By Asma Anjum Khan
Partition #MoinAkhtar #MarinaKhan#KingKhan #FawadKhan #OyeeAyesha #etc! #IndiaPakistan
Once upon a time…
No this is not a story with a beginning, middle and an end; rather this is a sago khichdi, the sure fire trick to get your hands dirty.
Partition is a Classical story, that doesn’t want to end, despite our desperate trying pleading beseeching and despite its being seventy or more years old.
(Or rather, is never permitted to end?)
But we can’t even utter oldie is goldie for this story.
Silly partition, ugly duckly as well.
It was an abuse to those millions of unfortunate migrants suddenly made to walk to the land of the Pure and it continues to be an emotional abuse for most of us even today, every day; We who chose never to migrate.
Never to leave our jaan se pyara Hindostan.
Read here my pet peeve from “2014 “
Get up, go to work, come back, listen to Partition. Have lunch, think of a small siesta, and read on Partition. Evenings think of a stroll, a column on the toxic past and its lengthening shadows emerges on your phone screen out of nowhere!
And when you finally step out for a quick stroll, get reminded of those lakhs of legs who walked and walked from here to there and from there to here. Also glimpses of the mall roads of Lahore and Chandni Chowk of Delhi aka Dilli, keep flashing on your mind screen.
What respite can we have from this damn Partition? Does the Nation want to know?
Hey bros and sistas, we; when we were born here, never knew what Pakistan was.
My uncles cheered for it sure during those Doordarshan days and we never understood what actually was happening.
It was only in standard VII when I was told in a history class that Pakistan was once part of our Akhand Bharat!!
That came as a shock. Nostrils began puffing. Anger filled up. How could, ‘they’ run away with our land? Later got to ‘understand’ it was carved up with the ‘mutual understanding’ of the big parties. I still feel like hating this evil drama. Seventy-five years after, the stings of trauma haven’t dimmed a bit to poke us emotionally.
I distinctly remember coming back home after that history lesson and demanding to know from my father, how could he not inform me, that Pakistan was once, ours? Or rather the lands were one, once? Or better still, ‘they’ had taken away our land forcibly?
My poor father had not said a single thing out of the above three. (He kept looking at me as if I had gone crazy.)
Though the numerously possible literary wordings and its implications can take you down the rabbit’s hole. But what will we do there? Need to come back, only to find, the rabbit’s hole has expanded all over us. Some can perceive it precisely, some do not.
Partition Prison; has no walls.
This pronoun, ‘they’ keeps becoming interesting, keeps changing shapes and identities? Us or them? Them or us?
Ah, yes, we the humans, later I arrived at the conclusion.
Partition wisdom.
But now another conundrum began taking shape when a few school friends and their mothers called me Pakistani.
Were we/us responsible for this evil Partition? Or were ‘they’ just the victims?
Thus began the story of a never ending, never resolving existential problem. Even petals of hundreds and thousands of roses could never decide it in ‘their’ favour or ‘us’.
You see the mind immediately goes to ‘us’ of course where apart from several other things, we are also ‘held’ as the chief patrons of the ‘Grand Partition’ and the ‘genuine (or original?) Perpetrators’ are hailed as heroes. Or is it created so that the minds quickly jump to us, and credit given where it is perhaps not, ‘DUE’.
And it happens so often, that one starts wondering, if it doesn’t, in public proclamations, friendly chats and twitter spats, etc i.e. giving us the credit of Partition.
And then that reverberant query, the conundrum of Why didn’t or why did some of our or their (?) Ancestors migrate to the alleged Holy-land?
Trapped?
Had you created it then you should have gone there?
No?
That’s why I don’t really mind when a #RajThackeray or someone from the current lot shout out to us, Go to Pakistan.
Let those who ask us to go, go there, first.
Pahle Aap!
The hilarious thing about IMs (you mean Indian Muslims?) is that they are, trapped, both ways.
There might be no other fools trapped in such a sauce of history anywhere else, like IMs are. No, not even…(the Blacks of USA)
Not disgusting enough?
Laugh or cry, it feels the same here.
Aaha ha…the first benefit of our/ their Partition.
We achieve a state of Nirvana. Where we remain beyond an iota of care. A state of mind preferred by our Sufis and propagated by our Saints.
La la la…..
So then, why not change the topic or why not turn the tables?
And talk about la benefits of Partition or to go desi, Partition ke faayede?
Also sounds like a school essay that would be given to us in the last moments to prepare for the writing competitions.
Would it not give us all a feeling of ‘doing (really) something’ after long years of schooling of/in Partition?
Now in order for diluting the associated sensitivity stuck to our dear Partition, naming it French would be like an extra lather of butter on our Sunday breakfast toast. Good, but it harms.
Avantages le Partitiona’
Now coming to the necessary points of this talk that one benefits is all too obvious.
Cricket matches with our arch enemy and those last ball sixers.
Where would we go if not for those much contested much awaited much heart-attack inducing moments la vigour par de excellaanta.
I sigh deep; this French bit is getting a bit far like that Islamophobia has been crying agog for years anonita.
Let’s talk about some other general advantages…aha…benefitta!
We, the two nations have been friends with benefit.
How would scholars historians write their books and fill up tens of thousands of pages of academic writing, if not for Partition? Partition works for them.
We meaning them, and them meaning we.
‘Them’ is Pakistan of course. And not an opportunity is lost to draw it drag it slog it lynch it here amongst ‘us’ by every politician worth his/ her salty saffron.
Hidden or obvious?
After the obviouses of cricket and academia come the arts, where our King @ShahrukhKhan reigns supreme over their every Khan, @FawadKhan.
How can their Khan be better than ours?
Never, ever ever.
Let their now oldie Marina Khan come and talk to our Neena Gupta.
Who do you think would marvel among the two?
Team Neena would surely suffice for any goodie good from Pakistan but when Marina laughs us off with those ultra-bright eyes, every Richard, every Imran and every Rhitik worth his salt melts like it has fallen on an ice block.
That is about frozen feelings, on both the sides.
And that Moeen Akhtar (1950)? Which Indian worth his salt sorry saffron has not made faces and laughed his head out at his Loose Talks?
Which of Anwar Maqsood /Zia Mohiyeddin talks have you not taken advantage of?
My grouse is had they not been in Pakistan, would they have become such legends?
Avantages Partiona!
As this rambling of thoughts kind of essay was being put to rest, there comes a lady in green making wavy hand moves on a wedding.
First as a Salty Saffron Indie, let me ask, who the hell dances on a song like this, at a wedding?
It’s a song of mourning, of loss of separation dear Green folks and you dance over our heads? Making a spectacle of our Partition?
My dear Partition; that has given me so many sleepless nights but also lots of fodder to write about, such as this one; and you, make fun of it.
And to top it all our dance diva Madhuri Dixit copies those moves!
Almost seventy years after we all are thrilling and strutting to the same tunes same dance moves.
I remember those lakhs of legs that trucked towards the borders, only to be unitedly shaking again 75 years after by the same music that thrilled us to our bones.
Do any of us miss those lands; both had lost to each other?
AskingforAfriend!
Writing and shaking legs remains the only option.
Avantages Partitiona, I pray I hope, I beseech, should not get closer beyond those hand moves of Oyee Aaisha
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