Breaking News

The Story of Toilet

 'Does your child use Urdu commode?'

Ah, time goes back


and forth. Did you know that the feet of time can be reversed like witches, we also thought for the first time.


The matter is somewhat old. A story of less than half a century, now you will not be able to guess our age. It is matriculation time. After enrolling with honors, he got admission to a top college. Our feet were not touching the ground, our first successful step toward the destination of becoming a doctor. Lahore Best College Hundred girls worthy of all good schools gathered, all proud of themselves. But there was something else that surprised us. I don't know what it was, but there were hundreds of faces and as many colors.

Laughter is more on some faces and fear is suppressed on some faces. Some have faith in touching the sky and some are ready to sink into the ground. Some of the swashbucklers became cheerful all the time, and some of the shy ones became ashamed of themselves. The intentions of conquering the world are on the faces of some, while some are already defeated. Some were proud, some were nervous, some were getting off long cars, some were walking and some were hanging from the foot of the bus. Some of them spoke English and some of them kept saying sorry, sorry, thank you, thank you.

She was the inhabitant of two worlds. One world is indigenous and the other is provincial. One is proud of his class while the other feels inferior. One was of power and rule and the other of subjugation and both had separate identities. In one country, two worlds and the creatures living in them were united in one wall, where everything was different from each other, even the language, i.e. English medium and Urdu medium.

The English medium girls, with crooked faces, raised their heads and spoke loudly to each other in English, chattering loudly, telling English jokes, and giving and taking Mills and Boone novels to each other. They didn't see the silent and quiet girls sitting around, maybe they didn't even want to see. Befriending the Urdu medium and including him in his group, no one even asked him who you are and what you are selling.


The Urdu medium was quietly sidetracked by their English knowledge. What do you say? What do you ask? What do you say? What language did they speak, they didn't know English. It was not forgivable to slip into English colloquialism.

English medium groups separate, friends of their own, teachers' approval, approval of the entire college. Urdu medium is less in number and even less in attention.




You rarely speak in class, how do you ask questions, how do you answer them? How to spread your laughter by speaking the wrong English, so you know peace only in silence. Even during the break, she walks away from the English medium, back and forth in the cafeteria.

The dress of both groups would also tell from a distance who is from where? Everyone was in uniform, but still, the difference was visible. One of the English mediums would have had a Diana cut haircut in one's steps, lip gloss on the lips, and clothes, and shoes expensive. English magazine in hand, walkman hanging around the neck, English movie, and song talk and on the other hand Urdu medium plain washed face, long braid, normal sa halia, no English song sheet

 nor English magazines, general knowledge t Limited to Urdu dramas and Urdu magazines on TV.

While coming and going in the verandahs and corridors, the eyes of the Urdu medium stealthily see the movements of the English mediums on their chests, waist, and hips in some stylish shirts. I wonder why I started seeing someone like me.

During the holidays, this difference becomes even more obvious. English mediums would sit in the vehicle parked at the gate with the same short V-shaped dupatta, while Urdu mediums would take out a chadar from the bag, cover it and sit on the Suzuki van or brother's motorcycle parked outside. During the Zia era, when the chador became compulsory for everyone, then the English mediums also took out a chador from the bag and put it on their shoulders as the watchman was the keeper of the chador.


We watched all this with great interest. Some are surprised, some are worried, and we are neither three nor thirteen. This college was started from our school so it was not as high as the English medium and not as poor as the Urdu medium. The same was the case with us, we were neither from English medium nor from Urdu medium.



The confidence gained from extra-curricular activities, worldly stakes by reading extra-curricular books, father's extraordinary love and sense of importance, mother's extraordinary caring effect, our art of correcting things, and personal worth. Pride and the skill of not being overwhelmed, why should we suppress anyone?


But despite all this, there was one shortcoming and that was that she did not know how to speak English. Yes, everyone understood. Come on, how difficult is this, you will learn it too, it is the language. Why should I be ashamed of not knowing English, when people do not consider reading or writing Urdu as a defect.

Take it, sir, our friends were not admitted to science so we had to do something. An English medium who made a friend, when asked and told that they had come from the school, was surprised to get the reply 'Well, I don't think so'.


