My shadow speaks to me.

I stand still, I stand alone
At the edge of a dark hallway
One step forward, two steps back

I see a door; slightly open, slightly closed
Light spills through, touches my feet but not my soul
I step back into the shadows
I stand still, I stand alone

I hear my name, someone calls out
I look around, my shadow speaks:
'One step forward, two steps back;
Why do you say that?'

I listen carefully, I give it my all
Long and narrow; my shadow stares back at me
Silent is my speech, unexamined is my life
I switch off the light; my shadow walks out of the door

Searching my mind, searching my soul
I leave the question hanging
In the thick air, heavy on my heart
I know I alone can answer that

Missing my shadow, I switch on the light
I find myself in front of a mirror, with my shadow inside
I have aged, I smile sadly
Where did I go wrong? Where am I now?

I hear my name again, someone calls out
I look up, my shadow speaks to me
'Look at your hands, they are still young.
You can still grab your life back, all at once'

My wrinkled face looks down at my beautiful hands
I hold a key; I turn around and open the door
I am not alone, my shadow speaks to me
One step forward, two to the right; I walk back into the sunlight.

Old-fashioned fathers, assholes & repulsive and past forgotten memories

Growing up from a self-proclaimed cute chubby toddler to a dangly pimple sprouting awkward teenager (not self-proclaimed in the least!), I didn’t understand my dad and he in return made very little effort to get to know me. Cancer cells, post-mortems and the latest blockbuster actions movies were his passion. Mom was his favorite person in the world. He simply didn’t need anyone else. He was one of the few lucky people who had found his soul mate and if he had one reason in believing in God, it was the day that my mom decided to marry him. He was complete then. Maybe that’s why his children were relatively low on the set of his priorities (or that’s what I like to say to him to emotionally blackmail him!).

In my know-it-all, tiny opinionated head of my adolescent years, I held firmly to the belief that everyone must reflect a picture perfect movie image. Dad was not spared either. He didn’t pick me up when he came back from work or let me sit on his lap and ask me about my day or even asked if he could help me in my homework. He was as far away from a so-called Hollywood dad as any dad could be. I remember he pinched my cheeks one day as I stared at him adoringly and I kept the memory with me, secretly guarding it from my siblings, hoarding on to the little acts of affection he would throw at us from time to time, year to year (Yes, I’m very much a self-proclaimed drama queen too!). Despite his silences, his indifferences, his lack of emotions, there was an unwritten, unexpressed understanding that dad would lie, cheat, steal, kill someone if need be for any one of us. He would spend his life savings on us (as my master’s degree hauntingly reminds me every other day). But he never told me that he loved me to my face.

That’s why it surprised me when Dad came running in excitedly one day, his glasses clutched in one hand, a newspaper clipping in another. I don’t even remember the title of the article he wanted to show me but if I ask him, he will cite the day, the author, the newspaper and everything that happened that day. That’s my dad with his picture perfect memory, except of course when it came to remembering my birthday. Even when he did, he was sometimes too lazy, sometimes too busy and mostly too arrogant to wish me. Mom would make excuses on his behalf. I instead chose to deny the silence on the other side of the phone. He’s just not mushy, I would say to myself. Millions of other dads don’t wish their daughters. No reason to make a big deal out of it. Secretly I knew that even if I cried or yelled back, desperately trying to get his attention, I would not get it. I would be the annoying kid who smashes things, bangs doors, falls to the floor in a tantrum and dad would just simply look away. But he would never forget it and refer again and again to ‘the-time-that-I-misbehaved…’.

Ok, who am I kidding?…he would give me a wad of cash in a nicely sealed white envelope, weeks in advance, forget my b’day ( I will still stick to this fact!) and I would go spend the money buying silly romantic novels, tons of clothes that I wouldn’t wear after gaining/losing a few pounds or something else that I wouldn’t need, depending which phase I was going through every year. Later, I would try to get more money out him for ‘forgetting’ my b’day! Yes, read and learn! Now here he was, showing me an article on how women chose their future spouses that reminded them of their fathers. I looked up from the clipping to see him standing proudly, beaming down at me, waiting for me to exclaim my joy at this possibility and make dramatic promises of finding a dad junior for myself. But I stayed quiet, mostly because I didn’t understand what he was implying…yes, yes it takes me time to realize truly emotional time-freezing moments, ask any of my friends/family.. It was only years later that I realized that my dad was asking for my approval at the way he was, the same qualities that he hoped I would want my future husband to have. I had no clue on what to say so I did what I was best at. I feigned disinterest in the whole matter and then pretended to be embarrassed at the prospect of my dad talking to me about a husband, which I identified at that time to mean a mating act between a man and a woman. So I looked away, faking my modesty and dad walked away, grumbling about raising ungrateful children.

