any pressure to follow any laws because of a general irreverence towards them, and also because historically, no company has been punished by the courts for non-conformance of maternity leaves.

Article 37(e) of the Constitution of Pakistan asks for maternity benefits. Specifically, The Maternity Benefit Ordinance, 1958 stipulates that after four months of employment, an employee may have up to six weeks of prenatal/postnatal leave. It also says that she will draw a salary based on her last pay.

Also read: Working mothers and daycare centres

Sadly, as reality stands, we would need an entire library to file in complaints of women who were dismissed for taking maternity leaves. The manufacturing and industry sectors are worse off.

In rural East Africa, where I grew up, women would be back in the field soon after birth, baby on the back with a sickle, cutting corn in the fields, because they needed to feed the family. No one should have to be that brave.

Summiting the roof of Africa had been on my bucket list for a while. I had been planning this trip for so long that when the big day loomed up, it felt like it was happening all of a sudden.

My friend, Abdullah and I set out to do the full moon trek in August 2015.

After extensive research, we decided to take the Machame route, which is known for its scenic value and greater acclimatisation, and by extension, a higher success rate. So with just three weeks of incline training at the gym, I set out for the toughest challenge of my life.

But, on arrival at the Kilimanjaro International Airport, I hit a slight snag. I had read online and even asked the airline I was travelling with, about visas, and was informed that Pakistanis get visa on arrival. Upon arrival, however, I was denied entry.

After some begging and pleading, I was asked to “show my generosity” to the immigration officer, so that he may in return, “show his humanity”.

A 100 dollars later, I was allowed entry in the United Republic of Tanzania. (Note to my fellow Pakistanis: there is a bright possibility that you will be asked for a bribe too, so it's better to keep some loose change so you don’t have to give out a $100 bill like i had to).

On arrival at the lodge, we met our guide, Michael, who checked our equipment. He informed us that we were going to be a group of four and asked us to be ready at 8:30am the next morning.

I tried to savour what was going to be my last shower for seven days and enjoy the luxury of a warm bed as much as I could. Our adventure would begin tomorrow.

Day 1

Machame Gate (1828m) to Machame Camp (3000m)
Distance - 10.5 km

We met our two travel buddies and set off for Machame gate.

The trek on this day passed through a beautiful rainforest with old trees and vines like the ones Tarzan would swing on.

Angik, Sandipan, Abdullah and I at the start of the adventure.

Vines in the rainforest.

Doesn’t this look like an ostrich, eye and all?

Tree canopies providing a perfectly shaded walkway.

Even though it was a gradual ascent, it was a long day and my five-kilo backpack wasn’t helping much. By the time we got to the campsite, we were quite exhausted.

Day 2

Machame Camp (3000m) to Shira Camp (3874m)
Distance – 5 km

The second day, we went through clouds, heather and fern. The terrain was very different from the previous day, but just as beautiful. The trek was shorter but definitely more stony.

A wild flower, perhaps?

A white-necked raven.

Our first glimpse of Mount Meru – Kilimanjaro’s little brother, which then became a constant throughout the journey.

Day 3

Shira Camp (3874m) to Lava Tower (4600m) to Barranco Camp (3940m)
Distance – 10 km

This was a tough day. We crossed the 4000 metre mark for the first time. This is when most people start feeling the altitude. I, too, got a pounding headache but nothing a painkiller couldn’t cure.

The Machame route follows the walk high, sleep low strategy. So we went up to Lava Tower at 4600 metres but came down to under 4000 metres to sleep. This helps in the acclimatisation process, though you do question the sanity of putting in so much effort to go up only to descend back to the same altitude you started off at. But such is the way of the mountains.

Our first glimpse of the mighty final destination.

On our way to Lava Tower, the terrain was completely different from the past two days – totally barren with no vegetation.

On our way down from Lava Tower, we saw the fascinating senecio trees. The leaves of this tree do not fall off but accumulate at the base and provide shelter in harsh weather.

Campsite song and dance with the porters and the rest of the crew.

It was Abdullah’s birthday and I had requested the tour company to see if the could arrange for a cake, and they did, at 3980 metres! That, my friends, is called customer service.

Day 4

Barranco Camp (3940m) to Karanga Camp (3980m)
Distance – 5km

This was the day of the scramble. Even though I was not up to mark with the training, I had read enough travel blogs before the trip to know what was in store each day.

Some people had scary reviews of the Barranco Wall, and to be honest, it did look pretty steep and daunting. Plus, there was frequent screaming from the groups in front of us, which created more nervousness.

Michael assured me that no one had died from the Barranco Wall, and this turned out to be the most fun part of the entire trek. We had to use all four limbs and be extremely surefooted. There was a ‘kiss and hug’ stone where you literally had to hug the stone and walk over a very thin ledge to get to the other side.

We reached an altitude of 4200m on top of the Barranco Wall and none of us felt the altitude – the benefits of walk high, sleep low were showing.

People going up the Barranco Wall.

On top of the Barranco Wall with Michael and our assistant guide, Johnson ‘the gangster’.

Sunset above the clouds. —Photo by Sandipan.

The gorgeous full moon brightening up the night.

Day 5

Karanga Camp (3980m) to Barafu Camp (4600m)
Distance – 4km

The final day before the summit was a relatively easy and short day.

The terrain was the same as the day earlier; rocks everywhere and no vegetation. We reached the campsite by 2pm and were served a hot lunch. I had lost my appetite for protein since Day 2 and could feel my legs grow weaker.

Our group had become like a family and everyone was generous in offering me their protein bars, protein powder, fruits and trail mix. I took full advantage of their generosity and on most days, ended up eating all the fruit served. We were told to nap, but anxiety and the fact that we were not used to napping in the afternoons made it difficult to sleep.

At 5.30pm, we were served dinner and instructed to get some rest. Our wake up call came at 10.30pm.

Making our way to base camp at 4600 metres.

Summit night

Barafu Camp (4600m) to Summit (5895m)
Distance – 5 km

By far, this was the most demanding night of my life. We geared up (I was wearing five layers on the top and three at the bottom) and started at 12.15am for the summit.

This was one of those experiences that cannot be put into words; the strenuous task of walking up 1295 metres from base camp in the dead of the night in sub-zero temperatures with the fear of ‘what if I don’t succeed’.

The night was beautiful. A full moon hung low low in the sky, with the moonlight reflecting off the snow in certain parts of the mountain. We went up ‘pole pole’ (Swahili for ‘slow slow’), which is key to success in summiting. From severe fatigue to extreme drowsiness, we went through it all. Abdullah actually had a dream when he rested his head on the walking pole for two seconds.

If it wasn’t for the encouragement of Michael and the entertainment of Johnson, most of us would not have been able to summit that night. I really don’t know how I convinced myself to continue walking against all odds.

In such a situation, you realise how amazing your mind is; how capable it is at blocking out the pain and becoming so singular in its approach that everything else becomes irrelevant.

Sunrise at that height is one amazing sight. You have to witness it to believe it. We finally reached the summit at around 7.30am after walking uphill for more than seven hours. And when I saw the glacier right next to the mountain glistened under the morning sun, it was an exhilaration beyond words.

We had made it to the roof of Africa — my greatest accomplishment to date.

They say the best views come after the hardest climbs, and they're so right. The views are indeed extraordinary.

I was incredibly lucky that I didn’t feel the altitude at all. No headache, no nausea...I was as good as I am at sea level. That definitely helped getting to the top slightly less difficult.

All bundled up for a night never to forget.

The sun just coming up.

The glacier right next to the mountain. Pictures can’t do justice to the magnificent sight of the sun shining on the glacier.

Because Pakistan is important.

The four of us with the people responsible for our success – Michael, Johnson and the summit porter.

Day 6 and 7

Summit (5895m) to Mweka Gate (1800m)
Distance 22km

Coming down all the way from 5895 metres to Mweka Gate at about 1800 metres is no joke. There is a general perception that coming down is easier, but it is very taxing on the knees and there is a greater chance of slipping and falling. I fell down about six times during the descent.

The morning after – waking up to a great view: sunlight reflecting off Kilimanjaro.

Farewell picture with the larger group, including the entire crew who made it possible for us to achieve our dream.

One doesn’t need any technical skills to go up Kilimanjaro; it is the only mountain you can ‘walk up’, but it is no walk in the park either. Besides being considerably fit, you need to have immense mental strength to reach the top.

There were moments on the summit night when I wondered why I wanted to do this in the first place. But once I did make it to the top, it was all worth it.

This adventure has left me craving for more, and since the very minute I was back in connectivity, I have been looking up the K2 base camp (fingers crossed).

—All photos by author except when stated otherwise

Related:

An Indian and a Pakistani in 'desi' Tanzania
Scaling Pakistan's mountains: A tale of expedition resilience

According to the latest Associated Press report, the number of pilgrims to have died in the crush during this year's Haj has now risen to 1,453. This makes it the stampede with the highest death count among all previous such incidents during Haj.

An enquiry has been ordered into the crush on the junction of street 204 and 223 in Mina, and though, with CCTV footage, it can be ascertained how the event unfolded, there is little hope that this information will be forthcoming.

In the aftermath of this tragic incident, contrasting reactions have cropped up.

Pilgrims from developing countries felt that the arrangements already in place were not only sufficient but beyond what anyone else could offer. Those from the developed world, meanwhile, who had seen crowd management in action, felt otherwise.

Also read: In Makkah I saw little of Islam’s compassion, but a lot of Saudi Arabia’s neglect

Amidst the varied opinions, some lame and other out rightly absurd, there were people who pointed out that the extensive coverage of the tragic incident was a conspiracy to put people off from the once in a lifetime experience. Some believed that criticism against the Saudis should be dismissed as it was nothing but propaganda from the opposing sect.

The Haj Research Centre, founded in 1975, was specifically set up to make recommendations for the management of the swelling number of pilgrims consented by the Saudi government. Although funded by the government itself, the recommendations made by this institute go largely ignored.

