We all love coming of age movies: films that celebrate the flow of adolescence towards the adult life. These movies are easy to identify not only by their storyline, but the very form of filmmaking employed in shooting them. Flashbacks? Check. Young protagonist as a narrator in the beginning of the film. Check. Young protagonist giving us a ‘moral of the story’ lesson at the end of the film. Check. The struggles of losing virginity subplot. Check (most of the times).
Not only are these movies immediately relatable, but they show us that it is okay to be human and flawed. Here’s a list of such movies that should definitely be on your must-watch list, especially if you’re feeling the burden and monotony of every day life:
Moonlight
Moonlight is the best film of the year, period. To give any plot highlighters would be to do injustice to one of the best scripts of all-time. The film is subtle, beautiful and relates to the vulnerable side within each one of us.
The Age of Seventeen
This is one of the films that leave you spell bound. With pieces glued together by a pitch perfect performance by Woody Harrelson (whose never been more likable), the film is an ode to the conundrums life throws at us that we just aren’t ready for: the death of a parent and of-course, our sibling dating our best friend.
Spectacular Now
Spectacular Now isn’t a memorable film: but it sums up the jist of school life better than any other film we could think of. We all have a carefree Sutter inside of us, who shuts off the world and all it’s pain. And most of us have the girl/guy-next-door alter ego within us that defines Cassidy – which makes this romantic coming-of-age drama all that much more personal.
Pan’s Labyrinth
The film’s protagonist Ofelia does not come-of-age in the conventional sense as in other movies, but that doesn’t stop this from being the best film on the list.- Pan’s Labyrinth takes us to Post-Civil War Spain, where a young girl battles the realities of constant war, an ailing mother, evil step father with escapist imagination. The film is one of a kind – mixing dark fantasy and brute reality in a fashion that has never been accomplished with such effortless gusto in a major motion picture before. It does not, however, seem to far away from home – there’s a young Ofelia in all of us – which comes out whenever the geopolticial realities of the region (terrorism, Pak-India rivalry, socio-economic conundrums) often supersede and aggravate every day life.
Some marketing genius somewhere thought of a great idea – get the best batsman of the modern day era – who also happens to have the sissiest husky voice for a celebrity in the same era – and have him sing a bathroom ditty to troll life as we know it. What we have now is a song that at it’s best can be deemed as bat-shit horrible.
The song begins with Sachin singing to lyrics which could only have been written by someone with Down’s Syndrome, and quickly has Sonu Nigam chiming in to bring it some credibility – and failing miserably at it.
There are two high points during the song, if high meant the high you receive when your trip on Acid and just want to kill yourself for taking this road in the first place.
The first high comes when Sachin teaches us the names of all the textbook cricketing shots out there: cover drive, on drive, off drive….and Chakka. If that was bad enough, Sachin then spends a good 40 seconds teaching us all of the names of his teammates over the years and then thanking them as if the video was meant to be shared over a Whatsapp Group before killing himself.
If anyone is having a great day and just wants to ruin it, click on the video below to watch Sachin’s first and hopefully last masterpiece.
Let’s face it – the famous Nihari, Paaye and Gurday Kaporay that the city is famous for are not everyone’s cup of tea. After much feedback from our readers, we’ve come up with a few alternatives that are equally resonant with the masses and have come to define the taste the city is known for.
Salt N’ Pepper Stuffed Chicken
The most iconic continental serving in the city. Although recent feedback has been largely disappointing due to changes in presentation (and also in taste by some accounts), the Salt N’ Pepper Stuffed Chicken has been the favorite of the city for the past two decades. What makes it extra special? The slithering slimy dirty sweet pineapple sauce that makes you want to chew right in. Butt Karahi For a city that prides itself on it’s Karahi, Butt Karahi is the hands down favourite. The Karahi is freshly cooked and is full of an array of spices and a generous serving of ‘desi kyo’. For those who don’t appreciate the rather innervating ambiance, there’s good news – Butt Karachi is going a complete makeover to make it more accommodating for those who prefer to carry their hand sanitizers with them. Fujiyama For a city with it’s fair share of Pakistan-ized Chinese Food, this one is a much needed, albeit expensive, breath of fresh air. The fact that Lahore’s concept of Asian food is a toned down amalgamation of Indian tastes with Chinese ingredients is no secret. Fujiyama thankfully stays true to it’s roots.
Howdy Say what you will about it’s pretentious B-grade vibe of it’s ambiance and visual appeal – a poor man’s Gunsmoke at first sight – but Howdy knows how to make it’s burgers. Well, most of the time. This restaurant chain literally paved the way for dozens of local entrepreneurs in the burger trade with Burgers that not only tasted great, but were much better than the wide variety of international fast food chains.
The Dozens of Café Restaurants with the Same Menu Let’s be honest – a good number of the city’s finest café restaurants offer the same things to eat. There might be a number of reasons: be it the limited training sources for chefs or the monotonous demand of the clientele, but there are usually ten to fifteen menu items you will find in any restaurant within the city – you know: Taragon Chicken, Morrocon Chicken, Thai Chicken/Beef Chilli and the usual suspects. The good news is: they usually taste pretty fine – and sometimes great. Take Café Zouk and Arcadian for example, these restaurants take food items that are available in dozens of other restaurants but stand out due to one reason or another.
After 27 years of being the face of the WWE, the Undertaker has called it quits. The Undertaker hung up the boots after his main event match with Roman Reigns, which he predictably lost to give Roman Reigns the last minute push (rather unsuccessfully as fans hate Roman even more) but also to gracefully wake out on the biggest stage of them. Scheduled to have his second hip replaced later this year, there is little doubt that we may never see Taker again in a full fledged WWE match.
For most fans, this is a blow that they may never truly digest: the Undertaker has been the WWE’s link with the past. The 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s saw many great names come and go from one organization to the next, but Taker stood his ground as the biggest star in the WWE. While The Rock and Stone Cold Steven Austin may have witnessed more popular peaks during their careers, virtually no wrestler since Bruno Sammartino has had the prolonged stint of being a main event player quite like the Undertaker. So will we miss about the Undertaker the most? Here’s a short recap: The Entrance
Is there a greater show on Earth? The Undertaker’s entrance – theme music, lighting, pyrotechnics and all – is one of the greatest sights in entertainment. The WWE tends to take it a notch further during pay per views – so you might want to check out some wonderful and eerie entrances from previous WWE PPV’s to get your nostalgia juices flowing.
Paul Bearer
Paul Bearer and Undertaker are forever etched into American pop culture as one of the more eerie sights in television history. Bearer’s shrill high pitched voice and forceful overacting are a unique act you probably haven’t seen anywhere else.
The Big Man Tricks
For a guy billed as nearly seven feet tall (real life height 6’9) the Taker had some truly remarkable agility. Whether it was the walk on a rope or the leaping clothesline onto the ring apron – the Taker took showmanship to new heights for big men.
The Matches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWDqHeCjUCc
The Undertaker has more memorable matches than any other wrestler in history. Having been billed against all main event wrestlers except perhaps Sting and Goldberg, the Taker made sure that his biggest matches always had that little bit of extra oomph. Case in point: the Hell in a Cell match with Mankind – touted by many wrestling insiders as the most important match in WWE history.
