Self Love and the Woman

The other day I was reading about  a sort of survey of men about top ten things they wish women would understand about them. Number one was, that if a woman compliments us, we take it really seriously. In short, men believe what women say and really take it to heart. Usually in a positive way if praise is communicated, but, it seems to follow, that they also take criticism too much to heart and then start avoiding the woman who told them things about themselves which were less than pleasant. Even the indication from a woman that she is unhappy is enough to make the man shrink away, when perhaps she is relating something which she feels generally and he isn't its cause. 

Men are of course, used to the image of the loving mother since childhood and a lot of their sense of well being is related to how much the woman in their life loves/admires them. They are used to a lot of love by the mother, and their self love is well fed and intact. Men have the whole society centre around theorems they have set for themselves and women, and for them, not much has changed for Eons, till the woman changed and wanted to do something else apart from being with them. 

Enter the modern woman. Under pressure all the time. Striving for perfection all the time. She just HAS to be beautiful, thin, attractive, smart, funny, entertainment, sexy, a caregiver, emancipated, great mother, having a thriving career, hooking/ keeping a great husband/partner, great homemaker, party thrower, religious n dutiful as well as able to look great in naughty nightwear, the list of accomplishments she is striving for seems endless. Perhaps it is. She is pushed in opposite directions. Even if she achieves all that she strives for, she is usually exhausted with the effort. and sometimes not as much fun to be around as a woman who just takes things as they come and doesn't push herself too much. 

But a woman does not have self love fed by the parents from the start . Hers used to be an upbringing about how to please others. Not anymore. Even then she is often worried about how much she is liked, especially by men, how much people in her life value her, did the person who gave another woman a smile, give her one or not? an often, even when she receives compliments, she disbelieves half of it, and is insecure about retaining the level of attention that she has seemed in her mind , to secure. The traditional woman was content to excel in the traditional arts like looks, home, cooking, mothering, and the erotic ones( that was for bad girls), but the modern woman finds herself competing in more and more fields to be more attractive to men. She finds herself competing with her rivals now in having a career, being more altruistic, independent etc.etc etc. Just to impress men who will just not be impressed anymore. Perhaps she is wrong. All that he wants is only to be loved, admired, accepted and taken care of. And mostly left alone to do what he likes. Can a woman love herself ? Only in the reflection of her beloved's eyes. Perhaps they will not like to say, it, but that is what the men also feel.

Every mark but the mark of shame

I was reading Faiz s poetry the other day....and a favorite verse struck my heart. Har daagh hai is dil men bajuz daagh e nadamat, which translates roughly as my heart has every mark and wound, but these do not include the blemish of shame or remorse. It is true that as you go along the path of your life, if you have done things with good faith and what you thought was right, you have no cause to be ashamed or to have remorse. However people judge you or try to find fault with you, if you know in your heart that you tried to do the right thing, you should take succour in the thought that you have done nothing wrong. Allah is, of course, aware of what is in anyone's heart and weighs your action accordingly. But remorse is, as Faiz said, actually a blemish in a heart. if one has done something wrong and is ashamed of it, it forever resides in your heart as a dark mark, a blemish, a reminder of what you did wrong. It makes your heart imperfect, tainted, not pure and whole. But if you know it in your heart that your actions were driven by good intention, faith and love, however somebody's actions hurt and disfigure you for life, physically and emotionally, your heart remains pure, whole and perfect. It is beautiful because its true. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than the truth.

Many times people wonder, myself included, when somebody lets you down, is it my fault? Did  I deserve this because i was foolish enough to put my trust in somebody's words?  Was there something wrong with me that made that person behave unfairly, dishonorably, treacherously to me? Did I deserve this because i chose not to demean myself by treating them the same way? And why did it happen to me when I was sincere? You hear all sorts of excuses from people who let you down, and you think, maybe everybody in this world is right, I'm the only one who is wrong...wrong to expect love, wrong to expect sincerity, wrong to expect loyalty, in spirit if not in flesh, wrong to expect affection and support from the people that I love, why? They say that one expects thing from people which one would have done for them, and the difference in their response shows the difference in the feelings you have for them, and the feelings they have for you. 

But it is not your fault if somebody else behaves badly. If somebody is evil, it is not your fault. Everybody has a choice to act the way they want to. If they behave badly, it is only their fault and their behavior. Even if you do anything, a bad person will behave badly, there is nothing you can do to change it. The only thing you can do is to hold fast to your values and what you think is the right thing to do. Never let a bad person veer you away from it. 

When I look back at life, I know one thing. I did what i thought was the right thing to do. Loving someone is not a crime, cheating someone is. When one thinks one cannot get along with somebody faithfully, it is good to separate rather than cheat. Now mostly people don't do that, and somebody who doesn't want to live a lie, is condemned for trying to be with somebody who one can be happy with. If you are true to the one you love, if you are faithful while it lasts, there is no need for remorse. If somebody lets you down,it is not your fault. It is his fault. Perhaps they couldn't do as much as they would want to. Everybody has their limitations. It is not cause for any shame. Regardless of how our skewed society sees it, the blemish is in the heart of the one who is untrue.

