Daily Times

When we were young — I am speaking early 1990s here — we used to have a mohalla (community) cricket team. Yes, I know anyone raised in Karachi has been part of one at some point in life. Ours was a bit different though because although we played well as unit, at least six out of 11 wanted to be captain. At that time we needed permission from area councillors to play in grounds and normally whoever got the permission was declared captain for that match.

Soon, however, rifts within us grew and it went from who got permission to who got equipment to in whose car we were going to the ground. Until it came to a point when we had to, as friends, sit down and decide who was going to be our captain. As we talked about it, we came to realise that there was no way we could select one individual without angering others. Thus we came up with a system. For the next three matches, the 11th man would be captain and we would keep the score of the contenders. What they scored, how they bowled, how many catches they took, all of this was recorded in the captain’s copy, which decided, once the matches were over, who was the best among us all to lead us for the next 10 matches. After which the system would start again so that anyone could get a chance to lead as long as they performed.

The 1990s faded away so did our childhood. Some of us moved to different parts of Karachi, some of us went abroad and never came back and some of us just got busy in our own respective lives to keep the friendship alive. When I got back from college abroad at the end of the 1990s, I found the group fractured to the core and not willing to even sit together for a dinner. The main reason for this dawned on me after a few months of fruitless attempts to bring them all together that we had stopped talking to one another.

To me, Pakistan today represents a picture not very different from this group of friends. It is fractured, there is a cold war going on among the different ideologies and social strata that came together to make it a reality and it has no captain. There is, however, a group of individuals who are trying their best to get us all to start conversing with one another again.

The Citizens Archive of Pakistan is known to many in Karachi as a collective, which wants to make a difference. In the past they have come up with many ideas like their school outreach programme, the now quite well known Shanakht Festival which highlights the work of budding and established artists in the fields of photography, painting, film and even graffiti, etc. Dialogue with Pakistan is another one. It is basically an effort to try to channel all the negative energy around us through the medium of discussion (live calls, blogs, interviews), via workshops, and discover solutions to resolve conflicts within and surrounding us.

Most of this discussion is focused on violence and the war that affects us all, with the body count going up day after day and more than 34,000 Pakistanis dead since the start of this now global conflict. The consensus is that we cannot sit still and let ourselves become numb. We are and have been paying more than our pound of flesh in the ensuing violence of this campaign and somehow, somewhere we have to find a solution to all this. Besides the war on terror, we have a multitude of problems from ethnic to racial to domestic violence and the only way out is to sit together and talk it out.

A lot of people from different fields have already come together for the ‘Dialogue with Pakistan’, be it Siwat Rizvi viewing the world through her camera lens or Salman Hassan speaking out against torture in everyday life through the new media. The discussion has begun. The only way to make it more vibrant and meaningful is for all of us to chip in with our voices. Too long have the people of Pakistan looked the other way and stayed mum. We must speak now or watch what is ours fade away into oblivion.

The writer is a blogger from Karachi. He can be reached at faiskap666@gmail.com