Since 2001, I have received a steady stream of messages from people, especially students abroad, who found the Eqbal Ahmad site I produced very useful. Back in the day, when this site was built, there was no Wordpress nor countless other open-source tools that would have made producing a site like this a breeze. The idea of developing a community platform that Eqbal groupies could contribute to, seemed so radical at the time! All those nights and stolen moments between other deadlines, the never-ending agony of trying to get code to compile, ‘forcing’ everyone at b.i.t.s. to read Eqbal … what heady times

This morning, I woke up to the best Eqbal e-mail I have have received:

My name is Carol Stock. I had the immense honor to work for Eqbal as a secretary for two years in the late 1970s (or early ’80s?), during the time he was advising the PLO, writing guest columns for the New York Times, and serving on the editorial board of Race and Class among many tasks.

So I read, and reread the writings he has left us, and I am indeed grateful for the website from which we who love him still can obtain some measure of comfort and inspiration. No, he will never be forgotten.

Trivia: I received immense flak from someone ‘important/stuffy’ who thought the inclusion of a Pink Floyd quote to honor a man like Eqbal Ahmad was terribly inappropriate. BAH!

http://www.bitsonline.net/eqbal

Today would have been the last, heady day of the Shanaakht Festival 2009. Today, CAP was going to present an exciting and diverse range of events; a kabaddi match, discussions with iconic Pakistanis, photo exhibitions, street theatre, and oral histories of the partition generation. Today T2F was going to host a story-telling session with Mrs. Raziuddin who played in the lap of Josh Sb as a child and was one of the first women in Karachi to drive a car, run a business, and make a film. Today, T2F was going to host a Mushaera featuring Karachi’s leading Urdu poets. Today, ADP and other musicians would have started arriving at the venue to set the stage for Raag and Roll. Today, thousands of Karachi’s citizens would have thronged the Arts Council to participate in a free, open festival celebrating our history, art, theatre, poetry, music, and resilience.

Today, why aren’t we all at the Karachi Arts Council, instead of sitting at home and writing frustrated blog posts? Answers will vary depending on who you ask. I think, as always, the real answers to such complex questions, are blowing in the wind.

Much has happened in the 4 days since the occurrence of the “incident” that unraveled the Shanaakht Festival 2009 in under 10 minutes. The press has misreported and reported, apologies have been rendered, threats have been issued, FIRs have been registered, government lackeys have lashed out at CAP, and aggrieved parties continue to expound their views on blogs and social networks. Many have spoken volumes by choosing to remain silent.

My earlier post on the Shanaakht mess has met with considerable criticism; which is absolutely fine - many valid points have been raised - but I am pained to be included in a group that one blogger writes about “… and it continues with tacit support of our so-called liberal intelligentsia”, because I commented strongly on the stupidity of the artwork. I have also been blown away by the inability of so-called educated people to read, analyze, and process.

After watching “Judgement at Nuremberg”, I lay in a crumpled heap for 2 hours, unable to speak for fear of throwing up. The film taught me, in no uncertain terms, about the granularity, complexity, and multi-hued textures of situations. Opinions evolve and can change over time. One can’t go through life being glib about everything, especially when commenting from very safe distances.

On a side-note, I tried to reconvene T2F’s Nadeem Aslam reading and conversation session at a venue that had earlier promised support to T2F following its eviction. Quite understandably, they said NO owing to security concerns. This is exactly what I expected following the Shanaakht fiasco, when I said that all our work will now be threatened and destablilized. This is why judiciousness and prudence is necessary in this environment, if you want to keep plugging away and making a difference. I don’t think that makes one a sell-out!

Since my stance is considered dubious and sketchy by some, I hereby declare my demands and an urgent call for a protest at the Karachi Press Club and other venues:

MY STANCE
I unequivocally condemn the violent attack of 8th April 2009 on arts, culture, and our freedom, and stand in solidarity with all voices of resistance

MY DEMANDS
1. Complete withdrawal of the FIR
2. Protection to be guaranteed to the organizers of the festival and the artist
3. Action to be taken by the government against the attackers
4. Retraction of the government’s statement supporting the armed attack on civilians

9 days have passed since the attack on the Shanaakht Festival 2009. I wrote the post below in a fit of rage and distress. Based on new information and people’s reactions, I now believe I should not have said all that I did, on a public blog. I certainly have a right to my opinion, but for someone who was preaching judiciousness, I think I didn’t practise it myself. I am not ashamed to admit mistakes; we’ve all learnt a lot from this incident, and in the wake of the deals that our government is signing, more so than ever, we need to stick together, collaborate, and avoid saying and doing things that cause divisiveness. One voice in my head tells me to remove this post altogether. Another voice tells me to remove certain portions. There is no right answer and I admit I’m confused. If I’ve done any damage, it’s already been done and Google has cached it. So, I’ll leave the original post as is, lest I then be accused of tampering with content because of sinister agendas.