The God Given Country

From the window of my office in the Pakistan Secretariat, a partial view is available. In the federal capital , the rumblings of national politics are palpable, but i am no VIP. I do not even like the lifestyle of a VIP. I am and like to be close to the ground, with my feet firmly planted on the ground. I dislike gunmen and protocol, one does not need to have an entourage to serve the country. But everywhere i see, I see perturbed faces, questions on the faces of the people in the Secretariat. They are thinking, what is going to happen? are we going to be able to come to work next week? Is the city safe anymore? 

The same questions are also on the minds of people of Islamabad. These are questions of personal safety, collective future, and political uncertainty. This is not the first challenge that this city has seen to its security. It has weathered many a storm. It has seen the Marriott bombing,the Laal Masjid debacle, the dharna of 2014, and many military takeovers. But the city, like the country, is resilient, and comes back again and again. However, the questions remain in the minds of all thinking people in the country. The limits of freedom are not breached yet, but  being able to get to work is my basic right, as well as freedom of movement, access to education, food and shelter. If anything curtails that, the State should act to protect me. However, the right to question its political leaders conduct is the right of every citizen of this country. We have salvaged democracy from the debris of toppling governments many a times. Democracy is valuable for us. Everybody is worried how we as a nation balance democratic rights of political parties as well as ordinary citizens. 

Peace is directly linked to prosperity , our country has seen much chaos, which has pushed it back by many years. Nobody wants that. Nobody should want that. In order to avert such happenings, politics should come to the fore. Politics is not only the art of the possible, but of myriad possibilities. Too rigid a stance from any side makes for a standoff, and the consequent damage to the nation. Hardline stances are good for political parties to rally forces together, but dialogue and a meaningful one at that, is the only way out to balance peace and stability in our country. It the responsibility of all sides to keep the dialogue going, and to resort to peaceful means to debate issues. It is the responsibility of the government most of all to keep the dialogue going. They have been elected to be responsible for the safety and stability of the country. It is a difficult balance that the government is treading. Lets hope for everybody's sake that they can make a go of it. Hopefully the God Given Country (Mumlikat e Khudadaad )will have divine help too, but sanity is required, first and foremost.

Role Reversal, ladies!

Last night I took a late flight from Islamabad to Lahore. Usually we see male pilots in the cockpit and air hostesses on the aisle. But last night I was pleasantly surprised to hear a female voice announcing from the cockpit that we are now landing and staff to take positions. The male flight attendants complied immediately. While this role reversal in the workplace is getting more and more common all over the world, it is still a bit uncomfortable in some parts of our society. Atleast in the urban areas, women in control are no longer a novelty. Although in the rural areas, women empowerment is still to be seen as an accepted reality, in urban areas, due to sheer financial compulsions, more and more girls are working and as a result, gaining independence and a stronger role in their families.

Whether financial independence necessarily translates into change in the societal roles for women, is still not a purity for independent, educated girls, or , for that matter, the uneducated but independent girls. Women in our society, whether independent or not, are still required to play the traditional roles that our society expects of them, and is used to. While the enforcement of these roles sometimes takes extreme forms like honor killing of a girl supporting her family, it usually takes milder forms like elders making sure that even if a female is working like a man in a man's world, she is supposed to take a supporting role in the house, that of the dutiful whatever she is in relation to her males, the companion, supporter, caregiver. Of course caregiving and nurturing, emotions, come naturally to a woman. But there are different qualities required to succeed professionally. As a working woman becomes more like men due to working in male dominated fields, she becomes less compatible in her roles at home as she brings these workplace qualities home to her personal relationships.

Naturally then, her relations with her family change. When we were growing up in the eighties and nineties, our female elders and some male relatives would call it that we have become outspoken, fast, headstrong and totally irreverent. This was only because girls who got educated and were given freedom gave voice to their opinion. This came as shock to elders and was disconcerting to say the least.

Some twenty years later, this is still the case. Men don't like to have independent ladies with minds of their own. Women are thought to be better if they are seen and not heard, they only applaud the thoughts of the men, and not at all is it ok if they disagree and worse, if they stick to their opinions. Unfortunately, men who are worth having usually are chauvinists, as naturally all confident meant think they are superior. So how do we manage? I guess reversing roles when we get out of houses, and then again when we get back in? This is a difficult balancing act. In the meanwhile, we keep on getting more and more space in the workplace. If more and more men get used to our changing roles, hopefully, we will have to do less role reversal at home and work.

Stumbling Blocks

In  life when we are all running towards our goals, individual and collective, we are in a lot of hurry to accomplish what we set out to do. For the sake of our goals we take chances, we make compromises, we take positions and of course we work hard . But some of us move faster than others, and the others get left behind. Why?

Of course this is nothing new in it, human beings have been grappling with external elements all the timeIn life when we are all running towards our goals, individual and collective, we are in a lot of hurry to accomplish what we set out to do. For the sake of our goals we take chances, we make compromises, we take positions and of course we work hard . But some of us move faster than others, and the others get left behind. Why? 

Of course fate and external circumstance play a great role in determining our trajectory in life, and for that we only have recourse to prayer and  a positive attitude towards life , a belief that good things will happen. But there are many internal reasons that determine how our life goes. For the sake of our own selves, it is important that we keep those factors in life under control that we CAN do something about.

One crucial but usually ignored factor in success is health. If we are in good health, and physically fit, our body can work more, take more stress and our mood remains ok, which keeps the temper down and allows us to make decisions without clouding our judgements. Regular healthy habits, avoidance of harmful substances and diet, all play their role in helping us live a better and more successful life for longer and absorbing the shocks and stresses that life is going to throw at us in any case. 

