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Dear Azeem;
Thank you for your kind words. My interest in 'left'
politics etc is a natural consequence of having been born in my family. I
grew up with the rather painful experience of feeling as if my family were
somehow 'bad' because they were always politically incorrect and in my
teenage years, during the Zia dictatorship this
feeling was especially acute. Now, of course, I am very proud of my family
legacy and connecting and sharing with all of you is my way of
preparing the ground for passing on that family legacy to my children. My
letter will talk about that in a little more detail.
Re: my Punjabi, infact, I grew
up like most urban youth in Pakistan
with a mixture of disdain and wonder at the language of Bulleh
Shah and Baba Farid. Like most middle class
people in Pakistan,
I was also convinced of the post-colonial view that regional languages and
dialects were somehow inferior or corrupted and the language of our
colonizers, English, was 'superior'.
My case was a little more complicated since my
grandmother was from England and till her last breath only spoke
rudimentary Urdu (and never any Punjabi) inspite
of having lived in the sub-continent for more than 60 years! I, therefore,
had some 'divided loyalties'.
I still remember an incident when I was a teenager. My
younger brother and I went with our father shopping for kites for Basant (these were the days before rampant
commercialization had ruined the Basant
festival). After we came out of the kite shop my father (an ethnic
Punjabi) said, rather quietly, "I'm ashamed that the shop keeper
was speaking Punjabi to you and you were answering him in Urdu". I
still remember that exchange.
Infact it was not until I came
to Houston for my medical
training and became fast friends with a Pakistani (interestingly enough,
from Faisalabad!) that I began
speaking Punjabi fluently. Nayyar and I used to
only speak Punjabi with each other (still do), partly as a way to assuage
and lessen our feelings of loneliness. That was when I learnt to speak my
'other mother tongue'. A friend recently asked me if I would consider
writing something in Punjabi. Regretfully, my knowledge of written Punjabi
is very rudimentary but I will make it a priority once I am a little more
proficient in Urdu. Perhaps I will learn to love it the same way I have
learned to love Urdu, thru its beautiful poetry.
Amrita Pritam's haunting 'Aj aakhan Waaris
Shah Noon' is one of my favorite poems and always brings me close to tears.
I think if one is convinced that all men (and women) are
created equal and that it is only an unjust social system that creates
divisions, classes and hatreds, it is very easy to be respectful of
everyone and every point of view. It is not something that comes naturally
or easily to most people but is worth believing in and as intellectuals,
writers, poets and activists, it is our task to
'patiently explain' until people understand the obvious.
Regards,
Ali
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