We use a lot of tools to make sense of the world, be it the logical type or the absurd. As Pakistani’s, we lean a bit more towards the latter. Therefore, when it comes to assessing people around us, we tend to see them as representatives of their castes rather than as observable individuals. As a result of this, our identities as well as our opinions of others are largely based on stereotypes of how a Jat, Rajput or Arain typical ought to be. For those not familiar with this branch of philosophy, we offer a small introductory guide to the traits most common (in theory [mythology] at least) to the various castes.
Jats Proud for no obvious reason. Those with money tend to be the life in the party. Borderline acceptable paindu and that too only because they have a ‘good heart’, whatever the hell that means. People don’t expect you to be too bright and you can’t help proving them right. You’re also a great believer in true friendship – and you’re always available with your white Corolla to drive your buddies around from town to the next.
Rajput A short-ish height and larger than life nose. You always have something brave to say in the face of adversity but won’t shy away from calling your Chachu when someone challenges you to a fight. Will make sure everyone else knows of your rich family history minus all the women married off to the Mughals for some peace.
Arain There are about two hundred books and Facebook pages dedicated to the wrongdoings done to other castes. “If you see an Arain and a snake, kill the Arain” goes the famous saying. You also generally tend to be more educated than your friends and much better in money matters than those other dumb Punjabi castes. Will also tend to do anything to get what they want, even if it requires castrating their best friend – or at least that’s how the story goes.
Kashmiris You don’t think much – you just eat it away. “All the world’s a buffet and we are mere diners’ goes the famous Kashmiri saying we just came up with. Tend to be good fighters inside the wrestling ring but would rather talk things out in a real fight. Also tend to be extremely fair skinned but with little in common with general perceptions of human beauty.
Pathan The best books written about Pathans would be SMS compilations. You are strong and foolishly hard headed. You think you can break rocks with your forehead and you probably haven’t wondered why you would do it in the first place. You loved Imran Khan initially but started hating him when you realized he spends more time wreaking havoc in Punjab than fixing shit in KPK. Pathans are good friends, unless they suspect you are flirting with a member of their family. In that case, be prepared for a five generation long family feud.
Memon If you’re a Memon, chances are your dad is probably married to his cousin (your Mom or stepmom or step-step-mom), your sister is married to the cousin you don’t like, you are about to get married to your cousin’s cousin, who also happens to be your dad’s business partner and last but not the least – your brother-in-law happens to be your wife-to-be’s third cousin, thereby complicating life itself and leading to centuries of poor genetics. Additionally, the meaning of your life is two-fold: count money during the day and count your nafal prayers at night. Gujjar Got milk?
We know click bait when we see it, and this one had us fooled. A farmer in Indonesia has been eaten by a giant python – yes, literally, eaten alive by a giant python. It’s fair enough to say that everyone’s favourite google search (“Can a snake eat a grown man alive?”) seems to come up with answers that are generally true, but there are exceptions as in this case: Yes, snakes can eat adults, although it’s very very rare and actual documented cases are few are far between if you ignore the Anaconda movies.
Experts have said that the man, a farmer based in Indonesia, may likely have stumbled into a trap set for another animal, as human beings are not generally considered to by the python’s meal of choice. We’ll leave it up to you to decide.
You probably have not heard about Bagga Safri, which is pretty good considering the crazy, funny and downright stupid stuff we come across in Pakistan. That’s a good thing. Or rather it was, as we will now offer a thorough glimpse into the world of one of the most underrated Punjabi artists on any side of the border. Be warned, although the videos do not contain any nudity, they are clearly NSFW for Pakistani workplaces – and rightfully so – I mean, where else do you see a grown man uppercutting his leading lady through her legs while pulling her into the air with a jubilant roar…all while lip syncing to a lively folk song. Yes, this is the world of Bagga Safri.
Here’s the shocking part: the guy is a legit superstar in some parts of Indian Punjab had has a serious fan following: think Ataullah Esakhelvi with more poontang in his videos. It’s not tough to imagine why there are so many cases of abuse and attempts at rape on both sides of the border – with ‘entertainment’ like this, there is little else to expect from the masses.
Warning: This is probably the most disturbing thing you will see this week.
There exists – for reasons many – a love/hate relationship between the Pakistani diaspora and those (un)lucky enough to be settled here in the motherland. For all the western union transactions we owe them, we still haven’t been able to muster up the resolve to ignore the appalling quirks of our Englistan-settled Uncles & Aunts. So here it goes: a short list of peculiar traits of the Pakistani Diaspora, which can alternatively be titled as ‘5 Facts which prove Pakistani Immigrant Families are Crazy AF’.
They are still stuck in the 90’s
Yes, in terms of art, music, movies, these guys are pretty much stuck in the 90’s. They think Kumar Sanu is still a thing and they would rather listen to Raja Hindustani remixes than a track Amit Trivedi, Coke Studio or AR Rahman. Funny enough, their choices in American movies and music is perfectly normal.
They wonder if Pakistan has internet
Yes, we have all met those Desi families living abroad who have stopped connecting with their homeland many years ago. Although they go on to live relatively successful careers abroad, their only source of knowledge about Pakistani are their lesser able family and friends in various villages of central Punjab. That’s why they’ll ask you the craziest shit this side of the Atlantic: Does Pakistan have DSL? When will people start watching DVDs instead of VHS cassettes? How will I be able to contact you when you return to Lahore – are there mobile signals where you live?
They keep up with Politics and LOVE Imran Khan
This isn’t surprising. For a generation that left Pakistan during the times of Bhutto and Sharif, you can’t help but understand their loathing of these two, combined with their infatuation with Imran Khan. They will miss out on Dada Abu’s funeral because you know – work and all, but PTI dharna? Book them tickets!
The women are oblivious to the latest in fashion
In line with the first point above, it is fair to say that the women are pretty much in No Man’s Land when it comes to fashion. Dressed in colours that could only make sense in 90’s Govinda flicks and in designs that could only be deemed contemporary in places like Bahawalpur, the women are pretty much stuck in a fashion void.
The inferiority complex
A white supremacists dream: an under confident brown man in constant Fight-or-Flight mode. The inferiority complex runs deep with the average desi in foreign lands. You can attribute it to the post colonization syndrome or any range of other factors, but there is a definite shortage of tennis balls in the self-belief department.
There are so many reasons why you should put your cellphone down and enjoy the moment like your family dinner, or watching movies etc. but your iPhone takes that very moment away from you and is doing so around the globe. But here is one interesting observation that we might have neglected is the iPhone is ruining your posture. That’s right! If you are in a public space just stand still and look around. You will see many people hunching over their phones. As one psychologist in New Zealand calls it iHunch or people often refer it to as text neck.
According to research, the average head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds. So when we bend our neck while using our phone the overall weight on our neck increases that roughly amounts to 60 pounds.
Similarly, when we are sad we hunch also when we are scared of something. The study has shown that when people go into clinical depression they hunch. Which resembles in today’s iHunch posture. Studies have also shown that a depressed person often stands with his/her neck bent forward, shoulders collapsed and arms drawn in towards the body.
