Nirvana

[stingingnettle]

Perne in a cyclic existence; escape should be our greatest imperative – but that is easier said than done. There comes a time in the life of all ordinary mortals when the great fountain of originality runs dry and the feeling of déjà vu becomes the invisible thorn in our flesh. The great mystics of the past became hermits to break out of this self-repeating cycle of inaction and gratification that fills the time between birth and death. The narrative in the new millennium is exactly the same as in the last one; the same lies, the same excuses, the same explanations, the same prayers and the same hopes – the only difference is the calendar year and fresher seeds of the human race. I see this everywhere but my concern today is Pakistan simply because I feel our need for Nirvana has never been greater than it is today.

Pakistan has grown older but many of us citizens deliberately or otherwise stagnate in the same putrid waters of uninspired and unoriginal thought and inaction. The same politicians tell us the same lies to win the same so-called right to rule us in the name of the same defective and rigged democracy. The same failures follow and we are given the same excuses and apologies – but what is missing from this fine dish of lies is the salt of culpability. The cup we see half full has holes in it and no amount of filling will ever give us the satisfaction of filling it to the brim. Lies have moved up from being institutional to national and now they have become generational – if you do not believe me, please take some time to read the ‘history’ taught in our schools or pick up a paper or if you prefer, watch TV especially day time TV. Ignorance has become ‘knowledge’ and truth has become an intolerable inconvenience. Recycled lies look exactly like old lies except they sound new because of our great ability to forget deliberately or otherwise. In the ‘gyres’ of a cyclic life, lessons are never learnt because mistakes are ‘never’ made so no one is ever responsible for our national failures and pains which are nasty and chronic in nature.

The outrage in Pakistan at the arrest, mal-treatment and subsequent conviction of Aafia Siddiqui in America is well documented so forgive my confused disgust when I read about the barbaric stoning to death of a woman in front of a court building in Lahore and in the presence of many hundreds some of whom were policemen. You would imagine such brutal murder would have been justified on account of some truly horrific crime; but the fact of the matter is, all she had done was to marry someone of her own choice. We, the people donned our self-righteous hats when a year ago the Delhi rape case was front page news but strangely we fail do anything about the daily rape and murder of women and children in Pakistan. It seems the only way we feel we can look better is when something horrific happens in India. This is the cycle of bigoted self-deception that is our reality; we cannot think inside the box let alone outside it.

We are not surprised when Chaudry Nisar, our Interior Minister, makes a puzzling statement; he says the law and order situation in Karachi is satisfactory and the operation against criminals in the city is going well. There can be only two explanations for this statement from our Minister; either the population of Pakistan is entirely made up of drooling idiots or Chaudry Nisar is a total imbecile. I am not prepared to accord him the title of ‘clever liar’ because that implies some degree of intelligence and competence. Karachi is convulsing and writhing in the unbearable pain of daily murder, kidnap and extortion and yet Chaudry Nisar finds the situation ‘satisfactory!’ MQM, who have cyclically been part of almost every Government in Sind, is complaining about the murder of their workers – its leader Altaf Hussain of Edgeware wastes no opportunity to screech and scream dire consequences in long distance telephonic addresses. MQM is less of a political party and more of a violent personality cult albeit in a city where violence and extortion tools used by other political parties too. Same politicians talking the same smelly stuff and we the people wonder why we cannot get rid of the putrid smell of intransigence.

Until Pakistan’s elects a prime minister we will have to do with Nawaz Sharif – and his extended family for running our national affairs. Pervaiz Rasheed says that Mr Sharif never invited India’s PM to his inauguration and that he never, at the time, expressed a desire to visit India. I recall vividly the moment when Mr Sharif did all this and said on TV that even if he did not get invited to India, will be happy to anyway. I am all for friendly relationships with neighbours but is all the lying necessary? The term ‘cricket diplomacy’ often slushes around in our electronic and print media as way of making things better with India; well, how long do we have to wait? Cricket diplomacy has managed to prevent, I am told, two or three hypothetical wars but it has failed to any impact on the Kashmir, water theft, territorial disputes and state-sponsored terrorism in Baluchistan. Pakistan does have serious internal law and order issues but the only question is not ‘how can India trust Pakistan’ but also vice versa.

Narendra Modi’s inauguration produced a striking image; gathered to celebrate his coronation were the likes of Nawaz Sharif, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Hamid Karzai – no wonder US decided to stay away from the party. India’s legal system's failure to deliver justice for thousands of murdered and maimed muslim victims of the Gujrat riots is a haunting travesty of the rule of law. Modi as the man in charge of Gujrat at the time was never charged, not even with dereliction of duty and today he sits on the throne of India, having got about 30% of the vote – described by the press as overwhelming mandate! Let me do the maths; 70% people did not vote for him but yet gets to rule them? Ah, the wiles and beauty of democracy!

