I’m sitting in front of the television, one eye on the screen, the other on my laptop, feeling like a hysterical drama-queen because despite everything that I’ve grown up with in Karachi across the years, I don’t know if I can handle this. And I feel a bit stupid for being so affected by it—I’ve seen and lived through worse, and I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of town that will (most likely) not be affected by what is happening, but I can’t help it.

Karachi seems to have gone completely mental. Dozens of cars on fire. Even more people dead and/or injured. And no one knows why.

There are about a hundred different conspiracy theories flying around about what has prompted this day-long blood-bath in Karachi, but from what I’ve managed to glean, the basic story goes something like this: the (fired) Chief Justice of Pakistan was supposed to come to Karachi this morning to address his supporters and the MQM, a political party that has historically controlled Karachi since inception decades ago, and is more of a cult than anything else, decided to hold “rallies” to counter his speeches. The current opposition parties, held rallies in the city to welcome the ousted CJP, and not to be outdone, the MQM decided to support the government.

How they’re managing to support the government by gunning down strangers on the streets, setting fire to vehicles, firing at apartment buildings in which defenceless mothers with six-month-old children cower, and threatening to storm private television channels—well, that’s beyond me. There are over fifty people dead—I have friends who work in the hospitals where people have been taken; the gunmen have fired on ambulances carrying injured people to the hospital and riddled them with bullets; there are snipers atop apartment buildings and lurking in junctions leading off of Shahrah-e-Faisal, which is effectively a transport artery for Karachi and a route that is almost impossible to avoid using if crossing any significant distance in the city, and all through it, the mother-fucking police are lying on benches taking naps, their shoes off, socks rolled down, moving their cars out of the area, and frog-marching unarmed men into the hands of these violent SOBs, standing there and watching as they beat the shit out of some poor guy with the butts of their rifles, and not doing a damn’ thing to stop it. I’m actually feeling physically nauseated. And never more so than when I see government spokespeople claiming that there’s absolutely no issue, nothing going on, no need for the Army or any other authority to step in and curb the violence. The head of the Aaj TV newsroom sounds slightly hysterical as he tells people that he has been asking for some sort of help from every major policing agency in the country for six hours, and hasn’t even received an acknowledgement. The spokesman for the MQM swears—as in the background, men wave his party’s flag and fire guns off at the same time—that if not for his party’s efforts, the city would be in ruins already, and that blood would be filling the streets.

There are dead bodies lying in the streets, and above them, in a display of jarring incongruity, is a sign stating that 2007 is the year of tourism for Pakistan, and I think that if I don’t laugh I’m going to cry, because how did this happen to us again? The scenes flashing past me look like images from Beirut or Baghdad, or Sarajevo. People crying, blood everywhere, fire licking at anything even remotely flammable, and no matter where you turn, moustachioed thugs with Kalashnikovs and carbines, firing at anything that moves. And I can’t understand why—that’s what freaks me out more than anything else; I’m used to the violence, I grew up with it in the 1980s, with the bomb drills in school and the mobs outside the gates and the whole nine yards, but I simply cannot understand what sort of twisted game is being played between the government and the political factions that support and/or oppose it. In this short-term move, do they have a fucking CLUE as to how much harm they’re doing? How quickly they’re devastating a city that has taken so long to actually start living again? People are scared, and rightfully so—because there’s no real method or logic to this behaviour—no one knows what to expect.

Sunday has been declared “a Black Day”, with all the inappropriate grammar, spelling, and illogic that could be mustered, by people who are most likely affiliated in some way with the people who have perpetrated this travesty of protest. The TV channels keep flashing back to this one particular instant of a man standing up, his hand clasped to his neck, chest dotted with scarlet; and his hand falls, he stumbles, a spray of blood arcing into the air, and he slides to the ground, trembling a few times before he falls completely still.

Musharraf is about to make a speech. If I haven’t thrown something at my TV screen and destroyed it in the meanwhile, I’ll come back with more later.

phew There we go, I just had to get that out of my system.

Oh hang on. Gay Pakistani male! Gay Pakistani male!

Right, I think weÂ’re done on that front.

And on this particular front as well. My time at Sepia Mutiny has—at long last—come to an end, and I can say without a single doubt that I’m glad I got to close out 2006 on such a bright note. It has been an experience, tumultuous and otherwise, and at the risk of loading up on the frommage, I think I’d be the poorer without it.