Much has already been said and written about the Shanaakht Festival 2009 and the subsequent cancellation. My stance, very quickly, since there is a lot of BAD STUFF happening and my brain and heart are devastated …

I am enraged about the shutdown of the festival barely a few hours after it began with such vibrancy and energy. The pain of T2F’s eviction from its original premises was somewhat alleviated by the excitement of being at the festival and being able to continue with our programming for 5 days in a public space.

I will attempt to put my rage and aggravation into perspective …

Everyone, not just an artist, has a right to self-expression. Governments have no right to muzzle independent points of view or interpretations of events. That’s obvious. I am not an idiot and don’t need to be told that.

HOWEVER …

The reality is that we live in a city that makes international news, every single day, for incidents of violence and terror. Against this chilling backdrop, artists, curators, organizers of public festivals, and anyone working for the cause of arts and culture need to be cognizant and sharply aware of reactionaries, political workers, double agents, the evil designs of members of spaces designed to support the arts, the sensibilities of the junta, the games people play, and everything else that you can’t possibly pre-empt. This makes doing anything at all extremely difficult. And that is our challenge.

And so, the very act of submitting an artwork for a free, open, public festival being held in the heart of an out-of-control city, displaying BB sitting on Zia’s lap, indicates that the artist is disengaged from reality. The work itself was monumentally stupid. I say this not as a PPP or BB supporter but as an individual who can’t suffer fools.

Moving on … the idiotic artwork was submitted to VASL which curated the Sohni Dharti exhibition. Apparently CAP was asked if the work should be included and gave it a green signal. VASL should have rejected it upon receipt.

CAP has duly acknowledged that this ‘offensive contribution’ should not have been put up and have apologized repeatedly through press releases and at a press conference. I’m glad that they are taking responsibility. However, I am appalled that VASL has not.

My elevator pitch: I strongly oppose the inclusion of the above mentioned artwork in the festival on the grounds of lack of judiciousness and prudence. I even more vehemently condemn the manner in which PSF and PPP workers lodged their protest; i.e. by storming the Arts Council with guns and sticks, spreading terror and mayhem, hurling abuse at everyone in sight, and destroying art and property.

As a CAP founder member and as a collaborative participant in the festival, I have some questions:

1. Why has VASL not stepped forward and acknowledged their role in creating this mess?
2. Why has the government condoned the manner in which the armed hoodlums lodged their protest?
3. What was the role of the Karachi Arts Council in the attack? Why were they not pro-active in handling the armed, violent attackers? Were they complicit?

All art and cultural activities will now be further under attack in this city. We don’t have the luxury of making mistakes like this. We have to live for our causes, not die for them - and to fight obscurantism, oppression, and extremism, we need to be smart, savvy, and strategic.

Oh, and for all of you who think that the show should have gone on, PLEASE, get real. I was there throughout the attack. There WAS firing and the threat was severe and frightening. We were trying to get our American guest speakers out of there alive as well as pack up all our stuff whilst trying to stay safe from bullets. You can’t fight armed madmen with art and poetry when they’re out of control and calling for blood. CAP did the right thing to cancel the show and I stand by their decision.

Aur haan, 17 crore Pakistani diloñ kee aek shanaakht naheen hae. Let us not delude ourselves and let’s embrace our myriad identities and celebrate our diversity.

When we were screening Darwin’s Dangerous Idea at T2F, my mother was hanging out at the Science Museum in London, paying tribute to Charles D on his 200th birthday.

She brought back a Darwin supplement published by the Times for me and I just LOVED this little sidebar:

Darwin the Tweet

Darwin clearly wasn’t thinking of future technologies when he coined the original title of his opus. Users of Twitter, who entertain each other by swapping messages of 140 characters or less, would recognize that you don’t give yourself much room for manoeuvre when your book title alone stretches to 111 characters: On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By its sixth print run, Darwin had managed to pare it down to the snappier The Origin of Species. Given another 172 years, he could have probably distilled its contents down to one succinct tweet:

DarwinC: Great creatures adapt. Not so great ones die. Check out those finches beaks. Survival of the fittest innit.
10:31 AM Oct 27th, 1837 from TweetDeck

Akbar Ji believed no single religion could claim a monopoly on truth and came up with a way-ahead-of-its-time solution - ‘Din-e-Illahi’. Radical dude

I believe no single application can definitively help manage complexity and so, I use a cocktail of tools and techniques to organize my day. I call this approach ‘Whatever It Takes To Get Things Done’.

