The Invisible Men

Re: # 25
masadi i hear you`ve gone back to pakistan.
to paraphrase jane austin, in pakistan it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possesion of a green card must be in want of a wife.

Re: hamid and his gang

All of your replies are quite ignorant compared to the profound insight based on experience of the article`s author. Alienation is not a gora or colored trait, it is not an immigrant or native trait, it is not a worker or middle class trait, it is a trait of a social system and the US social system is an Alienation generator par excellence. Those that understand this and get back in tune with their reality, they are the liberated. The rest of you, who are ``enjoying every minute of it``, self deceived and deceiving, remain enslaved, soon you`ll note that your entire life has just vanished away......for nothing. Devoid of meaningful memories, trapped in bureaucratically circumscribed existence, bowing day and night to the corporation for whom you work, for whose sake your leisure activities are rationalized, and for whom you nurture your kids.....you are a lost bunch....I pity you

I miss the US too, but what I miss about it is living within it yet rejecting its enslaving system. That sense of liberation and freedom, the real freedom not the fake bs is what I miss. In this country, the number of the free are much more and what required education and knowledge to uncover over there is known to the common folk based on their experience and deprivation. They are all social scientists of sorts without degrees. Over there, among the cheerful morons, hypnotized by the system, those that are liberated are few, and that feeling of liberation is what is missed...

Re: # 22

hamzaad,

.....excellent post ........ ``the haven of domestic servants and the mediocrity supporting it`` says it all ......... after thirty years in this country and loving every minute i still think that ``naukar allah taala ki sab say bari naymat hai ``....... and if i ever move back to pakistan it will be because of the cheap and abundant domestic help you can get there !

Re: # 8

I cant believe this, but I think both sides might be right. Kulharee is correct in pointing out that NYC is city that echoes with a million smaller cities, a million neighborhoods that are communities. E.B. White evocatively describes this and other city related phemonema in his essay ``Here is New York``. So, there are infinite possibilites of communal and individual identity every two blocks. This labryinth can be incredibly absorbing and challenging; some people have negotiated New York and found they belong here for the above reasons and others run back to the suburbs (where life is much stranger, if you ask me).

I am sorry that the writer of this piece felt so alienated in my city. Unfortunately, it is as White poiints out, a gift and a curse for all of us. ``Belonging`` can shift in degrees from one circle of identification to another; i.e. neighbors, friends, fellow hobbyists, work colleagues, commuters, etc.

I hope the writer revisits, and the next time he comes, be prepared to encounter and engage with the many communities that make New York. As Hamzaad (and I cant believe I`m agreeing with Kaka), for the discomforts and anonymity of New York, it is filled some of the best or people struggling towards being their best at their art and labor.

Also, spend some time in the boroughs. You might visit the most affluent middle class of color borough in Queens-African American, West Indian American. The Bronx has a growing and interesting West African and Bangladeshi community. Harlem is simply one of the most culturally, politically and socially significant areas of our city. Go to Long Island when you want to be in Surburbia. I cant account for Staten Island.

Written from the heart and written well!

Although NYC may have a lot of cabbie and working class desis, it is IMPOSSIBLE not to find like-minded, high brow individuals. You don`t seem to suffer fools like zeena easily and you shouldn`t have to but it is only through fools like zeena that you will get to meet people like neembu. Moreover, with your insights about what ails `the Orient`, you will find plenty of ears from the Lower East side to the Columbia precincts..

You fell off the great diaspora discourse by moving back to the haven of domestic servants and the mediocrity supporting it. Maybe like Saima Shah here, you surrounded yourself with goray MBAs and figured them to be relevant to YOUR view of the West and America..

PS. kaka was just listening to Natalie Cole`s live performance of `Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds`.. and it occured to him the utter irrelvance of `goras and integration etc` in face of this beautiful rendition. If you can`t appreciate the Occident on its merit of skilled artisans and best artists.., you really are wasting your time living ANYWHERE in the world.

What a BS article!! When you voluntarily move to some other country, you are the newcomer there. It is their country and you are trying to become a part of it. The onus is on you to integrate, not for the locals to treat you like a son-in-law who is gracing their home with a visit. How many goras did you invite to your place for dinner? How many goras did you consciously try to hang out with after work? Did you pick up on local sports and culture, which are topics for people to socialize on? If you kept inviting people and they didnt reciprocate, you have cause to complain. If you never took the first step and waited for the goras to initiate social interaction, then you are acting like a pompous fool who thinks he is God`s gift to America. Yeah, right!!

The fact is that all desis come to the US for studies or jobs. A lot of them intentionally restrict contact with goras to a professional level. After work, they like to hang out with other desis, attend desi parties, watch desi movies, marry some desi woman from desiland, shop from desi grocery stores etc. The same desi who will go out of his way to make friends with a new desi and invite them over for dinner, will rarely do that with a gora. Then they complain that the goras do not accept them socially!!

Taali do haath se bajti hai. If you want to integrate, take the first step. My experience is that goras are ordinary people just like desis or anyone else. If you make attempts to establish friendships, some will reciprocate, some will not. That is true with desis as well. My best friend at grad school was a gora. I have had many gora friends, just like I have several desi friends. I have dated americans as well. In general, goras are very open minded and have no hang-ups on interacting socially with anyone. It is an utter mistake to assign group identity to all goras rather than think of them as individuals. The point of going to America or any other place is to get out of your comfort zone and establish new relationships, to broaden your mind, rather than live in a self-imposed ethnic cocoon.