It gives me hope, sometimes. This community—because that’s what it is, a community, not just a place to write about brown-people-stuff—isn’t just dynamic and interesting and occasionally thought-provoking; it’s all of those things AND the whole damn’ bag of chips. It thrives on everything (clusterfucks be damned!—and secretly enjoyed!), and it makes me glad that I was incredibly, incredibly wrong when I thought to myself at its inception, wow, I wonder how long it’ll take for that site to tank, it’s a good idea, but I just don’t think enough people will be interested.

In case you were wondering, itÂ’s taking me a while to write this post because IÂ’m single-finger-typing while trying to get my ankle out past my molars with the other hand.

It was one of the things I felt most keenly while at university in the US. A lot of us homeland desis tend to automatically assume that just because we were born in South Asia, weÂ’re somehow better-informed and more capable of analysing/providing information about the region than people of desi origin who werenÂ’t necessarily raised there. And I canÂ’t speak for everyone, but some of us also felt very marginalised in the sense that we didnÂ’t think or feel that we had enough of a presence to be a viable social group beyond the simple stereotypes (OK well, I like men and make no bones about that so I definitely stood out, but you see where IÂ’m going with this) that everyoneÂ’s so well-aware of.

And once again, I was wonderfully, gloriously, terrifically wrong. The mould has been broken, the restrictions shattered and a bhangra danced all over them while Amitabh comes out of retirement once more to chew the scenery and Nusrat’s voice soars.

ItÂ’s utterly delightful, it really is.

“But I don’t want to be a good Muslim,” I muttered under my breath, keeping a watchful eye out for potential hurling of chappals. “And I certainly would much rather spend this time playing Final Fantasy XII.” But when I saw that Very Special Look that Mothers Have, I shut up and sat down. An hour later, I was actually rather disappointed to find that the show was over.

Meet Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, described on Wikipedia as “a well-known Pakistani Islamic scholar, exegete, and educationist”. Other than having a head of hair so thick that I’m convinced it’s capable of deflecting armour-piercing shells, the man actually impressed me. I don’t necessarily think he’s going to be storming the bastions of the unfaithful or anything, but after seeing some of the raving loonies on channels such as “QTV” (Quran TV), or “The Muslim Channel” and listening to them explain to the adoring masses that you have to have faith because if you don’t you’ll burn in Hell forever, I was taken aback to find someone with a functional brain on a mainstream TV channel.

As you may be able to imagine, in Pakistan critical analysis of any sort—particularly when it involves matters theological—is frowned upon most severely, and to find someone sitting calmly (albeit on an absolutely hideous set) on TV while happily dissecting a few dozen-odd “religious truths” is something of a mind-boggling experience, not entirely unlike being savaged by a goldfish.

I came into the programme as it was about halfway done, and so am a little bit hazy on the minutiae, but apparently some bearded guy sits on one side of a table, with this Ghamidi fellow on the other, and on the third side there’re a man and a woman who ask him what seem to be very rote-memorised questions. They’re also a bit daft, I must say—I caught myself wondering, do people REALLY sit at home wondering if they’re allowed to eat poultry that may or may not have been given a bit of meat in its feed, or laughing at the man who wondered if “it was OK to eat food caught by dogs because the dog is an unclean animal”. But Ghamidi’s approach towards answering these questions is actually very interesting, and involves a very…holistic, and common-sense approach towards religion. My favourite part was, I think, when he moaned out loud: “But all the things you’re saying, none of them are actually in the Quran! You’re using man-made rationales and reasons to justify your own cultural beliefs and customs, and that’s just WRONG. The Quran has nothing about dogs written in it, and you can’t just pick blanket phrases and apply them to things without actually thinking about it! ”

I’m interested in seeing how far this particular “reformist” movement will have an impact on popular notions of Islam, particularly in a domestic context. Half the radicals of whom I know or DO know tend to have picked up their notions from the media—I wonder if they’ll pick up the notion of moderation or critical thinking as well. I think it’s a good sign that it’s on TV, and that it apparently has a number of supporters; in particular, I find myself incapable of disliking a man who actually uses logic and rational arguments rather than reverting to tautological theology.

