SMD – Serious Mental Disorder

MAY 2003 - It is no exaggeration to say that the men folk in Pakistan are disgustingly obsessed with sex. The bane of their lives seem to be women who apparently have enormous powers to treat them as putty and do with them whatever they like. The men, rich or poor, powerful or not, well placed or ordinary people are simply unable to resist the smallest temptation. Like moths to a flame, they are driven to distraction by the mere sight of a woman’s hand, ankle or face. What have they done to deserve this exalted status is a question that many women in Pakistan frequently ask themselves. They have no answers, so their tribulations continue.

Into this cauldron, throw in a heady mixture of obscenity, lewdness, depravity and the like and you have the makings of a lethal cocktail. Fresh on the heels of the nationwide campaign of blackening faces of female models on billboards – a more revolting action one cannot conceive, now comes bad news from the English Literature Department at the Punjab University, Lahore. Visited by a lady ‘general,’ and also a senior teacher of Literature in Rawalpindi and who has the royal ear of our first lady, the Literature Department has been rocked by a series of explosions. The lady’s sensibilities have been deeply offended by obscene and filthy language that is running wild through the text books prescribed at the universities, undoubtedly corrupting entire generations of young, impressionable minds. The Punjab University, more than willing to accommodate the views of the VIP, have found in one Dr. Arif, a language expert, a willing crusader for the forces of truth and light. In a prepared summary, the good doctor has felled the work of Sean O’Casey, Edmond See, Paul Scott, Earnest Hemingway, Thomas Hardy, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Donne and Henry Fielding – and he has just got going. Now, the university led by its Vice (?!!) Chancellor and the Registrar, have vowed to obliterate this vile body of work, which has obviously already devastated many hundreds and lured them to the ways of Satan.

What these gentlemen find obscene is in itself obscene, but that’s another matter. The point is that if you are driven by an obsession to spot obscenity or vulgarity, you will find it in profuse quantities wherever you look. ‘The Rape of the Lock’ for instance is an obscene poem because – yes you guessed it, the word ‘rape’ appears in the title of the poem, lord have mercy on our blighted souls. In a Sean O’Casey play, the line, ‘When the song ended, Darry cocks his ear and listens.’ The offending word here is cocks. Those who have gone beyond a, b, c will understand that to ‘cock an ear’ is not a reference to that unfortunate part of our anatomy, but merely alludes to listening attentively. Who can explain this to Dr. Arif who scoured a degree out of a UK university? Perhaps burning that offending university would not be a bad idea. Vikram Seth’s poem must be banned, not because it is obscene but because a character in the author’s epic novel, ‘A suitable boy’ dares to state that Nehru was a greater leader than Jinnah. Thus, Seth is an anti-Islam, anti-Pakistan element and his work must be banned. Hemingway gets 15 words in all to sum him up. The good doctor says about ‘the sun also rises’ that ‘all characters sexually astray: men homosexuals, females lesbians/promiscuous; Brett Ashley nymphomaniac and so on.’ So on indeed. Both the crusading lady and the twisted doctor need to be examined by a panel of doctors. The first lady should have shown some restraint and verified the perceptions of her friend before hoisting her on the sagging shoulders of the university. As for Dr. Arif, well I don’t wish to make obscene suggestions.

What is or is not obscene is a subject as old as the hills. If one is to go by the peculiar yardstick (a dirty word in itself surely) employed here, we should simply ban the English and Urdu dictionaries and burn all the confiscated copies, because both contain obscene words. We might as well ban cultivation of rapeseed if Pope’s poem is obscene because if we don’t, some youngster is going to read about it and go off the deep end. Words like finger, cream, sleep, up, down, round, large, thick, hairy, slit, hole, laid, screw, suck and hundreds and hundreds more should simply be deleted because they can all have very steamy meanings and can easily lead the innocents to perpetual doom. If people are going to adopt the mindset that seeks to find obscenity we will have no choice but to ban bananas, oranges, watermelons, grape fruits and other fruits because their shapes can cause havoc in our minds. Vegetables like cucumbers, pumpkins, ladyfingers, bitter gourd will have to be banned since the unsuspecting minds will fall easy victims to their nefarious ways. The best thing to do would be to ban all language since it is the bastion of evil and contains words that destroy the very soul of the people. And we will have to remove car headlights and ask drivers to drive without them because as Dr. Arif will vouch, the lights are round and can mean anything. Gearshifts will have to be re-designed completely and if that is not possible, perhaps cars should be banned outright. The sight of a silencer from the rear end, I confess has often given me the shakes. Books such as Gray’s Anatomy, a thinly veiled porno collection of lewd nudes are a slur on our noble souls. It must be burnt.

I think that if we can put some of these disinfectant reforms into place, we can sanitize the country in no time. This will soothe the tortured souls of people who are haunted by obscenity wherever they go. It is likely that Mr. Jamali will have to be sacrificed as well for reasons we all understand, but then no sacrifice is great enough when cleansing the nation’s soul is the objective. Someone once said that if you get involved in an argument with an idiot, you end up on the same wavelength as the idiot – please forgive the use of the word ‘length’; I know it is an evil word but it just came out – oh so sorry I used the word ‘came’ and ‘out’ is bad because it is the opposite of ‘in’ and that’s a dirty word.

Somehow this obscenity business rears its head every now and then, more so since Zia ul Haq made pleasure and happiness the ultimate sins in life. His eleven soul-killing years warped an entire generation and brought to life the demon that now devours our society, fragmented and twisted as it is. There is far too much preoccupation with what infringes morality and endangers our fragile sense of piety. It doesn’t take too much intelligence to know that piety is not worn on the sleeve of your shirt, that those whose minds are not cesspools of filth, fear nothing since they have abiding faith and believe their convictions. It is the hypocrites – a tribe whose ranks swell by the day, who are obsessed and whose vision of things is flawed and dangerous. We are all faced by choices every day. The right thinking people make their choices according to what they believe is right. Sure, there is obscenity but what defines it, is highly questionable. Those who call up satellite operators at midnight and complain that they are being made to watch objectionable programmes, fool only themselves. If the males of the country – and nationwide wall chalkings inform us they are all suffering from the most horrible sexual aberrations -cannot look at the other 50% that make Pakistan without the most lewd thoughts, we need divine intervention. The President should put an end to this nonsense without further delay.

As for those who find weird meanings in some of the greatest literature known to man, one can only feel sorry that this is their worldview. They need serious help. Amazing that with so many problems facing us crying for attention, all we can think about is sex and dirty words.