A posture doesn’t necessarily reflect an emotional stage but it can cause them. A recent experiment was performed in a mock-up job interview where nondepressed participants were asked to sit in an upright position. Then they were asked a series of questions and long interviews. Linguistics analysis of the participants showed that those who were sitting in upright positions they were more confident and prone to give more answers than those who were not.
Many of us spend many hours on our phone, tablets or our laptops to increase our productivity despite all of this. We only rely on our mobile devices far too much than necessary and that is not changing anytime soon. So how should we fight this hunching problem?
The easiest way is to keep your head up and shoulders back; even if you have to keep it to eye level. When you are writing a message two of the main muscle groups are involved in hunching posture. That is your shoulder blades and the ones along side your neck. Keeping it at the eye level helps reduce scarring and restores elasticity.
So when next time you text or email someone make sure you don’t hunch and remember it can cause slouching and slouching can cause change in your moods your memory and your behavior. So your physical posture sculpts your psychological posture and that could be key to your successful life.
BELCHATOW POLAND - MAY 02 2013: Modern white keyboard with colored social network buttons.
“We are what we share” – or so goes a notable variation of a much used saying. Unfortunately, if such a premise held true for Pakistan, we would be in dire straits. The fact is that a wide majority of Pakistanis share nothing but rounds of unfiltered, semi-processed crap. Here is our roundup of the most common types of social media posts in Pakistan and how our world is worse off:
You won’t believe what this Famous Person said about this other Famous Person
The most common of the Facebook absurdities. The context is usually between two ex-lovers, people we thought were friends or just really, really famous celebrities. Whoever it is, you can count on most of the article to be based on making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Inspired by the great house of literature that is Perez Hilton, you can bet any hint of shade will be exaggerated to maximum proportions. Be it Wasim calling Waqar a ODI expert (which, of course, means that he was trash in test matches) or John Abraham accusing Bipasha of never being there (which, of course, meant she was cheating on him), make sure to indulge in these with one side of the mind closed.
Famous Indian Dude Thinks Pakistan is Great
We are always looking out for even the slightest bit of praise from anyone – and if it happens to be an Indian celebrity, we just can’t hold it back in. Nothing makes us feel better than Sehwag calling Shoaib Akhtar the fastest bowler in the world, or Om Puri saying Pakistan feels like home. Nothing like a little ass kissing from the enemy. Puke.
Notorious Atheist Sinner Accepts Islam
These ones are usually accompanied by before-and-after pictures where the concerned person resembles the devil beforehand and now resembles, well, a Maulvi. A quick google search usually proves that it isn’t so simple after all – Lindsay Lohan, anyone?
Random Fruit: The Cancer Killer
Those malicious pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to see this one! That is usually how the caption runs for these ones. The fruit or miracle food is usually an easy-to-find one (quite often honey or some type of berry) that has been proven to destroy all forms of cancer if a certain quantity of it is consumed (usually rounded off to the nearest hundred or thousand).
Apologetic Feminist Post: Women can do random cool thing better than men
Yes, some of us have studied in good universities and we know a thing or two about the positive effects of feminism. But of course, being in a deeply male chauvinist society, one step onto the feminist bandwagon usually means a lifetime of fighting the wave. For others who just want to live in their bubbles, we come across these absolutely absurd apologetic ‘proofs’ that women are as good or better than men – which just makes us wonder if the author actually believed in the men-are-better-than-women notion enough to write an antithesis to it. The fact is, if one or ten or a hundred women actually do ‘achievement A’ or ‘activity A’, it does not become a generalization. In any case, women do not need such apologetic reassurances, most of us (or at least those who can read such articles) already believe in equality.
Wedding Film in Slow Motion with Unfunny Interviews
No other nation has taken to formulaic 5-minute wedding films quite like ours. We already know what we are going to see before the video starts. Faisal Mosque, Badshahi Mosque, a drone shot of the Lahore Fort, a short unfunny iteration of the how the two met and a moving (as in physically moving) interview with the bride’s mother-in-law, who can’t wait to make her (and the fridge she’s bringing along) a part of the family.
Prospective homebuyers throughout the world usually have similar, universally applicable queries. Is the house facing a park? Is it in the vicinity of an industrial area? Are there are any hot girls in the neighborhood? How many children were burned inside the basement furnace during the black plague?
However, when it comes to Lahore, there are some additional queries that cross the minds of budding homeowners: How far is the house from probable structures in the Lashker-e-Jhangvi’s ‘to-destroy-by-July’ wish list? Is the housing scheme LDA (Lahore Development Authority) approved, TMA approved, Shahbaz Sharif approved? Does it correspond to the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah lest a theocratic military dictator take over tomorrow morning? Is there any pending fatwa against the local community club President and his five-year-old son for holding a Tambola night? How many motorcycle handle–inflicted scratches do I expect if I park my car outside? Will I be considered poor if the house does not have a false ceiling with spotlights (the holy grail of architecture as per Lahori aunties)? How far is the house from the Chinese spa down the street that professes to be a Far East takeout-a-rant? And the most important question of all in this city of land mafia, ‘If I buy this house, will I be it’s owner?’ With security being a fundamental issue, one route many adopt in the search for real estate begins amongst the league of gated communities that have spread throughout the country like a swarm of locust. These communities offer two things critical to security: a promiscuous name and a Delhi Sultanate styled entrance gate (if you are lucky, you may just come across Butt Town, with two lion sculptures on each side of it’s main gate, mouth wide open).
The prosperity of these closed havens is most bluntly displayed in the near vicinity of Islamabad and at the canal bank beyond Thokar Niaz Baig. Interestingly, both of these areas underwent the property boom after the success of the quixotic model set by the real estate kingpin we all love and adore. Yes, the man behind dozens of Dickensian court cases. Stating the name of a real estate mogul in Pakistan is often a double edged sword; the editor of the magazine may either be offered a five-canal house within the housing society – or wake up tomorrow to find out that the only thing left under the magazine’s ownership is the office boy’s cycle. Nevertheless, we may rightfully state that the pioneer behind the first of these gated communities has given dozens of Trump-wannabes a successful and satisfactory business model, so impressive that he just may sue the LDA for rights to the walled city moniker.
A visit to the Lahori version of this Disneyland of housing communities is always an interesting affair. The community is nestled with countless resurrections of world famous tourist attractions, from Trafalgar Square to a miniscule Eiffel Tower currently under construction. And if one is fortunate enough, on a clear day you may just catch a glimpse of a cemetery from the nearby village. Perhaps homage to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery before the yearly funds ran out? But what separates this housing community from others is that it claims to be a complete city within a city. There are long commercial avenues, skyscrapers-in-the-making and numerous closed-circuit cameras, which throughout the market slump of 2009 seemed to be collecting footage for the Bigg Loss. Today, however, the place is booming. Like it or not, it is one of the most successful commercial ventures in the country and has lived up to it’s promise of providing a comfortable living. On my last visit, I was quick to note that it was one of the few posh suburbs in the country with more security personnel than Army generals.
Quite impressed by the visual subtleties of the various housing schemes on the canal road, I asked a property agent, in one of the 1700 registered real estate offices within the gates of these communities, as to which areas are hot sellers in terms of demand. His answer, with a 12-rupee imported cigarette in hand, was more philosophical than I had anticipated, ‘To be frank, sir, at night, a few of us can sit down and decide how much demand to generate for a certain plot or for a certain block. And a few weeks later, it sells for that much and everyone wants it.’ Death be with Adam Smith, the instant dynamism of the demand-and-supply theory hit me as the ultimate actuality of life.
