The Love of Dust

Source: http://www.weru.ksu.edu

How much do you love dust?

Oh, for the love of God, I am not talking about the germs and all the crazy microscopic creatures that we are told share the same space as ours. How unromantic.

Why not take it as the inseparable, sticky particles of the Motherland that reminds you that you are only going to be reduced to it one day?

Or perhaps a golden opportunity to reconnect to nature? Oh wait, Mother Nature.

Or even an opportunity to recreate and relish the environs of an Arabian Desert in order to stimulate piety?

Where I am sitting right now, or living right now, is a great bowl of dust.

It’s as if I am back in time in the American Great Depression and am in the middle of the Dust Bowl.

Well, watch what you wish for, because it actually is the case.

Miserable economy, unemployment, power cuts, misery, poverty, frustration, dry country, no breadlines but all sorts of other terrible lines, and most importantly, dust. It could not be more perfect.

I have heard that history repeats itself. But I never thought that it would be true in such a horrific manner.

But hey, let us see the lighter side of things. After all, what cannot be cured, must be endured.

I have dust particles in my mouth.

Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that simply divine?

I just went to the roof of my house in order to write better while being closer to the stars. The cloud of dust in my neighborhood was so thick, I could hardly make out any bright dots in the blackish brownish what-appeared-to-be-the-sky. Despite the fact that it was pitch dark all around. Power cuts, mind you.

What is even worse, I could smell the dust.

Ah, the divine, maternal smell of the earth you belong to. One of the most disturbing and irritating feelings in the world.

And you know what is even crazier?

I seem to be the only person who has a problem with it.

It has been raining inches of dust on my part of the town for the past few weeks and it seems that there is no end to it.

And what is ironical, all that has occurred in the name of developmental construction, whatever that is.

OK, I’ll tell you what I think it could mean. It means vote for dust.

What is the most disturbing aspect about it is that it ruins the outdoor environment and you are greatly deterred to even step out of your house. Not that it would help you escape dust any better, but somewhat at least. You must hope to stay alive, while eating dust with your food and drinking dust with your drink.

For all the lamentation about the dusty air I breathe, let me inform you that I am a person who is accused of having a pretty dusty room myself, and partially rightly so. I do not usually appreciate foreign interferences in form of excessive dusting of my room, which through experience, I have often found counterproductive for a myriad of reasons, both in terms of time and the energy that keeps you patient.

Still by my shabby standards of living, the current unending storm of dust has succeeded in getting under my skin. It now seems as if I have developed a completely new sub-layer of skin which is made out of dust particles. Proving the Koranic revelation that “we made you out of dust”.

Wish they hadn’t.

But this disaster of a dust bowl surrounding my habitat is anything but divine, unless by divine, you mean manmade. And this colossal effort has been put forth in order to connect the misguided, naïve and degenerate people of my neighborhood to the soil of their Motherland.

And fortunately, people seem to be loving it. They are thanking the architects of these majestic pillars of dust every minute by ritually circling around them, celebrating their love of dust by not giving a fuck.

As much as I find it repulsive, it is about time I give in and announce my love of dust too.

Oh, how lovely it is to have its particles meet the taste buds on my tongue.

I can hardly tell the difference anymore.

The Mandate of Your Vote, for “Change”

Source: voteforchange.com

It is May 9 and the general elections are hopefully just a couple of days away. May 11 is the date. With Imran Khan falling off a makeshift elevator, forklift or whatever it was, getting severely bruised and injured, and explosions rattling the country from Peshawar to Karachi and several candidates losing their lives, campaigns are still going on. You can only hope that the elections day will pass safely.

More than ever in the 2013 elections, the emphasis is on voting for “change”. While like President Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, it is a great slogan, (though I am not sure what change he was talking about, perhaps social reforms) I am not really sure if my vote or that of any other Pakistani citizen for that matter, carries that mandate. I mean the mandate for change. However, it does feel good to imagine things, but that is the way it is. Inconvenient, I guess.

The last time I checked, I was only able to elect two officials to two positions in national and provincial legislature. In other words, my vote means that it is my responsibility to use my ballot to determine what kind of people will be using public money for these two positions for the course of next five years. So as it is, and at least to me, the process of the general elections is nothing more than electing and more appropriately hiring two public officials.

This means that all “change” that I am responsible for, or even capable of, is just trying to remotely influence what kind of people make it to the legislature from my constituency. And to that extent, yes, your vote can be a catalyst to change. But that’s all you can do. And that if you are deliberately voting for candidates which would ensure reelection, you are deliberately wasting public money and that you apparently are an idiot of the highest electoral order. But that’s alright.

You don’t have to apologize for your vote.

So while ideology is important, the candidate for the legislature seat is even more so, and especially his or her stance on various political, social and economic issues. To me, this forms a much greater and stronger basis for voting instead of what party they belong to or what ideology they claim to be proponents of.

Considering the prevalent extent of democratic values in the country and the restrictive and suppressive constitution and norms of the land, I can hardly imagine if any ideologies are at work on ground except for those allowed by the state. Still, I would not be cynical enough to suggest that there is no use in voting for ideology, no. Vote by ideology, vote for ideology by all means.

However, in our land of the pure, another high claim of the adherents of a higher than other faiths, ideology is often synonymous with individual leaders. Due to the absence of direct electorate for the positions of the Prime Minister and the President, the people are forced to imagine, like many of their inherent faiths, that the general elections are actually being held to allow them to choose their head of state. What a fallacy.

With the atrocious 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan and its criminal ratification in the otherwise celebrated 18^th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, you can hardly call this system of governance democracy anymore. If you ever could, that is. And you are forced to observe that the Parliamentary System is designed to block any change whatsoever lest it suits the vested interest of the politicians.

So the change you are looking for is sort of a far fetched idea. Because apparently your selected legislators would not be able to make their decisions independently. We are at the mercy of organized gangs.

I hope you do get the change you are looking for, I mean I am tired of the more than 12 hours of black outs in Pakistan myself, thanks to the current moronic and almost demonic interim “caretaker” government, with apologies to Lord Satan and his high accomplices.

I just hope I’m wrong.

But to be on the safe side, I am voting for the best possible legislators, party or independent.