Is it in?

Maverick: The Trend Settlers
by Farzana Versey
The Asian Age, Op-ed, Jan. 1, 2008

Her lashes fluttering like a fan, she asked, “Is it in?”

“You should know!” he said with the vehemence of one whose pride has been hurt even if only for a few brief seconds.

Having just read that silicone implants were on their way out, she persisted.

“The world is flat,” he stated flatly.

Trends may change but the idea of the fad will remain. It is not merely about couture. People, professions, issues, non-issues too become talking and mocking points.

Here are the two major trends and their offshoots that will not go away…

Who’s afraid of Islamophobia?

This fad of Islamophobia is so infectious that even when British society fights Harrods, Mohammed al Fayed screams out the word.

Islam has ceased to be a mere religion; it is a huge cinematic production for many. The box office registers don’t stop each time there is a new Islamic release. There are several reasons for it.

Jihad is the most rocking contribution of Muslims. They just have to bare their teeth, ball their fists, carry a rucksack and they are said to be on a jihad. Most people associated with it have no idea what they are fighting. At least, George Bush was aware that oil could be a weapon of mass destruction; Muslims don’t even notice the oil under their feet.

The fatwa is something that lays a price on the head of anyone who has a swollen head. Potential targets are writers and anti-Islamists. It helps the world understand the religion better when an exiled writer has a fatwa issued against him/her. This is also the Muslim way of doing zakat towards Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Islam has also changed the terror business. It is seen as a corporatised entity with one CEO who no one wants to find, for the moment he is found this whole industry will fall apart. If you don’t have Islamic terror then you cannot put your army to use and an unused army is not good for patriotism.

Which brings us to Osama, a fictional character created by the US establishment to whitewash its past and justify its present. Meant to be devious, we occasionally get to see him in comic-strip TV format wearing clothes that tell us he has found a laundry service and a beard that has been coloured, which means he has a future as brand ambassador of L’Oreal.

All the world’s a globalised stage

Even as individual nations become highly xenophobic, they continue to talk about how small the world is.

More and more people will leave the shores to become ambassadors of the country. Not all will refer to their wives as headless chickens, though. Due to outsourcing, fewer men are looking for ‘innocent divorcees’ these days, mainly because of hymenoplasty. Women with a history are also seen as valuable as antiques. These and not the mini-skirted, bustier-busting babes-in-the-hood are the new trophy partners.

Neo-politicians are no more fuddy-duddy daddies of boom and doom. They are snazzy and trim their ear and nose hair. Since everyone from fashion to film stars to industrialists is in politics, this was bound to happen.

Internationally, they will fight terror. They don’t have to do anything else after saying that. Oh, they might like to take their model/actress/singer girlfriend on cruise holidays or convert to some other religion.

The Leftists have made it possible for people to stop saying they are Leftists; these days you say you are left of centre, which means you like your martini shaken and your ideology stirred. They don’t believe anymore that Lenin is better than borrowin’, though they continue to leave their Marx and some stains.

The farm fatales are rich politicos who have made loads of money and now think the only way to prevent farmer suicides is to buy the farms. Like buying the bathwater to bathe the baby.

Women in politics will continue to be seen as a different species. While in the west they will be expected to dress sharply by their makeover and publicity agents, in our part of the world you need to show that you are a grassroots person, unless you are a Rajya Sabha member, in which case you must look like a dream girl whatever be your age.

Survivors will be those who manage to save a few big bucks at the stock market. Self-made people will be those who go through a sex-change surgery.

Advertising remains superficially progressive. Remember the ad that was considered offensive because it showed a woman experiencing what seemed like orgasmic pleasure washing a male undergarment? The objection was to the sleaze. No one bothered to point out why on earth she was washing his clothes. See?

But these guys will go to Cannes and get some award for their ads on how to save trees or the girl child. Both die sooner than they’d have walked the length of the beach.

Then you have the NRIs who make home-video type movies about eating two-minute noodles with your fingers. It is a profound metaphor for confusion and coping with disparate cultures. The two minutes represent the fast-paced world we live in.

Bollywood will attract youngsters who are not from film families. Some have been to college and only because they have succeeded at the box office they assume they would have been great architects, doctors, rocket scientists. They speak in measured tones, often with an accent. They say they are striking a balance between art and mainstream cinema. They talk about how comfortable they are with their bodies (If they won’t be, then who would?). You can hear them whisper, “I may be signing up for that crossover film, The Devil Wears Parandi.”