IÂ’m still reserving judgement though. Just in case.

There are a grand total of over 170 films being screened this year, including over 40 features, over 30 documentaries and over 95 shorts. They are from 37 countries as diverse as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland, Romania, Sweden, Guatemala, Sudan, Chad, UAE, Sri Lanka, Peru, China, Poland, Estonia, Austria, Australia, Turkey, Greece, Finland and the Czech Republic . They include a number of World Premieres and Asian premieres, while most are at least Pakistan premieres. Many of them have won prizes at other well known festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, London, Sundance and Mumbai as well as international critics’ FIPRESCI jury awards.

The film festival will also be running a retrospective on François Truffaut, and showcasing the works of Irani (not Iranian, thank goodness) director Jafar Panahi and Pakistani director Jamil Dehlavi. What I love about this festival, despite my inability to actually attend it, no matter how many times I swear to myself in the months leading up that I WILL go to at least a handful of screenings, is that it manages to also (albeit somewhat tangentially) hit other visual arts media. To wit:

Accompanying the film screenings will be a unique curated art exhibition of the work of 5 Pakistani artists who draw their inspiration from the hand-painted imagery of popular cinema and billboard advertising.

In a city like Karachi, where the only forms of public entertainment revolve around food (which, hey, no complaints from me or the owners of my gym) and the occasional (overpriced) concert, this is an unsurprisingly popular event. Tickets tend to be relatively cheap, and the organisers of the event tend to try and cater to a variety of income groups, for example showing movies like The Incredibles dubbed in Hindi/Urdu (the voices are by Sharukh Khan, no less! Eeeee! Not really.) for kids, and charging about Rs. 50 (about 90 cents) for a ticket to a showing. ItÂ’s not a bad deal at all, but I think what I find really encouraging about the whole event is that it tends to remind Karachi that it can well function as a city with cultural projects, as a locus not necessarily limited to bombings and huge amounts of criminal and sectarian violence or a massive economic class divide.

On the off-chance that there are any readers in Karachi whoÂ’d like to go and are having trouble finding tickets or getting sorted out, leave a comment and IÂ’ll try to help out. ItÂ’s well-worth the effort.

So Shobha Dé was nice enough, although slightly exhausted-looking. It seemed to be a let-down for one of the hosts, who commented to someone else within earshot of me: “I was rather looking forward to seeing Pakistan’s bitchiest man meet India’s cattiest woman, but they’re both just too civil for this to be any fun.” There were entertaining moments as well, not the least of which involved my pretending to have read all of Ms. Dé’s works. The conversation went something like this:

Flustered Hostess: “Oh, meet [Sin], he’s read ALL your books.” dragging Sin into the conversation with a vice-like grip on one arm

Shobha: “Oh, which did you like the best?”

Sin: lying maniacally “I couldn’t possibly choose, they’re all so powerful in their own ways.”

Shobha: “Really, you think so?” preening just a little bit

Sin: improvising madly “Absolutely, yes, they’re so…revealing, yes, they bare the cultural tumults inherent in the sub-continent, and your social insights!”

What I wish I’d said was “You write soft porn, woman, give it up already!”

Anyway, to return to the source of my angst, I was actually rather surprised at how the book launch had been publicised, i.e. as a Shobha Dé-related party than an actual book launch. If it hadnÂ’t been for the stack of Kolachi Dreams over by the chicken tikkas, I wouldnÂ’t even have know that Dé’s presence was meant to be anything other than some sort of vague social coup. I was also surprised at the pricing for the book, which made it fairly expensive to purchase; it cost more than a number of imported English books, and I felt that for a relatively unknown writerÂ’s work to command as much money as it did was rather foolish. Half the reason I try to support local publishers and authors is because I think itÂ’s important to have a home-grown reader base, with literature widely available at cheap prices, so that anyone can get their hands on it. We do have a handful of local publishing houses, but they tend to publish work thatÂ’s either deathly dull (yet another not-so-scathing indictment of corruption in politics, or yet another never-ending book of Indo-Pak history), or of interest to three-and-a-half economic statisticians over at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. And when I see stuff like The Simoquin Prophecies (fiction? SCIENCE-fiction? That doesn’t cost a thousand rupees? Holy crap!) coming out for almost half the price that Kolachi Dreams is listed at, just across the border, I donÂ’t really know what to make of it. Is it that we just donÂ’t have enough good writers? Or is it that our publishing industry is so far gone that itÂ’s hallucinating? IÂ’ve heard arguments that the English-speaking masses are a niche market, but IÂ’ve also heard arguments from people who wouldnÂ’t traditionally fall under “English speaker”, that they would buy more local books in English if only they were (a) affordable, and (b) more interesting.