Another great factor is determination and self image. We all have a self image in our minds, who we want to be and who we are, and a faint map as to how to become who we want to become. It is our determination in life which makes us get there. Our self image can never match reality if we don't make efforts with determination to do so. Our will makes us change ourselves and our world to a large extent.

One factor is keeping your spirits and confidence level up. This is related to both your health and your experience in early life, but keeping a positive attitude and believing in yourself goes a long way  in keeping the verve alive in a person to work, make an effort, and to enjoy life. If you believe in yourself, only then do others believe in you.

Negativity and overt suspicion is a great stumbling block to progressing in life. Its not to say that these things don't exist, but one does well to ignore and work around these fears. They are only as real and matter only if you believe they exist.

Another hurdle is too much pride or insecurity, which leaves us unable to reach out to others and kills relationships. The inability to have successful relationships significantly reduces not only our ability to have a successful and happy life, but also affects our health as all the scientists say. Our own hangups should not stop us from giving and receiving happiness in life.

The biggest stumbling block is the inability to stand up for what is important to you, but also not being able to keep a balance between what you want and what others want. that balance is crucial for human beings, individually and collectively. 

We can't control our fate. But we can control our actions that many times determine fate. And of course, our faith can change fate.

Epiphany

It all started when the Kasur Incident broke last year. It was devastating to see children in our rural areas and towns being exposed to sexual assault and the being made to suffer humiliation and pay for this atrocity by being blackmailed by the perpetrators. I had long wanted to do social work, first getting a taste for it when i helped people during my time on field postings as a civil servant in the administration. I saw with my own eyes how weak our links are with the vulnerable groups in our society, how limited is the governments ability to reach out to them. I had toyed with working for poverty reduction, women empowerment, as these are subjects close to my heart. With this incident, I decided that children should be the ones i should work with. Call it fate, call it epiphany, but it dawned upon me that day that this is what I am meant to do.

My sensitivity to children began early, I was always too attached to them. I endured an unhappy marriage for twelve years, only for the sake of my children and their need to have a wholesome life, not one in splinters. When the end came, my heart broke, not for myself, but for my children. I wrote down on a piece of paper that i would never claim for their custody and gave it to their father, this is how much i wanted them not to go through any pain, not to have them have to choose between mother and father. I tried in the last four years since my divorce, to make the fall as easy for my kids as possible, to make them as happy as possible. In the last four years, me and their father have been able to provide them with all the love and affection, and the best life that we can, as divorced parents. I think this is what I am proudest of. That i never forgot my children, and never abandoned them. They are the reason that I go on, despite all sorts of difficulties.

After my divorce, I began looking at children more closely, thinking more of what they need to be happy, and to grow up as well rounded individuals. In our society, it is appalling how little we think of the physical security and mental well being of our children. We produce them mindlessly, we use and abuse them at will, but we don't do our duty towards them. And the most vulnerable are the homeless and orphan children.

With my decision, Panaah finally arrived. This is a small charity organization that I have started, which provides clothing, books, food, and education to children. We support their school fees, and try to fill in the gaps that exist in their daily requirements. Panaah means shelter, refuge, safety from harm. This is what i want to give, not only to my own children, but as many others as possible. I m doing it on a small scale which my donors , mostly private persons, and I can sustain with my other commitments. I work with existing orphanages and edhi centres. When I think of how much difference I can make with this, I tell myself that if i can make the life of even one child better than it was, and make them smile as I like to see my children smile, my efforts are worth it.

Wrinkles

Women are afraid of wrinkles. Not sure about men because they won't admit to so many things in any case, and tend to keep their fears under wraps.For women, it is the first sign they are aging, that they will not be as desirable, as attractive as they were in the effortless bloom of youth. The face is slowly wilting, drying, losing lustre and vitality. Men also think that a more youthful appearance and a tauter body is more attractive. Perhaps it is, in a basic, carnal way. But there is another dimension to attraction , which resides in the soul , the mind, and the heartWomen are afraid of wrinkles. Not sure about men because they won't admit to so many things in any case, and tend to keep their fears under wraps.For women, it is the first sign they are aging, that they will not be as desirable, as attractive as they were in the effortless bloom of youth. The face is slowly wilting, drying, losing lustre and vitality. Men also think that a more youthful appearance and a tauter body is more attractive. Perhaps it is, in a basic, carnal way. But there is another dimension to attraction , which resides in the soul , the mind, and the heart. Wrinkles do not affect it at all. 

Memories are embedded in wrinkles. Memories and experiences. The life that we have lived keeps writing on our face, laugh line by laugh line for happy times, wrinkles for cares and strings that we have felt and sustained. Like life, we can see wrinkles any way we want to, lines if we are thinking wistfully, laugh lines if we look back happily. Each feeling, each struggle, each ordeal is engraved on our face. The fights that we have won and lost, the ideals that we stood for, successfully or unsuccessfully, the life we have lived, sometimes happy,sometimes difficult, the people we have loved, adored, cherished and despised, felt envious of, tried to hurt, or those that hurt us. They leave their imprint. Why do we then try to hide these wrinkles? Why do we use creams, treatments, even botox to make them disappear? Why do we strive so hard to keep our faces looking like the clean slate of a baby's mind? We like to hide all the ravages of time and travail, and present to the world an innocent, untouched countenance, not sullied by experiences, not damaged by hurt. Fresh as ever and open to new experiences. perhaps that is why we hide wrinkles, because we do not want to appear like damaged goods that nobody would want. It is true, who would want to write on a slate already cramped with writing by others? We would have to wipe it clean, to start a new story on it. 