No where is this more true than the DHA sector, the army administered housing enterprise in which the liberalist tax-evading majority spend their times sitting on their lush living room sofas conspiring against the materialist commercialization of the armed forces. The housing schemes are so popular in Lahore that plot files for a Phase XXVI extension, which should go on floor by 2093, or about two years before the return of Jesus, are more in demand than a low-paid maid in the home of an Indian diplomat. After the market slump in 2009, the real estate market has once again become the golden ‘get-rich-quick’ route. I asked a much younger friend of mine who had completed his masters in mass communications as to how he planned to go about with his career. Did he plan to work at a newspaper?Or with a creative agency? Perhaps fly abroad for further studies? In reply, he said that he planned to go into real estate – buy plots, make houses and sell them for a profit. Being a firm believer in the importance of a skill-based career, I had shunned him in response. Much to my surprise, with little or no knowledge of how to assemble a DIY cupboard let alone of how a house is constructed, the aforementioned individual had made a profit of five million rupees after a joint investment of nine million with a business partner.
Considering how much fresh graduates are earning in television channels and newspapers, and how sluggish the rise up the pay ladder is (unless they have their contacts on the upper tiers of the ladder), I figured it would have taken him around nine years to earn what he did within nine months in property buying and construction.
The burden of it all falls on the prospective homeowner. He, who only wishes to have a decent place to build a house is left to tackle the otherworldly prices given to him by the speculators, who will take their typically sure-fire profit and bid farewell. Consequently, the homeowner has to spend his whole life savings or a large chunk of it in building that very house which would have cost him much less had it not been for these honey suckers. Islamic? Nope. Unethical? Probably not. Just something which seems wrong when you see it? I’d say yes.
Also, as highlighted from an example above, the importance of education and a proper career is undermined when there is such a large gap in the payoff between hard work and surefire risk-taking. While I have tried my best not to sound like one of the pro-Jacksonian, anti-market lobbyists in one of their many contemporary disguises – if we are assume that young bioengineering scientists working with government agencies are earning five-digit salaries as per government pay grades, we may have to re-think as to how we prioritize and valuate certain things.
The situation is not unique to Islamabad, DHA Lahore, or the gated communities; newspaper articles highlighting the property boom in Baghdad show that it is a common trend amongst the handful of commercial and industrial centers that struggling national economies like Iraq and Pakistan seem to possess.
What then is realistically left for a person who does not already possess sufficient property? Unless you can act and sing like Sinatra, pack your bags and go to a far away village. And pray for a Che.
All cities of note and their inhabitants, from the John Doe’s to the distinguished, are guilty of it: rhetorical acclaim of it’s glorified past and a larger-than-life representation of the present. Fellini’s self-importance (just falling short of narcissism) interspersed with his love for Rome led him to film a directionless two hour-long tribute titled ‘Roma’, the main character being the city itself. Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City manages to titillate and bore you in a unique ode with the minutest details of the city. The bard of Avon is guilty of romanticizing many a European city with his grandiloquent odes. Read too much Shakespeare and you would think Jesus and Noah might stop by Venice any day for a quick game of snooker.
For Lahoris, like proud dwellers of all major metropolitans (with the exception of Islamabad), there is a certain liberty taken in the amplification of facts and figures under the banner of hometown jingoism. We hear awe inspiring tales of epic bravery as commoners walk about in bazaars right after a suicide attack has killed 45 people, oblivious of the fact that somewhere in Africa, some one is probably listening to reggae while his neighbor’s family is being assassinated two doors down for putting up a rival politician’s picture.
We talk about the food and the richness in our culinary variety, until we meet a family member from Karachi who scorns us with his otherworldly wisdom of spices and sweets. And when your logic leaves little to say, there’s always an array of widely raped catchphrases, with one literal translation going as ‘Lahore is Lahore’, which to a skeptic would read as ‘I live in Lahore and I will love it till I get my American passport.’ Is it, therefore, just a pruning loyalist attitude in believing that this city of 10 million strong could have any credible justification to meet the criteria of ‘great’? We may not have had noted poets of a universal influence; unless sporadic examples such as a ‘Tribute to Faiz’ dinner at an Indian restaurant in Utah hosted by a catholic nun with a Masters degree in Urdu can be deemed as being ‘widely influential’. We have also not have had the luxury of talented filmmakers, barring Rashid Dogar who did put in an extra effort to highlight our nightlife in his illuminating masterwork ‘Saturday Night.’ Heck, we don’t even have intellectual minds such as Navjot Singh Sidhu to tell the world about the beauty of playing street cricket in Delhi in his English household butler vocabulary.
The hypothesis of this piece is no less than to instill a Naziesque belief that we are poised to have our place in history and not just because of any superior physical prowess (the Akmal brothers will provide much killjoy to any far fetched aspirations there). Yes folks, Lahore is special. If the world were hanging from a pendulum right this day, we would be right in the center, not too much into the Alps and not too much into the Africa’s. This balance, as is taught by the philosophies of Zen, Islam and most crucially, Oprah, is the key to life.
The readers of a publication such as this, or those Lahoris who read actual text in English language publications are neither baby boomers, nor seasoned revolutionaries; but they have a unique vantage point. Within the past 60 years, they have has seen democracies, superficially progressive dictatorships and gruesome tyrannies (Nadeem F. Parachi mentions weird things in disfavor of army regimes, such as an incident in which he wept after hearing of Zia flogging a donkey on suspicion of lewd behavior in a public place) – content which would’ve made Dickens giddy as he was penning down his research notes for A Tale of Two Cities. We can almost picture him jotting down a famous line, ‘…and on this side of the Punjab was a dictator with a large mustache and mascara beneath his eyelids.’ This is perfect territory to analyze the benefits and downsides of socialism, democracy, dictatorship, imperialism and Zardarism, which literally means you inherit the country through your father-in-law.
Lahore is a city in search of a nomenclature for it’s unique blend of life. There are agriculturalists, industrialists and tertiary sector entrepreneurs, but that is not where this unique city gets it’s bread and butter from. The celestial relationship between landlord and tenant has promoted a simple to understand economic system: landlord receives lakhs upon lakhs of rent for shops his grandfather bought in return for a buffalo. He uses it to buy books, travel abroad and increase his awareness of the world. For the sake of time, let’s assume the tenant does not exist, because it is assumed he would not buy an English language publication, right?
Due to this difference in capital, there are people for whom Apple is still just a fruit and the first law of the land is the one set upon you by your father. Just across the canal, a son is being informed that his Dad is out with his boyfriend on his new Porche Carrera. It is quite a contrasting and abundant reef, where the big fish swim with swarms of the faceless majority, and that is true capitalist equality.
We do not read about poverty like schoolboys in Brooklyn who accumulate quarters and dimes for their UNICEF cardboard coin boxes. We see it everyday -as we step outside of the vicinity of the city to go to our new university campuses at the far borders of the city, so far away that the universities are ashamed of exhibiting the bitter truth that the campus is as much in India as it is in Lahore. We know the horrors of poverty first hand; always present to remind us about the benefits of working hard. But if you yourself fall on hard times, do not think that Lahore has given up on you. You can fill up your tummy any time with an All-You-Can-Eat free of cost offer at Data Sahab, a buffet bought to you by the lovely superstitious people of the city.
