Bhushan
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Smokers’ Corner: Republic cannibal
By Nadeem F. Paracha
Friday, 10 Sep, 2010
here was a friend of mine at college who fancied himself as a playwright. He was always writing these ‘activist’ plays for the Marxist student organisation that I belonged to in the late 1980s. He was into ‘socialist symbolism’, but I remember we kept rejecting his symbolic plays.
However, the other day while going through a couple of articles written in an English-language daily by some passionate ‘patriots’, who were angrily ranting away at columnist Fasi Zaka, actually calling him ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘liberal fascist’ for taking to task the many brutes who have given us such wonderful things as suicide bombings, lynching mobs and hate-mongers, reminded me of one particular play that my playwright friend once wrote. I do not remember what the whole ‘symbolic play’ was about, but I remember one startling scene. Who knows what he meant by the scene when he wrote it (in 1987, I think), but twenty-plus years later, that scene makes perfect sense now. It was about this bright, smiling and upbeat woman who has thrown a party at her house.
The party begins to turn a bit rowdy when the guests (while talking politics and religion) start arguing among themselves and some pushing and shoving also begins. The lady keeps smiling and praising the animated intellect of her arguing guests. One of the guests, who is mostly quiet, comes to her and tells her to do something about all this rowdy behaviour before someone gets hurt.
She hushes him up and tells him to stop being a spoilsport. “That’s the way we are, and I am proud of my guests.” As the arguments between the guests get louder, and abuses begin to fly to and fro, another quiet guest approaches the lady and pleads her to control the bickering. He gets the same answer and is told to leave if he didn’t like what he saw. The lady keeps smiling widely, and shooing away (sometimes in disgust), the few guests who warn her that the party may get out of control. Then, the door bell rings. It’s a couple of cops who tell the lady that her guests are making too much noise.
“This is not a police state!” She shouts. “We are all good citizens. How dare you come in here?” Meanwhile, as the cops are dealt away, the arguing guests (each one thinking his version of politics and religion was right), begin to indulge in fist fights. Things begin to break, the shouting gets louder, crockery begins to fly, but the lady keeps on smiling and dismissing the concerns of the few more sober guests.
Then a neighbour rings the bell and complains. “My children can’t sleep. You people are making too much noise. Is there a riot going on in there?” He is at once taken to task by the lady: “It’s none of your business. Stop poking your nose in our affairs. It’s because of people like you that we have to keep quiet!”
As the lady goes back in, the house has now become a mess. People fighting, things broken, some guests lying on the floor badly injured, moaning and groaning. But she keeps smiling and lauding her guests.
One of the quiet guests reproaches the smiling lady: “I told you it will get to this.”
“What will come to what?” the lady asks, still smiling, as if totally oblivious of the human and material wreckage around her. “It’s a lovely little party. What have you been drinking? Please leave, if you can’t fit in.”
Now, exactly what my friend meant here I don’t know. But to me this scene today is like an ingeniously far-sighted take on Pakistani society. A society in which terrorist attacks by extremist organisations are at once followed by the usual knee-jerk reactions: “It can’t be us.” The denial stands, no matter how many from among us are caught red handed indulging in all kinds of brutalities, sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes sect, sometimes morality and sometimes good old patriotism.
The disgust of watching human beings blow themselves up in the presence of men, women and children soon converts itself into anger that babbles its way across numerous fantastic theories about imaginary villains. In the process terrorists go blame-free, while most of us are left busy wagging our fingers at treacherous outsiders (‘foreign hand’
, ‘unpatriotic Pakistanis’ and our failure to follow ‘true Islam.’
In other words, just like in the play, the bickering, violent guests who were tearing one another apart to prove that their version of the faith was correct, symbolise the extremists and their apologists; most of our ‘patriots’ are like the smiling lady, who would accuse anyone for the debacle, but never the violence and self-righteous mind-sets of her destructive guests because that may amount to bad manners (unpatriotic behaviour).
She’s a liar and one in denial. But more than anything else, she is first and foremost lying to herself, even when her own house becomes the wracking ground for all those who are quite clearly mad.
As for my friend the playwright, well, he migrated to New Zealand in 1995, where he is today (and not surprisingly) a successful child psychiatrist. Smart fellow. I guess he knew what was coming to this ‘land of the pure.’