Over the coming years, we heard the phrase 'Acha, lagta to nahi' again and again and we laughed every time. But once we had to laugh when a professor from Pakistan while attending a conference in England saw us ordering coke at dinner time and innocently said 'Well, I don't think so'. Then we also had to say yes, but we don't either.

Even teachers who are very stingy in spending their energy on Urdu medium. 5 out of 50 Why bother with Urdu medium? Are you an English medium speaking fluent English ready to answer any question. One is difficult to understand Urdu medium, second how to ask questions? If asked in Urdu, everyone including the teacher will laugh, they don't know how to ask questions in English. The result was that all the girls who got into FSC with the best marks in matric could not make it to medical college, except one. Guess who she was?


Reached the medical college, same thing happened there. English medium one to one fast Tarar and Urdu medium aka Pando. Hearing this word, we were curious to find out why Urdu medium is called Pandu.

It is revealed that 'Pendo' is a metaphor for the class system. Upper class privileged, cultured, high in maintenance. Urdu medium low-income class, how to carry the load of Tam Jham, weak in keeping it, when there is nothing in the pocket, from where to set colorful traps in the caste, so got the title of Pando.


It was the oppression of a class system that was underpinned by the colonial era. After independence, the memory of the white skin, speaking their language, and living with the same sense of pride and superiority were the native Englishmen and all those who had their roots in the soil, dressed natively, and spoke the language of their peers, were the lower class.

I don't know what or was our fate that we remained children even there with the title of Pando. The language was clear, the manners were high, and the manners of dressing and the English language had already been learned. But there was no shortage of students from small towns of Punjab in the class who would have been overwhelmed by the English medium of Lahore. No class rap election, no beach rap, no thoughts of joining any society, no going up on the stage that their bags and purses were empty of confidence?

Where does the poor Urdu medium or lower class get the courage to bear the muffled laughter and sarcastic looks of many people after making a mistake in English pronunciation or grammar? The class system was everywhere.


The same color was seen in the hostel. English Medium would listen to English songs, Mills and Boone and Archie Comics would be visited everywhere, and on the other hand, would look for Urdu Medium Digest. The phrase of Urdu medium Pando came to our ears half a time, so we laughed and said, Yaro hum bhi to hai. The answer was the same, 'Well, I don't think so'.

A lot has happened over the years. The dividing line between Urdu medium/English medium has deepened. The world has become a global village for us as well, reaching the West and growing. English literature, English language, and English things, the eyes of some were further scarred and the closed eyes of some were opened. Children of the next generation become deaf from their own language. For some, it is a source of reassurance but for others a question mark.


When a girl made fun of her aunt's wrong English pronunciation, there were no fewer laughers around. Let us admit that once upon a time we were among those people who couldn't stop raising their eyebrows when they heard a wrong pronunciation.


The eye opened the day our own daughter, studying English literature in America, asked the question 'What is our mother tongue?'


'Punjabi', our answer

"What kind of mother tongue is this that we have not been taught," she wondered.


"Mama, a child of every country in the world must know their mother tongue, Japan's Japanese, France's French, China's Chinese, Korean's Korean, Bangladesh's Bengali, America's English, Spain's Spanish, while most Pakistani children If you learn Urdu, you can't even speak a word, similar is the situation of some Hindi people. And then no one regrets it?'


"Umm, you didn't teach us Urdu or Punjabi, why?"


I want to study Urdu literature. I study the literature of so many countries and I feel so bad in class that I don't even know what is written in Urdu literature, how is it written?'


What do we say? There was nothing to say

What is written in Urdu literature? What is read? Even today, the English medium living in the country has nothing to do with it and the Urdu medium does not let the sense of its inferiority rise to reach the world in its sleep of creation. Even today, English mediums stick their necks out and hold talks on foreign literature and Urdu is not considered worthy. Urdu writer Pendu, why call them Pendu?

The Urdu conference is considered a garden fair while the English conference is a show that Urdu people sitting outside the line watch with a longing that they might join. The columnists in Dawn walk around with their breasts puffed out like a real chicken, while the Urdu newspapermen walk around clucking their shoes. Also remember that the few thousand who read Dawn are native Englishmen or the new masters, while those who read Urdu newspapers are mud dwellers and Ghulam Ibn Ghulam.