Most over-used quote that will live on: “I am controversy’s favourite child.”

Me too. Like this column? SMS 2008. Lemme know if im in b4 im out!

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For some readers who may not know the background of certain expressions, here…

headless chickens – the term used by the cocky Indian ambassador to the US for our politicians who were nuking the nuclear deal with America

innocent divorcees – believe it or not but Indian matrimonial columns in mainstream newspapers did ask for such a creature

The Devil Wears Parandi – Parandi is the tasseled extension added to the braid of women, mainly in Punjab.

Like this column? SMS 2008 – This is a dig at The Times of India, India’s largest venerated newspaper. For a while now it runs this at the bottom of every column. I find it sick. Publications survive on ads, and the TOI had years ago decided that its Response Department would supersede its Editorial. I say, if you don’t have confidence in the abilities of your writers, then why have them?

Imran-e-insaaf

Imran Khan left his country in these turbulent times to holiday in Mumbai at socialite Parmeshwar Godrej’s bungalow.

“India should back our democratic process.”

Sure, and it is the right to be where you want to be when you want to be.

Other earlier quotes of Imran that are pertinent in the given circumstances of his country and his version of democracy.

“If your house is burning, wouldn't you try and put out the fire?”

The hose-pipe is in my city?

“It's more important to try to do something for the crores of poor people of my country.”

Yes…later, honey. No rush.

Benazir and Indira as Papa's Puppets

Benazir and Indira as Papa's Puppets

The Complex Electra
By Farzana Versey
December 28, 2007, Counterpunch

Brave and courageous. These words have not yet been applied to Nawaz Sharif who returned to a turbulent Pakistan, but Benazir Bhutto was honoured with such terms. She died on what people will now see as those terms. As the first Muslim woman to become head of state, she came with a readymade bonafide of martyr-rebel.

“Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it,” she had said recently. If she would have got the opportunity, it would have been the third time. Politics is about erring often enough to be human.

Benazir may have identified with India’s Rajiv Gandhi, but those were superficial similarities. Her real mirror, if it may be called so, was Indira Gandhi.

Aside from the fact that both were ambitious women, they shared complete devotion to and obsession with their fathers. While Ms. Gandhi was India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s only child, it is rather interesting that despite the politics of the subcontinent, as indeed the world, being heavily patriarchal Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto chose his daughter over his sons as his political heir.

The two male parents became Svengali and nemesis, their ghosts continued to not merely haunt but hypnotise their daughters. When Indira first came into politics, she was called “goongi gudiya” (the dumb doll). Her whole political credo was therefore designed to hit back.

She was Papa’s puppet. Naturally, in that small stage she had to move according to a pre-set rhythm. Katherine Frank’s biography talks about her paranoia regarding those she considered Nehru’s enemies. She felt that they were “out to trap her father and bring him down”. What was happening is that she was fearful for herself. Even as puppet she wanted to be on centre-stage. Perhaps, by getting her father to move away from the clique, she was subconsciously trying to claim complete ownership.

Psychology would describe this as the Electra Complex that combines penis envy with castration fear. Symbolically, the desire for impregnation would manifest itself in being able to internalise the father’s ideology.

Neither Benazir nor Indira managed to strike out on their own in terms of policy or altering the role of the family as ‘monarchy’. Benazir, had she lived longer, would have brought her children into the political arena just as Indira Gandhi did.

Dynastic rule in democracies or quasi democracies has been about perpetuating the name of the father. (The widow as successor is essentially legitimised only as ‘carrier’ of the husband’s progeny.) The spouse is a prop, often a convenient one to act as buffer and even bear the brunt of blame. Indira’s marriage to Feroze Gandhi was a façade that went through moments of turmoil to keep it alive. In all likelihood, she took his name to try and be her own person and not merely the offspring of Nehru.

Feroze was known to be a womaniser. Indira was aware of it. Her humiliation would be avenged only if he felt that while he had proved his manhood, he had lost out as the “nation’s son-in-law”.

Asif Ali Zardari came with similar credentials. Benazir settled into arranged matrimony and baby-producing to give Pakistan the sort of woman who did regular things and had descendants to perpetuate the royal pure blood.