I know that he never forgot my response, the memory sinking deep in and etching itself stubbornly on his mind. Other memories were overshadowed by this single, toxic and somewhat silly incident that weighed heavily on our relationship. The memory stayed close to me too (Ok, again who am i kidding...im sure he had more important things on his mind...the bills, our education, why the dog doesnt bark at the robbers at night...me...i think too much!). Of course I know that I can’t remind my dad of the day when I let him down by not giving him the approval he needed as a dad and as someone similar to him who I would want to share my life with. Now, as I look back at the last few years, I realize that I have been mostly attracted to men who are complete opposites of my dad and deeply cared about men who are very similar to my dad and who I refuse to accept and give a chance.

This reminds me a lot about this theory that this crazy friend made up; yes, I’m not giving her any credit and I think copyrights are a bunch of crap made for insecure people who think no one will remember them when they die (Yes, I’m referencing my dissertation and hence the frustration! And yeah, I’m proud to watch pirated movies!) Well the theory goes like this: there are two kinds of men out there 1) the assholes and 2) the repulsive. We love the assholes but they KNOW how ass-holy they are (translation: hot sexy guys!) and the repulsive love us but we couldn’t be bothered by their puppy-dog love! (and the fact that u don’t really believe in the beauty and the beast theory: translation its only in fairy tales that hot women wouldn’t mind beasts in their beds in the morning!). And so the circle goes on and on and on…

Anyway, of all the assholes and repulsive, I think I doubt I will love any man more than my father (This sounded much better in my head, but what the hell, I’ll let it stay here!). He makes me laugh, makes me cry, he is the star of the family, loved and respected by everyone, almost revered at times by his juniors. I adore him most for his strength and his humor which has always been infamous – he could make everyone around him laugh so hard that they would cry and he would pretend that he was just making a simple common statement. He had aced the art of good humor. But he never came close to acing as a dad. He gave me everything I wanted, sometimes after arguments that would last for months as both parties stubbornly stood firm to the ground until mom, my dad’s biggest weakness, would plead for one of us to back down. Dad would always lose out then and I would shamelessly bask in my new found power to use my secret weapon against him. Eventually, I became my dad’s favorite and I like to think it’s because he began to consider me as a worthy opponent. I had inherited his stubbornness, his arrogance and his charm. Over the years, I became my father in so many ways. I became the person I could not understand, the person who could take me to the greatest heights in the world and then bring me crashing down to the lowest points of my being.

If my dad came to me again today and showed me the same article, I would have a reply ready this time. I would tell him that I would never in a million years want my future husband to be like him. Instead, I would want someone like my mom, his soul mate. She gives him the love that he craves, the love that he demands. Only someone like my mom can understand what his love is made of and how much there is inside of him, waiting to burst out and explore what its capable of. In time I know that I will understand my dad’s love as I try to understand myself some day. I am proud to just know him, proud of the fact that he’s my dad and proud of inheriting all that he stands for. I am his daughter, his love.

Mumbai - the Indian dream?

Mumbai, to a large extent, had an uncanny resemblance to Karachi, the city where I spent a large part of my adolescence. Hence, it was natural for me to constantly compare my city with Mumbai, especially since it is in our nature as Pakistanis to compare ourselves with the ‘enemy’ that we are completely fascinated with and can never get tired of hearing from our ancestors when they migrated sixty odd years ago. The only difference between their anecdotes and the reality I experienced was that the gora sahib (white man) was replaced by a new class of people; the English speaking, Levis clad, McDonalds chewing upper class of Mumbai. Of course Pakistan (for once) could boast an equally large number but it was the stark inequality between the haves and the have-nots that was immeasurable. Today thousands of families live, eat, bathe on the footpaths of the colonial roads that perhaps were made from the sweat and blood of the ancestors of the very same people now sleeping on them. Maybe life for them never changed; the viscous circle of poverty continues, the children grow up to have more children of their own and then leave them behind to continue the lineage of the pavement dwellers. Truly, they are the subaltern.