Like a fickle lover, I constantly switch allegiances to GTD apps. Over the years, I have used iCal, OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, Merlin, and xTime Project to manage teams, assess progress, and get stuff done.

As my needs changed, I switched to VoodooPad primarily because it’s lean, has a lite/free version and functions as an offline wiki - so, lots of hyperlinking love. I loved being able to hit Command-Option-K and seeing a line go straight through a task, indicating it was done. It was great for a while until I discovered TaskPaper. Despite my fickleness, I stayed true to TaskPaper for the longest time. But I’ve sort of dumped it now essentially because of the lack of an iPhone version.

I’ve been evaluating Cultured Code, as an indie Mac software company for over a year now. Their core product, Things, is a stellar app that conforms to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, is fun to use, and takes an innovative approach to GTD. Mumbo jumbo aside, it’s awesome and is proving to be instrumental in my “Save Sabeen from Sabeen” project.

I will post a detailed review soon, but for now, I can’t recommend Things enough. It syncs seamlessly with my iPhone and it’s been a long, long time since I had so much fun with an application.

In January 2009, Fire Records/Geo hosted a press conference for Laal at T2F. Laal is a new band based out of Lahore that aims to set the poetry of Faiz and Jalib to music and bring it to the people.

I was holed up in my room through most of the session trying to meet a stupid deadline but crept out when Laal broke into song. They kicked off with Umeed-e-Sahar (Faiz Sb) and two things happened:

1. I allowed myself the luxury of a few tears following the news of our eviction from T2F. That was the first and last time!

2. I wanted to KILL the man standing next to me. Laal’s composition of Umeed-e-Sahar is not even remotely complex and this idiot simply couldn’t clap in tune with the beat. He ruined it for me and I went straight back to my room and forgot about Laal.

Then March rolled around and the video of Umeed-e-Sahar found its way onto YouTube:

I am now hopelessly hooked. Maleeha loves it too. YAY! Zak thought it was OK and Nuzhat Aunty said, “kya bayhooda dhun hae”. I’m giggling now but at the time, I felt personally violated. I accept that it’s far from musical genius but it does what it’s meant to do, i.e. engage people. Through tracks like this, a few more people will start thinking about issues, a handful more will start reading Faiz and Jalib, and maybe our merry band of activists will gain a little more strength and momentum.

I’m going so far as to dream of a desi equivalent of “We Shall Overcome”.

… because when that day rolls around, when we rise up and say ENOUGH, we will need an anthem we can relate to.

In complete solidarity!

Someone sent a message to a few people on Facebook during the recent spate of Israeli attacks expressing horror at the atrocities being committed in Gaza:

I am writing this message to some of the most influential people in Karachi, especially those who are influencing our youth’s thoughts and actions these days. Some/Many of us know what has been happening in Gaza for last many years but “none” of us is ignorant of what Gaza is facing for the last two weeks.

Donations in form of cash or kind are useless. When we were not able to reach out to our people in the north after the earthquake, it seems a difficult task trusting those so-called relief organizations working under the banner of UN, which is again for me the brainchild of Israel. In these trying times when all Pakistanis are made to suffer the economic crisis, food shortage, inflation, job cuts, terrorism, war hysteria and cold weather all at the same time, all we can do for the people of Gaza is Pray and Protest.

While praying for them can be done individually, protest needs people in unity. Each one of you is a star /role model for “at least” 5000 karachiites (your friends circle or group members proves it). Just one call (Facebook message or new group created) from your end can take 1000s of people to the streets of Karachi.

Imagine the volume if all of you work in unison and show your solidarity to the brothers sisters and kids suffering from Israeli bombings and hypocrisy. Just today UN passed a resolution for ceasefire and Israeli Cabinet approved continuity of bombings in Gaza totally ignoring the demand from world’s leaders.

I request all of you to please come together for one day and show the world you are concerned. I think just signing petitions, joining facebook groups will not help. Please set a day/time/venue/agenda for a serious walk a cause/sit in protest/ coming Sunday.