Nawaz Sharif, who claimed Pakistan’s throne in an election that were so rotten that there was hardly any core left, broke bread with Modi – shall I make the jibe about the beauty of democracy again? Then there was Karzai; whose democratic credentials are as crooked as a Rs 157 banknote who mingled with other dignitaries as if no one had noticed the stink about him. Then of course, we saw the smiling face of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa who has yet to answer very serious questions about the cold-blooded murder under his guard of hundreds, if not thousands of Tamils when LTTE was crushed. Rajapaksa hold on power is a direct result of a very South Asian kind of ‘democratic’ elections and I have little doubt he in the same club as Nawaz and Karzai. The cyclic nature of South Asian democracy and politics is like a disease that does not quite kill us but it also does not let us live a pain free life.

Nirvana is not just a quest for Modi but for all the people of South Asia who must seek a better brand of leaders. Our lives are controlled by unknown factors we can only label as x and y but this is because we fail to break out of a relationship that can only be defined as;

The square of x plus the square of y equals a number.

Breaking out of the circle of relentless lies and fatalistic inaction is our only hope – Nirvana is only a word unless of course you do something to achieve it.

Anyone up for Nirvana?

[Mirza Ghalib]

Excellent as ever, SN, and hard-hitting as is your wont. Nothing will I disagree with in your piece. I should, however, like to add my own two bits to the daydreams of "our" Interior Minister Chaudery Nisar. Look at he short and highly symbolically Video below and then tell me if the man doesn't live in the world of his own where even nature has to step in and take a hand to set him right.

http://www.zemtv.com/2014/05/29/tents-f ... ars-jalsa/

[Shimatoree]

Sting

" Many a flower is born to blush Unseen

and waste it's sweetness upon the desert air".........T.Gray.

Is it realistic to expect or anticipate that some how in some unknown manner Nawaz Shareef will LOSE weight and STOP eating the high Fat and high sugar foods that he loves to eat. So how can anyone imagine or Dream that suddenly out of No where Hospital.......he would agree to under go a Brain Transplant.....................and WHAMO.............you would have a thoughtful, caring, thinking imaginative human being!

The simple answer is an emphatic NO.....................And I use the FOOD as a metaphor only. Behaviour modification is almost impossible in any case but in the case of a 63 year old rich man it is impossible.

There is an old Navajo Proverb which is very apt for Pakistan and it's people. I quote.........

" You cannot wake up people who are PRETENDING to sleep " end of quote.

And since I am quoting this morning let me do one more from the Russian Mikhail Bakunin.........

Quote........."To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion. " end of quote.

And one more from Bhagat Gita............... quote " Your tears are for those beyond tears" end of quote.

Of course now I can be accused by some that I am only quoting the KAFIRS and non-Muslims.

Yes I am..............but Wisdom from anywhere is WISDOM.

[resurrected]

An excellent write that needs a proper response. How very interesting to see the merge of existential concepts into the political realities of our country and the region. You have succeeded erasing the thin lines dividing religion and politics. You also have artfully mixed so many things and made it a meaningful read. I’ll come back later with elaborated comment.

[stingingnettle]

MG Sahib;

Thank you very much for your kind words; this morning I steeled my stomach and watched the video you had posted and suffice to say it fits in perfectly with the cyclic lies we have become so used to. Despite blaming all the ills on Zardari, he failed to mention anything about responsibility, culpability and punishment. If Zardari is responsible for such criminal damage to Pakistan; should he not be send to jail?

Chaudry Nisar is far too slimy and I hope people can see past the disgusting lies he tells. I have read a lot of the PML N manifesto and have written about it too; it reads likes blind oath of allegiance to the Sharif family.

He speaks about not consuming 'haram' or letting anyone else do so; I think the is applying the usual exclusion clause to the Sharif family!

[stingingnettle]

Shimatoree Sahib;

You quote some thought provoking likes; I liked the Gray opener.

I do not think the problem is with Sharif and his extended family; I quote you some lines from animation film called Kung Fu Panda in which the grand old master Shifu says to the fat and inept Panda;

"The day you were chosen as the Dragon Warrior was the worst day of my life - by far, nothing else came close. It was the worst, most painful - mind destroying horrible moment I have ever experienced ...(shuddering sounds).. but once I realised the problem was not you but within me, I found inner peace and was able to harness the flow of the universe."

What we Pakistanis need is inner peace; the problem is within us that we tolerate the likes of Nawaz and Zardari; there will be always be scum on this planet and this has been the case since the advent of humanity but should it be allowed to float at the top? Nawaz Sharif either does not reflect our values or he does; either way the anvil of culpability is firmly on our own feet. It seems to me that falsehood and self-deception has the ability to become entwined with our genes and that seems to be the case in Pakistan. Bigotry and lies are the cocaine we snort, eat, drink and sleep; what is perplexing is our claim to inherited historic righteousness and glory.

Indeed I feel my "tears are for those beyond tears" and perhaps we are trapped in a well of hope; all we hear is merely the echo of our own voices." My father (may God give him a long life) gave me some remarkable advice some years back, he said;

"I do not wish my children to put flowers on my grave; I want them to be nice to us (my mother and him) in life."

It seems our obsession as a nation is to worship the dead; so why are we surprised a vast majority of Pakistanis seem to find living a particularly soul-destroying experience?