With such delusions, these women till the very last posed a threat only to themselves.

Indira Gandhi saw imaginary demons. The result: The Emergency. Like all frightened people, she camouflaged her baseless theories about others trying to plot against her government and stall its functioning beneath self-righteousness, declaring that democracy was not more important than the nation. She could not even tolerate a peaceful resistance movement. She was found guilty of corrupt electoral practices by the High Court.

Benazir Bhutto was exiled to escape corruption charges. The pretence of being the people’s princess had to wear off once it was realised her father had been the emperor with no clothes. The veneer of statesman was wearing thin.

Is it any surprise that Ms. Bhutto blatantly supported the Taliban regime in its initial years to make certain that the Afghans did not breathe down her neck?

This was similar in manner to Indira Gandhi propping up Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a leader in Punjab, when he was a non-entity. She and her younger son Sanjay used him till it was convenient.

The mistake we make is to confuse populism for popularity. There is no doubt that both these women had their ears to the ground; as opposed to the sons of the soil, they were the mothers of the earth. This again works well in the Electra Complex where the daughters aspire to replace the mother. In villages and remote towns it can have tremendous appeal. The poor and illiterate in our subcontinent like to be seen as loyal subjects being the benefactors of largesse. Political coquetry is a trait that comes with the territory.

To make the situation even better, both these women had the benefit of a western education and an urbane lifestyle. This seems a bit ironical for they insisted on holding steadfastly to the dying socialist principles of their fathers. These principles were for the most part straw pillars meant for the masses; these families remained committed to feudalism in their own lives. They had the luxury of encouraging coteries without seeming to court anyone.

In India, Ms. Gandhi took away the privy purses, but kept the princes. She spoke about rationality, but had a hedonistic ‘godman’ as a close confidante. She was suave and sophisticated, but she encouraged greasy middlemen. She spoke about “social democracy” but blatantly gave a fillip to underhand financial dealings that came to be known as ‘the license permit raj’. And she thrived on strife. This is how she came to support the Mukti Bahini in what was then East Pakistan and became Bangladesh.

A goddess was born. A few years later, she had internalised the spook and revelled in the praise, “Indira is India, and India is Indira.”

Benazir did not have to deal with such a coinage, perhaps because heading an Islamic country meant no idol worship. Instead, she deftly marketed herself as the broadminded, non-jihadi face of Pakistan. Her version of social democracy too was embedded in the old-fashioned ideals of dignity of other people’s labour while she sat back as her husband made the money and got to keep the change.

It takes some sleight of mind to master the act of playing both distressed damsel and the dominatrix-matriarch fiercely protective of everything around them and, as a consequence, their own position.

While most women in ‘tough’ roles are accused of mimicking men, as the ‘Only Man in the Cabinet’ and ‘Ms. Virgin Ironpants’, Indira and Benazir demasculinised themselves. Talking about woman power, what they really did was to build a cottage industry of being wronged. Politics became not just a playground for suppressed emotions but a serious arena for catharsis.

Both women were elected to office twice. Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her most trusted bodyguard. No one has as yet suggested that it could well have been a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) sympathiser who did Benazir in. She was the visible face of the party, but the ideology was dictated by the spectre of Zulfiqar Ali. Some say that her niece Fatima Bhutto, who has made serious allegations against her aunt for the murder of her father Murtaza, could possibly play an important role.

If that were to happen, we would have one more “mind-controlled victim” avenging her father’s death and dreaming his dreams. Individual voices in Pakistan are being muffled by echoes of old thoughts.

Benazir Bhutto: The final exile...

Benazir Bhutto has been killed. The news was she was injured, but the television channels confirm she is dead. 15 others have died in the suicide attack.

Having maintained that she was wrong on several counts, I feel that politics requires different voices and it might have been an interesting fight to see where Pakistan would go from here.

This is not to be, with one important player gone. It is unfortunate what this country is going through, and I am sorry but I do blame the United States of America for using it for its proxy wars and its leaders as convenient puppets to send messages to other nations.

Update at 7.45 IST: Called up a friend in Islamabad. Karachi has broken out into violent reactions; Islamabad is tense. Martial Law again predicted and elections likely to be on hold.

As always, the common people will suffer the most. I do hope everyone is well and safe.

