Qandeel, the rockstar!

Pakistanis harboured so much hatred for Qandeel Baloch. In fact, they loved hating her. She was a soft and convenient target for potshots. That is the problem when you’re not a conformist: you get battered for swimming against the tide.

In India, there are scores of ambitious and uninhibited girls who yearn for fame and fortune. They know how the cookie crumbles in showbiz. They’re no different from Qandeel. The snooty, the arm-chair critics and the pseudo-elites may have a loud laugh at the expense of these chicas, but I assure you that none would revel in the death of the latter. Misogyny has no place in a civilised society.

The brutality with which Qandeel was drugged and strangled by her brother is as horrifying as the celebration of her murder by a significant number of Pakistanis. Her cold-blooded end is a sexist tragedy representing everything that is wrong with Pakistan: sheltering hate-mongering clerics and murderers but turning ridiculously moralistic about a woman who makes and breaks her own rules. Regardless of what Qandeel did or was, she didn’t deserve to die like this.

Men like her brother Wasim are victims of regressive and misguided notions of ‘honour’ in a patriarchal society. Women defending her murder, outraged by her immodesty, don’t realise that the hypocritical honour brigade will come after them one day. These are the same women who turn a blind eye to their partners’ infidelity and quietly suffer ferocious domestic abuse, while wearing a happy mask in the world outside their smelly, claustrophobic bedrooms.

Most women like Qandeel in Pakistan’s so-called ‘glamour’ industry have a murky and tragic past — they’ve been married early and have suffered from failed matrimony or have been forced to prostitute themselves to support their siblings and ageing folks at home, or both. Giving up is not an option for them. They must pursue their career at any cost and do whatever it takes to bring a pay-cheque home. She was no different. I read that she started off as a bus hostess. There must have been valid reasons for Fauzia Azeem to become Qandeel Baloch. She set herself apart by being provocative and unabashed about her desire to be a screen siren. By her own admission, Sunny Leone was one of her role models. She loved the way she was — an open-minded girl who lived life on her own terms. People wanted to shut her up because she reminded them of who and what they were behind closed doors. She gave them a mirror of their true selves while no one was watching. She pushed the boundaries of what was ‘acceptable’ and paid the price of defying the archaic norms of a society ridden with alarming double standards and hypocrisy. Eventually, she was buried in Dera Ghazi Khan, a small town — unwept, un-honoured, unsung. No one of repute bothered to attend her funeral. Ironically, she got revered by many only posthumously.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Oscar-winning documentary should have been a trigger for the Sharif government to pass the anti-honour killing bill. How many more Qandeels must die for leading a life of their choice, before the inert government springs to action? How many more Wasims will roam scot free feeling ‘honourable’, because of feeble legislation? How many more lecherous clerics and self-righteous morons will continue passing judgments about ‘beghairat’ women? Why should a woman’s life be extinguished at the altar of a man’s honour? If a woman’s act of choosing a life that fascinates her can bring disrepute to a family, what would a man’s act of committing murder achieve for the family? These questions should prick Pakistan’s conscience. Alas, they will have no answers.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2016.

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