Okay...momentary lapse of blogging jitters all gone.
I was being silly-
how can i not blog. Its my vent place, and all those people who will never admit they want to keep tabs on my life will suffer seriously if i quit! :)
Identity.
Incident 1 : I had a rocking new years eve this year. No i was not partying till dawn with fifty billion people or anything ultra exciting. i was on a double decker boat with some of my closest friends eating the best crab lollipops ever- having tea and just talking in the middle of the sea.
So there are six of us on the top deck sitting and enjoying the calmness when one friend "F" asks me:
" Would you give up your Pakistani passport for any other one- like American or British?"
Me: (without a thought) ofcourse not. I would go for Dual-nationality but never give up the green.
F: Dual is ideal situation. I would give the green up if i had to.
He then asked everyone.
J said " No way- green stays forever."
V said " Never- dual yes but Green it stays."
H said " Not even dual. Green it is."
A said " OFCOURSE i would give it up. I'll throw it in the sea RIGHT now!"
:S hmmm.
4 out of 6 isn't bad i suppose.
Incident 2:
I went alone to the get my Passport validity extended so that i could go study abroad and come back on a single visa.
i sat waiting with token in hand for my turn to come.
Behind me was a woman with her two children. One boy and One girl. Both looked about 15 years old. Perhaps a year apart.
They had a man scurrying about getting their stuff done so all the had to do was sit there, get their picture taken and leave.
The wait was killing the two kids (it was 9 am in the morning). And unfortunately i heard a bit of the conversation mainly because they were incredibly and annoyingly LOUD.
Boy (whining) : This 'suckkksss'.
Mother: While you are waiting, here read this book, it has the incident about Hazrat Ali when he approached the King of Egypt and the letter he sent to him-
Boy: UGH- i raathher sleeep.
His sister then tries to fix his hair for the picture.
boy: what are you Doiinngg? i look like a Freakiinn Gaaayyy.
His sister then pokes him.
boy: You BITCH! you nearly took my eye out! ooooww owwwww owwwww!
What followed for the next hour was the brother and sister poking and teasing and making fun of eachother in ways that should not have been allowed in public.. esp at a passport office where simpler people stared at these tall for their age immature kids.
I thought of identity again. We were sitting there getting the same passport but dear lord how different we were.
It is what you make it.
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9 comments:
yup...the 'altering of color' et al reminds me of a verrrryyy interesting exchange with a Sardar jee post 9-11...he was mentioning relatives in NY and the 'demands' on them to change their physical appearance in troublesome times. And he was pretty pragmatic about why one shouldnt bother...as in 'naam kapda unka rakh do but SHAKAL tau unkee nahee la saktey'.
(adopt their clothes, name but you cant 'have' their face/features)..so Kay even if you dump the green, you cant exactly be red/blue.
Pakistani born confused desis.
:)
they drive me nuts.
what about them folks who were kept away from the homeland for all their lives...and then suddenly expected to fit in and claim it theirs at times of crisis? can you really blame them for being confused, and claiming a 'third space' as theirs? a third space thats niether red/blue, nor green..it's just a mix of everything because thats the only identity they know?
so very glad you're blogging again!
aneela: exactly... hair colour can change...skin can't...(disregard micheal jackson example in this case.)
Aslam: imagine that... a visa to pakistan :S
khizzy: i wanted to smack that kid. :/
Sakhmeth: okay here is the thing..i get your confusion and i can't tell you what or how to think. its all you and all about how YOU feel inside. granted you have not lived here, you are from somewhere else...ask yourself this, what are you? who are you? if you dont feel pakistani at heart...fair enough.. you cant be expected to...it's your call.
ps: i dont know how old you are but i believe there is a time limit on all confusion...eventually the time to decide your identity will be up.
ppl who say they are "finding themselves" at 40 scare me....honestly! :)
haha..40 year olds finding themselves really do exist! and they're really not so bad..just a bit lost.
what i meant to throw out there earlier was that identities are not just black and white, not clear cut. they are super complex 'things', and each person's identity is unique, depending on the experiences he/she was subject to. so i think it's okay for some pakistanis to feel that one aspect of pakistani culture is theirs, and another aspect of pakistani culture is completely alien to them. on the ride to where ever they are now, they may have picked up many traits from other religious/cultures and mixed it up with the pakistani artifacts they relate to...and now they are a delicious mix of many cultures, religious, etc.
also, identity is not static, now is it? it grows, develops, changes, evolves just as we do. at birth, one may simply be a muslim, at age 5, one may feel like a pakistani muslim, in the teens, one may identify with pakistani muslim women, at 40 with motherhood and so on.
multifaceted, multicolored things...these identities. but at the end of the day, you are right. they don't change with the color of one's passport. they shouldn't.
incident 2 has nothing to do with id crisis or lack thereof. they were just spoiled brats and anybody would want to smack em.
sakhmeth: agreed. identities are not black and white....for some of us that is. for others...its pretty clear cut. i guess ive never had the thing of having grown up somewhere else and thus the confusion etc etc...
as for evolving and growing... well.. nothing grows randomly... even plants ..creepers grow in a particular direction.. i guess, its just about knwoing which direction you are moving in.
as far as how identities "shouldnt" change with passport colours... sawall hee nahi uththa.. they physically can not...and whoever THINKS it does, is fooling themselves.
11 minutes: when i talk of identity.. i tend to write incidents that explore the word in several contexts...
identity in otherwords here refers to similarity...or close connection with....identity is also characteristic of a state or a culture or a place... community..whatever...
our identity..our culture teaches us to respect parents...not talk back...not make public spectacles of ourselves regardless of our age.
its a global concept yes but we are known to be the conservative culture are we not?
thus, their behavior was not just spoil kids.. but a far cry from our identity.
again.. disclaimer: this is just MY opinion...not written in stone or anything.
:)
brilliant
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