The Mughals have left us with their splendid architecture (buildings which matter only because they were made by the same dudes behind such runaway hits as the Taj Mahal). The Hindus left us with wedding customs, which would eventually leave us penny-less and wondering why they are here in the first place. From torrents, our youth have inherited the entire pop culture of the states, from Friends episodes to the latest Tarantino film. Much parallel to exiled cricket team, destinations such as Dubai, Thailand, London and New York are all distant second homes, or so we’d like to believe so. The former two are where we receive our telegram payments from and the latter is where we spend that money (after the rent is paid to the landlord).
We inherit the world’s largest film industry through our cultural links, and other film industries mostly due to social complexes rather than any raised aesthetics. From Great Britain, we have received countless abundances, from cricket to a newly discovered passion for football, which our cousin instilled on his half-a-decade ago when he bought back the Manchester United t-shirt from UK and we asked him if it was a textile worker’s union. It is almost sinful nowadays not to know vow for either Barcelona or Madrid, although if we were presented with a map in order to pinpoint Spain, half of us would be looking near South America.
We know what terrorism is first hand, and we know what peace is when the terrorists shift to Karachi for the next season of ‘Whose bomb is it anyways?’ We do not wince when we see hair-raising violence in terrorism-based video games such as Black Ops II, we sit back and laugh since our local news channels show the same stuff, only with real flesh and bones.
Racism in Lahore is not restricted to a livid recitation of Rosa Park’s famous bus ride or a Texan mother calling a Jewish kid ‘a Jew’. One just needs to take out their dog for a walk and come across the smoke covering the grand skyline, houses which once belonged to the religious minorities (Christians, or Choohra’s as Mohsin Hamid refers to them for the sake of artistic literalism). Where else do you get life’s fundamental lessons at your front door? Historians who are into the study of life before and after electricity; or for post doctorate students looking for a thesis study of how life has changed since Tesla’s AC current came about, look no further. There are two distinct modes of business and leisure. There’s one with light and one without. UPS batteries and generators have replaced an honest managerial staff as the most essential factor in running a successful business. It’s a fact no book will tell you. If you go to cafe and the drinks are not cold enough, your instant reaction is that of sympathy rather than annoyance, the same way your well educated child stares at you when the red light of doom starts to blink. The religion of the masses competes with the discounted prices on Dawkin’s ‘The Blind Watchmaker’. We have the exclusive position of being protected from the self-reliance and selfishness of the greater cosmopolitans of the world, and being immune to the pedestrian religious attitudes common to the rural. We are strung in the middle, too comfortable in the holds of faith and spirituality and too intelligent (some of us anyways) to be ignorant of science. This is good territory, for it strikes a balance from jumping into the sea and going too far into the forest. Yes you, people who read affluently in English, are sun stroking at the beach. Be generous with the sunblock cause either way – you are bound to go to hell.
Now n the fact sheet, any romances by the Ravi may pale in comparison to a Romeo and Juliet. Any sunset at the Mall would flinch if it comes across what Alexandria has to offer. The heat is cold and pale in comparison to the one the Balasubramaniam’s have to bear in Chennai. And any other category in which Lahore shines would eventually be snatched by it’s greedy half-brother Delhi, since the older brother is always wiser and gets the better share of the family fortune.
But while we may trail behind others on the individual tallies, we as active participants of history are a force of reckoning. The city’s present identity is not in it’s art, nor it’s culture. in fact, a history of countless invasions and rulers has plundered it of much genuine identity beyond the Moghul lust for constructing open courtyards. The true beauty is that it offers a little of each world, time in history, culture, reality of the human condition, whether good or evil. From the realities in which an atheist doctor in Defense returns from his research study in molecular cancer, to a starving soothsayer who cures the same disease with holy water for a mere 100 rupees; from the 3D cinemas propping up at every corner to a group of people flocking, to a house where 20 family members sit around a 21 inch Magnavox; we may not have the best of any world, but we do have a little of each. Anthropologists, metaphysical philosophers and heavyweight boxers have all pondered over the lessons of history and the penultimate reality of life and failed to provide any definite answers. Here is an open invitation to come understand the human condition and all major sociopolitical phenomena under one massive roof – our great city, Lahore.
Pretty rad, right? Mr. Kichoo (That’s his real name) made sure his wedding would be remembered for a long time – pyrotechnics, the flower ropes and the fake WWE belt just to name a few of the arrangements. But as genuine WWE fans, it had us thinking – doesn’t Triple H have one of the dullest entrances for a major WWE superstar? So here is our list of potential WWE entrances which would vertical suplex Mr. Kichoo’s effort onto the squared circle. Yes, the internet just has to shit on everything and this is our turn.
The Undertaker
The most iconic entrance of them all. The dead man’s entrance would be perfect for pretty much anyone who wants to scare his in-laws shitless. A good variation would be carried to the ring in a purpose-built casket. Warning: should not be tried in superstitious households where brides run the risk of being called manhoos at the sight of their ‘supposedly’ dead husband.
The Rock
The entrance would work for two types of people: those so cocky and good looking that they can actually carry this off (0.0001 percent of Pakistani men) or those at the other end of the spectrum; you know, the goofy lookin’ dumb mofo. In any case, the Rock’s entrance makes a statement: you like to be at the center of attention and your in-laws should get used to bowing before the People’s Champion.
Goldberg
If you have a couple of friends with connections in the Punjab Police, you’ll want to try this one. It’s low budget but impactful: just a couple of pyrotechnics and a tough face. The only problem is you won’t want people to presume that you have only two moves – could be a real problem on Walima day.
Brock Lesnar
If the dood pilayi is making you nervous, this could be the entrance for you. All you have to do is put on a poker face and get a trash talking friend to speak for you a la Paul Heyman with your in-laws. This has the potential to be wedding video gold: “My client refuses to indulge in such unspeakable rituals…”
Chyna
Perfect for the guy pressured into marrying against his will because coming out of the closet would have probably gotten him lynched. Sends mixed signals to in-laws just so they don’t have high expectations for the future. “Salam beta, when can we expect to hold our grandson’s hands?” You: “Didn’t you see my wedding entrance?”
Shahid Afridi bid farewell to international cricket last month with little to no response from the cricket community: there were literally no tributes on CricInfo and the wider international media. This may have seemed like a surprise for the average Pakistani living within the Afridi bubble, but there are five good reasons why the world is largely indifferent to Afridi’s goodbye.
We can still see Gandhi crossing the road with a walking stick in the midst of hustling traffic at Union Square nearby Broadway. Somewhere around Park Lane in London, an eighteen-foot tall Duke of Wellington rises above the street lights, albeit nude, yet in complete harmony with the urban scenario. Similarly, a turn onto Multan Road from the canal bank and on a pleasant afternoon you should inevitably stumble upon a donkey lynched mercilessly by the burden of it’s cart, hanging in the air as does a can of sardines scaled against a half kilogram weight stone. It is befitting monument amid the circumstances.
