When somebody wants to sell you something, even if you genuinely want that thing, you are kind of turned off because you detect that there's something in it for the other person.

It's interesting how this phenomenon of reactance carries over so easily to relationships. It feels like people begrudge others for having too eager a desire for them. It makes them feel like there's something in it for the other person. It challenges their sense of autonomy.

 Feeling that they are making a 'free choice' is extremely important to people.

Idea: Don't be swept away by EVERYTHING!

Subject: Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City & Kiara Advani eating sliced apples with peanut butter.

First of all, I love Sarah Jessica Parker. At 58, she can carry any fashion look under the Sun. One of the things I really admire about her is that she never got a nose job despite being the absolute fashion icon in the ruthless entertainment industry. Apart from the strength and self acceptance she represents, she is a joy to watch. I find her extremely elegant, feminine and poised. I love her voice and how she speaks.

 I loved the blingy word of the women in STC, specially because my sister accompanied me on those blissful summer evenings where we sat glued to HBO, watching Carrie (SJP) and her girlfriends.  There is an ease to watching such shows and movies ; the no-brainer aspect of visually pleasing entertainment. Watching Carrie  in every outfit has been a delight.

All this praise being valid, I will now put it to the side.

When i watch such shows, I must remember, I am not SJP or any of her friends, and I am not existing in their universe. It's very evident on the surface that I am not SJP but here I am talking about the internal experience of having desires about her lifestyle. I am talking about being swept away with things you watch, an experience many people will confess to having when they watch shows like Gossip Girl or STC . In most circumstances, when you look at something on screen and say: '' oh I want it'' Or that, '' I think I should have it'', you should first question your inner philosophy.

Recently, I saw a clip in which the bollywood actress Kiara Advani was talking about how her favorite snack is sliced apple with peanut butter.  Her fitness is admirable , and the novel food combination struck me as interesting.Inspired, I tried a whole apple with spoonfuls of peanut butter. It was good indeed. But the difference between me and Kiara Advani is that, she has this snack before an intense workout, wisely positioned between other very healthy, oil free, low carb, portion controlled meals, to maintain a size 2 that looks good on screen. She has a lifestyle suited, and even required for her job and she is sharing glimpses from it. 

On the other hand, I had that apple and peanut butter on top of the fried chicken sandwich from Shake Shack and a whole plate of fish over rice. Of note, I had also had two cups of my new favorite iced matcha latte. And there was no workout on that day! This random inspiration just added clutter and extra calories to my life because her lifestyle is not MY lifestyle. Her job is not mine. Her goal is not mine. As mine is not hers!

 I work 60 plus hours a week and I am a doctor. Mostly I am concerned with staying awake and alert at work. Now I have nothing against being inspired, but that inspiration has to fit into YOUR life plan and YOUR lifestyle. If I admire something about SJP or Kiara Advani, I should be clear and precise about that and then begin to incorporate what that is, into my life in a realistic manner instead of just bringing random clutter in my life, either in the form of desires or material things. Why? Because that distracts me from MY life story.

The way social media and entertainment works is that you, the common man, are exposed to such attractive faces doing doing attractive and glamorous things at all times. Even if you are scrolling mindlessly, or you are watching something for fun, you begin wanting things that may not be for you and they add unnecessary clutter to your life if you have not set up filters for yourself. Such sporadic pursuits have never made ME a happier person at least.

The vibe I dig about any of the people I see on TV, the look I admire, is not a one-off instance. It involves a lot of work and commitment on their part. Their whole life revolves around curating that image and looking that good and being that fit. It's a whole job that requires hardwork.

Having a bucketload of abandoned goals in my basket, I know it serves to have very clear idea about the goal at first and not to be easily distracted by EVERYTHING charming and flashy.

Even if its something as good as SJP killing this combination of colors.

Just because you are nice, people can start thinking that you have low self esteem.

Today I came across a very interesting story commonly narrated in Spanish language. There is a beach where the water is throwing out star fish on the shore in abundance. The star fish are struggling to get back in, but they are trapped on the land and most of them die trying. A woman on the beach starts throwing the starfish back into the water. One by one, she picks each starfish and throws it with the farthest shot she can take at the water.

The people are observing her, one of them comes up to her and tells her how useless it is. ''No matter how many starfish you throw back into the water, there are so many more which die on the land. It makes no difference.'' He says.

The woman calmly replies, ''to the star fish that i am throwing back in the water, it makes all the difference.''