As a result, there is calamity after calamity, year on year with little signs of improvement.

Also read: 89 Pakistani pilgrims dead, 43 still missing, says minister

These incidents only get noticed when the number of causality reaches three figures. The ongoing development, which seeks to make room for more pilgrims, has outpaced the health and safety measures that were never a priority to begin with.

There are some areas where Saudi authorities do get it right. For instance, a vaccine directive is updated every year and the authorities do regulate the numbers of pilgrims based on local and temporal factors. This year, because of the construction around the grand mosque, the number of pilgrims allowed were lower than average.

Similarly, last year, for the prevention of the MERS virus spread, the vulnerable groups (old and frail) were denied visas for the journey.

However, there is always room for improvement and there are areas where a lot more could be done. For example, there is a total lack of belief within the Saudi authorities on training programs for the pilgrims that guide on health and safety aspects of the journey.

The Saudi ranks seem to be of the mind that most pilgrims are illiterate and are, therefore incapable of any training. Ironically, the lack of training within the organising staff is also reflected in their handling of complex situations.

If the Saudi government can make vaccination mandatory for pilgrims, who is preventing them from making health and safety training compulsory, too?

After all, the pilgrims do train themselves on the religious aspects of the journey.

To put things in perspective, let us examine a disaster and the reaction to it elsewhere in the world. In 1987, during what is now known as the ‘Hillsborough disaster’, a football match played in the UK saw 96 people die in a crush that ensued after opening the exit gate. The gate was opened to ease the build-up of the crowd outside the stadium.

An enquiry was immediately launched. Within a year of the publication of the investigation report, all stadia in the UK changed their standing terraces to seated pavilions.

This measure came at a huge price (as seating people meant less capacity and consequently less income for the clubs), but the health and safety requirements of the public were held supreme.

As a result, in over thousands of matches that have followed, the Hillsborough disaster of 1987 has never been repeated.

Sceptics will point out that a football crowd cannot be compared to a Haj crowd, which is far bigger. But it is, nonetheless, a relevant microcosm, because of almost the same crowd density and emotionally charged atmosphere.

On the other hand, there is the Mina incident of 1997, where hundreds were burnt to death only for fireproof tents to be erected six years later in 2003.

Crowd management and crowd psychology have evolved into disciplines in their own right. Research in these areas provide actionable information, for example, how pedestrian footbridges are far less effective compared to pedestrian subways / foot tunnels. The reason is simple: People find it easy (psychologically) to step down a path than go up a bridge, despite the net elevation displacement being zero in both cases.

There must be hundreds of studies – many of them specifically on crowd management under scorching heat – which could prove invaluable in planning organising the pilgrimage in the future.

It is fair to say that the current Haj management has been reactive more than proactive. The incumbent management philosophy is to throw money at problems, which is obviously not the solution.

Normally, the Saudi authorities cite their large number of volunteers, stewards, police force and paramedic staff, along with the huge fleets of support vehicles, in defense of their performance. But good management needs deliberation, careful planning, attention to detail, due diligence and a level of foresight that seems absent in the current scheme of things.

Also read: Eight of the deadliest Haj-related accidents over the past 30 years

It is also important to counter the attitude that accidents are part of “fate” and questioning the “act of God” is akin to challenging the almighty. While belief in fate provides a comforting closure, particularly after tragic incidents, it is the belief in some control over your fate which distinguishes the inevitable from the avoidable.

Let us hope that we have now seen the last of the stampedes at Haj.

“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Jews.”

Imagine, for a moment, if this had been said to a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in a public meeting.

Imagine the uproar from both ends of the political spectrum, from civil rights groups and the public at large. Imagine the sheer amount of earnest and soul-searching ‘how did we get here’ op-eds and blogs.

Imagine the outrage.

But, nothing of the sort happened because the man in question made this statement about Muslims.

Speaking at a question and answer session at a Donald Trump town hall meeting, the man went on to say,

“You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing where they want to kill us … That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”

This isn’t to say that there was no reaction; there was. Several analysts and opinion makers rounded on Trump for not having responded forcefully enough to the questioner. “Why,” they shouted from their talk show and op-ed page pulpits, “did Trump not make it clear that Obama isn’t a Muslim?”

The Republican appetite for Islamophobia indicates a larger right-wing agenda.

Only a few pointed out that perhaps calling for getting ‘rid of’ an approximately 2.6 million strong community might also merit a mild rebuke, possibly even condemnation.

Instead, Trump waffled, “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things … You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.”

Later, his spokesman said: “All he heard was a question about training camps, which he said we have to look into … the media want to make this an issue about Obama, but it’s about him waging a war on Christianity.”

Then there’s Ben Carson, another hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination. In a September 20 interview, Carson said he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

When criticised by none other than his fellow GOP candidates, Carson qualified his previous statement by saying that he would be all right with a Muslim candidate who “publicly rejected all the tenets of sharia”.

Essentially, Carson is okay with a Muslim president so long as that president first rejects Islam. How well this played with his constituency can be gauged by the fact that Carson raised about $500,000 to $700,000 immediately after making this statement.

And then, there’s Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, who keeps peddling the myth about no-go zones created by Muslim immigrants in London even after he has been repeatedly told that there are no such zones.

Welcome to the Republican presidential debates of 2015, where scaremongering and playing to the lowest common denominator is not only acceptable, but is rewarded. Other topics on the menu, apart from economic and foreign policy were same-sex marriage, immigration and a lot of talk about ‘values’.

Five years ago, the situation was a little different. When John McCain, the 2008 challenger to President Obama was told by a supporter in a public meeting that Obama ‘was an Arab’, he took the mic away from the lady in question and clarified that Obama was ‘a decent family man’, though he didn’t (much like Trump) address the fundamental bigotry of the speaker. The look in McCain’s eyes at that time was of a man who had glimpsed the hate that lurked below the surface.

Picking on a minority group, accusing it of having a secret anti-American agenda and then exploiting that fear for political gain is very much part of the political history of the United States, or indeed any country at all.

For centuries, American Catholics were considered by the majority (and politically entrenched) protestants as a potential fifth column that placed loyalty to the Pope higher than loyalty to the United States. There were anti-Catholic and anti-Irish pogroms (here the lines of sect and ethnicity overlapped) and the Ku Klux Klan in particular condemned Catholicism as being ‘incompatible with democracy’ and ‘disloyal’.

It was only when the Cold War started that the rival sects formed an anti-Communist consensus. Assassinated US president Kennedy’s Catholic faith was also an issue during his election campaign and he pointedly kept his distance from Church officials and even had to declare, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic.”

Regardless, Kennedy got 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the Catholic vote, just as Muslim-sounding Obama got the majority of the Muslim vote in Pakistan.

The political acceptance of Catholics grew out of their numbers and increasing political clout, which aided and was aided by some landmark legislations as well. But with relatively smaller numbers and less cohesion, the American Muslim community will likely remain political orphans / punching bags for some time to come.

But does Islamophobia actually get votes?

A report by the Centre for American Progress titled, “Fear, Inc. 2.0 The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America” argues that in the 2010 New York gubernatorial elections, Republican candidate Carl Paladino’s Islamophobic opposition to an Islamic community centre near Ground Zero didn’t get him the support he expected.

While this was of course a single election in which there were more issues at play, it seems that it may also apply to the presidential elections where the demonising of an entire community cannot be a deciding issue.

So it seems that the Republican Party serves up Islamophobia not so much as a main course but rather as an appetiser on a larger right-wing menu. This dish is served because there is a growing public appetite for it, as shown by the fact that there are about two dozen anti-Islam rallies planned in various US states this weekend alone.

Thus, while Islam-bashing will probably not swing elections except perhaps, at a very local level, the trend is not likely to go away any time soon and will, in all likelihood, accelerate, especially if a floundering Republican Party fails to mount an effective challenge to the Democrat incumbents and is forced to secure the support of a shrinking and shrill political base.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 11th, 2015

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Think of a time you were offered unsolicited advice on a subject that you have far more experience dealing with. Imagine it occurring repeatedly, with the pretend-expert expecting you to thank him for patronising you.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

Oversimplifying obesity

All that is really known about obesity by the general public, is that less exercise and more food makes a person fat.

Fat people are aware of this equation. Our failure to lose weight is taken as evidence of our ignorance of this golden formula, which thin people constantly remind us of, often to feel better about their own bodies and an imagined expertise in fitness.

If the fat person claims that he already knows the rule, the next assumption made is that he’s too lazy or undisciplined to act on this information. It is worth noting that most people who render this judgement have personally never made any serious effort in staying healthy themselves, apart from an occasional jog that’s motivated by leisure rather than real commitment to fitness.

Individuals born with metabolic silver-spoons in their mouths, snicker at people struggling with their weight problem, much like rich kids who roll their eyes at poor people struggling to pay their bills.

“Try harder, loser!” holler the physiologically privileged from the top of the hill, while the obese people work twice as hard for half the reward.

One size does not fit all

The point above is lost on many who see seven billion humans as their own biological clones; assuming that any technique or ‘totka’ working for them, must also work for everyone else. This is especially true for those who have succeeded in losing significant weight.

The absurdity of that assumption is easily noted by physicians like myself, who wonder why the same drug, with dose carefully adjusted according to each patient’s weight and age, has varying degrees of effects on different patients; even outright failing to show any response in, say, 10 per cent of them.

See: F for fat: A documentary and a feature film examine what it means to be a large woman

The answer can be complicated. While the golden formula of weight gain as food intake minus exercise is theoretically true, it does not take into account many genetic, pathological, socioeconomic and pharmacological factors that either facilitate or impede weight gain. Idiosyncrasies matter tremendously.

We are not lazy

To begin with, there actually is such a thing as an “obesity gene”. A fault in the FTO gene – responsible for storing energy as fat rather than burning for heat – may explain many cases of early-onset and sustained obesity.