A tumultuous way for the year to end.

fariyaad katghare mein
ro ro ke tadapti thi
qaanoon ke rakhavaale
kal le ke gaye jis ko
ab us ko yahaan laayein
vo naash to dikhalaayein

-Fehmida Riyaz

Please excuse my basic translation:

The plea that cried in the witness box
Was taken away by the keepers of law
Bring it back to us
At least show us the corpse

Hello woman! This one's for you...

....forget the paunchy, white-bearded bloke with a sack trying to give you something. The one who matters is the one who gives of himself. He may not drive a Ferrari or a Porsche, he may not gift you solitaires or take you on holidays to sun-kissed beaches, he may not quote poems, but he stays by your side when you need him the most. As for filling your stockings, honey, nothing looks better in them than your own legs.

Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion

Where's Dante?

Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
By Farzana Versey
December 24, 2007, Counterpunch

Tony Blair has become a Catholic. Had it been seen as a personal decision, it would be fine. However, it already sounds like political canonization. According to a report, Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send British troops into Iraq.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, who led the service, said, “…in another sense it’s a beginning, because when you become a Catholic, as so many people who have become Catholics have said to me, it’s like coming home.”

What is worrying is this: A Vatican spokesman said such an “authoritative personality” choosing to join the Catholic Church “could only give rise to joy and respect”.

It brings us to the dilemma religion has always faced – how does it sell itself? The moment god images are used in consumer advertising there is a hue and cry for abusing religious symbols. What about the marketing of whole belief systems?

Years ago, the Church of England decided to sell Christianity like “beans and the banks”. Seven thousand pounds sterling were to be spent on 10 TV slots. One ad showed a suited smiling man holding the Bible in one hand while an angel – female – dangled on his other arm; the copy promised: “An hour this Sunday will leave you feeling good all week.”

One is not sure whether the gods were amused or not, but can advertising make religion more palatable? According to one agency head, “The Church has to make itself a more interesting, relevant and even a more entertaining product.”

Does all this bode well for our concept of religion? Is faith not a matter of personal belief? Or are we only fooling ourselves? After all, we believe because we have been brought up in a certain faith, or as in Blair’s case it seems to be a gift to his wife and children who are all Catholic, or because we have seen devotees throng to places of worship and, like with everything else, the herd mentality prevails: if everyone does it, then it must be right.

In that sense religion does not need advertising. It is advertising. It follows all the marketing rules. The brand comparisons regarding which religion scores over which other, whose product has greater appeal, which market can be captured.

In fact, many of our superficial concepts have been sold to us by constructed faith. Temptation, for example. Were it not for Eve, the serpent, the apple, and the Garden of Eden, we might have all succumbed to the worst and not been held sinners for our trespasses.

Monotheistic religions come with an inbuilt mechanism that is the super-ego. To those who often accuse outsiders of misinterpreting Islam, I think greater injustice is done to it by the so-called believers, who take every legend literally and use it as their Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Recently, the Islamic world celebrated Eid-al-adha to understand the greatness of sacrifice, of how you must be willing to give of your own. When Prophet Ibrahim willingly agreed to sacrifice his son, the goat was replaced by a holy injunction seeing the selflessness. It ought to be taken as symbolism.

Today, it is just another occasion for a feast, for I do not know what a Muslim can learn while watching an animal bleed to death. Does touching the knife to the neck gingerly teach about the virtue of readily parting with something personally precious?

No. Quite the contrary. It is an event that is reminiscent of early Islam. According to Alfred Guillaume, “Sacrifices, which were for the most part communal feasts, were popular; but at heart the Arab cared little for these things. He was, as he still is, fundamentally an individualist, and if a heathen god did not or could not help him to get what he wanted in life, so much the worse for the god.”

Among the five Pillars of Islam - prayer, fasting, alms-giving, faith in Allah and the Prophet and pilgrimage - animal sacrifice figures nowhere except in certain cases when on Haj at Mina, where the ‘stoning of the devil’ ceremony takes place animal sacrifices are made, though not compulsory.

In this light it would be interesting to note that in the original ritual of kissing the black stone, pilgrims were required to be nude, but the Prophet ordered that two plain sheets be used instead.