This story nicely sums up what i have felt so many times in my life. Whatever act of good you do, whatever effort you put in anything, can be perceived as useless by viewing it from another perspective. You want to help people? How many will you be able to help, the system will mostly stay how it is. You buy homeless people hot meals, they still go back and wake up in the reality of being homeless.  And are you looking for meaning in your personal life ? From the vantage point of death, what difference does it make, eventually it will be like you have never existed. 

You will talk about something with passion in front of someone, and people will tell you it doesn't matter in this or that scheme of things. 

With time, you will doubt your  perspective. You will doubt your joys, your passions and your longings, because you think that the people are serving you 'reality checks'.

But stay mindful that the people are also serving you reality checks from their own perspective. And as long as meaning of life and mysteries of consciousness are concerned, there is not one perspective on it that all abide by. Even the people who question you, are not very sure about their perspective. The cynic who mocks your happiness and the will to live, would sacrifice all his accolades to unite with the long lost love of his life. He'll not hear that there is no meaning in it.

So,

To the starfish you throw back in water, it matters.

To the homeless person for whom you bought a hot meal and who was otherwise hurt by every relationship who was supposed to protect him in life, it mattered.

To yourself, when you danced with all the joy in the world, when you talked with the stars of the universe reflecting in your eyes, when you did what made you feel exhilarated just to be alive, when you strived, when you struggled, when you shone, when you lived, when you thrived,

it mattered.

In YOUR scheme of things, it mattered. 

So much beauty is generated in your scheme of things, in your own personal quest for meaning  that one day centuries down the line, someone is looking at the 'The Scream' in a museum, and it gives them courage to scream against the wrong being done to them, or to others. The love you inspire, the lives you inspire, the life you live, will never be without consequence in the perspective of humankind

Sometimes it's simple.

 

I have taken exams for residency training in different countries. Let me draw a comparison between how the entrance exam for residency tested me in Pakistan/UK vs how USMLE tested me.

The standard exam would mostly have a straightforward question: What is the drug of choice for class I Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension ?

The USMLE exam however, would test you in very indirect ways. If they wanted to glean the same information from you as the above question, they would ask it in this way: So and so woman, comes to the ED with so and so symptoms, what is the mechanism of action of the drug that will be the first choice for her most likely diagnosis?  You can see that this kind of a question demands a higher degree of thinking based on substantial connections between different concepts in your mind. 

 As you keep preparing for this complexity for a while, over time during your preparation of USMLE , a new phenomenon emerges. You start to assume that answers can never be simple. In face of a straightforward question with a very obvious answer, you start to look for the hidden loopholes. It turns out that you can actually get these questions wrong. In fact, you will often find this advice on USMLE forums that sometimes the answer IS simple, staring you right in the face and try not to second guess it.

Similarly there is a proverb that goes 'When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras'

But you, dear human, will think how your experiences have TAUGHT and trained you. Your mind works that way. But if you are aware of this propensity, it will help you in entertaining the possibility that some things COULD be simple. 

Nothing in life is straightforward and so many things don't work out. But also, sometimes your anchoring beliefs may make you let go of perfectly good opportunities. 

  Maybe this thing, that you feel really really good about despite your cynicism, is the thing for you? It's the thing that could make you happy?

No kidding.

Indiscriminate kindness.

 

  Negative experiences usually succeed in driving us to register our protest against them. You have bad service at a restaurant, or the car in front of you is too slow, or you hate how a place works, it will usually occur to you to register a complaint or express your frustration.

  Positive experiences usually don't drive you to acknowledge them as ardently. Some of it is how our attention works, and some of it is beyond our control. We can react to accidents but not to accidents prevented.

Furthermore, when someone looks happy or it appears that they are doing well in life, there is a feeling in me that they are already surrounded by positive reinforcement, and they don't need my feedback as much as someone in overt grief does. But that's not true. Sometimes the people who appear to be doing very well are one step away from collapsing into a dungeon of psychological hell and our acknowledgement of the way in which they are valuable, can help them see what they are not seeing. (Have you never lived in a way that everything about you appeared okay but you were broken inside? Almost everyone has)

 I remember every single kind word said to me by anyone in my life. Some of the words came when I was surrounded by pitch-black darkness and they worked as the single ray of light that illuminated what I was not seeing.

  I feel that kindness be indiscriminate. You cannot accurately estimate who doesn't need it. 

Apart from that, just as your attention falls on things which are wrong and which should be rightfully pointed out because that's how change comes, if it falls on the good things and you acknowledge them, they may feel validated to exist and grow. 

