Waste Land – The Effect of the Human Side

Waste Land was in my ‘to watch’ list along with a number of titles that I have now decided to dig in before the list gets too long. Now from my ‘to watch’ list, it has shifted to my ‘favorite’ list.

The film is based on the journey of the renowned Brazilian artist Vik Muniz back to his home land Brazil & Jardim Gramacho, world’s largest garbage dump. Muniz’s initial idea was to paint the garbage pictures but after interacting with them, he came up with something better. He involved the pickers in his project by making them work on their own pictures with recyclable garbage. To quote Vik ‘..so that they can say we did it, not that Vik did it.’ Taking their pictures in natural & semi-natural environments, he then guided them to recreating them with the material that they collected from the dump. In the end those pictures get a top ranking exhibition & the funds help transform the life of some of the pickers.

It is the human factor that touches you the most, or at least that is what impacted me the most. The horror of the mountains of the garbage was taken over by the stories of the people involved & their struggle & aspirations.

Generally, we make assumptions about people based on our perceptions about them as per their outlook. Nobody bothers to look deeper than the outlook, where the true story lies. As the saying goes ‘appearances are deceptive’. These people who are disregarded as lesser beings have ideas & philosophy of life that can put the socially accepted intellectuals to shame. Some examples from the film include; Valter who argued with people that 99 is not 100. Tiao Santos, who worked for organizing the community of the pickers, to ensure that they can put their demands in front of the authorities & how he kept going when even people who he wanted to help, did not believe in him. Then there was another individual, who would pick books while looking for recyclable stuff & bring it to the community’s centre & intended to build a community library. He would be shocked to see that people throw away books in their garbage. The women in the group were proud of the fact that they were earning their living through hard work & not begging or prostitution. These are just few of the examples.

This is one side of the human aspect that touches you; the other is the one that is reflected by Vik Muniz. People, who when they get their goals give back to their community & not be ashamed of their roots are not in the majority around us. To realize that it was a combination of their work & luck that got them where they are. Like Vik states that a lot of these pickers are from lower middle class families & they ended up there because drastic circumstances evolved around them & they had to be there for their survival. Had something similar happened to him, he could have ended up there as well. Near the end of the film Vik says that when you don’t have anything, you desire material things & when you have everything you don’t desire any material gains. For himself he admitted that ‘I had to buy a lot of crap before I could get over my complex’. This view is not shared by a lot of people. A lot of people cannot get over their complex & in some cases it gets destructive, both for themselves & others around them. In my opinion, those who will watch this documentary, (& I highly recommend that everyone does) he will be a source of inspiration.

There is a part where Vik & other collaborators of the project are discussing the long term effects on the pickers at the close of their project, as a lot of them said that they didn’t want to go back. The option of flying them to London was under discussing. One opinion came that people are fragile & once they get to see the other side, reconciling with their original status would have devastating effect on them. The counter argument was that if they don’t get to see the other side, how will they work towards getting out of their present situation. I personally agree to this view point. While this is a reality of life that not everyone will get the same status or rewards for their input, this is no reason for not giving everyone a chance to try. Hampering this chance for others should not be allowed. Everyone is entitled to the basics & then let the nature course take its route. This is a kind of mind set that we have towards education in our own country which has led to an education crisis.

If nothing else, the viewers will take home the idea of giving back to your community & the realization that in search of doing something big, we lose out on the opportunities to make a significant difference in a few peoples’ lives, which can trigger the much needed trickledown effect.             

The Punjab Assembly does it yet again

The Punjab Assembly has passed a resolution banningconcerts in institutions. During the debate they added the word ‘objectionable’ to the resolution. However, no one was bothered to define the term objectionable. So with a lot of crazy things going around in our country, the PA has given one more front to the nut cases (& we have a lot of them) to use as an excuse for doing as they please. 

Suffocating the people is what seems to be the objective of this assembly & the irony is that they are paid for it by the tax payers’ money. No matter how much we want to forget the horrors of the Zia era, they keep coming back in one form or the other. Like always, they used religion to back their mindless ideas. I wonder why they don’t find anything mentioned in Islam, about liars, hoarders, hierocracy, rapist, poverty etc, real issues of the people, so that they can pass laws for them too. Not that these issues are not mentioned in the religion, they are but they choose to ignore them as they will be at the receiving end then.