Of course Karachi too has its invisibles and this trip was an eye-opening experience in the sense that it made me understand as well as contradict the common perceptions about slum dwellers are migrants or worse, responsible for their own misfortune, the ‘problem’ in the city, the barrier to a clean, green ‘world class city’. It was a new concept for me to understand that when people come together, especially women, they can achieve great things by pooling in their resources, not only in terms of money but their time, their effort, their passion and most of all their trust and belief in an innovative, almost radical idea and collectively struggle together, despite the economic, cultural and bureaucratic obstacles that they know they will inevitably face but never actually lose hope for twenty odd years is phenomenal. I can not forget what a Mahila Milan leader said to me, “Look what we have achieved, even the Municipality is learning from us now”. To her, the respect that she had gained outweighed the tangible benefits that she had struggled for all these years. In a sense, she had obtained her rights as a citizen.

Most of all I came to understand that there is a sort of a butterfly effect taking place; an action, decision and/or policy in one part of Mumbai or the state of Marahashtra itself can have multiple effects in any and/or every part of Mumbai. Moreover, the family or household unit to a large extent does not have the sole responsibility for what happens to it; there are so many wider overarching forces taking place that constantly shape the final outcome. For example, the rent control act so many decades ago in one part of Mumbai may possibly lead to the settlement of a slum dweller’s family in another part of Mumbai as a result of the high land prices all over Mumbai. The city therefore is extremely dynamic, which makes it all the more exciting and challenging to work with. The revelation of causal relationships, across time as well as at one particular time in place, was one of the key aspects of the MSc. degree that I will take away from DPU and in that sense the fieldtrip was a classic case that illustrated the practice of theoretical frameworks like the Web of Institutionalization (and some others that we did not work on but which would have been interesting to do so).

In conclusion I feel that the normative and value-based nature of academia does not fit very well with the practical life vis-à-vis the relationship between consultants and the client. It is truly a daunting challenge to remain diplomatic and at the same time give constructive criticism to your client. For the first few days, I felt frustrated at the lack of freedom I had in arranging meetings with stakeholders or pursuing a line of thought that interested me but was not at all relevant for the client. At times I also felt that the ‘consultancy’ was not holistic in nature; all the angles and critiques were not fully considered. Most of all, the tricky balance between remaining neutral and objective and at the same time passionate about the case was extremely difficult, if not, impossible to acheive. In a sense, consultancies and the medical field have many similarities; we are the surgeons that can not get attached with their patients in case our judgment gets clouded and our diagnosis gets biased. Hence, in the end we provide reports that outline the complexities and suggest our recommendations on the basis that we have met our “patient” only a few times and try to cure the problem only at the surface and leave the tumor for some other specialist to take care of.

What I remember, what I can never forget....

Ive never felt so cold in my life. I stayed in my sleeping bag motionless for hours, too weak from not havent eaten anything, too cold to do anything else. I refused to drink water in case I had to go out of the tent to relieve myself. Someone would come in, fiddle in our 'kitchen' and then walk out to take a smoke. Most of us stayed inside the tent, huddled together around the gas burner, hypnotized by its dying flame.
It was the eight day that we had been here. We had planned on leaving after three. Our food was gone, it was raining too hard for any one of us to go get water from the half frozen spring two hours away and our satellite phone batteries had died two days ago. So we stayed in the small tent, all 10 of us, sometimes singing old filmy songs or nibbling on the nimko that we found in the only village shop, the only commodity that we could get our hands on. Now the shop sat in wet rainy silence, the villagers stayed inside their tents, trying to keep themselves warm by huddling close to each other and their goats and chickens and we stayed in the tent cursing, praying, hoping that the rain would stop. It hadnt for the past 4 days even for a minute and gave no signs of stopping anytime soon either.