Is monogamy natural?

The Oxford dictionary definition of natural:

existing in nature; not made or caused by humans.

   I hear often that Monogamy isn't natural. Yeah. Right. Probably it's not. Because you are exerting so much effort to stay monogamous. Because everybody gets attracted to everybody else all the time.

   But is non monogamy natural ? Everybody is jealous and territorial when it comes to the person they really care about or want in their life. Almost every man and woman would prefer that certain fancies of the person they love are particular to them. (I am talking about a very clear majority here, not the exceptions such as people capable of polyamory).

 I don't know where this desire of having one person to yourself came from. As far as i know, nobody else knows that either. Maybe they tried it in another way in a time when history wasn't recorded and it didn't work. Regardless of its origin on the map of human society, jealousy seems to be a very innate emotion in people, even in the age when no indoctrination has influenced them yet.

It is evident in how a child throws a tantrum if his mother picks up another kid or gives him more attention. So, I strongly doubt that this emotion is merely a curse of the societal hierarchies we have created and the family systems we believe in, although they play a big role. Some societies managed to do away with the traditional concepts of love and two person marriages, and had practices such as collective upbringing of children of different fathers by the entire community. They surely had different ideas about love, life and family because of which they survived instead of descending into hot pools of vengeance and bloodshed. I don't know if jealousy never arose in those set ups or that they made their emotions obedient to the status quo. Such examples exist, but they are few. 

What we do know is that jealousy as an emotion, is as old as the mankind and you find proofs of it everywhere in history. Infact the classic divide between good and evil can be traced back to acts of jealousy in Abrahamic religions. Satan was an angel that turned evil when he felt that others were favored over him by God.

   Then surely, this jealousy is as 'natural' as the indiscriminate physical attraction people feel towards others while being in committed relationships. None is less natural than the other.

    I am not saying what is the right way to go about it and what is or what should be the future of jealousy. Maybe it is a higher point of evolution of human emotions when they do away with feelings like jealousy and maybe it is an ideal to aspire to, because in the end, it IS a negative experience for everyone involved.

   My only point is that as things stand, saying that monogamy is obsolete because everyone gets attracted to everybody, is not a valid enough argument because it is easily countered by the fact of you experiencing jealousy about sharing the person you love. You do want the things to be exclusive. You do want the experience of having one person to yourself.

So what do you do? It's so confusing. Both experiences feel legitimate. There seems to be no definite conclusion.

    The ones who find the strange and elusive specie such as 'the one' , say that they never want anything or anyone else ever again. 

   Rest, just kind of keep wondering , keep getting swayed, keep feeling guilty , keep feeling lonely inside and if they are lucky, they spend their life with someone they can at least cherish an attachment with. In the end, it doesn't sound like a bad deal to them usually.

 But only a few people in life have the gift of certainty about this situation.

 

There is a story about the silly elephant who had a slave mindset and considering himself chained to a post, he never tried to go for a walk or explore the freedom. The chain around his legs was not tied to any post and he was free.

This story is meant to impart a warning against inertia in our daily lives. Sometimes we just assume that something is a particular way without actually testing the limits or trying to know the truth.

However in defence of the elephant, having had a history of knowing that having a chain on your legs means imprisonment and immobility , not testing the assumption everyday is explainable because he is saving his cognitive resource which would be drained if he did the same thing over and over again. In fact learning lessons quickly is a form of intelligence.

 What proverbs, stories or any advice fall short of always, is an attention to the other side of the story. An important question arises here, what is the sweet spot for the elephant where he is curious and proactive enough to test his conditions in case they may have changed, and him exhausting himself doing the same thing over and over.

In life no matter what advice is imparted to us, it is based on the context in which we are suffering. If you are a procrastinator, the advice that applies to you is that don't put until tomorrow what you can do today. If you are a type A personality who gets stressed about doing things as soon as possible,  the warning imparted to you is that haste makes waste. These are both contradictory lessons, and they are not absolute truths as is. I feel that advices and lessons serve to bring us from extreme of one behavior to a reasonable degree of that behavior, and the fact that the other extememe exists as well is important. It must not serve to dilute the effect of self correction, as you may be inclined to think that what is the point of following one advice when completely other advice exists.

The other advice exists for the other extreme. Of all the clichés, that I find true, life is indeed a balancing act between extremes of your behaviors.

The elephant was not stupid, it was just too inert.  The opposite of this would be a neurotic and obsessed elephant yanking his chains all day and not settling for the circumstances.

