In Pakistan, hope is often not an easy thing to find. Yet, it is within so many ordinary moments that the individual is allowed to feel like they are more than the tragedy around them, that the pain and hurt in the world is not all there is. At present, we find that ordinary joy can complete the no-less-than-ordinary feat of re-enchanting the world in which we live. Through the art and genius of Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal, we find a way of being that allows us to keep moving, in spite of the tragedy, despite the pain.
Music, poetry, drama and art are key in preserving heritage for subcultures and entire ways of being, offering us a window into a world where alternatives can exist, where material reality is not necessarily a shackle from which the individual can never escape. Sufi lore and music push this even further: the boundaries of reality are stretched by questions of what really matters, of what actions constitute good and evil, and of time itself. As Naseebo Lal and Abida Parveen ask us; “what will we have left, if we have all our joys and dreams come true now?”— they overturn the very logic of a capitalistic and deeply suffering world. To be content in not having it all, to feel complete in spite of incompleteness through the act of movement (‘jhoom’-na, with all of its Sufi undertones of losing yourself in the remembrance of God) is a revolutionary ethic — upholding a wholly different way of being and interacting in the world, with lesser despair and covetousness, but still plenty of movement. There is much that we can learn from this ethic.
Scholars of social and urban development world-over are increasingly recognising that previous developmental models, even if they lead to growth in the short term, are unsustainable and not worth recreating in currently developing economies. As we attempt to erect building after building with little regard to sustainability, environmental impact, and any thought to where any of this is taking us, we risk running our neighborhoods, and planet, to their end. If the smog crisis in Lahore tells us anything, it is that unregulated development will lead to life-threatening harm. In our quest to build more without really understanding where we are now, and how we must, at the political and community level, re-educate ourselves about green, environmentally-sustainable development with some end in sight — we risk losing actual human lives to our unending, but natural, need for more.
To quote the greats, “Dhuppan de naal larr-larr ke ve labhiyan apniyan chaavaan” — i.e. I fight and fight with the light, just to get some shade — an apt metaphor for the unceasing human struggle to establish ever greater dominion over the very land that sustains it. Right now, we have the opportunity to course-correct. To strive for the kind of ethic in social and urban development, in education policy and actual schools, everywhere — to ask questions, like great art teaches us to. Can we find ways to progress that allow us to keep moving forward, without further pushing us into future incompleteness, further tragedy and unrelenting pain? From Japan to Germany, urban planners, theorists, and many more young people are saying yes. Not only can we course-correct, but we must before it is too late for all of us. With mounting pressures on the planet’s resources, we cannot afford to live by the ethic of never being satisfied enough. We cannot double down on modes of development employed by the industrialised West decades ago, especially in places where we can see that these have not necessarily led to greater equality. Our policies and underlying ways of actually living in the world need to change. Leaning on the wisdom of what feels too much like a bygone era, I turn to Abida and Naseebo for advice. I hear them, and seek to keep moving, to keep imagining a world where we can live without blindly wanting more.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 8th, 2022.
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