Main Muta'assir Hain... and You'd be Impressed Too!

Firstly, Imamat Day Khushiali Mubarak! And what an amazing experience of this Ismaili 'high holiday' I had here today in Karachi! I woke up early / late this morning (you know, the usual eyes open around 6 a.m. then falling back asleep in about an hour or so, then waking up again around 9... this jet lag, seriously!) and ate a very Karachi-special kind of breakfast at the main AKU cafeteria: halva-puri... except they were out of halva (which is like a very sweet, buttery, mushy... I can't even explain it), so I had puri with a very delicious chickpea curry thing... greasy, but delicious. Apparently this is for breakfast every weekend (both days!), so I'll either try to get myself out of bed a bit earlier, in time to try the halva tomorrow, or I guess I'll have to wait for another weekend...

I made a friend over breakfast -my dorm neighbour actually, this very sweet Ismaili girl from Hunza (Northern Areas), who just finished her Bachelor's degree in computer engineering and who's now working at AKU in some capacity... after breakfast she came over and we got to know each other a bit better -it was really nice. Then, I had my room cleaned. Like you call the front desk and the cleaning lady comes and washes the bathroom, sweeps and mops the floors and dusts all the surfaces... obviously university employees, but it's still kind of weird... in fact I was so weirded out by how acutely I felt the 'class differential' that I completely forgot to offer her a glass of water, or some of my 'Fruit to Go' or something... man those women work so hard, and most of the residents don't even really talk to them. One of my friends here was saying something about how most of the cleaning people in Pakistan are Hindus, and in the wealthy areas, there are a lot of rich families who don't even feed them or anything when their staff is on duty... which to me just seems particularly un-Muslim... I guess India's not the only one that still maintains a caste system... sigh.

Anyway, then, I napped... for 4 hours! And then showered and got ready for khane -we went to Metroville Jamatkhana for Khushiali and that was an absolutely wonderful, moving experience. Most of the Jamat (Ismaili congregation) there is from the Northern Areas and Afghanistan and they live in the 'colonies' (huge apartment building complexes with dark alleys in between -to be quite frank, I believe the people living in this area are all pretty low-income, uneducated, but warm and sweet, at least from what I saw... but apparently they're all Ismailis who live there... about 20,000 of them!). The Jamatkhana itself has pretty tight security, with Ismaili guards standing on the roof of the building, strolling about the gates, as well as in the apartment building balconies, and they check all bags when you enter (I was told last July 11 there was a bomb scare at this khane... I know, I know... but I really didn't know this until afterwards, I swear...)


Anyway, inside, there are 3 floors of khane -we were ushered onto the third floor, which was basically all children, young mothers, children looking after their baby siblings and a handful of elderly volunteers (but most of the volunteers were even these young 4-10 year-old children -the cutest and most beautiful kids I've seen, really).

Metroville Jamatkhana, Karachi (exterior)

And again, during the services, my eyes were wet all over again... I don't know what it is about khane here, but for whatever reason I keep feeling quite moved -Metroville khane though, I loved, absolutely loved. Humble people, but so much heart... the building was like one big heart, and the singing and Du'a was just like love on your ears. Of course, being the big day that it was, and with all the leadership-changeover announcements, the ceremony was looooong (though probably not as long as back home, to be honest) and so in the heat, and most of the people on our floor being young children, or women minding too many young children (huge families I tell you, huge!), I wasn't at all surprised or bothered by the increasing noise-level, restlessness and roudiness, especially towards the end. Some of the people with whom I had gone were though, and I don't know, I just couldn't sympathize with them at all on this one. Their basic argument was that regardless of socioeconomic status, or cultural background, "khane is khane" and thus being quiet is not negotiable out of respect for the sanctity of the ceremonies. And some of them had actually been to khane in the Northern Areas and said that there was pin-drop silence in the congregation during the ceremonies there.

But here's the thing: no one khane is like any other khane, no one murid is like any other murid, and there is no one way to show one's love for God and this Earth, no one manifestation even of respect. Pluralism is one of the tenets of our faith as Ismailis. Now think outside the box okay -pluralism is not limited to just different expressions of prayer or song or rituals... it's so much more than that right. I'm not saying that being noisy during services is a cultural thing -it's not cultural. But are the prayers of a roudy congregation any less likey to be heard or accepted from up above? Listen, many of these people, who have roots in Afghanistan or Tajikistan, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, for generations, never received zahiri deedar (that is, having an opportunity to be in the physical presence of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismailis, which so many Ismailis, especially those with East African roots, and those who live in First-World countries, have been fortunate enough to have multiple times in their life -I've had that over 5 times already!), until so recently.

And yet, their faith was so strong... imagine following the spiritual guidance of a leader that you have never seen, that your parents have never seen, that your grandparents have never seen, in a part of the world that was completely isolated from the rest of the world technologically and financially for such a long time... wouldn't most people in that situation start to doubt that such a leader even existed? So really, who are we to judge just because there's a little noise in the prayer hall while some boring guy reads out a list of a zillion names that mean nothing to you at the personal, spiritual level? Just sitting there with these people, with this history, as a people, I felt so moved -like I had something to learn from them that could not even be taught, and it was just a feeling okay. Calling them uncivilized is just unfair and ignorant on our part, and judgmental above all else, which is not our place, not at all.

Anyway, after services, and a quick 'tour' of the colonies (Hunza and Gulzar-e-Rahim colonies), the 6 of us who had come together from AKU, hopped into a couple of taxis (an interesting experience of madness really, foul smells of pollution, petrol, body odours, frying food and spices, and dust, all in the crazy bumper-to-bumper city traffic at around 9:30 p.m.) to a local 'dive' near Millennium Mall. The Sikh kebab was delicious, as was the naan (and so far, my stomach seems to be holding out well, shukar), the chicken tikka a bit less impressive... but the chicken that was BBQ-ed Lahore-style was also pretty tasty (a nice lime-y spiced kind of zing, if you can imagine that)... this was followed by unsuccessful negotiations with the cab drivers to take us back to AKU for under 100 rupees (cheapos I know, but hey, if you come here, you gotta go local... and doesn't 'a hundred' of anything just sound like too much? even if it's really just $1.50 for 4 people... what would cost us a good $30-40 back home?)... so we paid the 100, and made it back safe and sound, showered, and now here I am writing to you about it!

Anyway, it's quite late and I have to be up early tomorrow (relatively-speaking)... so with that, I bid you all, Khuda Hafiz.