A wide range of pathological conditions from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) to Cushing’s Disease, make it incredibly difficult to lose weight, or even keep it from increasing. A number of drugs, particularly psychiatric medicines, are known to affect BMI. Even the absence of certain gut microbes can affect satiety, hence cause weight gain.

Contrary to the public’s perception of obesity as a symbol of greed and decadence – used frequently in political caricatures to depict corrupt politicians and bureaucratic “fat cats” – obesity may paradoxically be a consequence of poverty and malnutrition.

Read on: The perceived criminality of obesity

In developed countries, healthy and organic food can be costly, while highly subsidised soft drinks and junk food can be surprisingly cheap. It also goes without saying that poor people cannot afford gym memberships, personal trainers, and weight-reduction surgeries.

The point is not that these factors render diet and exercise useless; but that they do make the process of losing weight significantly harder, often to a level where it demands superhuman determination and effort that only a small fraction of the obese people can ever muster.

Instead of acknowledging these difficulties, fat people are stereotyped as slothful, clumsy creatures without self-control. Such dehumanisation, studies reveal, worsens the problem by causing stress and sapping their confidence.

Fat people objecting to jokes perpetuating these stereotypes are further degraded as grumpy and humourless.

We know our bodies better than you

It is offensive when people haunted with these aforementioned problems, and possibly more, are smugly told to “eat less” or “join a gym”, as if they are too unintelligent to have considered or tried it already.

In fact, just about any variation of an unsolicited “Have you tried...?” question, likely has a resounding “Yes” waiting as an answer; not because obese people are all-knowing, but because they’ve had tons more experience dealing with weight problems than someone who lost six kilograms at some stage in life, and can not stop boasting about it.

It is condescension masquerading as concern; an act of self-gratification pretending to be assistance. Only in rare instances, where the advisor is truly close enough to a fat person to speak liberally about personal matters, that the suggestion may be deemed appropriate.

If not, then, it is nearly as ludicrous as telling an exhausted labourer to “work harder” because you can’t comprehend how he can’t be as wealthy as you, unless he’s lazy and fully committed to staying poor.

You wouldn’t shame a poorly-recovering stroke patient as a way of 'motivating' him to put more effort in his physiotherapy.

You wouldn’t laugh at a poor person to encourage him to pull himself out of poverty.

Why, then, would one insult those having a hard time losing weight, and pretend that it's community service?

Further reading:

• Obesity gene
  
• Gut microbes and obesity
  
• Fat-shaming a cause of weight gain
  

“One cannot lose if he does not accept defeat ... and in PTI’s dictionary, defeat does not exist.”

Imran Khan said to his supporters in Lahore on October 4th, while other PTI leaders standing behind him softly chuckled.

In the context of a democratic election, does this statement hold true?

Despite the rhetoric, on Sunday, by a close margin of 4,031 PML-N’s Sardar Ayaz Sadiq held his seat against PTI’s Aleem Khan in NA-122.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a satirical allegory on Russian totalitarianism, lead character Napoleon plays to the base needs of his followers who chant, “Napoleon is always right.” They are told to envision a utopia, where there would be no corruption and equality amongst the classes. But goals promised are never truly defined nor real solutions offered.

It becomes a dangerous thing when citizens fail to ask tough questions, developing a cult of personality following to their leader. Ultimately, left unchecked, Napoleon becomes a tyrant worse than the original leaders of Animal Farm.

Khan also promotes a utopia: a corruption free Naya Pakistan. During his rallies, he rouses his young followers with catchy slogans and lofty promises (and here and there makes some unconstitutional demands).

In between each promise made, a neutered version of the unruly Gullu Butt, a tame DJ Butt, plays a carefully synchronised song. The crowds are encouraged to chant and dance, before having much opportunity to reflect on what was said.

Playing upon religious and historical references of purana Pakistan’s founders Quaid-e-Azam and spiritual head Allama Iqbal, Khan urges for a more “Islamic” and idealistic state; a state that prides itself in the stern implementation of justice.

But, is there justice in this dystopia for women killed in honour killings, for minorities deprived of religious freedoms, or millions of children enslaved in forced labour? No.

The party’s leadership does not rally in the streets to end these injustices. Justice is also not reserved for those killed by the Taliban. Khan has advocated forgiveness and talks as the solution, even after the horrifying APS school attack.

The stern justice he wishes to unleash is preoccupied with seizing the power of the rulers. Like the revolutionaries in Animal Farm what the advocates of a Naya Pakistan may not have realised is that in Celebrity Khan’s idyllic new world, “naya” soon means old and “justice” ultimately means to usurp the country’s democracy.

Khan’s politics of agitation, allegations of rigging, and long marches are nothing new for Pakistan.

Had he and Tahirul Qadri been successful in overthrowing the government (and system) it would’ve proven a dangerous transition back to the real status quo in Pakistan, in which a weak democracy is usurped by a military dictatorship. This has been the case for nearly half of the nation’s short history.

In one of his recent press conferences, Imran Khan openly invited the army to conduct operations to “cleanse the nation” referring not to terror groups up in arms against the country, but to politicians.

And if one had any doubts after he pleaded with a third umpire to raise his finger and meddle into political affairs, over 20,000 costly posters covered the streets of Lahore, propagating candidate Aleem Khan alongside General Raheel Sharif. It is a stark reminder to the haunting posters, not yet forgotten, of Nawaz Sharif alongside General Zia.

The verdict by Justice Kazim Malik for NA-122, ruled for re-elections based on irregularities but cleared Sadiq Ayaz, or the PML-N, of any wrongdoing. This was widely celebrated as a victory for the PTI by its supporters.

The judicial commission’s report also laid to rest any allegations of systematic rigging. But this has not stopped the PTI’s continued cries of a stolen mandate by the ruling party PML-N.

Can the PTI continue to say their mandate has been stolen, when they have lost many by-elections to various parties oftentimes failing to retrieve even the same vote bank they had in the “rigged” 2013 elections?

A celebration would make sense had the PTI won the re-election for NA-122 but they now face another loss to Sadiq Ayaz.

In 2002, in the same constituency, Imran Khan had lost to Ayaz Sadiq by a substantial margin of 18,893 votes.

Similarly in 1997, when both he and Imran Khan were running under the banner of the PTI, both losing to PML-N candidates, Sadiq still received more votes than the widely popular Khan.

In the 2013 General Elections, Sadiq won against Khan by a margin of 8,945 votes. An audit of the votes later confirmed Sadiq’s win. The audit report found 3,642 invalid votes and 180,000 verified votes, which included 23,639 votes missing signatures of presiding officers and/or stamps but were otherwise ordained as verified and legitimate votes by the commission.

These were referred to repeatedly as “bogus” votes by the PTI, although this is not what the report claimed. (Had they been declared bogus, it would constitute approximately 17 per cent of the total votes, leaving 83 per cent as valid.)

The soft spoken Sadiq not only seems to have a sustained mandate throughout the years in his constituency, but has also earned the confidence of his fellow parliamentarians who voted him speaker of the house with a majority of 258 out of 313 votes. Still, the PTI put up a considerable fight and the gap is getting tighter.

Aleem Khan fared better than Imran Khan against Sadiq and, had he won it, would have been a big blow to the ruling PML-N party.

Like a cruel joke for a country used to seeing it’s elected officials sacked by military rulers, Sadiq was the third National Assembly speaker to be de-seated.

Still, Imran Khan continued to ask for a more “entertaining match”, as he wished to be competing against Nawaz Sharif, not Sadiq.

But one must ask, considering Pakistan’s fragile democracy, its current war against terrorism, and a population suffering from poverty, is there room for a never ending cycle of “entertaining” (yet very expensive) election matches, which may be toying with the mandate of the people?

Could all that money and time be better spent on education and alleviating poverty?

For a party claiming the country’s fight against rotten apples as its very own, controversial Aleem Khan was an unlikely choice for an important reelection which serves as a decisive battle for the PTI. Having a notorious reputation of being part of the land mafia, it is clear he was not picked on merit as much as on the fact that he is one of the biggest donors to PTI.

In an alarming social media message defending his decision, Imran Khan silenced dissent, calling those not in favour of the appointment of Aleem Khan as Trojan horses and the “worst of enemies” of the PTI.

As the popular saying goes, be cautious when you are promised too much too soon. Would Aleem Khan being elected into Parliament, the same one PTI once referred to as fake, really bring back Ibn Khaldun’s glory days and would Imran Khan’s Prime Ministership bring about the emergence of a Pakistani Caliphate? Probably not.

Imran Khan often says he has everything, but the one thing he has never had is power. That is the one of the greatest lusts of man which he is now seeking. At the rally on October 4th he even alluded to the “patience” with which he has been waiting for it. Such lust can corrupt the very best of us.

Hence, PTI supporters must be open to criticism of their leadership, engage in critical thinking, and demand better decision making.

Shouldn’t they demand Khan apologise to his own followers first and foremost that much of his allegations about systematic rigging simply didn’t prove to be true?

The Judicial Commission categorically declared Pakistan’s 2013 General Elections, “...in accordance with the law,” as well as “a true and fair reflection of the mandate given by the electorate.”

Pakistan’s May 2013 elections were also monitored by over 40,000 independent observers. Such is the protocol in fragile democracies to settle cries of rigging and to offer much needed legitimacy to elections. Along with the country’s most esteemed judges comprising the Judicial Commision, that Imran Khan himself praised, these independent organisations saw no evidence of systematic rigging.

There was consensus that the irregularities found were largely due to human error and not on a large enough scale to deem the election not transparent. Unfortunately irregularities to some degree even exist in the elections of the most stable and oldest of democracies, including that of the United States.

Yet, remarkably, mesmerising Khan has managed to continue the rhetoric that massive rigging took place. Is it that hard to fathom that the then bedridden Imran Khan did not win the elections of 2013? Even if he were certain of his loss, would he not accept defeat anyway?