Those who look back on a life well lived, stages of life successfully passed, do not want to stay at a particular stage. They are done with it and have evolved. But those who feel they have not been able to make a success of some part of their life, they want to do it over, so they try to make themselves over too, to match their efforts. They do not deserve pity, it is just that they want to make a go of it. But nothing makes a person more attractive than ones who embrace their past life, wrinkles and all, and feels confident of themselves for the future also. If you have lived, your experiences just add to your mystique, they add depth to your personality. Embracing your past, whatever it was, engraved on your face as wrinkles, is the only way to face the future with confidence and poise. I look forward to wrinkles as they come with new feelings, new experiences, reflecting the life force that is never still.

Don't Lose Yourself

This week a feminist issue again, which is close to my heart, but about relationships. Women are supposed to be the fountains of compassion, symbols of sacrifice and epitomes of self abnegation, for their loved ones, family, children, significant others. It is so, we are capable of a lot of sacrifice, and can bear a lot of pain and hardship for the sake of our loved ones. But in romantic or conjugal relationships, there is always a question of domination, subjection, and balance. It is of course a man's desire and nature to be in the dominant position. That is how he is designed to be: to take charge of the situation, to protect the woman , to take responsibility of the family. But mostly the devotion to her man makes a woman give in too much, retreat too much, sometimes at the cost of her own self respect. In the long run, it is neither good for her nor for the relationship. 

Its true that you must show the person you love that he or she means the world to you, but if you show somebody that you cannot exist without them, they will start taking you for granted. Somebody who is totally dependent is instinctively less attractive than an independent mate. And many times the man thinks that he has been able to fool the woman, otherwise how could she think so highly of a no good person like him. It does not cross his mind that she may be overlooking his faults and indiscretions to maintain the relationship. Once he thinks he has fooled her, he looks for others to fool, he thinks he can pull it off. Here infidelity creeps in. 

A woman can take a lot for her man, as long as she believes he is true to her, that they both belong to each other. But when you start feeling that what he is doing is not for you, what he is saying is not for you, there is somebody else on his mind and near his body, you do not feel like tolerating his tantrums, indulging his whims and desires , or making any extra effort for his sake. in your heart, he does not belong to you anymore. many women will refuse to look this feeling or intuition in the face, because it hurts too much, and its always better to exist in the la la land of contrived trust, because facing the reality of a beloveds infidelity breaks you yourself. So she goes on, not caring anymore but not facing it, nor letting him know, that she knows. 

But all this self abnegation or delusion doesn't get you anywhere. The moment you lose trust, you must react and ask the other person to renew it, otherwise its just a farce after this moment. It is not worth anything to live in a relationship which is against your self respect. If you lose your self respect, you lose yourself, you lose your way in life. And the person you compromise it for will never appreciate your sacrifice, in fact will rather hold you in contempt for being the weakling that you have become just to hold on to him.  I always tell myself, that the one who truly loves you, will never put you in a situation where you will have to do anything against your self respect. 

Love him as much as you like but don't lose yourself in your love. Nothing is as precious as your self respect. If your lose that, you will soon lose your love also. If a person has lost your trust and confidence, you can try to rebuild it, if you both want to continue. One loves a person for what he or she is, not only for looks or material trappings. But don't let somebody trample your spirit.Nobody is worth this much.

Tasweer

Blue-grey clouds cover the sky, and the green Margalla Mountains seem to touch them, hiding a muted sunset. The pine and cypress trees sway gently in the early evening breeze as the returning birds call out to their companions to hurry home. As I look at the window, I have an image of my own beloved in my minds eye, which seems to permeate through all the sights, all the sounds, encompassing my heart. I turn to look at his image, on a day when I have to make do without him.

I like to look at him. In person, or his picture, or Tasweer as we call it in urdu. It warms my heart . When he is not with me, I look at it to assuage my constant longing to have him before my eyes, to hold him, to hear him speak, laugh, and scold me intermittently. He likes to test how much I want him,whether I can match the great passion he feels but likes to hide behind his sweet smile. His Tasweer keeps his sweet smile with me at all times. And his shining , ever hopeful eyes, which reflect the goodness of his heart. I look into them and they speak to me, at times with love , at times admonishing, but always reminding me why I fell in love with my darling. Why I chose to be with him with so much idealism in my heart. Despite what he may think of as his shortcomings, I have never felt disappointed with him. I do complain, but only to remind him that I am there, waiting for him to smile at me and do the simple little things he does to make me happy, and sometimes to make me jealous, only like he can.

Why do we need a tasweer when we have the image of those we love engraved on our hearts? why do we adorn our walls and desks at office with their images? why do I need to see his face so much?  Perhaps to sustain ourselves with their images, to remind us of what they mean to us and how significant they are in our lives, what part of our life, emotions and selves do they represent. When I look into his eyes, I see all that is good and idealistic in me, my hopes, dreams and desires. I don't think he has ever tried to rationalize why we love each other, and why we need to be together. He just feels. I have a tendency to find and list reasons. But his smiling eyes makes me forget to think, but only feel.