One of you may volunteer yourself to lead the entire cause, create group, set date, time, venue for the walk, venue for making placards and banners, and overall coordination.

PLEASE PLEASE Make this happen This Sunday!!

I was put off by the last paragraph of this appeal and wondered why this individual couldn’t take the responsibility of leading the cause herself. Why always put the onus on someone else? Anyway, I responded in an equally rambling manner …

Hello. Thank you for your message, which comes across as truly heartfelt. I’m going to ramble a bit so please bear with me.

As a long-time civil liberties activist, I have been thinking, for a while now, about effective forms of protest, in a time of extreme consumerism, fragmentation, and apathy. Post-emergency, one saw the rise of a new generation of activists and it was heartening and gratifying. Some faded away very quickly owing to ridiculous expectations of immediate change. Others were more mature and rational and understood that change may not come even in their lifetimes but that it is important to raise a voice and relentlessly demand action. Activity on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites indicates that a large number of young, and not-so-young people in Karachi are outraged and helpless. I have been protesting on the streets for many years and unfortunately, we have just not been able to amass the numbers needed to make a significant impact. I have also been questioning whether coming out on the streets is even meaningful, today, if the numbers are not enormous. In a discussion with a women’s rights activist recently, I am glad that I was able to gain some clarity on this particular issue.

As the Israeli offensive in Gaza escalates by the day, it is imperative that two things be done.

1. We need to come out on the streets as a “symbolic” gesture. I say symbolic because it is important to be rational and understand that even if 100,000 Pakistanis take to the streets, the bloodshed in Gaza will continue. The reason that this symbolic gesture is critical is because we have to add our voices to growing international pressure and we have to be counted.

2. More specifically, we need to support the efforts of Avaaz and Amnesty International. These are credible groups that campaign for justice and human rights and know how to reach key powers. Avaaz has put out a call for robust international action to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. I have spoken to Paul Hilder, a core team member at Avaaz, and he said that they are making an impact but need greater numbers of people to sign up and donate to publish a full page ad in the Washington Post.

Take action today:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=551

The only way the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be addressed is by escalating international pressure. We need to ramp up the efforts of credible organizations that are out there doing what needs to be done.

Various local groups, from WAF to Peoples’ Resistance are holding meetings and protests frequently. A group of graphic designers are putting up an exhibition of posters at The Second Floor (T2F) on the 21st of January, the day that Barack Obama takes over (it’s also Martin Luther King’s birthday) and leading up to that, we will be holding meetings to figure out a strategy. Perhaps you can ask all the people you have written to, to come to T2F this week to plan a large-scale protest. I will speak to representatives of all the other human rights and advocacy groups to join us. We also have plenty of friends in the media who will support us. It is then up to individuals to spread the word and get people off their apathetic butts and out on the streets.

Not a soul responded or showed up …

A few weeks ago, I was forced to switch to a paid service to manage the ever-burgeoning T2F mailing list. I say “forced” because the service I was using, provided free as part of my hosting package, was not being able to deliver to Hotmail and Yahoo addresses owing to throttling issues.

After evaluating a number of companies, I picked MailChimp because I loved their attitude and style. Very contemporary and fun …

After importing all my e-mail addresses into their database, I tried to pay them. However, they wanted to know how I had acquired the addresses. They sent an e-mail with some questions and I responded in detail - but they pretty much told me to eff off.

I was furious and tried another service called ConstantContact. They spoke to me on the phone for about 25 minutes asking the same questions that the chimps asked but in a reasonable, rational manner. After a detailed conversation, they said, OK, we accept your responses and you’re good to go.

A day or two later, I returned to MailChimp to delete my account and was asked to fill in a survey form asking why I was leaving. Here’s what I said:

I am leaving MailChimp because you weren’t willing to accept my money, trust my organization, or believe that our mailing list was acquired through legitimate means.

I have signed up with ConstantContact because they had the decency to conduct a list review in a dignified manner and accept my responses as truthful and honest.

Of course, I haven’t heard from them …

Each time a contemptible fool decides to detonate a bomb to gain a place in the hallowed halls of martyrdom, apologists go on about how our religion is being misinterpreted, that this is not our culture, and that these are not our people.

It’s about time we accepted the fact that the face of Pakistan IS terror and insecurity. No one is safe or immune and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers currently feels like the lowest ebb imaginable. There is growing alarm at the thought that we have allowed this to happen to our country, and yet, we have absolutely no idea what to do, to take action.

Something is brewing though …