Like the elephant, we all have to find our sweet spots between extremes of behavior.

Context?

There are times when context is NOT important. At least not immediately so.

 These are the times when borrowing from the context, becomes an act of dismissal for what you are feeling truly heart broken about. And it is not just that, you can have different frames of references, different interpretations of events, different priming that makes you see a same event in a different light from another person.

Doesn't this sound too complicated if not flat out impossible to live with another human being and have your grievances heard and addressed ?

It does, right. 

Add another REAL level of complexity to it.

 CONTEXT MATTERS. it does matter too in many situations.And in some conditions, not accounting for it will be like, really bad and injurious to the relationship. In some situations context will be as relevant as the history of stone henge, before we point and exclaim at the disappointing nature of the rocks.

Then what is the answer? I think it is a difficult task of trying to strike the balance with consideration for the other person while also respecting yourself.  It's a very difficult balance to strike! 

But if two people can have honesty as the guiding light, and if they are sufficiently in love with each other,  and know each other to be reasonably good and trustworthy people, the fruit will beat the effort. 

 One of the many terrible things you can do to a child is to make him a tool for your passive aggressive tactics.  

   It's a lifetime of talking to your child in a way that proves a point to your partner. It's bad enough when things are not communicated clearly, it's horrible when a poor child is made a whetstone of never ending arguments and conflicts with your partner. I don't think the psychology of such a child can remain unimpaired. Yet the hypocrisy of the Eastern society is such that they don't bat an eyelid when they scorn the broken family statistics of the West, knowing fully well how the 'success statistics' in our society are mostly possible because of the ability and willingness to hide issues under the rug.

 The opposite of a broken family is a happy family. Not a toxic family that stays together.  Please.

When someone says they are guilty, or feeling bad about something, our knee jerk reflex may be to try to relieve them of their trouble by saying that it isn't something to be guilty about, or feel bad about.

It's born out of a good intention on our part, we are trying to direct the course of a human's suffering to it's resolution. But what's to be remembered is that if someone is feeling bad, or guilty, it's because of their internal value system.

Maybe the values are the very thing that  need to be addressed, but any feeling shared with you is worth more effort than just a dismissal of it. Lets suppose a person is eating a chocolate doughnut in front of you and exclaims that they are feeling absolutely guilty about eating it after maintaing a healthy diet for three days. Although you are tempted to say ''live a little'',  the relief you are offering is too brisk, requires no effort on your part and possibly not even warranted according to their personal value system.

What you can do instead is share your thoughts on the matter, in a manner which is not of advice, but of true,honest reflection on the matter on your part.​ Or maybe you should just be quiet and say nothing. It's just something to keep in mind.

On preparations before emergencies

I feel, as a nation we are only moved into action by emergencies. We care that new dams must be built when we face electricity shortage for hours on end . We realize we need to save water when we are faced with the very real danger of water shortage in coming times. We remember the ECG machine doesn't work when the patient is having acute chest pain and every moment is critical. We remember there are no medicines in emergency tray when we need them. We remember to fix the plumbing when the bucket doesn't solve the problem of the dripping water. We respond to emergencies. And the thing about emergencies is, once they happen , they take you by a storm in a state of unpreparedness when only struggle for survival remains.
    Leave technological advancement aside, leave the economy aside, leave that 'face saving' in front of the world aside. Pakistan may face a threat to the very existence of its people in the time to come. This is a country failing at every front. We are not 'safe' about the basics yet, water , electricity, health and food resources. These are issues that make difference between life and death of people. It's not about military might or muscle.
   I fear that tere will come a time when consoling ourselves with things like " that's how things are done here" will cease to be of comfort. When the ones who object or raise awareness are shamed with the accusation of bringing disrepute to the country. When we will be the ones standing in line for water. We , the people who wash our cars with running water while countries like Australia have banned it years ago,  where they educate their children about ethical consumption so that my 10 yr old niece schools me on how much water I should use. Ever been unable to even begin to untangle the knots of a mess? That's how I feel about Pakistan.  I don't have many ideas and I just have an apprehension. One day we will regret everything, perhaps all of our national obsessions including sports in the time when we should have been waging a war for our very survival. One day when your own mother is lying on the stretcher , waiting for an ECG , it won't suffice to say ' it wasn't my job"

