Omair @omairahmad@mastodon.social

The sea recedes,
taking with it
all those bright things
bobbing happily
on the surface:
joy, hope, life.
It recedes
and recedes
into a yawning abyss
of despair
littered with all the dead hopes
that never made it
to the shore,
that never will,
and then something comes,
a bird maybe,
or the dream of one,
an omen
I cannot name,
and I rise,
the dread wave
is coming,
the tsunami
is on the way,
but I smile.
I have life.
I will fight.
I will die
right,
damned be the sea,
damned be the sky.

Was it too much,
the strain on our heartstrings,
did we exhaust
the little compassion we had,
were our hearts so small
that we could not imagine
that others had a right
to our love as well?
How did we become
these vicious strangers
living in the same house,
full of bitter invective
and bowed under
failed expectations
and willing to lash out
at the most vulnerable amongst us?
When did we decide
to throw them over the side,
from this ship,
forgetting that they were us?

When did we become
a Republic of such little joy
and so much hate?
Yes, I know,
the darkness
was always there,
the broken children
outside our upturned windows,
the hidden lives
suffocating in the shit streams
of our sewers,
the broken bodies
paving our roads,
but when did we decide
that it was okay
to hate the poor?
When did we accept
that the wages of humiliation
were contempt and rage?
When did we turn
to our shadow,
embrace it,
make it our face?
What happened,
my brother, my sister,
to us?

We, the outsiders, love our country the way an abused child loves its family - with the broken possessiveness of one whose place of safety is hurt, with the passion of those that have put their faith in the faithless, with neither choice nor hope, just this vicious love.

Too many of us are outsiders in our own countries.

An old scar itches,
The evil of the knife
Alive
Long after its bearer
Has wended his way.
A monster comes
This way, maybe,
And I am
To be his prey,
Or he, mine.
I stretch, yawn,
Let my hands fall open,
Survey my claws,
Scratch my grizzled hide.
It is a good day for a death,
His or mine.
A good day to fight.

I wrote this a while back. We need to rethink resistance when it comes to enduring states ruled (hopefully for a short while) by immoral forces.

Don't know who needs to read this, but if you are part of the system, you don't necessarily need to buy into it. Nor, if you are outside it, do you need to completely condemn all within.

https://thewire.in/books/detective-chen-series-qiu-xiaolong-review

It's striking that all our diplomatic, economic, and military power is unable to change the discourse in Pakistan, but Pakistani students happily, willfully adopt the language of JNU students in their protests.

We misunderstand "power".

God, there are idiots that believe in supply side economics here.

First block.

"All of them [government measures] are measures on the supply side which give relief to producers, entrepreneurs, corporate houses, real estate and so on. But right now that’s not going to help you pump up demand. You need to put money in the hands of consumers. And mostly poor consumers who immediately spend what they get."
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/amp/entry/recession-economic-slowdown-modi-govt_in_5ddd0725e4b0d50f32968e82/?__twitter_impression=true

"Having exploited the help of liberals and the progressive left in their ascent to power, the Islamists underwent a spectacular change of heart. Those conscientious Islamist intellectuals who had been speaking truth to power suddenly became hucksters of party politics and petty legitimizers of oppressive policies. Turkish Islamism offered the world an ugly Muslim nationalism, a nouveau-riche ethos of conspicuous consumption, and kleptocratic handling of public resources."
https://www.duvarenglish.com/columns/2019/11/26/the-spectacular-fall-of-turkeys-islamist-intellectuals/

Or let me say, the modern feminist movement is.

I have little time for the Eurocentric view that Europe and its European colonies were uniquely feminist.

The intensity with which these values are defended is precisely because they have been newly won (or kind of won).

We are all in this together. Hyping the idea of a "natural superiority" of one culture over another is a fool's game.

"Women were considered uniquely susceptible to a phenomenon called “Bovarysme”—the view that, after Gustave Flaubert’s heroine in his 1856 novel Madame Bovary, books could corrupt a woman and untether them from their traditional roles. Even doctors even weighed in, providing medical explanations of “Bovarysme,” some arguing that since women a “lower brain-weight” than men, they were physically not constituted for intellectual pursuits."

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/18/the-secret-feminist-history-of-shakespeare-company/

We forget how young feminism is.