Friday will be Bakra Eid, that sacred time in the Islamic calendar, when we celebrate the sacrifice Ibrahim was willing to make for Allah.
Friday will be Bakra Eid, that sacred time in the Islamic calendar, when we celebrate the sacrifice Ibrahim was willing to make for Allah by doing our best to avoid making any meaningful sacrifice of our own.
Animals are slaughtered yes, and meat is distributed, but unless you do the hygienic thing and donate money to the Eidhi foundation — which sacrifices and distributes for you — offal litters the street, hide collection becomes a political issue and the choicest cuts go to wealthy neighbours and relatives rather than to people for whom they might actually be a rarity. I over generalise I know, but then I am Pakistani.
A friend and I have decided to celebrate the holiday season this year by having a small gathering tomorrow, where we plan to fete the spirit of Eid, Christmas, Jinnah’s Birthday etc over ping pong, poker and any other games that might tickle our fancy at that particular moment in time. As a concession to the non-Muslims who will be attending, we have decided to make punch, and hope the aforementioned non-Muslims will be able to break through the human chain that could conceivably form around the bowl and catch a sip of it.
I am writing about this the day before as I hope to not remember any of what happened the morning after.
The only other thing of note happening in my life currently is that I attended my first ever writers group. I have never been part of any writers circle/workshop/programme/coven, ostensibly because I am a self possessed loner who does not feel she would benefit from other people’s feedback/insight/approval but really because my grammar is terrible and people are sure to point and laugh when I e-mail them my feedback.
There were seven of us around a table. Five women and two men. Two fiction writers, one playwright, and four aspiring/accomplished screenwriters. Why does nearly everyone who can string a sentence together or knock around a story ball or two want to write for film or TV now? Is it the same in India? If writing for the page as opposed to the stage or the screen gets any more ‘non sexy’, for some of us (you know who you are) it will be ‘game over’. Our sensuality is best expressed in verse or prose.
Deprived of an individual platform for it will we be in danger of premature aunty/unclehood, hopped up on interminable cups of coffee, pretending to like our kids, and trying not to stare too hard at any attractive waiters in our immediate vicinity. Cabaret line or individual lap dances, it’s not the question of to be or not to be but what to be that threatens to consume.
(Shandana Minhas is a Karachi-based writer. Her first novel is Tunnel Vision)
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