By Nadeem F. Paracha
Friday, 10 Sep, 2010
here was a friend of mine at college who fancied himself as a playwright. He was always writing these ‘activist’ plays for the Marxist student organisation that I belonged to in the late 1980s. He was into ‘socialist symbolism’, but I remember we kept rejecting his symbolic plays.
However, the other day while going through a couple of articles written in an English-language daily by some passionate ‘patriots’, who were angrily ranting away at columnist Fasi Zaka, actually calling him ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘liberal fascist’ for taking to task the many brutes who have given us such wonderful things as suicide bombings, lynching mobs and hate-mongers, reminded me of one particular play that my playwright friend once wrote. I do not remember what the whole ‘symbolic play’ was about, but I remember one startling scene. Who knows what he meant by the scene when he wrote it (in 1987, I think), but twenty-plus years later, that scene makes perfect sense now. It was about this bright, smiling and upbeat woman who has thrown a party at her house.
The party begins to turn a bit rowdy when the guests (while talking politics and religion) start arguing among themselves and some pushing and shoving also begins. The lady keeps smiling and praising the animated intellect of her arguing guests. One of the guests, who is mostly quiet, comes to her and tells her to do something about all this rowdy behaviour before someone gets hurt.
She hushes him up and tells him to stop being a spoilsport. “That’s the way we are, and I am proud of my guests.” As the arguments between the guests get louder, and abuses begin to fly to and fro, another quiet guest approaches the lady and pleads her to control the bickering. He gets the same answer and is told to leave if he didn’t like what he saw. The lady keeps smiling widely, and shooing away (sometimes in disgust), the few guests who warn her that the party may get out of control. Then, the door bell rings. It’s a couple of cops who tell the lady that her guests are making too much noise.
“This is not a police state!” She shouts. “We are all good citizens. How dare you come in here?” Meanwhile, as the cops are dealt away, the arguing guests (each one thinking his version of politics and religion was right), begin to indulge in fist fights. Things begin to break, the shouting gets louder, crockery begins to fly, but the lady keeps on smiling and dismissing the concerns of the few more sober guests.
Then a neighbour rings the bell and complains. “My children can’t sleep. You people are making too much noise. Is there a riot going on in there?” He is at once taken to task by the lady: “It’s none of your business. Stop poking your nose in our affairs. It’s because of people like you that we have to keep quiet!”
As the lady goes back in, the house has now become a mess. People fighting, things broken, some guests lying on the floor badly injured, moaning and groaning. But she keeps smiling and lauding her guests.
One of the quiet guests reproaches the smiling lady: “I told you it will get to this.”
“What will come to what?” the lady asks, still smiling, as if totally oblivious of the human and material wreckage around her. “It’s a lovely little party. What have you been drinking? Please leave, if you can’t fit in.”
Now, exactly what my friend meant here I don’t know. But to me this scene today is like an ingeniously far-sighted take on Pakistani society. A society in which terrorist attacks by extremist organisations are at once followed by the usual knee-jerk reactions: “It can’t be us.” The denial stands, no matter how many from among us are caught red handed indulging in all kinds of brutalities, sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes sect, sometimes morality and sometimes good old patriotism.
The disgust of watching human beings blow themselves up in the presence of men, women and children soon converts itself into anger that babbles its way across numerous fantastic theories about imaginary villains. In the process terrorists go blame-free, while most of us are left busy wagging our fingers at treacherous outsiders (‘foreign hand’
, ‘unpatriotic Pakistanis’ and our failure to follow ‘true Islam.’In other words, just like in the play, the bickering, violent guests who were tearing one another apart to prove that their version of the faith was correct, symbolise the extremists and their apologists; most of our ‘patriots’ are like the smiling lady, who would accuse anyone for the debacle, but never the violence and self-righteous mind-sets of her destructive guests because that may amount to bad manners (unpatriotic behaviour).
She’s a liar and one in denial. But more than anything else, she is first and foremost lying to herself, even when her own house becomes the wracking ground for all those who are quite clearly mad.
As for my friend the playwright, well, he migrated to New Zealand in 1995, where he is today (and not surprisingly) a successful child psychiatrist. Smart fellow. I guess he knew what was coming to this ‘land of the pure.’
