April 9, 2012
Rema Aunty came back on Saturday after a 10-day visit with her daughter and grand kids in Dubai. During the customary neighborhood meet up during the half an hour power cut at night, she shared "news" from the Middle East. One of her grand kids has joined a school there.
"His teacher is a Pakistani," she said. There was a momentary pause that allowed the neighbors to formulate their response to that statement.
I was expecting a wave of moderately alarmed and significantly disappointed "ah"s. I guess she was expecting them too. So she hurried with the follow up just as the sighs began to rise, "He loves her very much. Says she is the best Miss. Her name is Mrs Ashraf."
I am sure her initial response in Dubai was similar to what she anticipated the neighbors to have. But I am glad she has reformed hers from that standard Indian response to anything with the word Pakistani associated with it.
"It is good thing the kids are getting a wider world view from the beginning, "I philosophized, "it'll help them be less xenophobic and more open-minded as they grow up!"
I didn't have any Pakistani teachers when I grew up. I became acquainted and then friends with students either from Pakistan or of Pakistani origin only at Texas A&M. It was quite easy to see that they are just like me, exactly as any other human being whom it is so stupidly simple to compartmentalize and detest under the easy "labels" at our disposal. Those labels that are a symbol of nothing but our own ignorance and blinkered world-view!
How can anyone have anything but respect for the likes of Tina Sani, Sanam Marvi and the other marvelous musicians from the Coke Studio? And that is just a tiny sliver of a tiny aspect of Pakistani culture.
Over the weekend, news has trickled in of the avalanche at the Siachen glacier in Kashmir burying around 135 Pakistani soldiers and support staff. Except in areas like the comments section of Indian websites where the utterly unevolved scum of the Indian society type away their frenzied neurosis, the response in India has been the solemn one befitting the tragedy. There is the solemn realization that it could very well have been Indian lives on the other side of the unnatural line.
Unfortunately due to the politico-religious exploitation of the region and its strategic importance to military, several hundred Indian and Pakistani men need to spend sizeable chunks of time in isolation in the trecherous, glacial, white and silver majestic heights of the mountains.
Coincidentally, the Pakistani President was on a visit to India. While he took one step forward in choosing to visit the dargah of a Sufi saint in Ajmer, he ensured that the perpetual milking of Kashmir issue and terrorism continue to keep our politicians in power and diplomats with a job and perks.
The Himalayas are not aware of the Hindu or Islamic stories associated with it or the man-made lines cutting through it. Avalanches don't care, no matter what the mullahs or astrologers want to believe and make believe, whether they extinguish Indian or Pakistani life.
I read a recent E.O.Wilson piece discussing how humans are, like ants, genetically predisposed to have an ethnic, tribal social spirit. It is a two-sided coin that causes both destructive violence as well as cultural advancements. I don't think the great Dr. Wilson wrote the essay to be taken as a justification for all the nonsensical bigotry, nepotism and narrow-mindedness.
If anything, the awareness that the amygdala that has been pushed deep within our massive brains over the millions of years of evolution, still behaves the way ant brains operate, should make us wary of the "ease" of hate and its pitfalls.
I hope that one day the entrenched ethnic spirit of the human mind will expand to embrace the entire planet, dissolving the multiple, divisive, primal tendencies that continue to plague it.
Let there be more Pakistani teachers for Indian kids and Indian doctors for Pakistani patients...
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