Reflections

There have been some comments passed by friends on chowk, and I return once to pay my gratitude. They manifest the depth of human emotion and the team spirit develpoed on a cyber board and I owe this to them.

swarrier,
Our disagreements were a reflections of our perspectives and we never brought religion into focus. Perhaps I was the only Pakistani who dared to discuss issues which very few non Hindus could dwell into. My comments were not based on hogwash or hate, but some research that I had done on Ancient India both from a perspective of anthroplogy and security. Let me remind you that I am not an old man. Just early 50s and still consider myself young to indulge in sports. Thanx for your wonderful feelings.

Atif,
I am a dreamer like you, and dreamers always like to stick their heads out. Though I am not blessed with your apt sense of humour, maybe my style is too straight forward and blunt.

One of my dreams is to live in a Pakistan as envisioned by Jinnah and my father who was a motivated worker for the Pakistan movement. I feel that by and large, Pakistani society is in essence plural. When some people in this society discriminate we alienate them.

In chowk, the editors do not follow any guide lines. Perhaps the editorship is in the hands of people who themselves have multi nicks. Each nick reflects similar or diverse approaches and such people live in all situations. Therefore chowk itself is now part of the problem. It is due to such policies that temperol and amrita also left.

Revanthy Gopal’s death is a case in point. Even wishing the departed soul became a do or die affair.

My disillusionment came with my essay on World Cup. Sadly, I stand vindicated but do not feel happy about it. Now after this disgraceful performance, those self proclaimed puritans have disappeared or come back with different nicks to comment differently.

As minorities living in Pakistan, we are very sensitive to what we say about religion due to Blasphemy Laws. Yet on this board, muslims provoke Hindus and then get abused with words and illustrations and pay back in kind. For the past few months there is an unending war of words between three sects of Islam. They paste holy verses and abuses on the same page and yet profess righteousness. If it were to happen on a street in Pakistan, these bigots would have pelted stones and killed. Yet paradoxically, they thrive in such mud slinging matches. The worst is that this pain is caused by Pakistanis and not Indians.

So these are my reasons and I will remain in contact with some of the good friends I made at chowk through email and formal contact like temperol, NHK, Hamadani, Beena, Vareesh, Ayesha Sarwari, tanishaq, goonga. I forever remain grateful to Zahraj and Azure for encouraging me to write.

For Zeemax, I would just comment that, "the essence of sociability lies in fermenting commonalities and not exposing diversities"

Folio, I dont recall ever having offended you.