It's good to be a woman

Women make the world go round; at times in gentle circles like a Ferris wheel, where everybody gets to be on top of the world at least for some time, and at times like a wheel in a theme park in London, which is not meant for the fair-hearted and where everybody gets to be terrified a number of times.

With so much power tied up like a bag of herbs in the left pocket of her apron, and a magic wand of spoon in her hand, who wouldn’t want to be her; who wouldn’t want to be a WOMAN? No matter what color, shape or size, in today’s world, it is good to be a woman, and it is so because no son of the soil or daughter of the West can make an entry into this world without a woman. What good would the theory of relativity be if there was no Einstein, but then again, where did he come from? Even Adolph Hitler was once an egg, and the only person who had the gall of smacking him on his bottom, telling him to behave himself was a woman. And it only gets better. It is good to be a woman because she is a sister, a sister who almost always has a brother. Whether it’s a teaser, a harasser, a follower, or even an annoying husband, all a sister has to do is tap on her brother’s shoulder, look hapless and he will go all the way to the other side of the world to beat the man up till he sounds like a seven-year-old Chinese girl. All a woman has to do is call for help in squeaky voice.

And it only gets better. It is good to be a woman because she is a daughter, a daughter who always has a set of give-it-all-away parents. They raise you, nurture and pamper you, paint your room pink, protect you, and pay for all the million clothes that you wear. Things only get groovier as you grow up, for all you have to do is point, and they will get it for you. You study in your own time, there are no taking-care-of-family or earning pressures, you don’t have to learn how to drive, no responsibility, no blaming. It is like living in a doll house, only for real. And it only gets better, for after your parents are done looking after you, you get a brand new caretaker, who goes from emperor to pamperer for you in one day. All you have to do is say, ‘I do’, and you get to move to another doll house in a fancy decorated car with, what you call a husband.

Now let’s not get started on the blessings of not having to shave every morning, not having to change a tyre in the middle of the road, not having to pump the sewerage pipe at home every time the line gets choked, not having to wake up one morning with the bald patch in the middle of your head, and not having to earn enough to buy a Ferrari to get the love of your life. There is nothing like being able to cry, nothing like getting a whole new lease on life just by changing the color of your lipstick.

So, yes, it is incredible being a woman and more than half of us would agree. Because let’s face it, men may be the stronger sex, but not when there’s a beautiful woman in the room. It is us, women who add beauty to the world, and if we had not been here, the story of the world would have ended with Adam’s final breath.

Schazeen Bokhari

Read more »

The Real Thing

The Real Thing

Schazeen Bokhari

A lot of people in this world remain engrossed in trying to search for their “fairy-tale” lives, dreaming about true love, guts and good luck. But this is not the real thing. The real world sometimes becomes a cage. The real world opens people’s eyes and teaches them lessons- the hard way. Sometimes, it steals your pride, deadens your ambitions, limits your imaginations and psychologically cripples you.

I reckon that it takes about two minutes to read each entry in this blog. Well, according to statistics, in that space of time, 300 people will die, and another 620 will be born. I might take half-an-hour to write this: I’m sitting on my bed, concentrating on what I am doing, with some books around me, ideas in my head, cars driving past outside. Everything seems perfectly normal, and yet, during those thirty minutes, 3000 people have died, and 6200 have just seen the light of the world for the first time. Where are those thousands of families who have just begun to mourn the loss of someone, or to smile at the arrival of a son, daughter, nephew, niece, brother or sister? Hundreds of those children who have just been born will be abandoned the next moment and will go on to form part of the death statistics before I have even finished writing this.

How strange. A simple statistic, which I happened to read, and suddenly I’m aware of all those deaths and entrances, those smiles and tears. How many are leaving this life while alone in their rooms, with no one realizing what’s happening? How many will be born in secret and then abandoned outside a children’s home or a convent? I think to myself that I was once part of the birth statistics and will, one day, be included amongst the number of dead.

People do not think very much about death. They spend their lives worrying about absurdities; they put things off, and fail to notice important moments. They don’t take risks, because they think it’s dangerous. They complain a lot, but are afraid to take action. They want everything to change, but they themselves refuse to change. So many things that make life rough around the edges- an indiscriminate dent in your car, a door slamming in your face- are due to lack of consideration. Imagine for a minute, a world where everyone is just a little kinder. When you are trying to merge in traffic, someone lets you in. At the supermarket, you allow a person in a hurry to go ahead of you in the check-out queue.

If we thought a little more about this, we would never forget to make that much-postponed phone call. We would be a little crazier. We would enjoy the power and beauty of our youth. We would not fear this incarnation coming to an end, because you cannot fear something that is going to happen anyway.

- Schazeen Bokhari

Read more »

A Slow Burning Revolution in Pakistan

Pakistan certainly seems ripe for revolt. It is perpetually on a knife edge – extremists plot and explode bombs, senior politicians are assassinated, society seethes with discontent. A slim upper crust floats in a bubble of wealth and privilege, while the poor grind along under soaring food inflation and 12-hour power cuts. Regional tensions threaten to pull the country asunder. In Quetta, residents were shivering in their homes because the rebels had blown up the gas pipelines four times over the previous week.

Some analysts compare the mood to Iran in 1979, when a restive middle-class upended the American-backed Shah and opened the door to theocratic Islamic rule. Yet on the ground in Pakistan, the whiff of revolution is faint. For a start, the country is too fractured. Take Karachi, a sprawling megalopolis of 16 million people. Control of the city is divided between a patchwork of political, sectarian and criminal gangs. All are heavily armed. Protests against Pervaiz Musharraf in the city four years ago pitted rival groups against each other, triggering a bloodbath.

The bigger problem, perhaps, is that there is no dictator to overthrow. Pakistanis already have democracy, elections and a vigorous press. But among the educated classes, few want to engage with the political system, considering it dirty and corrupt. And so they focus their frustration on their president, Asif Ali Zardari, a fantastically unpopular figure. Locked into his fortified Islamabad palace, Zardari is portrayed by a hostile media as aloof and corrupt, a schemer and a shyster. Many people are prepared to believe the most lurid stories about him, including that he plotted the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in 2007. Zardari-hating has become a virtual fetish among the chattering classes.

Some of this is warranted, although many of the wilder stories are almost certainly exaggerated. But the hard truth is that power in Pakistan resides inside the gleaming halls of the army headquarters, where liveried generals hold the keys to the country's nuclear weapons, and control policy with India, Afghanistan and America.

And so a true revolution in Pakistan would see the army being thrown out from power– except that would be tricky, because it isn't officially in charge.

The real danger, however, may lie in the dark clouds gathering over the economy. Companies such as PIA are sucking the Treasury dry; last week's strike demonstrated scant political will to get them into shape. On the revenue side, the rich refuse to pay tax. To plug this hole, the government has resorted to printing money at an alarming pace.

Economists say the bubble could burst in a matter of months – rocketing inflation, a crashing currency, capital flight. If that happens, trouble could stir on the streets, notwithstanding Pakistanis' amazing tolerance for adversity. Pakistan is a country flooded with ethnic, religious and political divisions, battling multiple insurgencies, and facing both economic and identity crises, and a complete revolution doesn’t seem to be too far away.

- Schazeen Bokhari

Read more »