In the meanwhile, I continue to add items to my Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com wishlists, and not-so-subtly remind my friends coming in from the UK and the US to bring me books. Lots and lots of them.

While the actual numbers are listed in the linked articles, so far people have died from the cold, from being electrocuted as live power cables snapped and fell into the water through which they were wading, and a number of shops and businesses have shut down because the streets are (were) flooded and there’s no access to them. Karachi’s most notorious underpass, which was designed to keep traffic flowing smoothly was temporarily the city’s most expensive wading pool, and all the while, power outages continue to make their presence felt–I’ve spent most of today trying to make sure that all the power outlets in the house are turned off so that the electronics in the kitchen and assorted rooms don’t blow up from sudden current surges. While it’s somewhat understandable that a desert city may not necessarily be well-equipped for rainfall, one would think that annual monsoons would have indicated to the municipal authorities that SOME sort of drainage system is in order.As a bulletin from the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights states, apparently,

of the 350 million gallons of waste water Karachi produces every day, only 30 million gallons are treated by the Karachi Water and Sewage BoardÂ’s three treatment plants (two built by foreign loans), which have the capacity to treat 151 million gallons. All the rest flows into the cityÂ’s 9 natural drainage nullahs (canals/lanes), and out into the sea – untreated. Foreign-financed infrastructure projects may be bankrupting Pakistan, but for the banks, the big construction companies and the high-flying consultants, they are real money-spinners.

I’m hardly an expert, but having seen the amount of construction work going on in various parts of the city, particularly the (oft-described as “upscale”) ares of Defence and Karachi, I’m not sure that anything substantive is really being accomplished. I think the best analysis to date that I’ve found of the problem is in one of Pakistan’s better-selling monthly news magazines, Newsline, which has a rather good article on the problem, and discusses the issues rising from the summer monsoons that effectively crippled the city this past summer, in July. Some choice quotes:

It started with some rain. Then before you could say the word “infrastructure,” the city flooded. The mayhem that followed was of Katrina-like proportions: power outages, telecommunication failures, collapsed roads, sewage in the streets, car breakdowns, stranded workers, five-hour commutes, flooded businesses, crores of inventory soaked and ruined, inaccessible hospitals and electrocuted pedestrians.

On July 30, some dark clouds rolled into town and dumped 67 mm of rain on Karachi. Then on August 17, the monsoon showered the city with 56mm. So, less than three inches of rain hit the city on each occasion. Three inches. Three inches is less than the depth of a coffee mug. Three inches is the length of an adult’s index finger. Clearly, ‘torrential downpour’ shouldn’t be used to describe three inches of rain. Moreover, three inches of rain should not be associated with the words ‘state of emergency.’

The rains that happened in the last few days haven’t had quite as catastrophic consequences as one would have expected on the basis of the article, but they’ve definitely messed the city up substantially. One of the major problems has been the covering up of the nullahs, the drainage canals, by housing developments that while not technically illegal, shouldn’t have occurred in the first place, were it not for incompetent or possibly corrupt land zoning authority regulators who seemed to think that allowing construction work to block drainage sites wouldn’t cause any future problems.

Well, at least the rain seems to have stopped. Anyone know where I can get a canoe?

One of the more eclectic sports, and for people such as myself who know nothing about the game other than its featuring scantily-clad, oiled-up men chanting, kabbadi is played by two seven-player teams, which take turns raiding each other’s side of the court. One scores points either touching an opposing player and returning to your own side, or by an opposing team managing to prevent a raider from returning to his side.