Pakistan gracefully accepted and owned one of the biggest refugees populations in the world . In many cases they were given citizenship. Yes , laugh about it. " who needs the citizenship of پاکستان" . Ask them, they needed it.
Even when the situation in the refugee camps was far from ideal, even if crimes erupted there with a vengeance, ask the importance of that one piece of paper granting you right to exist without fear of being blown up , ask this from the syrian refugees stranded on no man's land, or ask the souls of the people who lost their lives because the sea with all its ferocity felt safer to them than their homeland; ask them why crossing the sea in a boat and making it to some other place was a more reasonable hope for them than living in their own country? This is where Pakistan once stepped in. Yes , the country which does not have a very coveted citizenship gave it to millions. The country with an impending imbalance between its population and resources opened its doors to those who sought it.
I understand the hurt about Afghanistan's rebuke of Pakistan, perhaps it's a national sentiment for us today .But you ,I or anyone commenting on social media most probably did not open the door to the refugees. We were perhaps getting excited over cricket matches even then too. The right to discredit the noble, to bring disrepute to the good work that our country did , does not belong to us. We do not have the right to service the "burn". This "burn" is delivered to the Afghan cricket fans. Those with no say in their govermnent or cricket team,those studying with us in our universities, those selling us the "lush push lawn" , the most honest vendors on our steets and those on social media who will never respect Pakistan again. This vitroil is always fun in the beginning until it  transforms into a many headed serpent of hate. The relations become toxic. (The matches against India are a testament to that.)
If we become unable to enjoy a game because we are scared of our repute , it is perhaps the time to stop confusing nationalism with being a cricket lover. If you are compelled to call an entire nationality "namak haraam" , it is time for an existential crises to humble you down; to make you reflect that most of us are born, and  we die with the slogans of our group. Our injured pride about something that we were not personally involved in is nothing but that.
Be nice in your speech and if you want to protest, do it gracefully. As gracefully as a "failing state" accepted refugees while the world looked away.

It's not the evil eye, its the fact that joys are usually short lived. Correlating them to an event is a typically human way of making sense of the events.
Our constant state of apprehension has been useful for us as a specie in an evolutionary perspective. At one time the senses of our ancestors had to be at high alert for reasons external to them. Today, anyone equipped with what we consider to be the basic needs of life may testify that as we  start to feel safe , the source of our attention moves from the external to an internal locus . We are quick to celebrate and quicker perhaps, to mourn.The transient state of emotions we feel and the ups and downs that we experience reflect nothing but the true nature of everything that is there : temporariness. Perhaps nothing more should be read into it.
Also, under such circumstances, care might be employed in gloating too soon over a victory,  or celebrating your happiness publicly . Tomorrow as the tide turns, you may be left alone with people who find it hard to believe the account of your misfortune because you had them convinced otherwise. And there are few things worse than proving your misery to win understanding.

Reading about human psychology and how our minds interpret environment and even the statistics presented to us, leads me to believe that we are always primed by the influence we surround ourselves by. It is research based support of the age old wisdom like ; a man is known by the company he keeps., your friends determine your destiny and so on.
This enables me to have an insight about why, despite having the potential i couldn't acheive some of the things i had wanted to.acheive. But more than friends and family, what had influence on me was reading.
Some things we read leave us with a bad after taste, some books help us learn something, some books make us imagine and in doing that , make us more imaginative. Some books may turn our life around. I have read books in all categories. . 
You are reading Elif Shafak and you identify with the solemn protagonist who always has layers to what she says, who exists in a perpetual melancholy, who does not love freely and is very stubborn about her grudges. Now against a backdrop of a compelling story, and under the magic of the beautiful words you may adopt her identity. This can go as far as you embodying the characters you read about. I wouldnt say whether its good or bad. A person has to decide for himself/ herself. I for one, would choose not to read the books that make me dull like that.
Reading Bertrand Russel made me a better person. I learnt what is jealousy, and how self centered we can be while imagining ourselves to be selfless. I learnt that sadness or boredom with life was not necessarily a wiser behavior. I attribute a lot of the good i have ( if i have it) to him.
Reading fantasy , of which Harry Potter books were the first, gave me an imagination, and the ability to exist in a fantastical world on short escapes from reality.
I may not speak on behalf of all readers, but we have to.choose the books we read carefully. All the time spent reading books is still 'spent' somewhere and we may be paying the cost with a potentially amazing future for us.

For a lot of us , there is no growth beyond oh i am so loved, #blessed, i have the best parents,  I have the best man on Earth ( girl calm down) , Feeling loved with 69 others.
That is all fine too except when these people dish out advice for the 'maladjusted ones' , the ones who chose differently or even the ones who ran into misfortune. When the happily married queens of sacrifices advise gullible girls to " change themselves and adapt to circumstances" to be happy. When, just because they have it good, they put the onus of happiness on every woman as well.