If the PTI is to be a formidable force for much needed change in the country, it’s up to its promising wide-eyed followers to take lead of their party, hold its own leadership accountable, and not buy into rhetoric when it ceases to make sense.

In the meantime, we can at least thank the PTI for pressurising the ruling PML-N party into action.

The recent mobilisations around the cow in India have little to do with religion and everything to do with politics.

The expanded ban on beef in Maharashtra, the vigilante violence in Punjab against those transporting cows, and the shameful lynching of a man suspected of possessing beef in Dadri, are chillingly resonant of the cow protection movement of the late nineteenth century.

What we are seeing is not new: but what is of note is the political cache it now commands.

Political opportunism

In the 1880s, north and west India saw a mushrooming of Arya Sabhas and Arya Utkarsh Sabhas. As the names suggest, these were upper caste bodies whose agenda was to protect the status symbols of caste Hinduism: the cow and Sanskrit.

Propagating an ancient, original and, therefore, imagined Hinduism, that was unsullied by external influences, these Hindu revivalist organisations targeted Muslim butchers, consumers of beef, lower caste leather workers, pastoralists and others involved in the transport of cattle.

Also read: Politicising the holy cow, alienating India's minorities

At the time of Independence, some of these organisations acquired formal political identities. One such party, the Ram Rajya Parishad, had minor presence in Rajasthan, in what is now Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. It contested elections on planks such as the revival of Vedic sacrifices, prohibiting lower castes from entering temples, and banning cow slaughter and alcohol.

While the early Hindu revivalists were considered as allies by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres, their tactics and amateurish organisation were viewed with contempt. This, however, did not stop the RSS from adopting those very tactics when needed.

In 1950-'51, after the lifting of the ban for the organisation’s role in the assassination of MK Gandhi, RSS cadres participated in anti-cow slaughter protests. This helped it regain some lost ground, especially when the government of Saurashtra reinforced its prohibition of cow slaughter.

The position of the state

The cow as a symbol, in fact, appears at many key moments of Indian politics. The state’s engagement with it has, however, differed.

During Gujarat’s anti-reservation and communal violence of 1985, Shambhu Maharaj of the Ram Rajya Parishad alerted the Ahmedabad police about the decapitated head of a cow in a crowded marketplace. The local people were highly agitated, he said.

On reaching the scene, the police did find the cow head, but they also realised that it had not been noticed by passers-by. They concluded that reports of a furious people were meant to stoke tensions. The head was immediately removed and potential communal violence averted (reported in the Dave Commission of Inquiry, 1990).

While the Gujarat of the 1980s was no paragon of secularism, it still offers a contrast to the responses of government and political functionaries in the aftermath of the Dadri lynching. Union minister Mahesh Sharma has termed it an “accident”, and local Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have insisted on testing the meat in possession of the victim’s family – which the administration duly conducted.

Also read: Murder over meat — The 'schizophrenia' that stalks India

Meanwhile, leaders of the Samajwadi Party and BJP are debating who does and does not support cow slaughter. The stage is being prepared for the 2017 election to the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly, and the cow has once again been pulled into service.

The hypocrisy of it all

Even as many people lose their livelihoods (and some their lives) over it, the cow is hardly in clover.

In the 20 years since 1980-’81, India has lost 1.69 million hectares of grazing land, mainly to non-agricultural activities such as housing, infrastructure development and manufacturing. Meanwhile, land classified as “uncultivable” and “waste” has declined by 6.99 million hectares. This might seem like a good thing, but such land is more often than not a source of animal fodder.

The steady decline in grazing area is being consciously engineered by the very governments that claim to champion the holy cow.

Also read: A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws

Gujarat, for instance, has allowed all its public “wasteland” to be privatised from 2005. This has allowed private companies in many parts of the state to appropriate all manner of public land, including pasture.

To placate affected populations, these companies occasionally provide fodder through their Corporate Social Responsibility budgets. However, this is very much clientelistic and erratic, not a right that the real protectors of India’s bovine population, the farmers and others, have traditionally enjoyed.

This article was originally published at Scroll.in and has been reproduced with permission.

From an impartial election researcher's point of view, ‎NA-122‬ was always going to be a close contest between the PML-N and the PTI – pretty much a dead heat – however, PML-N did not win it as much as PTI lost it.

Yes, they put up a great fight but closing the gap with PML-N today means nothing in the long-term as public opinion changes over a matter of weeks. For those of you willing to consider something other than election rigging as the reason for this loss, one will be so bold as to suggest all roads lead to campaign failure.

It's been a really long time since May 2013 and the incumbency factor, plus any residual gains of the dharnas, should have been working against the PML-N (remember the 1990's? This population is pretty much done with the incumbent at the two-year mark).

Also read: Should the PTI continue to grieve over ‘stolen’ seats?

The PTI has been building up momentum to change their baseline from “not winning” in urban Lahore to “winning” urban Lahore. Let’s face it, if the PTI is to be a formidable third force they have to be able to win in places where the demography (urban educated voters and high youth numbers) of their key constituents plays in their favour.

Simply put, if the PTI aren't winning urban Punjab yet, they're not winning any national elections in the next two and half years. 


Five ways PTI's campaign strategy failed:

1. Attack campaigns don't work if you don't have your ducks in a row

The PTI vilified Ayaz Sadiq (who remained rather dignified) to the extent that they made a martyr of him.

There is such a thing as taking your campaign to a point where it starts working against you, the effects of which you can see when your opponent’s voters show up in force.

2. Candidate selection is the holy grail of electioneering

The PTI clearly hasn't gotten the memo in the last 2.5 years.

Running attack campaigns will result in people hating your opponent, but at the same time, they also create higher expectations. Your voters are expecting a candidate who embodies the values YOU told them your opponent doesn't have.

Thus if that is the chosen nature of your campaign pick a benign gentleman/lady of known character (even if they are relatively unknown to the public) instead of a controversial electable.


3. Run a real campaign centered around WHO your candidate is

It's not enough to just be anti status-quo.

The undecided lazy voter just didn’t know enough about Aleem Khan outside of the PTI’s anti-PMLN campaign to come out and vote. Campaigns must give people something to vote for and not just something to vote against.

4. Put your house in order

The most deadly mismatch is that between a party's candidate selection vis-a-vis the values they claim to hold as a party. If your candidate is not (or at least, is not presented as) the epitome of your loudest values, the voter will question your ethos.

Answer me this, does the PTI, as a genuine harbinger of change, have as much traction today with voters as it did three years ago? I worry they don’t, and internal party politics are largely to blame for it.

5. Don't blame the media

If you didn't use them well, that's on you.

Those are just some basic criteria to a successful campaign that weren’t met here.

While one has your attention, let’s just call a spade a spade – this was NOT a contest between Ayaz Sadiq and Aleem Khan – this was a referendum on the righteousness of the PTI versus the evil of election rigging.

It's an absolutely terrible idea to link victory in one constituency to vindication of your party’s broader message. It’s simply too much pressure on one campaign and the problem with that paradigm is that elections have less to do with right or wrong and more to do with mathematics.

That kind of messaging raises the stakes for victory and increases the impact of defeat, where one constituency can sink your entire cause.

Little victories sustain causes, not losses! Little victories are the fuel for your supporters and the incentive for those undecided voters.

"Rigged elections of 2013" consequently doesn’t resonate the same way it did back in August 2014.

Furthermore, using that rhetoric will again alienate the critics and distance the swing voters. With each loss you failed to walk on water, you didn't emerge from the fire unscathed, and the children are crying because you just showed them Santa isn't real.

And finally, let’s address the expectation that somehow changing the process (election reform) will yield a different electoral outcome. That simply is not going to happen, not when political parties are choosing candidates that the public has a hard time getting behind. 


Processes and rules don’t change anything. They are just necessary to prevent deviations in behavior that might influence the outcome.

Campaigns, on the other hand, actually influence the outcome.

Campaigns have the power to change preferences. But the power to give the voter really good reasons to choose you lies with ... well ... you.

http://images.dawn.com/news/1174029/food-stories-tahiri

I have a seven-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son. My approach to these two individuals is palpably different.

My daughter, to my enormous relief, is a bit of a gem. Her qualities fill me with pride and pleasure on a more or less daily basis. She volunteers when it comes to household chores, thrives on acts of kindness, works diligently and makes reasonable requests.

For all that, family and friends bestow upon her generous praise, and I bask in the knowledge that with her, at least, I have landed on my feet.

You may have guessed that the tributes paid to my daughter above, while all grounded in veracity, are set up as a foil against my wonderful, and wonderfully different son.

My son is a source of immeasurable joy and fascination, and I often, literally, stand back in awe of him and his engagement with life. I envy his decisiveness, his ability to think dedicatedly of himself and his inclination to prioritise his needs and desires over those of others.

Admittedly, these ‘qualities’ may be interpreted as the standard definition of self-indulgence, but I genuinely admire their presence in my son. And, it has struck me, with part shock and part horror, that these personality formations of my two very different children have been, to a large extent, my own propagations.

Submissive from day one

Extolled above, in the form of praise for my daughter, lies the dangerous myth of goodness.

As a little girl who commenced the journey to ‘womanhood’ from birth, she is lumbered with, like it or not, certain expectations from day one.

We live in a household that upholds feminist ideals at every opportunity presented to us, but I have come to realise that despite those values, I have been raising my daughter to be prepared for the many adjustments, compromises, sacrifices and endurance that life may demand of her.

If I had been inculcating in her the values of hardiness and combat, my approach would perhaps be less troubling. Unwittingly however, I have been teaching her to accommodate and to fit in; to be resilient but not to fight; to have her chin up but not to stick her neck out.

What’s more perturbing is the ‘exacerbation’ of her goodness since the birth of her little brother.

As she showed signs of making adjustments around his considerably more assertive personality, my regard for her maturity and perspicacity soared.