I mean, I sort of know what it’s all about, but my experience with kabaddi was limited to having heard about it, seen the occasional match while channel-surfing at 4:00 a.m., and once or twice, driving past Clifton Beach in Karachi on a Sunday evening and seeing what I was informed was a match in progress. I certainly had no idea that kabaddi had hit an international level, and even less aware was I that Japan and Iran are also into the sport. I also had no idea that (a) this existed, and (b) that there were some hotties involved in the game: Am I just clueless about this, or did I somehow miss the (re?)surgence of kabaddi? Best of all though, I can’t help but feel somewhat vindicated by this image. On behalf of all brown men everywhere who enjoy getting oiled up and tussling with other oiled-up men in skimpy clothing, I say carry on my brothers! We shall overcome!

My caveat, since this seems to have been cropping up just a teeny-tiny bit: I am not making any representations as to a multitude of opinions, perspectives or experiences other than my own, as a gay Pakistani male from a fairly privileged social background. I just want to put that out there so I donÂ’t have to spend another forty minutes deleting angry e-mails accusing me of trivialising the desi experience, because in case anyoneÂ’s confused, IÂ’m not Indian, IÂ’m not British, IÂ’m not American, and seriously I donÂ’t really claim to speak with any authority on issues relating to any/all of those perspectives.Moving right along, for those of you who may not be familiar with this story, Wikipedia has a fairly decent back-story entry about it, but the short version is something like this: Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana is a 12-year-old half Scottish-Pakistani girl who gained some measure of notoriety a few months ago when she and her father (the parents are divorced) flew to Lahore without informing MisbahÂ’s mother, who freaked the hell out and accused her ex-husband of kidnapping the girl in order to make her into a child-bride. Sajad Rana (the father) and Misbah, on the other hand, claim(ed) that the decision to go to Lahore was MisbahÂ’s, and that she wanted to move to Pakistan in order to live with her father and two of her siblings.

Now the semantics of the case are what make it interesting. A news report from the Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English newspaper stated today that the Lahore High Court has ordered Misbah’s return to Scotland. In particular, I was struck by a comment made by one of the judges, who “said that when he had a chat with Misbah she had no perception about ‘halal’ and ‘haram’ and could not distinguish between the two. She also did not know how to offer prayers according to Islamic injunctions.”

The point of the court order was clarified further on in the article, with the legal opinion being based on the fact that the father had “brought her to Pakistan without approaching the competent court and violated the orders of Scottish courts. This removal is flagrantly illegal, deceitful and a dishonest act, the court observed. The court held that Mr Rana had not been an upright, fair and honest man in this case and was guilty of showing disrespect to the court’s orders, which was tantamount to fraud. And thus he could not be allowed to have the premium of such fraud.”

Great. Lovely. We’ve discovered the ratio decidendi for the case, all’s well. What I find amusing—and slightly worrying—though, is that fact that apparently Misbah’s religious knowledge, or lack thereof, seemed to be influential (at least to one of the judges) in the decision as to whether or not she should be allowed to stay in the country. Hell, I know the differences (and just don’t really care that much), and I know how to pray (more on that later, but how MUCH do I love Eid?), but good grief, pop me in a kilt and send me over to Glasgow if that’s really important (yes, I know it’s not the “real” reason, but I need something to work with here). There was a somewhat similar moment some time ago involving a comment made by a member of the Pakistan Cricket Board regarding the suspension of fast bowler Shoaib Akhter, which basically came down to “he drinks and has pre-marital sex, so he kind of deserved to be suspended, neener-neener”.

I canÂ’t believe I just referenced cricket. I feel so fucking butch right now.

I suppose that I just find it interesting that this comment regarding Misbah’s religious knowledge was enough of a factor to (a) be mentioned in the article, and (b) count as a strike against her appeal to be allowed to remain in Pakistan. Once again, I make no representations as to the sincerity or nature of the motivations that prompted said appeal, but I can’t help but wonder just how or why it was considered relevant enough to be brought up in conversation. Maybe this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but the very fact that religion spills over into what is ostensibly very much a secular and legal matter…well, that disturbs me somewhat. It’s a trend I see going on amongst some of my peers as well—more and more of us, who moved back from the US and the UK for a variety of reasons ranging from racist abuse to the Patriot Act and fear of deportation for pretty much any reason, are coming back to religion as the prime motivator for their return. While I bear no one any grudges as far as religious (dis)belief goes, I do find myself wondering how much of these returns to Allah are based in actual faith and how many are predicated on the notion that by re-embracing faith, the transition back into a society that traditionally remained somewhat unwelcoming will be made smoother. Is it just another flailing attempt to somehow locate a sense of cultural proprioceptive identity, or is there something more genuine behind it? I wonder at how widespread the theocratic notion of identity, legitimacy and/or agency will become.