The extent to which you can go to blame a woman surprises me , it is one of those real life infinite things.

1) A teenage girl in love? Don't you care about your parents respect ?
    A teenage guy in love ? Everybody does these things at this age. Sudhar jaega. Yehi tou din hain.

2) A girl having an unapproved affair ? You can't marry her. Bad character
A guy going to  prostitutes? Koi nai. After marriage everything settles down. Sab theek hojata hai biwi Samajdaar ho tou.

3) Don't like your husband ? Try to do things with him and for him.
Your husband doesn't like you and occasionally screams at you or insults you in front of others ? Try to assess what ticks him off. Have a conversation

4) Having an affair?  Seriously I Don't respect you at all
Husband having an affair ? Yaar try to please him, dress up for him and look pretty. It's man's nature.

5) girl: can't go out late at night
             Can't always travel alone
             Can't go to some spots alone
             Can't travel alone in most cases
             Can't hire a taxi without informing                 emergency contacts
Par Kya Hua  ? Check your privilege girl! Naan tou pehle milte hain na !!!!! (This is another matter that sometimes  someone ever so sligthly brushes against you while you get that naan and rest of the eyes are gauging the performance of your pectorals) NAAN tou pehle milte hain na. Seat bhi pehle milti hai !!!!! So much privilege.

6) Working lady not being able to manage household chores ? In the end it's the woman who has to do it
Working man ? He came home so late. Usko roti do. Also put his dirty dishes in the sink after he is done kiunke uske tou upper limb ki coarse movements kharab hain.

7) Not having a child ? Everyone is sooo curious. Not trying ? Trying enough ? Yahan bedroom me sab ko ghussna hai. Warna sex is the biggest taboo for a girl her whole life.

8 ) Not having a child ? Get asked about it in every social gathering while the husband enjoys complete immunity.

9) Girl caring about the guy's family ? It is hardly ever enough. Hum tou bahu baray shok se laae thay par ye tou apni marzi se saans leti hai!
Guy brining a tea cake from the local bakery to the girl's family where he sits with everyone like an exalted statue for two hours ? Awww so sweet. He is so caring. ♡

10) Guy going out with his friends : informing
   Girl going out with her friends : asking

11) Husband unable to make it to a friend's gathering: he is such a slave to his wife
Wife unable to make it to official company dinner: husband didn't give permission . Sorry. Majboorian hojati Hain!!

12) After marriage , our son does not even sit with us everyday.  They click their tongues while the daughter in law stands in the doorway asking the husband's mother permission to go to her own fricking home and see her own parents! Irony just shot itself in the head here

13) Husband carrying his own son : look at him. He is always carrying his kids. Hahaha.
Wife spending sleepless nights post pregnancy , with dark circles under eyes, misses the wail of the baby : even husband turns on her and questions her commitment of care and attention

14) Issues with adjustment post marriage : it  happens. The woman is the home maker. Try to involve him in activities.
For the man , all the freedom is gone yaar. It's understandable. He needs space !

15) Man has extramarital affair : it happens. Guys are not satisfied easy you know. ( its the same guy from whom the only big O a woman gets is a clueless gaping mouth) Just try to attract him back. Or another pearl : allow him to make it legal ♡
Woman has extramarital affair : saali randi.  Kartoot ki saza milegi. Mic drop

I have either been in, or known someone who has been in each of these situations. And everybody else I know has too. So papa ki princesses and hubbies ki darlings can stay away in their perfect little bubbles without informing me of their wonderful coping mechanisms. ( which usually involve being a doormat) so,  Thank you very much  .

Aurat March

Daily in the Burn center where i am working, i receive patients who are victims of domestic abuse. In 9 months , there have been more than 20 cases of female patients who were victims of domestic abuse that led to severe burns and in some cases even death. A couple of them had not filed a legal case but expressed their predicament tearfully when i interviewed them as a part of history taking.  There was also one male victim of vitriolage in this time.

Talking to them was an experience that revealed the true essence of their helplessness to me. A generalized version of their stories ( and no two stories are too different from each other ) is that for years women face emotional , physical and sexual abuse at the hands of men who are their guardians ;in most cases their husbands. The last kind of abuse is the hardest and most uncommon for them to call out, because usually any kind of sexual behavior on a man's part is seen as his right by the wife, a supposition further cemented by the feeling that sex is perhaps always supposed to be painful for the woman.