This itself proves that religion must perforce be amenable to adaptation. The Quran, which is seen as an occurrence to meet the various crises/occasions in the Prophet’s life, was in its entirety perhaps apt in the 7^th century AD, but was it destined to govern millions of lives so many centuries later? Guillaume gives one example to highlight the difficulty of following rules steadfastly, “How could a Muslim keep the fast of Ramadan from sunrise to sunset in the Arctic Circle where in the summer the sun never sets?”

In fact, many of the Quranic verses have been changed. Of special note is one which refers to those who accept a religion other than Islam as being the lost ones when Prophet Mohammed himself believed that uncorrupted Judaism and Christianity were early manifestations of Islam.

The problem is that devotion in contemporary society has become a means of displaying status; the fatter the goat, the more you can show off. Many of the early Muslims practised asceticism, contrary to the image of Islam as an indulgent religion. The Prophet himself belonged to an impoverished family, which is why it is said that “his subsequent success must be accounted the greater in that he converted his opponents without help which prestige and a high social position would have given him.”

As the poet-philosopher Iqbal interpreted the story of the fall of Adam as “man’s rise from a primitive state of instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of a free self capable of doubt and disobedience and the emergence of a finite ego which has the power to choose.”

The point then is why does religion need to sell itself when its task is to further sell other things? Is it only about making a leap of faith? How different would this be from converting people through missionaries and other old-fashioned avenues? Would not the same subtle forces be at work? Would not the hidden persuaders be upto the same dirty tricks trying to reach the innermost recesses of our consciousness to find areas of darkness deliberately in order to lead us unto light? Would the Church truly find its feet with so many lost souls that have drifted in perchance, like in a shopping mall where you end up buying things only because they are displayed so attractively and strategically?

The Church of England is falling prey to celebrity endorsement. Can you do so for selling a god whose omnipotence and omniscience you believe in?

These things did not worry the Reverend Robert Ellis years ago: “Our aim was to keep alive the rumour of god. It is not about bums on pews.” This does not speak too well about god or his staunch advocates. If a rumour is all there is to it, then why not sell Satan, or fairytales and myths?

Religion already has us by the collar. What more does it need to sell? If advertising faith is to be a huge thing, then one must pose the query applied to marketing principles:

Would there be censorship code and how would it be operative? Can the advertising council accept complaints about people that have tried the ‘product’ but are unsatisfied and feel cheated by the hype? And what about issues like exploitation? In the advertisement mentioned earlier, a female angel is dangling from the arm of a devotee. Is this abuse of the female form? Why is the male not shown to be seeking salvation and getting it? And what about the copy: “An hour this Sunday will leave you feeling good all week?” How different is it from a quick-fix or an exercise regimen where you are urged to spend 30 minutes a day to knock off a few pounds?

Even if one stops nitpicking, the crucial query remains. How can the very home of god be sold as a product, which it is not? Can you sell the Almighty as the Complete Man? Or as Superman who drives away evil? These are not products but the sentiments they wish to convey.

Religion is well and truly on its way on the billboards, hoardings and shelves. There will be more brand wars and consumer surveys. The soul has no choice but to wait to play its role as the confused consumer.

Ifs (about X'mas) and buts (about butt)

Barf: “Happy Holidays”…If you are getting gooey about Santa, shopping for X’mas presents and getting the tree and the mistletoe ready, then stop this baloney about non-religious specific terminology. You are celebrating Christmas, so stop all the ooh, I don’t believe in all this…

The same applies to any other festival. At least in our subcontinent we don’t have these pretensions. This whole Happy Holidays thing started to keep the Jews happy, and the Jews decide what Santa and the Republican candidate in America looks, sounds and feels like. So, have a good one.

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Barf: Saving the environment…Will Smith is very concerned about cleaning his butt and the environment. No, he is not letting it out in the open - hey, who would get excited at the sight of someone doing it out?. It makes me feel really sad when I think that in my country there are several poor people who have to do so…and the women come out after dark, some bring along umbrellas to cover their faces…

Mr. Smith has got a fancy Japanese loo which not only disposes of bodily waste but also cleans the waste-carrier. Said Will, “They're paper free. Wherever you sit on the toilet, somehow it hits the bull's eye perfectly. It cleans and then dries you. It is just water and then air."

So he is saving paper but wasting water. And what happens when he travels? Does he carry it with him?

How much more does the West have to learn from us…what we have been doing for centuries, these guys make it sound like Columbus on a discovery trail. Piss off.