As she gave in to his tantrums, handed over cherished toys and teddies to him under pressure and settled for the smaller portion of ice cream, I secretly (and often quite openly, too) applauded her for being the ‘bigger person’.

This process did not end when my son exited toddlerhood.

He is now the same age as she was when she made those seemingly sensible choices and noble sacrifices. Unlike his sister, however, he has the decisiveness and drive to fulfill his wants and needs in a way that, as I earlier suggested, leaves me regularly amazed.

The way I have encouraged my daughter in working around her brother’s presence, with growing elasticity, is dangerous – it is the first step towards embodying that very same compromising, settling-for-less, negotiating persona that has left women unable to gain even the semblance of equality with men world over.

Raise them fearless, not meek

If I have inadvertently encouraged the nurturing of selfish brats, I must explicitly state that this is neither my intention nor inclination. In the end, we all want to raise decent human beings.

However, I don't have any qualms professing that we raise our daughters with clearly-defined ideas about what they reasonably want, desire and are entitled to, and foster in them the determination to pursue all of the above.

If I have managed to make son decisive and resolute in his approach to life, it should not be at the expense of my daughter.

To prepare our female children to cope successfully in a disconcertingly male-dominated system is tantamount to accepting this system, to playing the existing game.

So as a mother, it becomes our obligation to ensure that our daughters are not just good, but acutely aware of what is good for them.

For this, they may be labelled feisty, gutsy, fearless and voracious. Embrace it. None of those terms have negative connotations of any sort attached to them. Trust me, I’ve checked.

Zunera Ishaq is a niqab-wearing Canadian immigrant of Pakistani origin; she is also likely to determine Canada’s future prime minister.

Ms Ishaq picked a legal fight with the right-wing Canadian Conservative government over her right to take the oath of citizenship while wearing a niqab. She prevailed.

In so doing, she has inadvertently swayed the electorate in the Conservatives’ favour, who were otherwise falling out of favour with the Canadian voters.

Canadians are heading to polls next week. The incumbents (the Conservative Party) are running a political campaign on their opposition to the niqab, a piece of cloth that hides the wearer’s face, exposing only the eyes.

The Conservatives have mastered the politics of fear, scaring the electorate of a make-believe onslaught of niqab-wearing women on Canada.

Ms Ishaq and her ilk are hardly a grassroots movement in Canada. Still, the Conservatives have made niqab to be the centerpiece of their campaign because despite being in the government for eight years, they don’t have a stellar record on economy, job creation, trade or the building of Canada’s image internationally.

Also read: Choosing between religion and justice in a Canadian court

Thomas Muclair, the leader of the left-leaning National Democratic Party, was in the lead until recently, with many pundits speculating that he may be the next prime minister. He took a principled stand on Ms Ishaq’s right to wear whatever she pleased to her oath taking.

Mr Muclair and his party have paid dearly for standing up for their principles. Their support in the French-speaking Quebec province, which until a couple of weeks earlier had lined up right behind the NDP, evaporated after the niqab controversy.

Know more: Anti-Muslim rhetoric dominates election campaign in Canada

Quebeckers have an estranged relationship with, not just Islam, but organised religion in general.

Some Quebeckers even objected to the presence of a cross at Quebec’s National Assembly (Quebec’s provincial legislator). A nationalist government in Quebec earlier passed a law that banned the wearing of religious symbols by public-sector workers. The law applied to all religions, but its target, and the motivation for promulgation, were the Muslim women who wore hijab (a head-covering that does not cover the face).

Mr Muclair’s federalist party had swept the last federal elections in Quebec. In a province overtly opposed to any public manifestation of religion, supporting a niqab-wearing woman would hardly be popular.

Mr Muclair knew this. However, principles, and not political brinkmanship, mattered more to him. Now, in the third position behind the Liberals and Conservatives, Mr Muclair is still miles ahead of the rest on standing up for his convictions.

It must sound Machiavellian, but it’s true.

The gurus of partisan politics in Canada have swayed the debate away from what matters to Canada, i.e., aboriginal rights, economy, environment, jobs, and global human development, to a few square inches of a piece of cloth that covers the face of a Pakistani immigrant in Canada.

What does it say about the Conservatives in Canada, or more importantly, the gullibility of an electorate that can so readily fall for a gimmick?

The Conservatives speak for the rights of “old stock Canadians”, a euphemism for White, Christian, and (soon to be) pensioners, who will draw their old-age benefits on the backs of taxes raised from today’s workers, many of whom are, like Ms Ishaq, immigrants.

Despite the overt racist underpinnings of the Conservative campaign and its targeting of immigrant minorities, many immigrant communities readily offer their support to the Conservatives.

Some in the Indian diaspora – large enough to tilt the balance in the Conservatives’ favour in the suburban ridings in Toronto and other cities – for instance, have increasingly agreed with the Conservatives’ agenda because they like the Conservatives’ strong stance against Muslims in Canada and abroad.

A few months ago, when the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, addressed a ‘sold out’ crowd in Toronto, the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, was at the centre stage with Mr Modi, trying to shore up support in what was effectively a pre-election rally.

Take a look: 'It is not their faces they're hiding, it is their fears'

I am, personally not enthused by Ms Ishaq’s decision to hide her face from the rest of the citizenry. Her interpretation of her faith creates a mistrust between her and the rest of the society.

I wish the diktat were even more severe for face-covering women, where they were also forbidden from seeing others’ uncovered faces. Only then, they would realise how this erects isolating walls of mistrust between neighbours.

However, regardless of my disapproval of Ms Ishaq’s decision to cover her face, I find her to be a brave and inspiring woman who stood up for what she believed was right and took a sitting government to task.

She has demonstrated the tenacity and courage of a conscientious citizen, and I welcome her to the fold as a fellow Canadian citizen.

*Sana was a 20-year-old unmarried girl sitting in the modest examining rooms of a government hospital’s emergency room, with complaints of chest pain and “ghabrahat”.

This was her third visit in three days, and her family was beside themselves trying to understand why the doctors weren’t helping their daughter.

They had witnessed her attacks. She would be fine one minute and then, all of a sudden, she would have difficulty breathing; she would report a sense of “ghabrahat” and “dum ghutna”.

She would start wailing and they would rush her to the emergency. So far all her heart test results were normal.

*Asif was someone I knew since kindergarten, but as schools changed and career paths diverged, we lost touch, till my last year of medical school. We all met at a reunion, and upon hearing that I wanted to be a psychiatrist, he started talking about some of his struggles.

As his story unfolded, I learned about his mysterious illness; he had headaches, felt like something was stuck in his throat at all times and had difficulty sleeping.

Being unemployed and living with his grandparents wasn’t helping his peace of mind, and he confided that the only thing that made things better for a while was “Relaxin”, a tablet first prescribed by his family doctor. He had started buying it in bulk from three different pharmacies without prescriptions.

His struggles and physical symptoms were as real as the last breath he took in another friend's lap on the way to the emergency room, after taking one too many Relaxins to feel better.

Thankfully, we’ve started talking about mental illness, and the common man today has more information available now than I did while growing up.

You stumble across the occasional conversation about depression and suicide, and sometimes anxiety gets a mention in passing, but it deserves more than that.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety can be described as a state of apprehension, uncertainty or fear arising from the anticipation of an event. In Urdu, it has various terms, like “beychaini”, “paraishani”, “ghabrahat”.

We all experience some anxiety at different periods in time; it is the brain’s way of getting us ready to face or escape danger, or deal with stressful situations. For example, anxiety before exams can make one study more and, hence, do well on a test.

However, at times, the anxiety can be quite severe or exaggerated, and as a result, impair physical and psychological functioning.

That can lead to intense physical sensations, ‘worst case scenario’ thoughts, worrying and avoidant behaviours to the point where they start affecting one’s life. An example would be skipping school on the day of a test out of anxiety or panic attacks.

Why does it manifest with physical symptoms?

Consider this simplified explanation: The brain is an extremely powerful organ. It is, in a way, the central command centre for the rest of the body and has an influence over all the different organ systems.

When this central command system is hijacked by anxiety, the anxiety has free reign to cause havoc in the different organ systems, creating actual physical symptoms even though there is nothing wrong with the organ itself.

Headaches, shortness of breath, stomach issues, skin eruptions, muscle aches and pains – you name it, and anxiety can cause it.

Things are never quite that simple though.

When evaluating mental illness, one has to keep in mind the “bio-psycho-social” approach. There is always a multitude of factors at play.

The explanation above hints at the biological aspect of anxiety, however, social situations, such as loss of employment, difficulty with the in-laws, financial issues, political unrest, religious persecution, etc. can all contribute to difficulties with anxiety.

Then, of course, there is also the individual’s psychological make-up. The way one person may deal with and react to a situational stressor may be completely different compared to another, and hence, different levels of stressful situations could cause anxiety in different people.

According to a 2007 study (of a varied community) conducted at a private hospital in Karachi, anxiety disorders were twice as common in women as in men. Factors associated with anxiety disorders included middle age, low level of education, being a housewife or being divorced, separated or widowed.

Other studies find a higher prevalence of anxiety amongst patients with other medical problems as well.

Is the “beychaini” treatable?

Yes.

Primary care physicians and emergency room doctors are usually the first line of defense. Their methodical approach to first rule out medical causes, such as thyroid, heart and other hormonal problems, and then diagnose an anxiety disorder, is a positive approach to diagnosing an anxiety disorder.

There are a number of non-medication ways of managing anxiety. These include reducing stress, exercising, practicing breathing and yoga techniques. Therapy or counselling can be extremely effective, especially cognitive behavioural therapy, which teaches one to modify thought patterns.

There are medications to help in the short and long-term. The stumbling block, of course, is lack of awareness and stigma along with a cultural desire to have a quick fix.