Animal rights and protection, if the emergence of NGO’s are to be deemed the sole indicator, is globally accepted as a most relevant and alarming issue, alongside ones such as the rapid decrease in liquid funds flowing into terrorist camps. Not even the ground-breaking events in Egypt were seen as a matter of a greater distress – and in case you are curious, global warming is so two thousand-and-one.
Nonetheless, in our country, animal rights get little focus in the areas where it lies in a dire strait. There are a number of local NGOs working for the protection of domesticated and working animals, but with the sum of funds and media attention they receive, it is ambitious to expect much more of them than to print a thousand copies of a sketch depicting a farmer hitting a horse. And that is before the problem of putting it up on the roads arises. The Parks & Horticulture Authority (PHA) doesn’t let a leaf lie idle on a steel scaffolding without holding it’s mother tree accountable against charges for the indirect and unlawful advertising of it’s respective genus.
To the minds of the middle-class and upper-middle class, which most middle class men become while reading newspapers, it may seem that all is not lost: there is the revolutionarily weekly article printed in one periodical or another about a man being condemned by local police for stacking a donkey into a carry wagon; about the strict high quality alfalfa clover and alfalfa diet of the stallions and mares at the Lahore Polo Club; about a doctor performing the first dog-to-dog kidney transplant and whatever else the art of filling papers in a daily requires one to write. There remains, however, much to be done on the field in terms of the people who cause the most harm: the lower class workers.
Parveen Shakir, a 60 year old widow, is crying mercy after her cat, Dodo, a 2 year old white Persian, went missing a week back. She plunks herself in front of Pearl Continental at Mall Road, while her gardener cum ‘jock who can do anything for an extra hundred rupees’ stands on a ladder and clips a photo of the cat wit with physical characteristics stapled onto an old Poplar tree alongside the Mall Road. Parveen’s ripe old age and condition significantly attest the fact that in a city like ours, she has a greater chance of running into the abominable snow man than finding her cat – Unless, of course, she comes home and finds the cat sipping on a cup of Cappuccino with a cigar in it’s face, ‘I love ya too much to leave ya’. The principles and ethics of animal ownership, conduct and their place as a part of society are simply not registered in the cognizance of the average Lahore citizen.
The fault has to be divided in some share, however, with the animals themselves. In 2009, the Public Health Department exterminated 16,500 stray dogs through poisoning or gunshot. It was in response to a growing outcry in regards to public safety as the dogs were deemed dangerous for children and local residents. Perceptibly, it seems that it has become an obligation for all canines to be of a noble breed, know the identities of their parents and siblings, and possess a loving disposition. However the fact that you are ten times more likely bump into a petty thief rather than a stray dog reeking blood does make one speculate why similar treatment isn’t dished out to the other violators of the law. Darwin’s notion of the survival of the fittest works in mysterious ways, ironically quite like God.
Until there are people who find Dodo and muse over the possible origins of the cat, rather than exultantly roll up two slot-machine lemons behind their eyebrows, a lot of work remains to be done. Perhaps a stately visit from the WWF mascot, Macco the Panda, would be a sufficient step forward?
The problem is, that in a nation in which every aspect of human life lies placidly in state of emergency, animal rights still have a long way down Marlow’s hierarchy of needs. ‘Either I put food in my kid’s stomach, or I take care of my donkey’s calves’, says Anwar Ali, a stork cum donkey owner. It is still heartrending, that in a society engulfed by a religion which teaches love for all flora and fauna we see people of such disposition towards the mute, and tragic, that some of us can do no better than make a mockery of it – pity on us.
I’m from the generation who grew up with Harry Potter. I was nine when I read the first book, seventeen (just like Harry was) when the last book came out. We were the generation who waited eagerly for the next installment to come out, standing in lines to get our hands on the latest editions and making Harry Potter references was (and still is) the way we conversed – it had always been a magical experience. Finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows felt like the end of an era; a void had been left empty but we had gotten something far more infinite in return. With the last book, I bid farewell to that world, invented my own reality about what would happen to the characters and truly believed, like the last line of the Deathly Hallows promised that ‘all was well.’ Then came the release of the play, the eight installment of the Harry Potter series. Like many others, I was unsure. I didn’t wait in line to buy it and only after debating for three days after it’s release did I actually make the effort to get myself a copy. And it was bittersweet.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play, its NOT a novel. And that’s probably where the greatest disconnect lies. The style, the form and even the characters lack the feel of the series we’ve grown up with and loved and you realize that within reading the first few scenes. The best way to get through the entire play is to just accept that this an entirely different entity than the original series. As far as plays go though, it’s well-written, comprehensive and witty and as someone who has only read a handful of plays and never had too much partiality towards them, I couldn’t put this one down.
The plot leaves a lot to be desired and makes you question a lot of things. Concepts such as love, time, mortality, friendship and sacrifice are spoken about here but they aren’t grappled with the same intensity and magic as in the original series. JK Rowling’s own lack of input in this is tangible and, to be honest, a little frightening.
The characters aren’t the characters we’re accustomed to; they’re older, much older than us and their predicaments aren’t the ones we’re used to reading about. They’re married, have children, are struggling with their careers and worst of all, they’re not central to the plot. The Harry, Ron and Hermione we see don’t really gel well with the idea of what most of us had conceived them to be. That being said, it also drives home the fact that we’ve come a long way from the Harry Potter era and that life isn’t always all hunky-dory – it has its ups and downs and ultimately, it does have a way of making things look up.
Read it if you’ve been an avid Harry Potter fan and really want to know how this play pans out. But best to do it without any expectations and knowing that this is completely independent of the series that have been ingrained in us. Better yet, if you can manage to see the play itself, that might make for a better experience.
To Queen Rowling: please don’t write any other extensions of the series. Let the magic live on itself.
Politicians have long promised to take us back to ‘Quaid ka Pakistan’. This is not a unique phenomenon, of course. Most nations yearn to return to a glorified past.
One notorious example of this is Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again.’ Seven years ago, ‘The Donald’ was berated by President Obama during the White House Correspondents Dinner. He mocked Trump’s aspirations and prospects for the White House.
Obama cannot be blamed here. Much like Pakistan’s cricketer-cum-playboy turned Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump’s resume was fairly unconventional.
For starters, Trump has wrestled (well, kinda) in the WWE. He starred in one of the roughest celebrity roasts to date. He also spars occasionally with the likes of Rosie O’Donnell.
However, like Khan, President Trump understands the power and lure of revisionism.
The Art of the Deal: Know Your Audience
Trump is a political demagogue. Let there be no confusion about this.
Trump began his run for presidency with a promise to take America back to its glorious past. This, of course, is not quite different from Hitler’s rise to power. The Nazi leader had also promised to lead Germany toward its true destiny.
It did not matter that 2016 United States was easily the most powerful country in history: the past is always better. This ‘return to greatness’ banks on a broader political ideology: realism. Ever since the Cold War, much of western political thought split between two broadly-defined theories.
Liberal institutionalists are hopeful of a progressive future led by international institutions. Realists, contrarily, maintain that the international system is still defined by self-help and survival.
Realist thinking necessitates that a nation to look inward for inspiration. This is a breeding ground for ideologies like ‘Make America Great Again’.