Naturally, having all the depth of a particularly shallow puddle, IÂ’ve opted to go with fashion.

Fashion, or what passes for it in Pakistan, really pisses me off. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t somehow find myself at least marginally involved with it, but in the years since I’ve been back, it’s taken on this quasi-mystical status as an “industry”, with a mythical “council” comprising…well, I’m not quite sure who’s on the council at present, but I’m going to go with “senior”, “established”, and/or “reputed” designers, since those are generally the terms that seem to be kosher.

Now, at the risk of back-tracking, let me just mention for the record that I know most of the designer community in Pakistan. It’s all a bit of the little pink mafia, with most designers either being gay men or straight women (I’m sorry, they’re not always gay, some of them are “bisexual”, or “bi-curious” snort; I’ve yet to meet a larger group of individuals who have managed to make what they describe as a “phase” last well over a decade or two). And then the photographers, stylists, event managers and “choreographers” all tend to fall into the same gay man/straight woman alliance, so when you combine the somewhat incestuous socialising with a severely limited pool, and then further refine it into an industry dominated by fags and their hags, it’s not hard to meet them all—and be declared their new best friend—within a matter of hours. And while I’ll admit that there’s a certain amount of glitz to the whole thing, to socialising with the crowd that everyone knows (of) and being dragged from one party to another, the realisation that it’s tinsel and not actual stardust comes rather rapidly.

I know, what a shocker, right? Fashion, shallow and superficial? Never!What actually gets on my nerves about fashion in Pakistan is that it’s…well, it’s not really. Now I’ve never really understood fashion (I know, I risk losing my homosexual membership card with this admission), but I’ve sort of always followed the perspective that creating outré outfits that no one can either afford or actually wear in public for more than thirteen-and-a-half minutes may well be couture, but it’s not necessarily fashion. And admittedly, I adore Project Runway (although Laura was robbed, but we’ll get back to that)—to me, that’s sort of what the fashion industry is about—creating innovative, imaginative looks that while interesting, aren’t so completely insane that you can’t actually wear them out in public. But the key thing here is innovation and imagination. And learning about pattern-making, about sewing, about how fabrics need to be tailored, the basic tools that one would (I assume) require to be a successful designer.

Not here though, apparently. It seems that any bored hausfrau with a bit of extra cash and a tailor at her beck and call can set up her own “boutique” or label; and the successful designers seem to be the ones with the most technically adept tailors. I cannot for the life of me, imagine more than one or two of Pakistan’s most “famous” designers being able to go on a show like Project Runway. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all bridal wear, ghararas, lenghas, shalwar kameez, and the occasional blouse, all differentiated only by the amount of embroidery, the length of the top or the trousers, and/or the general cut of the neck or the sleeves. There’s really not much else going on there. I’m not really doing it justice, but basically if you’ve seen one outfit, you’ve seen ‘em all. The menswear market is similarly limited, but enough on the limitations of the actual designs and clothes—suffice it to say that by virtue (again, we keep coming back to this) of an innately theocratic government and society, designers are fundamentally limited in what they can and cannot actually make. So I’m happy to give them a bit of a pass on the “oh good grief, it’s the same bloody thing as you made last week” element of the local fashion industry, they’re definitely working within some stringent conditions (although I continue to maintain that if they’re going to paint themselves as “edgy” and “daring”, they need to do more than slash a couple of vents in random pleats and contend that it’s a breakthrough in design).