This is the same assembly that was discussing polygamy & trying to justify it. The same day I met a school kid whose tuition fee was due & he was out on the road trying to sell stationary to be able to raise the money. Another gem that is credited to the PA, is the lota foot ballmatch that the members performed in the grounds of the premises.

The fact that the issues of the people are never discussed in the assembly, drain out hope for democracy. Institutions need time to establish themselves, but when people responsible for them don’t show that they mean serious business, their survival is at stake. This is especially true for a country like Pakistan, where a large majority is deprived of the basic needs of their lives.

p.s Zoo & the Punjab Assembly are located in the same area, merging them won't be that bad an idea, keeping in mind the direction in which the PA is headed.

Pakistan - India Relaxed Visa Policy

In this globalized world, it is quite easy to communicate with anyone around the planet. One can travel other countries in hours as compared to days & months. The case of Pakistan & India is different. Two neighboring countries, whose citizens can’t visit each other with ease. The visa process is hell & one of the most difficult one. A difficulty, which is solely reserved for each other. No wonder then that SAARC is a failed organization & has done nothing substantial for the region. How can it succeed when both the main players have a trust deficit which no one is interested in improving? Not that the situation can’t be approved, after all France & Germany were able to do it.

In an effort to improve the Indo-Pak visa policy & highlight its benefits, Institute of Peace & Secular Studies (IPSS) arranged a conference on the 14^th of January. Dr. Khalid Zaheer was one of the speakers, who spoke on the topic ‘How will a relaxed policy help attain peace?’ By the time I reached the venue his session was already in the Q & A phase. In answering one of the questions he said that the reason for the success of the negative forces is that they are very much committed to their cause, which we in the majority believe to be wrong. Those of us who are in the majority are not committed to the cause in which believe in, thus, tilting the balance in their favour.

Rtd. Professor Nabeela Kyani of Government College Univerity, narrated a story titled ‘An Ink Bottle’. The story revolved around an old man, who had witnessed partition of subcontinent. He left his belongings in the custody of his Hindu friend. When things settle down & they start waiting for the stuff, the delay causes his family to believe that they will never see their things again. The old man however, sticks to his belief that his friend is a good & trustworthy person. Meanwhile he falls in love with a University professor & takes his mother to her place, who rejects the proposal because the girl is Christian. In the end a truck does deliver their stuff along with a handwritten list, which even had the empty ink bottle listed & returned.

Balance between Words & Pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I for one am an adherent believer of this statement. However, there are some limitations to it as well & the conflict erupts when a picture is used to overpower the strength of the written word. This I feel is happening a lot more these days. It feels that the attention span of people is reducing by the day, something that for me does not really indicate the result of a higher evolution. 

A few days back, while discussing ideas for how to get maximum traffic for the Pakistan Sustainability Network, a fact that came across was that a simple random picture of a spoon got around three hundred hits & if any of our blog posts get these many hits we might just hit the roof ourselves. (And NO, we don’t do boring stuff). This episode instantly took me back to Gary Shteyngart’s novel ‘Super Sad True Love Story’. A story portraying the future ultra technology oriented world, where the main character Lenny Abramov, is being looked down because he reads real books & has a ‘wall of books’ in his apartment; instead of just streaming the stuff & covering the main points. In one of the chapters when he is on a flight & opens his book, the passenger sitting next to him tells him that the book has an awful smell!!!

Not really a bright picture.

The point is not to state as to which way of expression is better because there are things which can’t be compared & this is one such point, where comparison is pointless. The concentration point is the loss of balance. Skimming through material can work at times but for in-depth understanding one needs to get in detail. There is no alternative to this. A lot of misrepresentation results because people don’t bother to go below the surface and discover the details and then analyze them. All this requires proper attention span and concentration. In this age of technology, to ensure that this advancement is used for proper progress, people need to return to a balanced position, only then we can move from the complaining stage to solving the problems stage. 

Desensitizing Ourselves

The word desensitized is something that we come across quite frequently these days. This word rose to its share of fame along with the rise in terrorist attacks in our country. However, I feel that now we use it like we use a number of other things to throw away responsibility from our shoulders. Things around us are getting from bad to worse and all we end up with is ‘ doesn't matter, we have been desensitized by now’.

What does this even mean?