It is not uncommon in Pakistan to think that a doctor who prescribes more is better than one who doesn’t. Treating a common cold with antibiotics and the copious use of “drips and injections” drive up patient satisfaction and hence guarantee repeat business.

Writing a prescription is a “knee jerk” reaction, which leads to overuse of medications that should be used judiciously and for short periods of times. Benzodiazepines such as Alprazolam, Lorazepam, Diazepam under various brand names (commonest ones being Xanax, Ativan, and Valium) are prescribed casually and without warning of being highly addictive.

The easy availability of over-the-counter medications makes things worse.

Although, things have improved slightly in Pakistan over the years, it is still just a matter of who you know at what pharmacy and how motivated you are to get the medicine without a doctor’s prescription.

Asif had no mysterious illness. He suffered from an anxiety disorder that led to a prescription of benzodiazepines, to which he became addicted. Soon, he needed much more than the recommended dose, and at one point, he was taking 10 times the recommended dosage in a day.

His story may have been different if there was recognition of an anxiety disorder and a conversation about how to treat it. When medications are warranted, the popularly known (and misnamed) anti-depressants, under the supervision of a doctor, are good long-term, non-addicting solutions.

So, hopefully, if you have been experiencing ghabrahat, beychaini, or paraishani, or have been having multiple physical symptoms without any known cause, you will hear the term “anxiety disorder” and when you do, don’t despair or think that no one is taking you seriously.

Be relieved that there is no life-threatening medical problem causing your symptoms, and ask your doctor about the best way for you to gain control over your anxiety.

*Names have been changed to protect identity.

I don’t know who found him, or what even his name was, but we called him ‘Tangey Walay Baba’, or at times, just Baba.

We met on a freezing morning, when he came to pick us up for school. ‘Chalo! Chalo!’, he shouted, knocking on our door with the wooden handle of his horsewhip. My sister Sheba and I came out slowly, shy and hesitant, and climbed onto the tanga.

We lived next to APWA School and were the first passengers; others would join on the way as we rode to our school, the Presentation Convent in the Cantonment of Jhelum.

The tanga was shared by three or four other people. But I can only remember the two pleasant girls who were daughters of the District Commissioner, and who lived in a nice big house detached from those around it, with a front garden bordered by an immaculately trimmed hedge of green bushes.

They were older than us, probably in the sixth grade, whereas I was in the second grade, with my sister a year behind me. I would move to the front to make way for the girls, who sat behind in the carriage with my sister.

Baba looked very old – ancient in fact, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that he was only in his 50s. He had a grey moustache but no beard, sad deep-set eyes and a world-weary expression with a tinge of frustration, as if he had not been dealt a good hand by fate.

I noticed that he was wearing only a thin, white cotton kurta (shirt), white shalwar, white cotton turban around his head and a coloured thin cotton chaadar (shawl) wrapped around his body; hardly adequate to protect him from the icy winds which was cutting us to the bone. Baba asked me a couple of questions, which I answered nervously. Then he fell quiet, concentrating on the journey, using the reins cautiously, while keeping a lookout for pedestrians trying to cross the road or cyclists attempting to push forward way ahead of us.

‘Bacho, bacho’ was his familiar refrain, but I can’t remember him swearing, although swear words are very much a part of the Punjabi conversation.

He loved his horse, a well-fed brown colt. We liked it too, but Baba would only let us touch his neck and not the face, in case he bit our hands. Baba would keep the reins taut, allowing the horse only a gentle, steady, rhythmic trot all the way to the school.

We journeyed on neat roads bordered by painted white stones placed at regular intervals, leading to ‘Chawani’, the unpolluted suburban neighbourhood dotted by pine trees.

The only time he let his horse charge forward was on the stretch of Railway Road near Naz cinema, going uphill to the intersection with the old GT Road, with Zeelaf and another hotel across the road on either side. Once the ascent was achieved, it was back to the usual clickety clock.

On reaching the school, Baba would rest his horse and get his feed out in a bag, while watching us cross the road over to the huge school playground.

In the afternoon, when we finished, he was there again, along with many other tangey walas waiting for their regular passengers, occasionally waving to announce his location.

Baba had a handsome young son called Bashir, who was an un-commissioned soldier in the army, like scores of other young men from poorer families. Whenever Bashir came home for the holidays – which was only for a few days – he took the tanga out instead of his father, which was fun because Bashir made the horse sprint, not just on the ascent near the cinema, but all the way to school, overtaking all the other tangas and making us breathless with excitement, experiencing a chariot race.

‘Did Bashir make the horse run yesterday?’ Baba asked me one morning.

‘Yes’, I replied, without considering the repercussions.

‘He has picked up an injury’, he said, pointing to the horse.

‘I told him not to make him run, but he never listens,’ Baba remarked angrily.

‘Actually it was not that fast...,’ I tried to backtrack, but he remained unconvinced.

Bashir did not turn up for the next couple of days, but did appear after that, as his father probably forgave him. He raced the horse again and this time, he let me hold the reins!

I remember sitting next to Bashir and overtaking the other tangas. I don’t know if I had been bribed, but I did learn to keep a secret. When Baba asked me the next morning if Bashir had sprinted the horse, I lied. Then Bashir left the city after being posted in Rawalpindi.

After six months, I asked Baba when his son would return again.

‘Why do you ask?’ Baba was curious.

‘Oh, just wanted to know,’ I said. The real reason, of course, was that Bashir made the journey to school so much more exciting.

‘We have been trying to get him to come back for a few days, so we could marry him, but is unable to get any holidays.’

‘Ah’, I mumbled in sympathy.

A few days later, when I asked Baba if I could hold the reins, he not only refused but also admonished me for asking.

‘You are too young yet. Driving a tanga is not easy; the horse does what you instruct him to do. One wrong move and we could all fall in a ditch. We could even be killed.’

He then thought for a while and said that he would let me hold the reins once we reached the school and the tanga was stationary.

‘Don’t pull! Just hold,’ he instructed.

One time, my mother, sister and I went to Peera-Ghaib (a neighbourhood on the other side of ‘Company Bagh’) to find a bricklayer for our house, when we found that Baba lived close by in a small modest house.

The house had a small square space in the middle, where the horse was being fed. He asked us to come in for tea, but we left in a rush to find the builder.

Although Baba was not a conversationalist, he did demonstrate a dry sense of humour at times. I was once singing a song, ‘Chal chaliye, duniya de us nukrey / Jithe banda na bandey di zaat hovey (Let’s go to that corner of the world where there is no other person, no other soul).’

As I repeated the lyrics, ‘chal chaliye’, Baba turned around and asked, ‘Ki karan (what for)?’ with a hint of mischief in his eye.

It must have been around the end of the fifth grade when I got a bicycle and was allowed to pedal to school instead of taking the tanga, thus saving Rs10 a month, which was significant in those days, especially as my father was jobless. When Baba was informed, he was not amused.

‘Why is a 10-year-old boy pedalling to school six miles away?’

Meanwhile, Sheba continued to go on the tanga.

Then at the end of grade six, we left the school and the town to relocate 1000 miles south in Karachi, where dad had finally found a job, after nearly three years of searching.

I didn’t see Baba before I left and returned to Jhelum only occasionally in the early years, but never got around to meeting him. I do vaguely remember seeing him on his tanga on a couple of occasions; I had waved at him once but he didn’t notice it.

His eyesight was already failing at the time he used to take us to school, and with time, it must have deteriorated even more.

Many years later, I did once visit my grandma for a couple of hours, and was disappointed to find that there were no tangas in Jhelum anymore – the Municipal Committee had decided to phase them out and replace them with auto-rickshaws.

I thought of Baba and wondered what happened to him, his horse. He was too old to learn to drive. Did he learn any new trade? How did he earn a living?

Unfortunately, there was no time to investigate as we were in a hurry to attend the passing out ceremony of my younger brother in the army.

In June this year, nearly four decades after having left Jhelum, and three decades since moving to England (where I now live), I was on the phone with my mother in Karachi. She told me that she had seen Baba soon after my graduation in 1986, and had informed him that her son had become a doctor. Baba was delighted and said that he wished he could see me.

He never did.

‘Is he alive?’ I asked, without thinking.

‘No, he died many years ago,’ my mum replied.

Suddenly, I felt a surge of emotions and found myself overwhelmed by the warm nostalgia of yonder years; the gentle Baba, whose life and livelihood revolved around taking us, little children as we were, safely to school and back, every day without fail.

I feel humbled that he wanted to see me. Perhaps, he wanted to tell me about his failing eyesight or his painful knees, or maybe it was more than that. Perhaps, he felt proud that he had contributed to my journey in becoming a doctor.

I wish to express my gratitude to Baba for his kindness, for remembering me and for taking me to school, for looking after my sister and I, and being part of those early years of my life, which flew away too quickly and without any opportunity to meet again.

Pakistani all-rounder Shoaib Malik's profile on the popular cricket website, Espncricinfo, begins by noting that Malik has played almost every role (as a player) in international cricket, but no one is quite sure what his role really is.

This enigmatic little quip actually sums up Malik’s personality rather well. Even though he’s been in and out of the Pakistan side since 1999, he has been largely unable to define exactly where his strengths as a cricketer lie.

What’s more, his captains and the coaches that he has played under (and with), too, seem all at sea in providing a consolidated and well-defined role for him in the team.

So, what is it about him that leaves so many of his cricketing contemporaries and elders baffled that they just cannot set a goal and a role according to the obvious talents that he has always possessed?

Some believe that Malik is just too withdrawn and detached as a personality and not very easy to understand or communicate with. No one knows what goes on in his head as he almost perversely blocks all attempts to be analysed, even by his closest colleagues.

Yet, there is this other Malik as well. A stubborn hothead who can suddenly fly off the handle like an angry young man responding to a slight inflicted by the powers that be.

But he’s not all that young anymore. He’s 33. However, he does seem to be on a path to correct this aspect of his puzzling temperament.