Rab Di Marzi (The Will of God)

Picture this: A hot Lahore forenoon in July, Main Market, Gulberg, one of the poshest areas. I get out of my car to go to the ATM machine, my son and I are going to do some shopping. Actually I am, he just likes to tag along. I love him for tagging along. Just next to the machine in the veranda, two boys, seeming to be street urchins, are sleeping on an old foam mattress that has lost its cover. I looked at them, i looked at my son in the car, wearing his nightsuit and waiting for me in the air-conditioned car while he played some game on a Samsung Note phone. And yes, apart from all disparities, he is fair, and the urchins are brown, with sun bleached blonde hair. I didn't like it. I felt guilty. Now if i were to follow the usual political rhetoric, which is reflected in wearing of khaddar, establishing it war bazaars and turning off ACs in offices to show solidarity with the plight of the poor, in vogue in Pakistan, me and my son would come out of the car and stand in the heat with these guys and postpone our shopping plans. But would it help them? No. Neither would it if i gave them some money and got rid of my guilt. The charity would help them for some time, but would not take them out of this vicious circle of poverty. What we need in our country is not superficial acts of charity to give impressions of caring, but a system that throws a lifeline to the poor to get out of poverty with their own efforts.
I , perhaps cruelly,  and certainly not respecting their privacy, took their picture and posted it on twitter, calling for a safety net for such children. it got lots of response, but one comment hurt and revolted me to my core. Somebody wrote, Rab di Marzi, or that it is as Allah has willed. It is the same mentality that feeds the above superficial acts. It is engendered by the erroneous belief that somebody who is born at a particular class is supposed to remain there because he was born there through the will of God. And, as good muslims, we are supposed to surrender to His will and not try to change things too much. This attitude is in itself tragic. It makes us take the opium of acceptance, and prevents us to make an effort to change even the things that can be changed. As Muslims, we are supposed to accept the things we cannot change as the will of God, but we are exhorted to make efforts to change the things that we can. In fact, it is our duty as muslims to struggle to put things right. If we recall, it is called Jihad, and is one of the pillars of Islam. It is this effort to create a more equitable society that Jihad envisages, not terrorism .
Now whose responsibility is to establish a more equitable society? Individual effort definitely counts, but it is the State which has to do this huge task, because it taxes us and then decides where to spend its revenues. Right now, whatever efforts are being made at State level are in the old mode of giving charity, subsidies, and short term relief to the poor. Very little effort is there for creating an enabling environment for them to get out of poverty through their own efforts, learning some self respect and gaining confidence along the way. But we are ignoring our children the most. We have so many young people, and we need to very quickly devise a system, a safety net to enable them to get out of poverty and illiteracy. The answer is in giving street children access to education, nutrition and skills to get them off the streets and into educational institutions, and then to workplaces. Our children are the future and we can jump start progress by investing in them. A mega project that funds such a safety net for our young people is much more valuable for us than brick and mortar. This is the real will of God. This is what He enjoined us to do.

The Lost Generation

The name of this blog post seems a bit cliched. Im not talking about the lost generation of the American history . I use this cliched phrase because it is the name of one of my worst nightmares.

The existence of such a feeling began for the first time a few years ago, when we were recruiting some people for an energy sector organization. I was responsible for these recruitments and was a panelist. We usually like to say in our public discussions that we have lots of talent but our youth has no opportunity for employment. However, the young people we were interviewing had serious deficiencies in knowledge, understanding ,expression, work ethics. Most of them were not worthy of being employed. That evening when I drove back home, I noticed for the first time the pursuits of people in our streets. Usually idling, gossiping, or doing work without much interest, not able to make a success of what they were doing, and our young people, not adequately educated, lacking exposure and knowledge, many of them unemployable.
Everywhere I go, I meet young people like this. Lacking adequate education, weak ethics, weaker work ethic and motivation. Listlessness and lack of belief in their own ability to make things change. But we have used the earlier generation at the alter of expediency, of jingoism, of vested interest. They have not done well.
Last night, I was watching tv and there flashed names of young men who, in the nineties, were responsible for political shootings. They had such illustrious names: Naveed Nusrat, Minaj Qazi, Saulat Mirza, Mustafa. Surely their educated parents spent a lot of time to give their children meaningful names and did not foresee the future that would befall their sons. These are just a few. In the name of ideology, in the name of Jihad, in the name of social norms, our young people have been used and abused. Their minds have been played with so much that this generation finds it difficult to believe in anything, even themselves and their ability to control their lives. Why should they? Can we even decide whether a crime is a crime or not or where and when in our history should we start holding people accountable? when the normal definitions of right and wrong seem to blur and merge more and more as we progress to the higher echelons of society, how can we expect our young people to find their way out of this labyrinth of life? The only thing that holds a person together in adversity as well as in times of fortune, is belief and values, ethics, which one holds on to as the winds of upheaval blow. What do our young people have to hang on to? what kind of lives have they seen their elders live? what kind of social values have they grown up with? Only and only hypocricy, selfishness, twisting what is right to make it wrong just to suit people who have might? They have not learnt indolence on their fathers knee, they have learnt how to be a sponge, how to prey upon your near and dear ones instead of pulling your own weight and being proud of it. They have learnt self abasement and sycophancy, not self respect and respect for difference of opinion. They have seen brain washing and indoctrination without question, not tolerance and quest for real knowledge ,which starts with a question, not acquiescence .
So we have fifteen year old boys, beautiful , brawny, blonde, bursting with vitality, leading terrorist attacks in Charsadda, rather than leading a hockey or football match in high school, or doing charity work during school breaks, like my fifteen year old daughter does. There is a disparity of class and what a child from a specific family background can expect from life in our country. They are taught at the outset not to presume to be equal. Then why should they not be listless and slackers? they cannot be sure if they have a level playing field. And they are right. They don't. Unless we give them one, we will keep churning out multitudes of such directionless people. We say we have a huge youth bulge with great opportunities fro growth. But what we consider gold is turning into dust before our eyes.