We are in a state of desensitized mindset as long as other people are at the receiving end. When the circle tightens around our own necks, then there is no desensitized effect, it’s all active action and a need to respond. Double faced or Hypocrisy are the two most decent words I can think of for all this. 

Being able to laugh at yourself is a good thing BUT not everything is supposed to be used as a joke. Unfortunately, this is exactly what a number of people are doing. Some are of the opinion that this is just an extension of our desensitization. Again I don’t share this view point. I think that people who think that creating and mass-forwarding sms jokes, emails etc is not funny or your way of coping with the stress. It just shows that people are mentally sick and in need of psychiatric help.

The sad part is that this problem is no longer limited to a few people. The number of people involved in this is increasing and it is just reflective of our society’s mental state.

If we want to look at a better future and not just simply talk about it then we need to cure the way to think. This is the base from which we need to start. For this change, we don’t need any political party or figure to come forward. We will have to bring this change on our own. People on the upper side of the hierarchy will only change once the base of the pyramid changes itself.   




This piece was originally written for Jaag TV at http://www.jaag.tv/article_read.php?a=36

Educated-NOT

Generally speaking it is supposed to be the educated class of our country from which to get the hope to hold onto optimism when things are hitting new levels of low every day. Lack of education is what we put at the base of almost everything that is wrong with our homeland. A fact that is absolutely true.

The question however, is what to do of the educated class that refuses to show the traits that are supposed to distinguish them from the other group? This band of ‘parhe likhe jahil’ seem to be on the rise, at least as far as I am concerned. (Maybe I am not moving in the right circles! Anyways)

On Monday, a 23 year old Shams Alam murdered 19 year old Samar Wasti, a student of Kinnaird College and then committed suicide on the spot. He wanted to marry her and as a reaction to the refusal from her and her family he took her life as well as his own. The rest of the details we all know, thanks to our media who is running on the motto of ‘show it all’.

It was the reaction of people that made me smash my head in the wall. Not the reaction of the people in generally who we know are going to point their fingers at the girl even before they get to know what happened. I am talking about the reaction of our educated section of the society and frankly there was no difference in their opinion and that of an uneducated person. Don’t mention the degrees and you would not be able to tell the two apart. No wonder one of our politicians is of the view ‘Degree tu degree hoti ha, asli ho ya jali’ (A degree is just a degree, real or fake).

Some of the top comments were:

Ø  The fact that the boy committed suicide proves that the girl was responsible.

Ø  Girls these days are very good at manipulating the boys.

Ø  Boys don’t go to this extent if they are not provoked by the girls.

Ø  Girls hook up then when they can’t keep it from their families back out which results in such incidents.

To sum it all up, it was the girl’s fault she got killed and it was her fault YET AGAIN that the boy committed suicide. Seriously, WTF!

The fact that the girl’s father told the media that he knew the boy was bothering his daughter and had told him to back off. The fact that she was on the phone with her father telling him that he was harassing her and most of all the fact, that Samar’s father heard the shots that took her life on the phone were ignored by these people is simply mind boggling to put it in a polite manner.

Not to ignore the fact that this moral brigade is usually led by women themselves. Mothers, who nurture the basic thought process of their children and therefore, making sure that this bug is implanted in their grey matter.   

If our educated class thinks like this, then we are surely on a speedy trip to hell as a society.

The small thoughts

There are incidents and moments in one’s life that spontaneously make you think about matters that usually never cross your mind. These thought provoking incidents don’t need to be big in magnitude. In fact it is the small things that touch the cord more often.

Few days back I too had a similar experience and the idea of human beings & their general attitude of arrogance struck me. The subconscious feeling that humans are superior and all powerful make us the arrogant brats that we are. However, this though is so hollow in reality and it doesn’t take something very serious to burst this bubble.

A small external infection at my lower back had completely left me torpid. For a week I was trapped in one posture and that was to lie down on my stomach. So even when I tried to kill my boredom with reading, I ended up cramping my neck which was not pretty, with my entire body hurting dude to stiffness and exhaustion. 

     

The point of this post is not to detail out as to how I spent my last week, but to share the conclusion. Instead of staying in the bubble of arrogance and considering it a part of our nature, we should be actually looking at the other side of our nature, which is quite humble and wants good for everyone.

It is the power of the human minds that differentiates them from animals; unfortunately we see that humans have used this ability to be the cruelest animal to walk on the face of earth.