In January 2014, I was in Dubai interviewing Pakistan’s captain, Misbahul Haq at the hotel where the Pakistan team was staying (during a Pakistan-Sri Lanka series).

After conducting the interview, I also managed to meet a few other Pakistani players and the team’s coach at the time, Moin Khan.

During a brief conversation with a player there, Shoaib Malik’s name came up somehow. This player – a batsman who had played a lot of cricket with Malik – said, ‘Malik should have been part of this team.’

But he quickly added, ‘He (Shoaib) himself is the reason why he is not playing for Pakistan anymore. The captain (Misbah) would love to have him in the squad, but Malik refuses to realise that he can’t be in the team because of no other reason than the fact that his attitude is bringing him down …’

The player then (smilingly) also explained the attitude he was talking about:

‘It’s as if on a day-to-day basis he (Malik) swings like a pendulum (bari ghari ka danda). One day he is extremely quiet and lost in his thoughts, the next day he is cracking witty remarks and the next moment, he is sulking or lashing out, and no one knows what is making him swing to and fro like this …’

Well, yesterday, Malik’s temperament must have swung towards a much happier disposition as he continued to be on a dream-like comeback trail.

Returning to the Pakistan ODI and T20 sides after being completely written off, Malik smashed 500 runs (at a massive average of 114.41) in the 11 ODI games that he has played after returning to the side early this year.

His good form then bagged him a place in Pakistan’s Test squad, recently engaged in playing an important series against England in the UAE.

When Malik was selected to play in the first Test (still in progress), this was his first Test after spending a good five years in the wilderness.

He came in at no. 3 and would have done well to stay there a bit and maybe crack a 40 to reacclimatise himself to the exhaustive aura of Test cricket. Instead, he went on to pile a mammoth 245!

Also read: Malik strikes gold in comeback Test

The comeback man: Malik celebrates his double century against England. —AP

Misbah was seen applauding Malik’s Herculean effort enthusiastically. When Malik was selected (as a last minute addition) to the Test squad, Misbah did not hesitate to exhibit how pleased he was to have him in the team.

Malik’s recent form alone was not the only reason why Misbah sounded delighted to have him in his squad. Getting him in and then giving him a go in the very first Test of the series (apparently due to the injury suffered by Azhar Ali), Misbah was repaying a debt that he owed to Malik.

On a number of occasions, Misbah has named Malik as the man who (when he was captain) had fought a grueling battle with the selectors to bring back Misbah into the side after he had been left to wither away in the obscurity of domestic cricket.

Misbah had made his ODI and Test debuts in 2001-2002. But after being dropped from the squad just before the 2003 Cricket World Cup, he was largely forgotten about despite the fact that he was notching some impressive scores in domestic games.

Malik replaced the mighty Inzamam-ul-Haq as captain in 2007 (after the latter resigned due to the team’s terrible show at the 2007 World Cup). The same year also saw the inauguration of the T20 World Cup (in South Africa).

Malik wanted Misbah in the squad. The selectors were not quite sure. To them, Misbah was passé, even though the current Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Shahryar Khan, claims in his book, The Cricket Conundrum, that the board was quite aware of Misbah’s good performances in domestic cricket, but that it was captain Inzamam who had kept him away from making his much deserved comeback.

Khan suggests Inzamam was ‘a highly insecure captain’ and ‘was suspicious’ of players who were more educated than him. Khan also alluded that Inzamam, who was promoting a certain strand of religiosity in the team (as a regulatory tactic), saw Misbah as not quite fitting in this scheme of things.

However, Misbah has repeatedly (and rather diplomatically), underplayed the issue, simply suggesting that (to him) a captain would not keep out a good player for reasons related to things other than cricket.

Another reason that Misbah often cites for his exclusion is that during Inzi’s captaincy, the team had a packed middle-order and it was difficult for a batsman like him to break back into the side.

Whatever the reason may have been behind Misbah’s wilderness years, Malik pulled him back into the Pakistan team for the 2007 T20 World Cup, and that too at the expense of the veteran, Mohammad Yousuf.

Misbah’s return too was impressive, until he was dropped again in 2010, to return once more in 2011, this time as captain of a side rocked by spot-fixing and infighting.

This time, he marched on to finally become a prolific batting mainstay in the team and then the country’s most successful Test captain, roping in more wins than any other Pakistan Test skipper.

So I’m sure Misbah could entirely relate to the way Malik has marked his return from the cricketing wasteland. But unlike Malik, Misbah’s temperament has remained one-dimensional: steady, calm, reflective. Always.

Malik, on the other hand, has been more like a misguided missile. Though not quite coupled by the media with the enfant terrible likes of yore, such as the moody and random Wasim Hassan Raja, the implosive Sarfraz Nawaz, and the confrontational Shoaib Akhtar, Malik’s eccentricities have been largely elusive and tough to comprehend.

Born in 1982 into a middle-class family in Sialkot (in Pakistan’s Punjab province), Malik was being groomed by his parents for a decent education and then a stable job. He was interested in cricket but only to the point of watching it on TV and playing it in the streets like any kid would in Pakistan.

However, in 1994, when he was 12, he gingerly walked into a ‘travelling coaching clinic’ (that had reached Sialkot). It was being headed by Pakistan’s former captain and cricket icon, Imran Khan.

Malik fancied himself as a batsman who could bowl a bit. But not much came out of his trip to the coaching clinic because he was soon barred (by his parents) from even playing cricket on the streets because it was disturbing his studies.

In an interview that he gave to cricket journalist, Osman Samiuddin, in 2004, Malik alluded that it was his mother who was the stricter parent, while his father would secretly encourage his passion to play.

In 1996, he slipped out of the house to attend trials that were being held to select a squad for an Under-15 World Cup in England.

To his parents’ surprise, he was selected and to his own surprise, he was picked in the side as an off-break bowler!

So batting went out the window and he began to concentrate on his bowling, managing to also make his way into the Pakistan Under-19 team for a series (in Pakistan) against the England U-19 team, which also included a young 17-year-old Freddie Flintoff (the future England star).

Impressed by Pakistan’s then latest off-spinning sensation, Saqlain Mushtaq, Malik began to remodel his bowling action. In 1997, he made his first-class debut in domestic cricket when he was selected to play for Gujranwala.

Malik during his days in the Pakistan Under-19 team.

Former Pakistan batsman, Asif Mujtaba, was so impressed by Malik’s bowling that he jettisoned his entry into the much bigger (and better-paying) domestic side, PIA.

Malik was overjoyed, because PIA was studded with top Pakistani players, including Wasim Akram, Moin Khan and Malik’s idol at the time, Saqlain Mushtaq.

In 1999, while replacing an injured Saqlain Mushtaq in a domestic ODI game, Malik impressed Akram and Moin so much that they included his name in the Pakistan team that Akram was to lead for the Champions Trophy tournament in Sharjah.

Malik only got to know about his inclusion when he returned to Sialkot (from Karachi, where he had played the match). The news was broken to him by his ecstatic parents. They finally allowed their wistful teenager son to pursue his passion.

Though he bowled steadily in the tournament, he was aware of the fact that he won’t be getting many chances to retain his place after the return (from injury) of the spinning maestro, Saqlain Mushtaq.

Malik thus began to pester his captains in the domestic circuit to push him up the batting order so he could prove that he was an equally accomplished batsman.

In early 2000, the new Pakistan captain, Waqar Younus, began using Malik as an all-rounder, and sent him up the order during an ODI game against the West Indies in Sharjah. Malik grabbed the opportunity and smashed a quickfire century.

Then, in August 2001 (still just 19), he made his Test debut in Multan against the visiting Bangladesh. But it wasn’t an impressive debut, and he kept falling in and out of the team for the next two years until in 2004, when he began to score big (and pick regular wickets).

He was made a permanent member of the team by captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, under whom Malik blossomed into becoming an exciting all-rounder.

Pakistan’s coach, the late Bob Woolmer, saw in Malik a future captain because (according to Woolmer), Malik’s ideas were ‘the most original and sharp’ (compared to other youngsters in the team).

Malik’s relationship with Inzamam was a largely quiet one. Though Malik never entirely submitted to Inzamam’s unique regime that mixed exhibitions of faith with cricket, he quietly went along, cementing his position in the squad.

A quiet but steady relationship: Inzi with Malik. —AFP

In 2005, at the age of 23, he was made the captain of the Sialkot side in the country’s first major T20 tournament.

Captaincy brought out the other, more unsavoury, side of Malik’s personality; from being the quiet and easy-going character, he became a sharp, aggressive and determined man on the field.

Leading from the front and desperate to bag the national T20 title, he lost his temper at the umpires during a match against the Lahore Eagles. He accused the umpires of siding with the Eagles. And as if this wasn’t enough, he ordered his team to deliberately lose their next game (against the Karachi Zebras) just so the Eagles would be knocked out and fail to make the semi-finals.

During the post-match ceremony, commentator Rameez Raja asked Malik (live on TV) whether he thought his decision to throw away the game would dent his chances of ever captaining Pakistan in the future.

Malik accusing the umpires of cheating in the explosive post-match interview.

Malik exhibited no remorse. He told Rameez that he didn’t care if he was ever made (or not made) Pakistan’s captain. He said his actions were justified because he was left with no other option (by the tournament’s organisers). He lamented that the only option left for him was to throw away the game (as a matter of protest). He also reiterated his allegations against the umpires.

Malik was handed a 1-Test ban and a fine by the PCB.

In 2006, during a series against arch rivals India (in Pakistan), Malik exploded with the bat, blasting 90, 95 and 108 in three consecutive ODI innings. The same year he also notched his first ever Test century (against Sri Lanka). He told reporters in Lahore that his scores should once and for all shut his critics up (in the media).

After Pakistan were embarrassingly knocked-out from the 2007 World Cup, Inzamam resigned as skipper and PCB approached Younus Khan to become Pakistan’s next captain. Younus refused.