Quaid Ka Pakistan and Madinah Ki Riyasat
At the core, such movements feed off the fear of change. Structural changes can threaten a nation’s historical identity. For politicians who employ identity politics, this is an obvious disadvantage.
The political realm, both in movies (think Bollywood’s Junta Raj films) and in the real world, has seen several attempts at revisionism that aim to lead a nation toward its ultimate destiny or glorious past. More often than not, the path leads it to disaster. The arrow of time only moves in one direction – forward.
At home, we long to return to ‘Quaid Ka Pakistan’ or ‘Madina Ki Riyasat’, uneasy with what we are becoming.
Pakistan aches from the misgivings of such revisionists. Due to certain beliefs, we still bask in these ideologies even after centuries of failed attempts. The bread and butter (‘roti, kapra and makaan’ to be precise) of our political leaders revolves around singing falsetto to a tune of false identities.
The Politics of the Past
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has built a career promising us a return to Quaid’s Pakistan. He was not the first: Bhutto, Sharif, and the Men in Boots (MIB) have all employed this motto at some point in their political journeys.
The history of the subcontinent is replete with firebrands urging us to return ‘Hindustan’ to their own interpretation of theglory days. For Hindus, this refers to an epoch defined by purity and bliss before Muslim conquests of the subcontinent. For Muslims, it’s a longing to return to the glory day of the Mughal rule, or even Muhammad Bin Qasim for what it’s worth.
Whether America or Pakistan was ever great is an intricate question that requires further retrospection. How do you objectively measure the glory of these ‘golden periods’? After all, there has to be more to ‘greatness’ than nostalgia, fantasy, and rhetoric.
In this article, we take a light-hearted look at some famous (wo)men of sciencewho did not get their due recognition and appreciation during their lifetime. This includes Pakistan’s famed scientist Abdus Salam.
Since we now live in an age where scientists such as Richard Dawkins routinely perform lab experiments on priests and pundits alike, it may surprise many of you (i.e. those who don’t read books) that there was once a time in which some of the most brilliant men of science faced harsh ill-treatment and ridicule.
After centuries of ignorance and dogma, a group of people become angry at Jesus & Co. (this being Europe) for being away from desk during disasters such as the Bubonic Plague and the Crusades. Also, science was coming up with all types of inventions — Netflix not being one of them (yet).
It was no surprise, therefore, that more and more people shifted towards rationalism and scientific enquiry.
We will now look at six groundbreaking scientists, who despite the golden age of enquiry that defines the past few centuries, were pretty much treated like second class citizens during their lifetime.
Galileo
Anyone that has ever opened a science textbook knows that Galileo was the Kanye West of his times. Like Kanye, Galileo was brilliant and misunderstood. The man was instrumental in inventing the first really effective telescope. This allowed him to make some of the most astounding discoveries in early observational astronomy. It also helped confirm his belief in the heliocentric theory, which posits that the Sun is the centre of the solar system. People know him today as the father of observational science, astronomy and perhaps even the real father of North Galileo-West.
Not surprisingly, Galileo was in all sorts of trouble with the Church. The church, if you didn’t know – was the NSA of its time. It sorted through Big Data and laid the smackdown on anyone acting smart.
His controversial writings eventually reached the Inquisition. Making people think that geocentricism is bullshit was a serious no-no. Of course, the Church implored, how could the acclaimed writers who wrote and edited the New Testament after Jesus’s death be any wrong?
The inquisition accused Galileo of heresy placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Copernicus
Now it would just be wrong to talk about the heliocentric model without crediting the man behind it. Although Copernicus didn’t really face persecution within his lifetime, he did spend many of his days wondering whether to go ahead about publishing his ideas.
Ultimately, Copernicus never published his book during his life. The fear of criticism and ridicule probably made Copernicus a victim to inertia. Which turned out to be a good thing eventually. Once the book published, a wave of criticism came flowing in from all circles. Everyone demeaned the theory posited in the book – from Martin Luther to his very own assistant.
In the 16th century, Aristotle’s geocentric world view remained entrenched in the mass psyche: questioning it was out of the question.
Charles Darwin
Darwin’s game-changing theory of evolution actually goes like this: all species have descended over time through common ancestors, driven by the process of natural selection. Add to that a little rhetoric such as the ‘survival of the fittest’ and you find a theory that gives the Bible’s Adam and Eve a hard look.
Unsurprisingly, Darwin’s ‘On the Origins of the Species’ did take a fair share of flak from the general public. The only reason Darwin probably came through was the support of scientists and thinkers from the age.
Understandably, the church was not happy. They church failed to merit in an explanation of man’s origins that had no room for God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Karl Marx felt that the book was ‘a bitter satire’ and local publications were full of loathsome attacks on Darwin’s person and theory.
Alan Turing
Today, we call Alan Turing as ‘the father of computer science’. However, he is also classified as something you just could not be in early 20th century Europe: he was gay. Turing passed his time formulating the Turing machine and formulating techniques to decode German ciphers in World War II.
Homosexuality was a serious crime in 1952. If caught, your ass was grass. This wouldn’t be too bad of a thing if you were a curious gay felon in Atlanta, who wouldn’t mind the sausage party going on in most jail cells. However, you must understand: Turing was a scientific genius and not your local drug dealer.
The court ordered Turing to be brutally castrated. Two weeks later, he killed himself.
Women scientists, generally.
Women have played a bigger role in public life as the centuries rolled on. The field of science is no exception. Between them, women have accumulated 16 Nobel prizes. Recent Nobel Prize winners include the likes of Rita Levi-Montalcinian. Rita is an Italian neurologist credited for her work in nerve growth factor (NGF).
Up until the 1800s (and even later in most scientific circles), it was largely believed that women were primarily sent by God to ‘grill that chicken, right’.
Even today, famous women scientists such as Chien-Shiung Wu (research on radiation detection and uranium enrichment), Esther Lederberg (discovery of a virus that infects bacteria) and Rosalind Franklin (usage of x-ray to take picture of DNA) have generally been snubbed due to the prevalent sexism in society.
Over the centuries, female researchers have to work as “volunteer” faculty members. They have also had their work and discoveries get assigned to male colleagues, without much choice.
Abdus Salam
Abdus Salam was the Nobel Prize winning scientist (only the second Muslim ever) recognized for his contribution to the field of theoretical physics. Simply put, the man played a monumental role in helping us understand the weak force and the theory of quantum mechanics.
Abdus Salam did receive the wide acclaim of the scientific community. In his home country of Pakistan, however, he is still treated more like a shopkeeper than a Nobel laureate. Yes, the Pakistani government did posthumously print stamps alongside the apologetic things countries do after a well-known person dies. Generally, however, there was very little public grief upon his death.
The reason was simple enough: Abdus Salam was a Ahmedi Muslim, which is like being the descendent of Tutkhamen and going to a holiday trip in Israel. Ahmedis today are as heretics by a vast majority of Pakistan. In 1974, Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims by passing a seminal law.
This understandably ticked Abdus Salam off as he packed his two finest shirts and headed to England – for ever.
Less than 0.1 percent of Pakistanis use Netflix. Social media networks like Facebook are largely used to stalk people and participate in meaningless debates. And YouTube, despite the rapid improvement in local content over the last two years, still falls behind when it comes availability of A-grade art and knowledge.
