Fear and Loathing in Karachi

I've been meaning to write this for quite a long time, but something or the other, mostly laziness, has kept me from doing so. But events in Karachi over the past few days have spurred me to pen my thoughts. Yesterday, I was coming home from my grandmother's with my parents when my mother piped up, 'Faysal beta, please be careful these days when you go visit your friends (as it's the end of summer, many friends are going back to college abroad, so I've been going around town bidding them adieu). I'm not forbidding you to leave the house, but try to meet them at their homes instead of at restaurants on the street, as 'they're' picking boys up at random who are never heard from again. Just the other day, your uncle was telling me how one of his workers' son was grabbed from the street along with his friends. Alhamdulillah, he escaped but the others weren't as lucky.' Now normally, my mum is quite chill for a mum. I've seen some pretty uptight mums so I'd say mine is the Ferris Bueller of them all. Dad takes our only car to work, so she lets me hop on public buses to go wherever I want (Once you get over the paan spitting, bad BO and filthy seats, it's not that bad really). Sure, she adds her fine print (which mum doesn't?); no bus after dark, Hassan Square is as far as you can go, and not on days when there's trouble in the city (since this is Karachi we're talking about, rule no. 3 keeps me grounded a lot of the time. That and my mum's refusal to let me go abroad for college makes me suspect she has empty nest syndrome (Read: She loves me so much. Awwww). Keeping in mind the mother I've just described, you can understand that I was quite surprised when she put a leash (albeit a thin one) on my city-trotting. At the time I just put it on maternal instinct, but later this incident got me thinking about what's been brewing in this fair city of ours. Let's be clinical about this. Let's put ourselves in the kidnappers' shoes for a bit. Either the kidnappers are serial killers, paedophiles or human traffickers or they have the sole nefarious purpose of instilling terror in the stout hearts of Karachiites for whatever sinister agenda(s). Whatever the cause, it's turned Karachi into a nervous, quaking wreck. And when people get nervous, they start acting irrationally. It is this irrationality that I shall discuss in this article. A quick google search shows that in 4 days 77 people have been killed in the recent spate of violence gripping our fair city. Another search shows that Karachi's population is approximately 13 to 15 million. Let us assume it is 13 mill. Therefore: 77/(4*13000000) = 0.0000015 That means that there are around 1.5 killings for every million people alive per day.1 million is the estimated population of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, a sprawling area. Everyday, max 2 people will get killed here. Out of a million. Factor in the fact that the violence is mainly limited to certain areas of the city only, and the probability decreases even further. There were 6 kidnappings on Tariq Road you say? Sweetie, have you SEEN the sheer number of people in that commercial centre at any given point in time? That means a BIG denominator, while the numerator remains 6. Low probability again. Which puts the problem in perspective doesn't it? In comparison, Tuberculosis is the 3^rd biggest killer in Karachi’s slums, well above homicide. Hence, we have more reason to fear germs than terrorists. But I don't see us walking down the street wearing facemasks. Why? Is it because in our minds, bacteria are microscopic, virtually non-existent critters while a terrorist is a gun-toting, big, bad wolf in dire need of a shave? We really haven't changed from when we were kids. We still fall for the 'Bogeyman-will-come-and-eat-you-if you-don't-finish-your-greens' story our grandmothers told us in our childhoods. Now the lion is the terrorist and eating your greens is milling like scared bleating sheep.

  When our relatives and friends abroad or even in other Pakistani cities telephone in panic, saying they just saw that 6 more people died in Karachi and are we OK, don't we laugh it off, telling them not to worry? Where's that composure now? What's interesting is that people in the States think that we have a pig of a time here, that we literally dodge bullets everyday in our efforts to lead normal lives. But we know it's not as bad as they purport. We probably think the same of people in Iraq and Palestine. But ask them what it's like eking out an existence there (I have), and unless they live bang in the centre of a warzone, they'll roll their eyes too. The media plays a big part in this mass hysteria. In order to sell their brand, they only report that which is likely to shock and awe. Telling us how many people did NOT die in Karachi today is bad business for them. If they did that, the news would take a lot longer to deliver. Most of us would switch to the shopping channel. Remember, fear is a powerful tool to keep the masses in line. We won't speak up if we are scared. And that's what 'they' want. Case in point: we still refer to 'them' as 'them'. Can we get more Orwellian than this? To quote Roosevelt, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So put on a fresh pair of pants and be empirical about everything. There is comfort in probabilities.