I suppose it’s because of the somewhat repressive social regime that exists across the board here in Pakistan (although some are, of course, more repressed than others) that fashion has taken on this mythological sense of presence. There are fashion shows for just about everything, and they double as excuses for parties, for fundraisers, for self-promotion…just everything under the sun. Which again, somewhat understandable, but I hear about things like Pakistan Fashion Week and cringe just a little, imagining a week of catty designers screaming epithets at one another as models swish down the catwalk in a rapid succession of only-marginally-different outfits. I think though, that an exchange between two of my friends right after the massive earthquake last year neatly encapsulates the degree of self-importance that fashionistas in Pakistan exhibit. A friend, living in Islamabad, got a telephone call from a “fashion choreographer” (i.e. “Walk down the runway! Now turn! Now walk back!”—seriously, that’s the extent of it from what I’ve observed), the day after the earthquake. The first thing asked was not “Are you all right?”, but rather “Oh God, what am I going to do? The fashion show is going to be completely ruined, you HAVE to come and be the MC.” I suppose that could be a relatively innocuous statement coming from someone who couldn’t process the tragedy and was dealing with it in manageable chunks, but I see this mentality everywhere. It’s as though the designers and anyone associated with the domestic industry have an obsession with living up to the conceptual certainty of being a designer (read: like to do lots of drugs and party massively) without actually exhibiting any amount of technical skill or ability. Not that you’d think it from hearing them speak about how incredibly talented (and self-effacing, of course) they are, nope, not at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I have an enormous amount of respect for the fashion industry—never in the history of humankind has so much attention been paid to the deconstructed A-line skirt. And there’s definitely an industry present, remarkable in its own way for the sheer amount of business it generates, but what strikes me about the Pakistani fashion industry is the number of aspirations that lack any real substance. But you have “fashion journalists”, and “fashion photographers”, and “fashion stylists”, all of whom are focused on inflating the reputation of an industry that is very much in its fledgling stages, is dominated by about a dozen people, and which quite frankly, needs to get its shit together. There are some genuinely talented people out there, but they tend to get overlooked by the pompous gits who seem to think that their ability to describe an outfit in its most literal sense is some sort of major accomplishment. Seriously. It’s that attitude, the “fashion is the panacea for all earthly evils” thing that really gets on my tits, and it’s what limits the industry here severely. If someone could get everyone in the general industry knurd, I suspect very strongly, that once the medications have run their respective courses, people would really get their shiznit together.

I swear, I cannot WAIT for Heidi Klum to auf someone from the Pakistani version of Project Runway. Just to see the expressions on everyoneÂ’s faces.

When I was growing up in Pakistan, being gay went beyond just being taboo; it was one of those “don’t even think the word” concepts, kind of like Dubya, only with, you know, actual concepts and not all conceivable mental processes. And over the years it started getting a bit better, but that coincided with growing up, with getting to know other gay men (and one and a half lesbians), with a slightly more liberal government regime, that sort of thing.

But regardless of anything else, there was a substantial lack of a sense of entitlement, of feeling that your parents, friends etc., were obligated to accept and tolerate your particular peccadilloes, whatever those may have been. Drinking, smoking, partying, fucking men—they were all lumped together in an odd smorgasbord of “if you’re going to do it, you make damn’ sure that no one in a position of familial authority finds out”, although the first three occasionally got a free pass, depending on how “fast” and “liberal” the family in question was. [In case anyone’s interested, there were a fair number of such clans.]What amazed me most when I moved back to Karachi initially, was the degree of openness with which everything functioned. And it still continues to astound me. Alcohol’s not a guilty pleasure (much) any more; there are queens prancing about all over the place, and just the other day, I was listening to a young gay man tell me about how, when coming out to his mother, he (and I quote) told her to “piss off and leave [him] the fuck alone”.

More than anything else, I was astonished at the fact that he hadn’t spent the week following this statement collecting his teeth from around the room in which this statement was uttered. I mean, it’s not like my mother’s violent, but my “generation”—and I undoubtedly generalise here—would find this sort of thing conceptually inconceivable: not just coming out to a parent, but saying it like that. I’m pretty certain that my [hypothetical] grand-children would be counting the bruises well into their teens had I said anything along those lines to my mother.

I do realise this isn’t necessarily “newsworthy”…“Youth of Today Not Like Youth of Yesteryear” is hardly an earth-shattering realisation, and it may well remain irrelevant to the vast majority of people who read this site. And believe me, I understand. I just don’t understand the sense of—entitlement, for lack of a better word—that these gosh-darned kids walk around sporting. I mean, when I came out to my friends at…hmm…lawks, when I was 12 or so, and finally got onto the Internet at the age of 16, I spent all of time talking to people living in the US and the UK, becoming friends with men and women several years older than me. I also ended up empathising with them immensely—many had either lived through the 80s AIDS crisis, or were close to someone who had, and the whole “silence = death” motif really resonated with me.