Just a Light Beating

Pakistan's descent into the dark ages seemed imminent with the statement by the islamic ideology council head Molana Shirani that a husband may give a light beating to his wife as and when required. While humankind has evolved to a stage where the lasting psychological and emotional scars inflicted by physical violence are known to most civilized societies, this is an interpretation based on tunnel vision , the only motivation being to maintain the social ascendancy of the man over the woman in Pakistani society.

Now this approach has a number of aspects and implications. First, what constitutes a slight beating. depending upon the girth and size of both partners, it can be an unequal match mostly. But the more important question is, why should any of the partners need to resort to violence, albeit light, to get their way in a marital relationship. This reflects the ascendance of the man who can punish the woman as and when he feels right. If the concept of light beating is incorporated in the law, it will again establish the principle of the man's ascendancy in the relationship in a physical way, calling into equation so many freedoms that the law presently gives to women in Pakistan. The whole issue revolves around the idea of an unequal relationship between man and woman. Why a relationship may be unequal is because physically she is weaker and he is supposed to take care of her. But taking care of a weaker family member does not mean being their master. We take care of our children and old parents, but if we use the ability to take care of them as an opportunity to wield power, then the unfairness begins. This paradigm becomes even more irrelevant as more and more women are financially independent and have more of sense of self than they used to. On the flip side, the woman also takes care of the man in many ways, but does that make her justified in trying to gain mastery over her mate? No. The only answer is an equal relationship, where both partners respect and love each other, wish each other the best and try to be partners in life, rather than adversaries or competitors . The only way to achieve such a partnership is to be fair to each other, communicate to each other, not that one partners keeps taking and the other keeps giving. Both need to be aware of and be willing to make an effort to give importance to the other's desires. such a meeting point only comes when there is respect in a relationship. One partner feeling entitled to beat the other is enough to destroy respect, affection and sharing in the relationship. Allowing men to feel entitled to light beating will just reinforce the concept of being master of the woman, throwing out of  the window any chances of a mutually satisfying relationship. Considering how much importance is given to men and womens likes and dislikes while deciding marriages, the chances of being happy together are already rather slim.
The second implication of such a ruling is lack of communication in a marital relationship. How many times does a Pakistani man thinks of discussing with his life partner what her wishes and desires are? Usually its a monologue of what he wants. Many men think about asking and in their hearts their sole wish is to keep their woman happy, but our social norms inhibit his natural desire to make her wishes and thoughts important to him. It is the natural instinct for men and women to treat each other as companions and partners. That is what they were created for. However, our society scoffs at sensitive men, calling him hen pecked and so on. The concept of beating being permissible is again reinforcing this view of the man-woman relationship, which is unnatural and erroneous. It is not even Islamic. It is only an attempt to maintain the status quo and protect all the abusive men from law. Islam is not an unfair religion. It has not concept of papacy as rightly pointed out by some. However, the authority that such bodies wield allows them to affect our social fabric and to damage it in cases such as this one.
As the issue has been reduced to the supporters of the status quo against those who would change it, such as the Punjab and KP governments, Its time that the government thought about introducing women clerics, lawmakers and lawyers into these bodies, so that the ascendancy of one gender over the other in our social life is diluted. We need a system based on fairness and mutual respect.

More Than A Woman

I still remember my father trying to instill in me the idea that I am equal to men, and that I can even surpass them. On the eve of my marriage, I remember my elder sister telling me that i should not only try to make my spouse happy, but also remember that he should make me happy too, that i should not forego my own happiness for the sake of somebody else. I have been reminded many times by my liberal and forward looking family that i was more than a girl, or a woman, i was a person. Of course, i grew up to be that, a person. With an identity of my own. Choices that were independent, and not dictated by anybody. But the more independence i sought, the more away I seemed to be from my life partner, who found it threatening, difficult to take in his stride, and he, like any other man, sought solace in people who were, and could be dependent on him. The more of a person i became, the more threatened my near ones became. More alienated, less sympathetic, less willing to help. Human nature is that one doesn't want to help somebody who seems ok, but thats how it is.

Being more than a woman, I feel, takes away the womanness in a woman. So I thought, rather than being weak and dependent on everybody,  and being too compromised on independence, I could decide to be dependent on my children and one man . Meaning for love, affection, attention, advice, support and collaboration, and help. That did not seem such a bad start, then my siblings came in also. But being in love and living for the one that she loves, comes naturally to a woman. There is no greater happiness than seeing your loved ones happy. Being a person takes away your selflessness, and takes away from your womanhood.