Hmmm... My bro`s been living in US since 7 - 8 years (was in NY and then moved to Dallas) .... Never heard such things about GORAs from him. According to him .. they are very friendly, polite and accepting people ... Neways ... we all have our experiences ... Good luck with ur stay in Pakistan. Cheers

``we mock our most sacred memories.``

minhaj-man: Nothing is sacred when you are in your 20s (assuming you are a 20-something) least of all ``memories``, which should be cherished as opposed to worshiped, from a distant future, of the past that was yesterday.

Re: # 17

``Sang-Froid`` and ``look`` are not used as a single expression.

``Sang-Froid`` here means isolation or aloofness.

The job started. I was good at it, I liked it and the pay was generous. The best of all the worlds. A loving wife, prime of my youth and plenty of money should have automatically been translated into “the best days of my life” but it wasn`t so. What happened was that I had consciously shunned my own culture, my own society and my own religion while being in Pakistan and had tried to embrace the Western one. What I had forgotten was the fact that how sham or how hypocritically nonsensical my religio-social heritage might be, it was my mine and the two of us were inseparable, how hard I might try. On the other hand, no matter how hard I try to integrate myself to a foreign culture, there would be minute details that would continue to escape my attention plus that biggest factor, “GORA doesn`t care”.

A very enjoyable and honest essay! I like the point you made that when we make a `conscious` attempt to free ourselves from something as natural as the culture and events of our childhood things like Sehri or watching Knight Rider, we lose an important emotion and we mock our most sacred memories.

Secondly I had to, since GORA was displaying his “Sang-Froid”, look for Indian/Pakistani couples with the same social/job backgrounds: Just to have some sort of social existence. That had its own drawbacks. That severely limited the choice of company that I could keep.

What is a Sang-Froid look?
Yeah I would hate that! To make the transition from real friendships to `taalukaat` type of relations so that you can mantain a family environment where every one can have fun. Maybe your kid likes to play with their kids but you dont nessessarily like the parents. Still you go there because your wife needs an `outing.` A person may feel that he works day and night to keep others happy and himself miserable. I am very interested to know if you became happy after returning to Pakistan. Do keep writing as frankly as you did.

``And sadly cogs don`t have any social significance or have they? ``

They do. You are just stuck in your granddad`s mindframe where ``GORA`` was his master and he his colonial slave. If you were in North America, you would have found out that it is about ``You`` only and not the entire social hierarchical baggage you bring from the old-world. Isn`t that the whole point to come to the new world anyway? to leave your granddad and his demons on the dusty old streets of lahore/karachi/whatever.

[obviously, knowing who you are and how you want to build your life (on what ideas and mythology) is no easy game.]

integration, assimilation and stuff are details that come later.

It is called crossing the river .
All the A level defence living snob american immitating deserve to be taught there staus in the world

The articles brilliant honesty is the point at which art starts. Best of luck, dude, you are asking questions and not compromising--that`s intellectual honesty.

Here is my two bits for you:

1. Your identity that inexplicable, indefinable you is up against a huge challenge, fortunately you share that with thousands of others. Left liberals (Indo-Paki and others from all races populate the planet from Alaska to Khatmandu) ask similar questions, whereas the right quickly dons a hijab or a beard. Personally speaking, I prefer questions to voluminous folds of cloth. Open your heart, and you shall find others like yourself. Live as a cog in the corporate world--a world that only cogs inhabit till they cannot, and you won`t find them.
2. There are two things that can happen at that point, you can expand your sense of self, find others who ask such things fearlessly and continue to develop your individual identity, or give up, remaining just another cog, who mistakes livelihood for freedom. The second doesn`t appear to be possible, given that you seem to be a compromising type:). Now that you are here, don`t stop. It gets better, not worse.
3. I feel sad that so many of us in the interacts display an acceptance of the low self-esteem that immigration to the West brings. We all go through what you did--trading status for anonymity, trading identity for a designation (some of us weren`t even lucky enough to get a job), trading self for livelihood. But do we have to? Who decided that? The singular joy of the West is that compromise is neither necessary nor required. There is no rulebook that says you have to follow the rules. So, my friend, stand up tall and look the others straight in the eye. Be a mover and shaker, and the whole world will flock to you: White, yellow, brown, black the whole world looks for leaders. Your country has great intellectual resources, it has art, it has language, you have the education and the creativity to turn the tide. If you have asked such questions then do the next step. Be a leader.

Re: # 10

one of the profoundest statements ever made on chowk.com. so true.

of course, until you`ve had your soul sucked out of the end of your dick by a goree* you haven`t really lived...

* gori here means anyone who has grown up in the west from birth or infancy and not just
white skinned folks since culturally and in terms of morally and ethically most of us are indistinguishable from them no matter how much we might fool ourselves or how it may torment our elder generations. i too was in self-denial until i actually lived in the `land of the pure` and couldn`t take it anymore after a few months. then i realised that speaking urdu or being able to quote ghalib doesn`t make you culturally a pakistani. mentally we are a different species...

i think it is up to the migrant to integrate; each person integrates as much as he or she wants to. often i have seen spoilt people from pakistan or india come to the UK and, when treated like equals like everyone else, get a shock and spend the rest of their time badmouthing the host culture. when the fox cant get the grapes, they`re sour...

i respect you for coming back to pakistan though. 99.9% of the people who complain never come back. take our friend masadi for example...