The board then decided to honour the observations made by Woolmer in 2005 about Malik’s potential to become a good captain. Woolmer had tragically passed away during the 2007 World Cup.

So Malik was made captain. Though his two-year stint as skipper was at best patchy, he did come close to winning the first ever T20 World Cup. During his captaincy, he had a falling out with Mohammad Yousuf, who accused him of keeping him out of the side.

Things went from bad to worse when the parents of an Indian-Muslim girl claimed that Malik had married their daughter.

Malik, who was once described by a cricketing friend as ‘a discreet Casanova’, immediately denied the allegations. The lady continued to appear on Indian TV for a while and accused Malik of betraying her trust. The family, however, could never prove that Malik had actually married the daughter.

The ‘discreet Casanova’.

In 2009, Malik was unceremoniously removed from captaincy after Pakistan lost badly against Sri Lanka. A leaked report (authored by the coach and management staff during the disastrous Lankan tour) claimed that Malik ‘had isolated himself, was uncommunicative, and hardly interacted with the players.’

The report also claimed that ‘apart from giving short 5-minute talks to the team, he would go quiet and seem lost in his own thoughts.’

However, the player I was talking to in Dubai (and who was also a member of that team) had told me that Malik (at the time) had fallen into depression because his ideas and tactics ‘would zoom over the coaching staff’s heads)’; and that ‘they (the tactics) were actually way ahead of their time …’

He had then added: ‘I now see similar ideas being implemented by a number of captains around the world …’

Malik remained in the team, though.

Malik showing the court order to the press.

Malik’s form began to deteriorate and then, after a disastrous tour of Australia (under the captaincy of Mohammad Yousuf), Malik was banned by the PCB for a year (along with 7 other players).

Though PCB did not entirely explain why the bans were imposed, a report (quietly leaked to the press), suggested that Malik was slapped with a ban because he had not co-operated with the captain (Yousuf) and had tried to lead a rebellion against him.

Pakistan’s star all-rounder, Shahid Afridi, too had testified in front of the board and claimed that Malik had been ‘a bad influence on the team (during the tour) …’

Malik was livid. He took the PCB to court and was successful in getting the ban lifted.

Malik’s form, however, continued to slump. But this didn’t stop the ‘discreet Casanova’ to win over Indian tennis star, Sania Mirza, and marry her in April 2010. His Pakistan cricketing career, though, seemed to be as good as over. He was picked for the turbulent 2010 ‘spot-fixing’ tour of England, but not given a single game.

He was then entirely discarded after this tour.

Sania and Shoaib.

Most players would have hung up their playing shoes by now, but just as Misbah had done during his years in the wilderness, Malik too, continued to play domestic cricket.

He turned his T20 Sialkot side into one of the most successful teams in the country. This got him selected to play in a few T20 matches for Pakistan. But in each of the few T20 games that he appeared in, he seemed out of sorts and never looked like becoming a permanent fixture in the Pakistan team again.

In May 2015, years after he had played his last major game, Malik was picked to play in a series against the visiting Zimbabwe team. His selection raised a lot of eyebrows and a section of the media questioned why a 33-year-old discard was being preferred over newer talent.

Under tremendous pressure to perform and win his place back in a side that had apparently forgotten about him, Malik smashed a century, signaling that this time he was here to stay.

He continued to pile on the runs in the next two ODI and T20 series, and was finally brought back into the Test squad as well.

His wife was at hand in Sri Lanka, cheering him on, during a series in which he finally proved that his comeback century against the Zimbabweans was not a fluke.

His bowling seemed to have improved as well, and for a 33-year-old, he still looked fit and as agile and flashy as ever, competing well with brilliant young fielders such as Anwar Ali and Mohammad Rizwan on the field.

Malik hitting his way back into reckoning (Lahore, 2015).

In an interview that he gave when he was in the middle of piling those 500 runs in 11 innings, he confessed that (as a sportsman), he did feel compelled to make his way back into the Pakistan side every time his wife would do well on the tennis court. He said he was under tremendous pressure.

Well, now that he’s finally managed to come full circle, and will most probably be part of the Pakistan team for quite some time, I wonder if this was the kind of a roller coaster ride he was imagining when he took that gingerly walk into Imran Khan’s coaching clinic 21 years ago?

Mandir in Ganjmandi. —Muhammad Bin Naveed

In the kaleidoscopic streets of bustling Rawalpindi stand tall a few Hindu temples that are hitherto the centre of Hindu festivity. The temples tell stories of the city’s diverse religious past and the neglect that the city's heritage has now fallen into.

Since the partition of the subcontinent, these temples have somehow withstood the wear and tear and still bear imprints of a culture long lost in the abyss of things bygone.

Rawalpindi, which was once predominantly inhabited by Hindus and Sikhs, now hosts only a few hundred Hindu families. All members of the Hindu community are devout worshippers and regular visitors of these temples.

As I stood at the rooftop of the buildings near Soojan Singh's haveli, I could see the old Rawalpindi city and its mandirs spread out before me. Even in the densely populated areas, these mandirs are easily discernible.

Bagh Sardaran Mandir as seen from Sujan Singh Haveli. —Muhammad Bin Naveed

Their structures rise higher than the surroundings, nevertheless blending beautifully into the colours of the adjoining environs; a telling testimony of religious harmony amongst the people of Pindi.

To learn a little more about this cultural multiplicity, I set out to visit these temples and the Hindu community of the city. I drove from Sadar bazaar to Kabarri bazaar to visit Krishna mandir, which is still open to public. It is situated in a busy street near the railway station.

Mandir spire in Bhabra bazaar visible from Sujan Singh Haveli.—Muhammad Bin Naveed

Built in 1897 by the generous citizens, Kaanji Mal, Ujagar Mal and Ram Rajpal, the double-storey building has a tree at the entrance and Shivling underneath it. The building has a plate inscribed with the names of the Hindus who donated this piece of land to the community. The mandir is dedicated to Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesh and Goddess Sheran Wali.

At the entrance of the mandir, I was warmly received by Jagmohan Arorra, an elderly man in charge of the mandir, along with a few other people from the community. They are natives of Rawalpindi and have lived all their lives in the city.

“We have lived here since ages. I was born in this mandir and have spent my childhood playing in this area,” Arorra said.

At the top floor, the interior is illuminated by sunlight shining through the large windows. The room is decorated with pictures of Hindu saints, like Sai Baba.

Mohan Mandir in the background with another mandir in front at Landa bazaar. —Sultan Ali

Rawalpindi was once home to a large number of Sikhs and Hindus. Manohar Lal, who looks after the Krishna mandir, told me that Hindus and Sikhs had and still have intermarriages among them.

“My mother was a Sikh and my father was a Hindu,” Arorra confirmed.

Since the majority of the Sikhs migrated, the Hindus are looking after these temples. The Krishna mandir, however, is now looked after by the evacuee trust board.

A worm's eye view of a mandir in Old Rawalpindi. —Sultan Ali

A mosque is situated in the street right next to the Krishna mandir. When I asked if the Hindus felt any hesitation in celebrating their religious festivals in the neighbourhood of a mosque, Arorra said:

“I don’t remember any incident. We know each other’s prayer times. Rather, we try to facilitate the other. We offer prayers and have special gatherings on Tuesdays and that has never been a problem for either us or the Muslims.”

Arorra further recalled:

“When I was a child, I used to play with my Muslim friends in this very street. One day, while playing with my friends, I went to the mosque and asked the Maulvi sahab, 'Maulvi jee! Can I say azaan as my Muslim friends do?' Maulvi jee replied with a smile, 'Why not?' That day, I called for prayers in the masjid.”

Nostalgia swept over Arorra's face, softening his eyes.

Mandir spire juxtaposed with Mosque Minar in the Bhabra bazaar neighbourhood of Old Rawalpindi.—Muhammad Bin Naveed

Another mandir that is still open is Guru Balmik Swamiji’s mandir. Situated in the Chaklala cantonment, this mandir was built in 1935. A number of Hindu families live nearby.

Read on: Historic temple’s days may be numbered

The mandir is surrounded by military camps, which have been there since the British era. It is owned by the community and not by the evacuee trust. On my arrival at the temple, I met Jagjeet Bhatti , 67, and his family, who have lived here since the time of British India.

Sunil, a young man from the community told me, “Hindus from all over Pakistan come to this mandir for Bhandara (festival) in June every year.”

On my inquiry about the religious freedom of Hindus here, Sunil said, “We usually don’t feel any hesitation in offering our prayers at the mandir. The last 15 years have been peaceful for the community because of the awareness that the media has brought to the society, but we do face problems for cremation. The Shamshaan Ghaat is situated at an overcrowded place which makes things difficult for us. For this reason, we have to take the dead bodies to Attock city for cremation.”

Mandir in Purana Qila. —Sultan Ali

Mohan Mandir. —Sultan Ali

Several other mandirs of the city are in shambles. Most inside the city have become houses or been made parts of schools or universities, while others lie in complete neglect. According to the locals, these temples are not more than 150 years old.

These mandirs; those which have vanished under the expanding city or those which are left crumbling, seek recognition from the city that once owned them, and from the people that have their past attached to it.

See: Historical sites in Rawalpindi to be preserved

According to some reports, recently, a project was planned by the Unesco to renovate the temples in Rawalpindi and to declare these assets as regional heritage. Whether or not that will happen still remains a question.

Bagh Sardaran Mandirs. —Sultan Ali

As the sun sets, the mandirs fade into the darkness, overshadowed by the past and drowned in the raucous buzz of city life. One wonders if they are ever going to come out of the shadows that surround them.

Rawalpindi has the potential to become the centre of regional heritage, if taken care of.

A city with a rich history and culture, it calls for recognition and consideration from its own people, before seeking it from anywhere else.

Related:

Rawalpindi’s dilapidated Shamshan Ghat
Devi ka mandir – a faded reminder of Pindi’s past