I have had the fortune to be with somebody who matters. Men seem to think that power and money matters. It does, a little, but it is not everything. It cannot make anybody fall in love with you. Atleast not me. I fall in love with a person, his qualities, abilities and attributes. Yes it is true that it takes a lot for me to be impressed. But I only appreciate personal attributes, never outer trappings. If a persons exceptional personality makes him or her stand out in life and achieve something, so be it. And it is true that ones exceptional character does help one achieve in life. So it just happens that the one I love can be exceptional in other things too. If a person has trappings but no personal attributes , I would not be interested even if it was , name any handsome actor or rich man. I could never love somebody I could not respect, admire and adore, and who does not love me back.

I wish I did not face this dilemma , of holding a balance between being a woman and an independent person. Yet i face it everyday.But I cannot stop being a woman, and i cannot stop being independent. I love both. The scales balance someday, some days they don't. But I like this.

Love Is

When I was a young girl, I read somewhere that Love is not only looking at each other, love is looking together in the same direction. I thought this must be true, seemed like a reasonable definition of similar dispositions enjoying a quiet life together, looking in the same directions, having the same world view and plans for the future, and living together because they are no conflicts. All my life I looked for this kind of an understanding, and in the process, made lots of friends. Because, this approach makes friends, and friendships have all these ingredients: they have fun together too. But friendship is not love. Whatever people say, friendship is NOT love. Somebody was saying love is friendship set on fire. I was forced to discard this mumbo jumbo when I fell in love a few years ago. And now all I can say is, you are lucky if you can be friends with your love, but you can love somebody more than life itself and not be friends with him. So I have clarified what love isn't.  More difficult to define what love actually is.

Love is basic,love is instinctual, love is primal. It has to do with skin, smell, taste,chemistry, heartbeat going at 100 miles an hour when you see or touch each other. It has to do with wanting to be around that person all the time, seeing each other every day, hearing his voice in the silence of your loneliness, imagining his touch and not wanting to be touched by any other, even if he cannot . It is feeling as if there is no difference between your body and his, feeling as if he belongs only and only to you, whether he has given you this right or not. Love does not wait for permissions, It swoops and takes hold of you, and makes you do unimaginable things to be with the one you love. It makes you drive to where he is when you cannot even walk. It is the feeling of murderous rage at even the thought of him or her being or even wanting to be with somebody other than you. None of it is explained, none of it has a reason. The only reason is that you love him or her.
Love is the feeling that you cannot go on without your beloved. It is the feeling that tells you that everything is incomplete without that person. Friendship blossoms when you are similar and have similar goals, but love makes you want to change to be what your beloved likes you to be. It is wanting everything he wants, being everything he wants, and being happiest when you fulfill any wish or desire that he has, and to see him or her happy, glowing and satisfied with you, and holding you in good esteem. All you want to see is love in the eyes of your beloved for you, and you need the love and support of your beloved at each step you take, every endeavour you make in life , in things that are important to you. And you think the world of your beloved, in your eyes he can do no wrong, even if he does, it doesn't seem that wrong!
It is anger too, when attention and affection are denied, if he or she questions why you seem to think they belong to you. It takes the form of fights and tiffs if you cannot spend as much time with each other as you like, or you feel you cannot do enough to make your beloved happy.  You so want to make each other happy it makes you cry when you can't. Because. What makes her happy makes you happy too. You will steal, you will lie, you will take risks, because ...you cannot live without each other.
If you cannot identify with the above, you are not in love with the person you are with. If you can, this is what love is. Enjoy and try to make it last. It is more important than anything you have or can hope to achieve in life. It is worth that much.

Distance & Despair

In recent years suicides are being reported more and more in the media. It usually used to be men and women resorting to suicide due to financial problems and poverty. While it was a vivid reflection on the inadequacy of our economic system to provide enough opportunities for livelihood to our poor, it was only an indicator of poverty leading to despair and suicide. In recent days and months , however, incidents of suicide of young boys and girls, teenagers to be precise, are being reported, which is an alarming indicator of a deteriorating society. The overwhelming reason for these suicide is distance, alienation and pressure from their own parents, their own families. For me, economic or administrative problems, are less dangerous. they can be checked by the government or non government organizations, but problems that have to do with the society are deeper, more pervasive, and more dangerous to our collective well being. The crumbling relationships between children and parents in our society, is a fast creeping illness that is rotting our social structure.
Earlier in older times, few people left the social structure or did anything which was an anomaly to it, the men enjoying more freedom in their actions but still bound by social norms. The generations in the 70s and my generation who grew up in the 90s, were exposed to different thoughts and possibilities for alternate lifestyles. But the Millennium Children are exposed more and more to western ways of behaviour, and are encouraged to think and question what their parents want them to do and how they want to behave. The parents themselves are now caught between the new and the old, and feel pressured to be the symbols of values that they felt their parents to be, but unable to be such paragons and unable to transfer those values to their kids because they themselves have confused views of these and their own roles. They do not have the lifestyles their own parents had so the kids are emulating different models. The parents don't like how their children are behaving by emulating them. The kids want discussion. The parents don't feel bound to do so under traditional norms But have no choice due to the newfound freedoms and exposure that cannot be denied to kids now. The parents do not want to qualify their actions to their children. They don't want to recognize that their children are individuals and have their own rights and problems of their generations and they might need to discuss these with their parents. They do not want to recognize that their children view themselves through the lens of their parents opinion of them, and their words, and need to know that they are loved and accepted with all their shortcomings. And the parents feel justified not to recognize this. Their parents never did all that. So they themselves have no example to follow in such situations. They simply don't know how to let down their guard and engage their kids on a human level. So the distance grows each day, and the despair of the teenager, going through the sensitive years of identity crisis, grows deeper. It is this disconnect which leads parents of suicides to declare that their children have not killed themselves, it is an accident or a murder. Even in death, they remain in denial of how their child felt. And their own role in pushing him off the brink.How could he kill himself? I gave him everything. The new paradigm of materialism which has creeped into our relationships. What we don't realize is that Things never make up for love, they can only compensate for a time. The present crisis is of today's parents more than their children. They need to break free of this tussle between the old and the new, select a way of life, and be the example that their children can emulate. Accept their shortcomings, and feel them your own so that they can accept them.The distance between God and Man is impossible, who loves us more that 70 mothers. the closeness between the parent and child, should atleast be one seventieth of this closeness. The love of one mother atleast.