Death is meaningless if you have not lived a little. Pakistanis need to live a little before they die; my suggestion is pay less attention to the stiff and focus more on the quick; there lies redemption, salvation and the secret to a bearable life before the curtain falls.

Filthy crooks mar our lives because the only justice is become an after-life concept. That is why people are prepared to 'end it all' with a 'bare bodkin.'

[stingingnettle]

Res,

As I have always said, your comments mean a lot to me; you write with a rare sense of clarity and perspective. Thank you for you kind words and I look forward to reading your comment.

I leave you with Samuel Beckett;

"Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence."

[resurrected]

SN,
Thanks for the compliments, I really feel elated. Shim used to say that our writing is more valuable as auto-therapy than filling some other purpose. Even though, I agree with him to an extent, but still believe that by writing we strive to reach others and transmit our thought currents to them and thus make a difference between the prevailing situations and our wishes. I appreciate your thoughts as these are often of genuine nature, also original thoughts fermented in your own mind. Keep up with that.
Now we can come to your piece Nirvana and discuss it. As a student of comparative religious studies, I’m familiar with not only Semitic religions, but also of Eastern philosophies. Buddha tried to find the meaning of life and found his enlightenment in the end in the shape of noble truths and thus we can say that the ultimate goal of all living beings, according to him was to break the chain of births and to achieve the state of perfect bliss, also Nirvana. Let’s not entangle ourselves in the concept and its depths, but return to your subject. Deja vu, you talk about is not due to some mysterious happenings but a result of our stupidities. It’s due to our inability to learn and progress and thus avoid all the identical pitfalls in future.
We need to remember that it’s not the rulers who come up with argumentations or elucidations, but it’s done by some learned but vendible people. The maturity doesn’t come with the age, if it could an old donkey would be wiser than a younger one. Khalil Gibran put the phenomenon you mentioned beautifully in one of his texts, by saying that “Devil visited him and he started committing the most ancient sins, he got bored and went away….. Yes, our prayers and sins are the same as these were thousands of years ago and the same is true about our natures, which are not emendable.
It’s not our politicians who are clever, but rather our ordinary citizen is less intelligent and thus can fall into same traps again and again. Have you heard about the story of Haji Baghlol, who used to tell to the teasing children to go and get some sweets at some particular place. After getting rid of these, he would go and visit the address, thinking to get the same if the sweet distribution did take place there by chance. Our public is like him, they vote again and again to the same crooks, hoping to get a better dividend each time. To sum up the behaviour of our voters, we can say that democracy is not meant for people devoid of basic education, principles and civic sense.
Yes, our society is inexorably hypocrite, no doubt about it, There are different standards for the same situations, depending on who is in focus. The tragic happening outside the court’s courtyard made you disgusted, the question is why so? I’m sure you must be reading the daily newspapers and thus be aware that it is not some rare incident that took place over there. Each day you hear about terrible things occurring there in pure land of ours. I’ll not elaborate on the subject, except underlining that the situation can never get better until we destroy the entire structure from its foundations and build a new and healthy home for us. Believe me this old, decayed house can never home new ideas or doctrines. The rotten elite of the country will Not Allow any change that takes away their position of immense power and the wretched of the land is too meek to bring about the needed change. So that brings us to square one. Your analogy and argument about India is valid and yet don’t forget that in body and spirit we aren’t very different from our Indian friends. Thousands of years we have lived side by side and thus have indulged ourselves in so many travesties, negativities and inequalities that in flesh and mind we have become identical to our bigot neighbors. You can see the same trend in the entire subcontinent when it comes to women. It’s something that is the result of the traditions that haunt us from centuries, or perhaps even millennia. To get rid of these we need reformers of high caliber.
I’ll not discuss some stupid minister here or there, they all are of the same statures, dwarves in big costumes. What can we expect in a country like Pakistan, where the process of Brain drain has effectively emptied the land from all intelligent people? Those left behind are either below average or are crumpled by the bitter realities and don’t have the strength to demand anything, they are all occupied trying to survive the terrible times.
Your words- Until Pakistan elects a PM, we have to deal…….
Or we can overthrow the pseudo PM and choose a new one, a worthy one. Here, I may sound undemocratic, but better that than to accept a man imposed on us by local and International Mafia through rigged elections. I’ll not go into details here, why I’m convinced about Nawaz being imposed on us through conspiracy against us, but would love to present my view if anyone is interested to know. I will not be apologetic and so should the others do and demand midterm elections, if we are to avoid another ML and some stupid General taking over.
I stop here and leave the rest for some other time and session. As I mentioned earlier, you have raised so many topics in one and the same article, which inexorably require a lengthy response. No SN, we can’t get access to Nirvana, while we struggle with existences, trying to proceed on ladder of evolutionary arc, but we certainly can strive for some better living conditions and a relative peace and with a right to retain self-esteem and basic rights. Nirvana is our ultimate goal and can be achieved at the end of the road, when we become one with the creator and yet you may be right as there must be numerous shapes of Nirvana as well.