Yet , i am not talking about the grey lines here . i am talking about a man setting his wife on fire because she asked him for money to manage expenses , a man pouring boiling hot water on his wife because she was late to bring him warm water for his bath , a man pulling his wife's hair until they came off in his hands,and we could see baldness in places, not explained by the burn at all. I am talking about acid being thrown on the face of 20 yr old beautiful Naila, which led her to lose both eyes. She became blind in front of our eyes, her cries of despair owing to her maladjustment to her new blindness are still alive in my memory. I have seen a post mortem where an axe had to be extracted from the skull of a girl in her late teens; the axe her brother had killed her with because she loved someone.  I have looked for any signs of remorse in the face of the family but not found any. To say that i have been surprised to the extent of numbness wouldn't be wrong. What was about slogans and demanding equal respect, pay and status , became an internal void ; a hole that ran so deep that anyone who talks about feminism in mocking tones, hurts me instead of offending me now.

Why would it offend me? It is your viewpoint. But i have only sadness for the people who can overlook the realities of the society and mock the struggle for women rights, again pointing out what's right and wrong about women by putting them into boxes. I am not offended but hurt, because it was the same concept, the same entitled thought which is behind your judgement that the women who parade on the streers with bold slogans are 'without shame and honor" that led to qandeel baloch's brother murder her in her sleep. That led to the deaths we couldn't reverse. That led to the lack of justice i took personally. This is the stuff my nights, my nightmares are made of.

Women tolerating abuse because they have nowhere to go, women not getting a divorce despite criminal behavior of their husbands because it is for the woman to compromise in a marriage, according to one of my patients " jo jootian talaq k baad sab se khaani hain, wo banday se kha leti hoon " ( the treatment i would get from everyone after divorce, i would rather get it from one person ) . i have seen women either defying or justifying their existence. I have seen men shameless, i have seen them without a worry, i have seen the ugly concepts of women being their property being openly validated by the society.
.  My question to you, yes the girl who puts up pictures on facebook, can engage in conversations with men, is probably educated, is that how different do you find yourself from the ghairat brigade that led to the deaths of countless women? What is ghairat? Does it even deserve a mention in today's time when we are supposed to believe that a person's life or her choices that do not harm others, are her own property?

Yes, you say men suffer too . But do they , in reality , objectively speaking, suffer anywhere near to that , even a fraction of it ? Check the statistics of rape, harrasment, domestic abuse and any other crime against women. Or simply, ask yourself whether you can go to get yougurt from the nearby shop at 11 pm or do you send your brother ? Do you not instinctively recoil in public places ? Is 20 to 1 proportion not telling you anything at all? Or is this a universally ordained principle that no faction of population might actually be more oppressed than the other ? Is it better to hide the truth behind face saving forced neutral conclusions?( Had it been the case we would never have abolished slavery or racial discrimination in its worst form)

  For the men, You may not agree with these  women on the streets but these women on the streets are people , independent persons , who don't need your agreement just like you don't need theirs when you shout words of abuses at each other involving the women and find it hilarious. When you make sexist jokes and the women on the dinner table look up slyly , when you basically...just exist and do things which are demeaning to them, without knowing it.

Yes, amidst the cries of the burnt women, it is hard to remember how many times i was judged only on the basis of my skin color, how i wasn't given the same credit for the same work as was done by a male colleague , how i was chided into doing the 'appropriate' things, how the responsibility of my family's honour was unfairly thrusted on me too, how my brother returned home late and no one questioned him while i stood in a witness box, how i am always supposed to bring the plates to table still. Yes it is hard to remember these things, this internalized discrimination in people's behavior i have felt with varying intensity at different points in my life..  but these are still problems. A heart attack kills , a snubbed toe hurts. And for goodness sake, women have the right to speak about both. If some zealots among you were on a lookout to fish the stuff they could find controversial so that they can poke fun, ignoring the hundreds of women in all kinds of dresses from hijaab to tops displaying diverse messages , it is YOUR problem.  It is your entertainment. Kiunke aadmi ko ya aurat mujra karte achi lagti hai ya ji huzoori. It is hard to stand a woman who can put you in your place.
(Notallmen)

You don't like what you see ? Back off. Thats all that was always wanted of you in the first place.

Dear Urdu writers.