After the Kashmir Earthquake in October 2005, a team of students were trainned in LUMS by World Bank staff to conduct surveys and collect vital information from areas accross Kasmir to analyze the quantity and quality of aid going in. Our findings would be crucial for future policy changes and hence all of us were prepared to put in all our effort and energy in this project. We had trainned for weeks now, sometimes spending 12 hours in the classroom and a further five in the field. Within this team, a handful were selected, on the basis of past trekking and mountaineering experience, to go to the most unaccessible parts of the mountain terrain that had been hit hardet by the earthquake. I was one of the two girls selected to go in the team of 10; finally I had a chance to be in the front line in the middle of the action. For months I had been heading a team of disaster relief program whihc was responsible for sending aid and volunteers to areas especially where very little information was available. Many of my male friends and colleague had gone already but it was felt to be dangerous for me to go yet.
Now the plan was to send students who would camp in these areas, conduct the surveys and focus group interviews and bring back essential information that was posing to be the biggest problem for the aid agencies and the government.

We left from Lahore and reached Kashmir where we spent our first night. Nothing had prepared us for the extent of the devastation. Schools, hospitals, shops everything lay there crumbled up like a piece of discarded tissue paper. There were huge cracks on the ground and large tracts of the landscape had just disappeared. Seven feet storied building had collapsed onto the road, one half of the resturant where we had the first meal was gone and we sat there solemnly eating our dinner, thinking of what was to come in the days ahead. There were 36 of us, three of my closest friends were going with me but only one was in the smaller team that would trek further into the areas where no road went. We left early next morning, first on jeep and then trekked for some hours until we reached our target population and after setting up the camp we quickly began our research. There was no houses standing, no infrastructure in sight, just thousands of white tents spread all over the mountains covered with a thick layer of snow. Children, wearing only their shalwar kameezes that were too big for them or too small for them, playing around the debris where their houses laid destroyed. Women were busy preparing the family meal, it was Eid today, they had sacrificed a chicken for the first time in months for the special ocassion. Men walked about waiting for any news about the next aid delivery point or the sound of the choppers coming to drop them a bag of wheat.
Our arrival was a source of great entertainment, young boys with pink dry cheeks quickly rushed to relieve us of our heavy equipement and old women with crow feet around their eyes came to give us a glass of water after the lengthy uphill trek.
Soon we learnt the name of every man and woman in the small village, our sample case study, it was difficult to remember the name of the children since they took great pleasures in changing their names everytime we asked and we would then play along. Our work carried on relentlessly for three days. Sometimes we would become the subject of the interview; the young girls were particularly fascinated with the fact that my parents had let me travel with a couple of single boys to an unknown part of the country. I remember once when a young mother of three children pointed out that their misery was a result of the city girls wearing sleeveless clothes and I tried putting on a sympathetic face without giving up the knowledge that I might have been responsible for their fate as well. But she didnt judge me, she just stated her worldview and carried on the task of feeding her child and at the same time shielding him from the heavy smoke coming from the stove where she prepared me a meal. The deeply entrenched traditional attitude was in one way quite appealing as I had never met more generous and hospitable people, despite the devastation that they had faced and continuted to face everyday. However, on the other hand, it was frustrating at times, while talking to women who had not recieved any form of education and getting information would sometimes become a long difficult process.
Although, I have a horrible memory of recalling faces of people ive met for a short while, their faces are ingrained in my mind. They were beautiful women, some were talkative and loud but most were shy and timid. All of them were exceptionally strong. Washing laundry and dishes in the hard cold snow, preparing meals for the large family in 6 x 4 feet sheds, fetching water in heavy cans on their heads from mountain springs two hours evreyday caring for the sick and old while taking care of their husbands and children's needs. No, I can not forget their endurance even if I tried.

Over the course of my work with the earthquake affectees in the past couple of months, I had become extremely interested in accounts of witchcraft reported after the earthquake, especially among the women. The village women too affirmed their suspicions; the witches, the ugly half women half-beast creatures had been heard calling their names from the dark forest on the mountain hills in the middle of the cold nights. But if any women went out of their tent or roamed outside the village, the witch would come and scratch out their faces or worse take them away to where they lived among the wolves in the mountains. It was quite logical; no one had disputed their existence since no one had ever seen a witch in flesh but no one had not seen them either. For generations, the witches had lived among them and the earthquake had now opened the cracks in the ground and many more witches had come out. However, one of my most memorable interview was with a man who was involved in the Kasmir militia and sat there with his family of three girls and one boy and his beautiful young wife, narrating his heroic tales of the past. He had lost everything and since he was not recognized as a citizen by either India or Pakistan, he had no one to turn to. I remember that he had been very hopeful that our research would conclude to something substantial for him and his fellow brothers in arm. Unfortunately we didnt include those interviews since we were never meant to be in that area; his voice on the recorder, his picture in my camera, his words in my paper meant nothing. He had become invisible.

