My 5.3-point plan

By making more space in public discourse for women, we'd have greater diversity, move towards healing use of...

There is no sound more infectious or enchanting than a child’s laughter. When my sons were toddlers, I would tickle them relentlessly. What they needed to say to make me stop was not ‘uncle’ or ‘mercy’ or ‘buss’, but vocabulary pulled from the maelstrom they were born into. So, it was that my children could say ‘parliamentary democracy’ before they could tie their shoelaces.

It started as a game but as they grow, I keep them familiar with the words of the day, like ‘violence’, ‘multiply’, ‘terrorism’, ‘dictatorship’, ‘soil erosion’, ‘secularism’ or ‘water kit’. Language is fluid; I do not wish them to ever be swept away by the powerful current of loaded words so I try to teach them to approach life itself from a solid foundation, a foundation of knowledge, so they can place meaning in context instead of in stone. If, one day, someone says to my children ‘jump’, I want them to ask ‘but why’ and not ‘how high?’

This approach is an inherently risky one. If you arm your child with knowledge, rationality follows, and you are the first person he or she will use it against. Hence, situations like my little one responding to my cooking by ‘going on strike for better eating conditions’, or my older one denying my request to turn his ulta chappal back the right way with ‘just because you’re superstitious doesn’t mean you have to try to make me superstitious too’.

‘Why is she going on about her children,’ you might ask. ‘I have a clever little anecdote about the time my car drove itself to the mechanic but you don’t see me cluttering up column space about it.’ I write about these things now because over the last two weeks, we have seen an unprecedented number of women, with their children in tow, come out on the streets, and funnily enough, you never see them come out in op-ed pages. A lot of columnists write ‘when I was in the army’ or ‘when I was in the foreign service’ or ‘when I was in the MRD’. Nobody ever writes ‘when I was in labour’.

Greater diversity of subject is not the only thing we could gain by making more space in public discourse for women. We’d also move closer to the feminine, compassionate, healing use of language women have perfected through centuries of being caregivers (its counterpoint is Mubashir Lucman’s abusive bombast). We see some of it already — the nuance and tone of Najam Sethi’s Aapas ki baat, in which Sethi Saab and his sidekick talk about the issues of the day with warmth, wit and a cup of tea, is an example of how mature, witty, warm women speak to each other over a cup of tea, honest. Another example? Hina Rabbani Khar’s articulate, dignified, goal-driven performance with Christiane Amanpour the other day. This might seem like the simplification of a complex truth. It is. The truth, as every child knows, is that human beings feel less depressed, insecure and anxious about life when those who seem to influence theirs are calm and focussed rather than loud and aggressive.

We can keep elements of the juvenile though: Tahirul Qadri calling politicians Yazidi, Maulana Fazlur Rehman referring to Tahirul Qadri as Musalmanon ka J Salik, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira saying of Qadri Yeh reformer nahin performer hai, Tahirul Qadri referring to Rehman Malik as Shaitan Malik and Rehman Malik saying that Qadri acts like a ‘semi-pope’ and dresses like a ‘Jewish pastor’. In the new democracy that is Pakistan, we are all toddlers and we can take these utterances as our siyasat/riyasat parents tickling our armpits.

Speaking of the need to champion advocates of the feminine, compassionate, healing use of language, how ironic it is that the Supreme Court has just admitted a petition against Sherry Rehman. For blasphemy.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2013.