The sexually liberated , independent and a tad bit crazy girl that you talk about , isn't exalted to the status of a ' mystery '  but instead she becomes so many other things I can not mention here. Seemi (Raja gidh)  in real life is that girl everyone hates for her guts, and according to them, she deserves what she got in life ( she deserved her end as well)  , not to forget her insolence towards her mother , she is the least likeable character I wonder how these people have spent so much time on. The girls who read Russian literature and smoke cigars , and climb into the balconies of strange men are not enticing riddles , they are ...One word. And that is enough.
    What's more in line with how women are is the soppy , emotional girl waiting by the door her husband has slammed shut on her face , the one who does her best to win hearts through her patience after a forced marriage , the one who Is dedicated to household chores and doesn't blink when her husband orders her around , this is more In line with the reality! This is what the writers today are producing. They are smarter than you.
' acchi larkian khamosh rehti hain. Achi Larkian har kisi k paas nahi chali jaatin' Umera Ahmed
' I don't understand the need for equality. Does speaking louder than a man makes a woman powerful ? ' Farhat Ishtiaq
A boy rapes the maid who was sleeping in the corridor because ' wo wahan pe leti kisi jaltay bhujtay diyay ki tarhan usko dawat de rahi thi '. And yes that boy was the hero. Who had forced relationship with his wife as well. And hid the illegitimate child he had. And in the same story , the other hero was a guy who kidnapped a girl and then she had to stay there because wo he uska ghar hai. - from the acclaimed book Ay tair e lahooti 
All these plotlines have been made into incredibly successful, most viewed dramas on humtv.
This is the reality !

So Urdu literature of the past. I find you entirely bizarre. Because you speak of the specie that does not exist. A woman who is not product of the interactions she has had and expectations that have been set , developed between the brackets of religion and societal customs. I find you entirely, dishearteningly bizarre. And when I read Urdu literature I feel as if I am reading something that I am meant to take as a very exotic experience and that in fact has no bearing in reality.  It feels foreign, ...It pains me to say because i love urdu and the expression is beautiful but I find it......... pretentious. And I wish to heaven that I didn't.

We are defensive about our opinions as if ideas are our properties. We stick to labels as if there are some proven to be better than others. I am quite sick of the endless wars of opinions where people debate different interpretations of the same thing  instead of discussing evidence based objective realities and learning along the way.  Capitalists throw shade at Communists and similarly communists are just as extreme in their opinions.  Similarly, the new Pakistan is not a new phenomeon. It's created on every discussion table, every tea time between brooding men and among facebook warriors. I get the impression that everybody thinks that all the things will be sorted out if the next person does the job honestly,worshiping a utopia in their minds, while slacking away in their personal/ professional life. Perhaps it could be said that I have spent a lot of MY life doing the exact thing but I solemnly declare that it didn't benefit me or anything in any way possible and I realized it after spending time which could have been put to much better use.  Criticism just makes you lazy and I don't want to engage in a discourse which keeps revolving around the conflict of opinions and the ego of its participants, anymore.

Resentment is the chief source of validation for your grief in life. There's nothing like deciding that others are doing their job dishonestly to ease your conscience. At every dinner table, under every political debate , there are people discussing corruption and condemning the corrupt people. I want to call attention to the fact that not everyone has to rob the country of millions of pounds for it to count as a corruption. Everyone will do corruption in his sphere of influence. A clerk who accepts bribes cannot embezzle at the level of a prime minister , a doctor who doesn't tend to his patients , the government officers who reach their work place late are all doing corruption at some level. My corruption as a doctor would be to be neglectful of my patients' well being , it would be me arriving late and leaving sooner , taking breaks that compromise the patient care, recommending patients to my private practice when they seek my services in government set up. As a professor and in charge of ward, my corruption will be not to try and set the affairs of the ward right , to come each day for a quick round and a cup of tea and leave for things i am held accountable for , as a government officer my corruption is also making the people wait , people who come from all over the country to get something done , my corruption is to allow this loss of efficiency. If I can manage100 patients in 6 hours, and I see 80 in 4 hours , it is my corruption. If I can look over 8 affairs in 8 hours instead of 6 in 6 , specially in a country where so much work needs to be done , it's my corruption as a government officer.
. To not do my duty properly, to find excuses , to put my rights first before all my responsibilities and becoming blind to all these exercises , it's my corruption. This is the reason I have begun to hate discussion on politics because they are stale and they reek of hypocrisy.  People's lack of ability for self analysis stops me dead in my tracks. All around me are people content with blaming others for all of their shortcomings while neglecting their own role ( or lack thereof ) in the bigger picture