Evolution needs catalysts

But, once the decision to eliminate her was taken by her father-in-law Zamir Solangi, she was taken to a local midwife Mrs Badshaan alias Baashi for forced delivery of the child. Soon after the delivery, the baby was thrown into the nearby canal and later the mother was put to death.

Linkage

My earliest imagery of Pakistan women, as a post teen, was shaped by the slightly asymmetrical and exaggerated (as duly pointed out by a litcrit professor) accounts of gender based bias and discrimination in Tehemina Durrani’s “Blasphemy”. Though, today, I don’t quite think it’s as exaggerated as Dr D’Souza thought but as young and heady biblophile you feel the need to form opinions basis what your “esteemed” literature teachers tell you.
Honestly, I was quite scared of ever stepping foot anywhere beyond the LOC and it had nothing to do with the perennial under-currents of violence and hatred, assumed or otherwise, between the two neighbors. India and Pakistan share a murky history and a superior culinary culture. Plus a million other things but despite celebrity proclamations of how it’s the “same” country both sides of the border, I know for a fact that’s not entirely true. We are different entities and the umbilical cord was severed quite a few decades ago. Even then, apparently, you can relate to the urban Pakistani ecosystem a lot better if you come from the Northern part of India and I have been repeatedly informed by friends and mutants alike that much of Karachi will remind me of some of Delhi. I haven’t travelled the length and breadth of our Northern neighbor to notarize that statement so I’ll make room for reasonable doubts than take it at face value.
My interest lies elsewhere though; a comparison of parities in the lives of an average Indian woman vis-à-vis one in Pakistan. Differences galore and similarities too. In lieu of the cityscape, I do confess to very little information about rural Pakistani women.
I am grown up enough now to believe that not every Pakistani household has its own feudal lord – though a significant amount of them are at the mercy of some lameass patriarchal messiah of sorts – even though I am also firmly aware of the bitter truth that a very stringent sort of sexism prevalent in a large part of that country (as in mine) means a daily, almost ritualistic, persecution and defilement of women – emotionally, mentally, physically – as well as a thorough disregard for women’s rights. If they have indeed ever heard of that term.
So, you see, despite my usual preparedness for the abnormally grim, stories like these still manage to scare me insane and fuel unbridled rage within me. Wrath is what I can feel right now, rising from the absolute pit of my stomach. Unadulterated and unmitigated anger. And I want to use this anger in a way that pulverizes the very core of our enforced patriarchal inheritance. I want my anger to be raven and brutal and as devoid of mercy as these murdering charlatans are.
I need revenge. We need revenge.

I could have chosen to satirize in my usual blasé manner because I find in humor – especially dark humor – a rock-hard and unshakeable crutch. Without agency. But, this is not the time to seek crutches, it’s the time to encounter and demolish;uproot the chronic plague of our system that’s left it moribund.
I beseech those academically fortified women amongst us, who love to deliberate about ethnocentric feminism’s strides in the warm comfort of their Ikea infested living rooms, to stand up and address this. Now. Without politeness and political correctness corrupting their ire. Because when young girls are left for dogs to feed on, very little room is left for civility.

What kind of monsters would force a teen to prematurely birth her child (who was subsequently thrown into a canal since he/she was deemed illegitimate by a killer father-in-law) and then based on some asinine rodent’s “wisdom” would throw her to a pack of rabid canines?
While this epic torture drama ensued, hitmen were sent after Taslim’s absconding mother to snuff her life too. However, if all of this doesn’t inspire serious fear and fury in your breast then take heart in the knowledge that a government official – a top level assistant commissioner, no less – was at the helm of these vile proceedings. Yes, officially signed, sealed and delivered et al.
How much more do the women in the sub-continent have to bleed, scream, cut, hurt, dismember, sever, turn sore before their voices can reach the world outside?
For every Mukhtaran Mai, a million Taslims are silently buried and disappear without a trace. But not this time. Definitely not this time.
This time the water has reached our necks and it is lashing at its nape. It’s gurgling in our ears. It’s dirty and infected and it threatens to enter our insides and wash us away. It’s a hurricane of pain and disillusionment. In the Macrobiotic Age of Madonna and IJesus, young girls are being fed to dogs. Literally, figuratively, really – take it whichever way you want, whichever way you like. It all boils down to one thing: Women are a long way from being ranked or even considered as human beings amidst some of the largest populations on the planet.
Who will speak about it? Who needs to speak about it?
We. We need to speak. No, actually, we need to do more than just speak about it, we need to scream, yell, shout, screech, holler, and tear apart the Universe if the need arises. This is not injustice to one, it’s injustice to all. From the teeny boppers in fluorescent pink tees jamming in make shift studios (my sister) to the high profile, jet setting corporate supernovas (Me) to the activism heavy, politically informed, divorced single parents of rambunctious daughters (my mother) to the fashionably illiterate still twin cell phones wielding, can-pound-the-husband-for-incessant-drinkking, sharp as a Jalapeno, lower middle class working women (my housemaid).
It’s all of us in this primal soup. In the remotest corners of the sub-continent, hell, the world, I’d say, we are still 18 million some flights away from fairness and equality, without taking anything away from Sen. H. Clinton. We all get torn apart when militant fangs dig into a pleading Taslim’s skin, soul and heart.
We can’t reduce ourselves to willing and mute witnesses to this century’s crimes against ourselves. We can’t afford to watch it till it simply “dies down” or “dissipates”. We can’t afford to be so static and unaffected.
We must do something. We must seek justice. We should, ideally, seek an eye for an eye because it just doesn’t work any other way - due to respects to the Gandhian dogma and Bollywood movies inspired by it. For all that chest beating/bra burning in the name of the Sisterhood, it eventually boils down to this. This is the reality for brown women in our world. It’s a large and fairly violent world but someone has to change it. Evolution needs catalysts. Theorizing and rationalizing will only take us so far. The rest of the journey is on foot. Without crutches. Mine, included.

After thought – Basis this account, is it just me who is grimaced by the recurrent abuse of religion to debase women since ancient times till date? To swear upon Quran (as an atheist the significance of this is entirely wasted on me but as a longtime lover and worshipper of Angela Carter I couldn’t lie after swearing upon a copy of The Passion of New Eve either though I reckon it’s more a literary than zealotry thing) and follow it up with a crime so heinous, seriously, why can’t the larger Muslim population see through the act?
Do we need a better reason to untangle from the religious mess?
Don’t strain your neurons too much, the answer is fairly simple.