Which all comes full-circle in that even while at university in the US, I found myself cruising crusading for gay rights, attending and being disillusioned by HRC meetings, really fighting for a cause. For goodness’ sake, I was nicknamed “The Queen Mother” on campus, frequently coming home late from classes to find random freshmen sitting on my couch and doing homework, or in the kitchen putting exam results up on my ‘fridge door, all clamouring for a biryani dinner. Since my return to Karachi, both then and now, my interactions with an increasing number of people have led to this perpetual red cloud, this miasma of anger at the sang froid with which I see people blithely dismissing the gay men and women of a different generation, failing to even acknowledge the difficulties that they…hell, that WE underwent, the shit we put up with and fought insofar as we could, the way we manipulated media and an assortment of social mores (and I assure you, we did, just by insisting on being who we were around our peers and their families, around our own families) so that being gay—while not overtly acceptable—was no longer one of those (pardon the pun) in-the-closet issues that no one would ever discuss or admit to. Baby steps sure, but important ones, and now I see what seems like an entirely different species nancying about, undoing everything that we tried to establish. That we weren’t attention-whores. That we’re not going to abandon the cultural values that define us because of something fundamental to our natures, but that we would try to integrate those values into the system.

Personally, I hate the idea of assimilation (although I continue to think that the Borg are rather wickedly cool), and “normalisation” will lead to sputters of indignance on my part (so much so that I was once asked at a campus Pride meeting whether I was planning to hack up a hairball). Yet at the same time, I feel that there has to be basic cognizance of the fact that in a primarily theocratic society—leaving cultural mores aside for the time being—very few people, myself included, are capable of really overturning the status quo, especially with regards to an issue that most people couldn’t give much of a fuck about. It is very much a matter of undermining the system from within, and all of a sudden, decades of work are being rapidly undone by Hello Kitty Princesses with too much attitude and not enough sense to realise that despite their oh-so-urbane and so-wildly-cosmopolitan exposure and airs, they’re still living in a country where being found making out with someone of the same gender could leave them steaming in a pile of shit so high that the entire nation could use it as fertiliser.

I sound like a complete uncle-ji, I know. And IÂ’m not doing a very good job of explaining my ire, but let me try for an abbreviated (and somewhat clichéd) version: whatÂ’s with all the people losing their grips on (admittedly unpleasant and far-from-ideal) reality? IÂ’m using homosexuality as an illustrative example here, but itÂ’s not just the homos and the dykes; itÂ’s the drinkers, the coke whores who, umm hello it went out in the 80s and just is NOT cool any more, the little shits who believe that because they watch MTV 24/7, that somehow grants them the latitude to go out and splatter other people all over the city. I look around at Karachi, or even Lahore, and I see cities and an entire generation spiralling out of control madly. Sometimes you can practically feel the whole thing unravelling like a cheap pashmina, and you wonder where the subsuming of a functional identity is going to leave everyone. I mean, kudos to Begum Nawazish Ali (pictured and linked above) for getting to pull a tranny routine on TV, but how necessary is it to reiterate the stereotypes of a gay man as an effeminate “woman stuck in a male body” or as a hijra?

My homily is coming to an end, I swear. I do have to return this soapbox before dawn, but I still feel afeard that I haven’t adequately expressed what I mean. I worry when I look around me, and see a cohort of Pakistanis who not only refuse to give a shit about what went before, but seem equally oblivious to what they’re setting themselves up for. And this sounds hypocritical, I know, given how many parties I go to and how much I drink and manage to sleep around, but here’s the critical difference (that most desis, I suspect, realise): what goes on behind the scenes doesn’t matter as long as basic appearances are met. And when those are swept aside, you get the 1980s under Zia back all over again, a decade of martial law in which there are 9 p.m. curfews, religious zealots rampaging through the streets, six-year-old kids in schools being taught how to deal with schooldays that are punctuated by lynch mobs and bomb threats (hide under the desks and pretend you’re not around, in case anyone’s curious), and everything that’s been somehow—no matter how discretely—accomplished, is left meaningless.

And believe you me, starting from scratch is a bitch and a half.

Now if one of you could help me get off this stepladder because IÂ’m done getting over myself bayta, that would be very nice indeed.