Understanding

I have been away for nearly a month. I was ill and therefore distracted.Could not get to write what I am writing today, though i have been thinking about it in bits and pieces for the past month. Perhaps my illness has given me more food for my thoughts in a way. They say that the secret of a happy relationship is understanding. Love, attraction,faithfulness, mutual trust and compassion cannot sustain without this crucial ingredient. Perhaps. Love and attraction, in my experience, can exist without any of the above feelings. But the rest are the result of understanding. It is true that one tries to make an effort in a relationship when one is in love and attracted, but unless there is trust and respect in a relationship, it cannot last. And of course trust and respect comes if you understand each other, your personalities, your quirks, your limits and your temperaments, and know in your hearts that you like each others traits and beliefs and identify with each other.
 Opposites attract in many cases, but basic similarities in natures are important for understanding and adjustment. This creates trust, respect, belief in each other and a willingness to accommodate each other, to share and support each other to achieve separate and mutual dreams and goals, and mutual forgiveness. True understanding is to understand that we are both human with shortcomings, and to keep forgiving each other when we might fall short of each other's expectations.
When a relationship starts, the man wants to impress a woman, and to keep her impressed as long as he can. A woman wants to bedazzle and bewitch a man, and keep him besotted as long as she can. The man wants to keep seeing the admiration in a woman's eyes that he saw at the outset when he first caught her attention, and the woman wants to keep seeing the lovestruck look in his eyes when he first saw her. It is possible to continue it, but as an affair turns into a relationship and perhaps a marriage, the wear and tear of events that you face together, the good times and the bad that you see, dampen the ardor, the magic, the thrill of romance. The mundane takes over, leaving little time for intimacy and excitement. With understanding, with forgiveness and acceptance of each other's natures, and trust , is the only way the woman keeps believing her man is the hero she fell in love with, because however much h he tries to be the superman he wants to be in her eyes, he is human, and cannot win every battle, pass every test, cater to every whim of hers. But if she understands that he tried, if she knows in her heart that he loves her, if she sees that he wants her and cares for her, he will remain a hero in her eyes, the one she first thought was her brave superman. And if, while he might have gotten used to her beauty which might be fading a bit with time, her love and commitment to him and what he holds dear will still make him want her, and cherish her for the affection and happiness that she brings to his life.
 Attraction and love are of course the basic ingredient of the relationship, but understanding and mutual forgiveness , and belief in each other, can make even each other's presence enough to rejuvenate and heal, as no medicines can. Few words are required, because the heart knows, and does not require explanations.

Territories

Human beings are only vessels. Flesh and blood. We ascertain our worth by what we own. What we achieve, what others appreciate us for. In our society, that is Pakistan, as in every inward looking society, we have a habit to hang on to things, to people, to our jobs, to our areas, we have difficulty moving from place to place, from work to work. It has a lot to do with how we are brought up. Ours is a society which thrives on the status quo. Where nothing happens. We are bred to hang on to things. This attitude reflects in our work ethic also. But more importantly, it is because we are insecure. Now who is insecure? the person who knows that he or she got things the wrong way. So they want to keep these things the wrong way too. In our society, things are crooked. The system does not facilitate progression through the right means. People in our country perceive that they will not be able to achieve things by sheer dint of hard work. They know that they will have to have"other" qualifications for the job, be it personal contacts, bribes, or any other thing. In a fair system, a person knows that if he or she does not get one good opportunity, they will get another. So there is no hanging on to things. But in an unfair system, they do not want to let go of the foothold that they have been able to get, because they are not sure whether they can manage other opportunities. So we see more politics than work in our offices, we see more feuds and conspiracies in families, and we see the inability to give up the personal good for the benefit of the greater good. This is because sacrifice is demanded of others, but not given ourselves when others demand it. Yet most of us do not realize that there is a higher power than us, which is God. We like to think that we can control outcomes, we can control others, we can destroy others. But many times, God gives the victims of our wrath better opportunities, better people, better lives, especially because they were conspired against, cheated, deceived and let down. But ultimate outcomes are not decided by us, things can and do go terribly wrong and we get trapped in the webs that we have spun for others. God is indeed the greatest conspirator of all. Territorial tendencies can only change if we start doing the right thing and being fair to others. This is especially true in public life. If people at the helm of affairs ensure FairPlay and transparency, territorial behavior will give way to acceptance of reform. By doing the right thing, we can convince others to follow and agree. If we as a society refuse to do that, individuals will continue to feel insecure and will endeavour to hang on to what they have by hook or crook. As long as the vessel holds, so does the desire to hold fast.