We finished our research, I organized the interviews of the women that I had conducted and packed my bags, ready to leave the next day. Then it started raining. We got up the next morning, the rain was coming down hard and fast. By afternoon, our waterproof tents gave up. By nightfall, we all shifted into the biggest tent that had been generously donated by the villagers and which we had been using as our kicthen. We coulldnt leave because as we sat perched on a mountain top, the land around us started sliding down. After every few hours, we would hear a rumbling and find a large piece of terrain missing from the mountain in front of us. So we decided to wait for the rain to stop. It rained for 6 days and six nights without more than a minute's stop and that when the rain turned to snow. Our stocks began to deminish and we started rationing but the most difficult part for me was to go to the loo, which basically was out into the fields. In the daytime, I had to hide behind a mountain or a tree, hoping no one would walk by and during the night it was better in terms of privacy but that meant that I could not see where I was going myself and had to stop myself a number of times from falling into a ditch or worse off the mountain itself.

On the ninth day, at the height of our frustration, we quickly packed our camp as soon as there was a moment of relief from the rain and made our long journey back to the army camp that we had seen on our way up 9 days earlier. We were welcomed, with reserve, enjoyed a good warm meal and mdae quick calls to our families to assure them we were OK. Mom burst into tears as soon as she heard my voice, partly since she didnt really know that I would be going to the middle of the nowhere and parlty cause she had been watching the tv reports of massive landslides and blocked roads.
Although we had come down from the mountains, we were still stuck in Kashmir as long as the roads remained blocked. I was emotionally, phyically and mentally exhausted by now, especially when we saw hundreds of helicopters come, drop off their load and fly away empty. They were only following protocol, since they couldnt take any passengers back with them. Now that i think about what I did, I feel ashamed but at that time, even though I was aware of acting selfishly perhaps, I felt that calling my parents to arrange for someone to send us a helicopter, which were in any case taking the route that we were on, seemed justified at that time. Miguel, the faculty member and someone whose opinions were important to me, and I had a falling out at this point. He went on his way, on foot, through the landslides on a 6 hour long trek and the rest of us quietly got into the helicopter and made our way home.
Sitting in the helicopter, I saw the mind-boggling beauty beneath me and how fragile it was and how in a second it could all go away and leave you with an dark cold pile of debris and devastation.

I want to go back one day but im not sure when and if the women I talked to will remember me. Even if they do, Im not sure if they will welcome me in their kicthens and among their families since after coming back I dont know how much impact our surveys made in the government policy reform. I like to think that we did make a difference and there has been some sort of a difference in my life as a result of an experience that I know I can never forget and not beacuase of the devastation of the earthquake but by the strength of the people's spirits.

a picture worth a thousand words...




This photo is the "Pulitzer Prize" winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so it can eat its prey. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, not even the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

Three months later he commited suicide due to depression


The Angel

She sits next to the well
The harsh sun bears down on her
Her brother lies motionless a few feet away
Its been circling for hours in the air,
Shadows dance on the cracked ground below
So beautiful
So ugly
Hours pass away
Swooping down, the vulture slowly walks up to him
The bloodshot eyes stay on her
So beautiful
So ugly
Time stays still
Hours pass away
No one moves
He moves. His leg. He’s alive
“Water”
She looks down in the well
Empty
Nothing
So beautiful
So ugly
The vulture inches closer, eyes still fixed ahead
Maybe its an angel
Death?
No!
Water?
Yes!
Heaven grumbles
Moans
Tears
Flood of tears
The angel of death flies away, searching for her next prey
He moves; his arms, legs, turns his head around
“Water”
She looks around through the curtain of rain
Her angel will survive
So beautiful
So beautiful