So what has driven Pakistan’s cultural and productivity renaissance under-the-hood for the last 15 years? This article explores the story of torrents and Pakistan, and how the latter have helped the country keep up with the rest of the world.
Pakistan’s Age of Enlightenment
In 1999, Pakistan was a nuclear dead-zone in terms of access to entertainment and knowledge. Low-speed internet and no indigenous programming other than the state broadcaster and a couple of licensed terrestrial channels. Many middle-income and above homes had foreign channels through satellite television, but the experience was shoddy to state the last.
In 2002, a mini-cultural boom took place. A flurry of Pakistani television channels went on air and internet speeds shot up with the introduction of DSL. The use of peer-to-peer file exchange was also introduced to the internet users at large.
Since then, torrents and similar protocols have allowed people to obtain a tremendous array of previously inaccessible movies, software, music and publications. Unsurprisingly, people in developing countries like Pakistan have systemically used the gaps in intellectual property laws to meet their needs for this content without paying a dime.
Is torrent-ing wrong? It depends on who you ask.
This pursuit of art was never a noble undertaking, however. There just happened to be millions who were never going to pay for intellectual property. As they say: necessity is the mother of invention.
We have often heard the saying: torrents are immoral and illegal. A vast majority of this deeply religious country, believe it or not, just does not hold this view. This also holds true for most of the developing world.
The use of torrents and illegal websites to download pirated content could be seen as a justifiable karmic response to centuries of colonization by the west.
To best understand how the use of torrents became the norm, we must look at the people most responsible for it.
Data-mongers
There are the data-mongers; the people who download file upon file of movies, software, television series and books. Data mongers sell their police officer father’s service medals just to buy a few extra hard disks. This group stacks up on gigabytes of data as passionately as the US Army does on spam during a war. Where can you find every ‘Masterclass’ ever published? These losers.
Data-mongers are also the library keepers of a great trove of culturally relevant publications. These individuals inspire, influence and instigate others to follow their unending pursuit of digital knowledge.
An Islamic saying goes, “Seek knowledge even if thou must go to China”. Indeed, they will add every imaginable Chinese film to their collection, even the ones that the Chinese tend to ignore. You can also expect every iteration of Adobe Illustrator to be available just in case they need backward compatibility to open a particular file.
The Professionals
Whether it’s Microsoft Office or any other popular productivity software, there is little doubt that a majority of the informal sector works primarily using unlicensed software. This is a norm and not an exception.
And it makes sense. For one, how do you expect a graphic designer who earns $300 a month to buy a $50 dollar Adobe Photoshop subscription? Similarly, do we really expect small private schools, shops and retailers in thousands of rural towns and villages across the world to download official copies of productivity software? It’s a tough ask.
Larger software companies with global distribution have tried to circumvent this by pricing locally and affordably for their most used products. However, this is just not possible logistically and financially for a majority of software vendors.
This gap in supply and demand is understandably met with torrents and similar download sites.
Seasoners
Then there are the seasoners – esteemed hoarders of the fraternity of seasons. They will watch each season, old and new, in isolated weekend marathons. I have personally witnessed 17-year olds in Mughulpura finishing complete seasons of Frasier and House of Cards. The analogy of that is a Jew gyrating to Nusrat during Passover.
And then you must only look towards your Facebook to see how imperative a role these seasons play in the lives of youngsters around you.
Research has shown that the bucket list for the majority of upper-middle class youth consists of finishing each episode that has hit the airwaves. It starts from Friends and finishes at whatever Netflix is tossing at our faces this weekend.
These young men and women, who just fifteen years ago would have been watching Veena Malik host a Top Ten countdown show are now busy watching a college professor cook up some meth and sell it around town. Images of Uncle Sargam’s nose are being superseded by incestuous conflicts on Game of Thrones.
Torrents, without any subscriptions or financial setbacks to their parents, have opened up the world right onto their laptop screens.
IMDB’ers
Then there are the IMDBers. The sole objective of this lot is to watch the entire library of 250 movies in the IMDB’s Top 250 Films list.
These 15-22 year olds, young men and women, will watch it all: from countless sex comedies (no, your innocent daughter is not an exception to this process of becoming Munni/Sheila) to films from countries you didn’t know existed. Nothing bewilders one more than the sight of a 17 year old suffocate through countless Godard films just for the sake of moving one up on this esteemed list.
So now that we have met the visionaries, what effect have these people and the torrent movement in general had on our unassuming lives? Let’s go back to the era before torrents.
Twenty years ago, a search for “Best Protein Powder” on Lycos or Altavista had every chance to redirect you to the personal homepage of Patrick the Poodle-lover. The only evil we took part in was downloading one-off singles on Napster after a thirty-minute wait. It was here that the playlist was truly born, musical tastes diversified; but this was the very limit of free entertainment for the average Pakistani.
Brown Lives Matter
The spread of art and knowledge in any form does have it’s merits. For good filmmakers to be born, there needs to exist a social milieu where films are taken seriously as an artfiorm; in which people can freely watch, discuss and dissect films and learn from them. For this to happen, the visionaries of tomorrow need access to original sources of art in the form of films, books and music.
Torrents fill in that gap for the masses in a very convenient way.
Similarly, to create the tech and business professionals of the 21st century, you can’t have them working on Windows XP or whatever operating system they can afford.
Despite the growth and prevalence of open source software, there are many instances where you simply cannot move forward on your digital journey without a credit card. In the absence of the latter, most third world users tend to take the easy route by opening up an instance of uTorrent and getting to work.
A Race to Relevance
A few years back, there was always that one rich kid who proudly showcased his collection of 500 DVD’s in his father’s movie collection. Unfortunately for him, his movie savvy-ness was of little worth in his social circle at large.
Rich kid: Say, what do you guys think about Woody Allen’s Manhattan? I think the black and white cinematography really added to the ambience of the film. Friend: “I think Stallone was awesome in Rambo. He has these titanic biceps back then.” Friend 2: “I think Arnold was more beefed up in Predator.” Friend 3: “Is Woody Allen muscular?”
Thankfully, most of us have progressed beyond this stage. Torrents have largely been responsible for this by levelling the barriers to entry on a massive scale. No wonder so many online pirates see themselves as modern day reincarnations of Guy Fawkes.
Torrents and Pakistan: How Long Can This Continue?
Today, people are less envious of their friend’s looks, bank accounts and automobiles, and more of how many seasons they have watched over the last week. A few of us have had the courage to load up our credit cards and get Netflix subscriptions. Many more of us use Netflix credentials belonging to one of our siblings living abroad.
But this is still a very small minority – most Pakistanis still use under-the-table means to view the content we desire.
Authorities have unsuccessfully tried to step up and block access. Every time a repository like ThePirateBay goes down, another one goes up in a matter of hours. The tussle seems ongoing – and is likely to continue for a long time.
For Pakistanis, the race is on for who can stay awake through the most Tarkovsky films. Also up for contention: who can listen to the most albums from a genre of which they don’t possess the wildest clue about? And just while you are at it: who can discover the secrets of life by learning palmistry through counterfeit e-books?
In this particular Age of Enlightenment, pretentiousness works hand in hand with curiosity toward the noble pursuit of knowledge.