Bubble Wrap Bonanza

I have an allegory for the types of pleasure, which I admit, is pretty neat.
1) Short term pleasure: You have a sheet of bubble wrap. You wring it tightly. You hear an avalanche of popping as almost every bubble is popped simultaneously, creating a divine bubble explosion. But within a few seconds, the sheet is just a plain piece of polyethene, completely useless.
2) Long term pleasure: You have a sheet of bubble wrap. You pop one bubble at a time. Maybe two if you're feeling naughty. Each pop gives you a mini eargasm each time. The bubble wrap lasts for as long as you want it too. You are not the bubble wrap's slave. It is yours. So which path do you take? Of course, all this can be circumvented if you own a bubble wrap manufacturing plant, but I'm quite sure there's something like a bubble wrap overdose. Either way, that's going on my bucket list.

Haiku

Faysal on his knees
With his 13 inch Mac Pro
Turning Japanese

But you know who can write Haiku most easily?

An OCD patient:

I will wash my hands
left right left right left right left
over and over

Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 Caitlin Upton:

I personally
believe that South Africa
ummm...uhhh..Iraq...uhhh...

Snoop Dogg:

Snoopy is my nizz
f'shizzle hizzle dizzle
i like my nizz...wizz?

Eiffel 65:

I'm Blue Da Da Dee
Da Dee Da Da Da Da Dee
Da Da Dee Da Da

 

Encounters with the Fourth Kind

A video of a Papuan tribe's first contact with the white man and the outside world.
P.S. sorry I couldn't embed the video since Youtube has flagged it as material unsuitable for anyone below 18, so I needed to be signed in, but I haven't a Youtube account. Yet, at least.
SubhanAllah. This has to be one of the most fascinating videos I've ever seen. Thank you Stumbleupon!
What we have here is an anthropologist's dream come true. The white man discovers a race of humans completely cut off from the outside world. They have grown up in what can be called a test tube, completely isolated from the rest of the world and therefore have NO form of external influence. They are a product, as is everyone, of environment. Their lives, culture, religion etc. are all dictated by their immediate surroundings, i.e. the jungle.
Why was this a unique opportunity? Because it would let us 'extraterrestrials' (to the Toulambi) differentiate, to a certain extent at least, between human habits, behaviours etc. that are innate and those that are learned (On the downside though, we may end up giving them a foreign disease. The white man is famous for that. Happened in War of the Worlds when a human disease is what wiped out the aliens and to the Red Indians, when their unprepared immune systems were exposed to smallpox for the first time, an exclusively European and Asian disease till then). For example, why do we kiss, hug and shake hands? How can something as ridiculous as two people touching lips evoke such a landslide of tumultuous emotions? It's not like we have any physiologic erotic receptors on our lips. Hence, what naturally follows is to find out if tribes like the Toulambi kiss. If yes, then either the kiss and its associated emotions
a) are innate,
b) by some remarkable coincidence developed in the Toulambi tribe on their own,
c) we have yet to discover erotic receptors on our lips.
A word of caution though: As a Muslim, I believe that Allah (SWT) sent guidance to all people from among their own. Which means at some point more than 1400 years ago, some prophet was sent to the Toulambi (or whatever they were back then). Ergo, if some of their habits are familiar to us, it could be entirely possible that this is a trickle-down effect of what that/those prophet(s) taught the Toulambi all those years ago, even if they did modify their religion afterwards (which is what happened with the Jews and Christians). Which also raises the interesting question: if they have been in isolation since before the arrival of Islam in Indonesia, that would mean they haven't received the deen (Islam) as yet. Hence, whatever religion they followed all this time was all they had. And since Allah (SWT) chose not to let the message of Islam reach them, whatever religion they have had would be the one they have to stick to. Would Allah (SWT) then judge them according to whatever they were following? Even if the tribesmen's ancestors changed their religion all those years ago? Something here doesn't sit right with me.
Of course, there are always the detractors:
http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2011/07/toulambi-1976-contact-fact-or-fable.html
Even if the above video was orchestrated by actors (who then definitely deserve an Oscar), there probably were at some point and possibly still are such tribes tucked away in the remote parts of the Amazon etc. who have yet to make first contact with the outside world. Anthropologists should not miss out on any opportunity to study such people before globalization and the culture of conformity swallow them whole.
P.S. Interesting how everyone was skeptical and fearful until the Belgian brought out the rice. Then, there were smiles all around. Which proves one thing: the adage 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach' goes back a LOT longer than we think. Oh, and I loved the Toulambis' reaction to the mirror.
Some more 'test-tube' tribes:
http://www.adventurebimbling.com/travel-articles/7-indigenous-tribes-of-indonesia/