Why this sense of superiority? Why this inferiority complex?

Have we not been blessed with freedom even after independence?

Are we the servants of the white masters?

Why are we different in our own country?

Is it not enough to be a stranger in the land of strangers?

The story of being a foreigner in the land of foreigners was also sad.

When the Englishmen went to settle in the West, they thought why should we speak Urdu? When our child speaks English, he will be proud when he returns home. Even if it happened, the parents were mature, but the children, the children were helpless, neither the partridge nor the quail. Poor goose movers.

For example, Pakistanis, belong to South Asia and this identity cannot be changed for generations, but they do not know their own language. They speak the language of non-believers like them, but they are not like them. If such a child is mistakenly asked what is his mother tongue, he will be extremely confused that he does not understand the language that his mother speaks.


We also saw countless mothers around us who were worried that listening to Urdu would spoil their child's pronunciation learned in an American school, 'Go Go, Finish Your Juice'.


This linguistic disparity is the religion of the English, which is happily embraced by those left behind. Who thinks it's bad to look important and rule even if it's over your own kind?

We regret not being able to teach our children to read Urdu. To reduce the burden of regret, we must have done one thing to make them speak Urdu at home. Not only spoke but also forced them to speak, even when they spoke to us in English we waved our hands to say that we did not understand. Gradually, they understood that if they speak Urdu to their mother, they will get an answer.


We got some strength when the children who studied for years in America, instead of being fascinated by white skin, started to consider them as their own. They openly say that there is no one in the world like South Asia, not in culture, not in food, not in traditions, not in diversity of languages, not in tenacity, not in intelligence, not in skills, not in festivals, not In music.

We were discriminated against on the basis of race and color, taken advantage of, and the journey in the right direction took us to heaven. It is our right to study in their countries, we also have a share in this development, but it is not right to paint in their color and consider them superior. Even if you keep trying for 100 years, you will not become like them and they will not become like us. Anyway, what is the need for so much imitation, we are us and he is that!

2 stories of this sense of superiority or inferiority that we are perpetuating at our hands. An example was seen in the Karachi Urdu conference when an English assistant professor from London was invited as a special guest. Apart from her ability to speak English, her only qualification was that she had a Ph.D. in Linguistics. He had nothing to do with creative literature.

Recently, Hindi writer Gitanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize for her Hindi novel Reet Samadhi, proof of how important it is to speak your own language. Daisy Rockwell, the translator who adapted this novel into English, was very well received and it is reported that she is also visiting the Lahore Literature Festival.


Well, LLF is the function of coconut dreamers, i.e. native Englishmen, so what should be done, but what to do with the fact that no one bothered to invite Anwar Sun Rai, the Urdu translator of this novel, to the World Urdu Conference? Such a unique use of the Urdu language and such a translation is unlikely to happen again, but why should a nation affect by feelings of inferiority care? If there was something in English, it was a different matter.

One more reference here, Gayatri Spivak's most important recognition of postcolonialism and feminism in Asia is that he translated Jacques Derrida's famous book Grammatology.


Well, the last thing we started the article with is to laugh first and then cry. Children from a top English medium school in Karachi had gone on a trip. A mother worried about her child asked another mother, "Does your child use Urdu commode?"


The other mother's Urdu was somewhat good, she said a little worriedly, 'Urdu commode? That is Urdu Commode. what does mean?'


Is the commode also Urdu? Or Urdu in the commode?

"Yes, Urdu commode, the one on which one sits on the feet". Thankfully, they didn't say that they finish sitting on their heads.


So, sir, this is Urdu time. This Urdu is included in the primary reasons for East Pakistan to become Bangladesh, and this is the place of Urdu scholars and the status of Urdu literature. Yes, I want to tell you the history of the commode now, but then I think, why should your endurance be tested, more than ever again.

















No comments

The 16-hour-long hijacking of an at Karachi Airport ended with 22 deaths

"From Silence to Survival: Untold Tales of Pan Am Flight 73's 16-Hour Hijacking Drama" In the heart-stopping saga of Pan Am Fl...