STAY HUMAN: A Woman in the City -
TW: Assault & etc.
This is why so many women have responded to the rape of a 23-year-old girl from Dehradun not by battening down the hatches and hiding, but by barrelling into the street to reclaim the space that was denied her. To cast our bodies into the city like ballots, affirmative…
(Source: southasiajournal.net)
Davide Benati.
loneliness kills
why
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Pakistani Truck Art
One of the reasons why I love Pakistan is the people’s ability to give ordinary things much needed beauty. For instance: A truck. In most countries around the world, trucks are simple vehicles with very little “art” on it. But in Pakistan, trucks become symbols of style, color and even poetry. If you’re in the country, you’ll see that 8 out of 10 trucks and rickshaws have beautiful images painted on them. It’s become a Pakistani signature style.
In the image above, there are four trucks featuring Urdu poetry. A loose translation of the four separate couplets is given below:
1. Don’t look at me with such contempt; I may be poor but I certainly am not unfaithful.
2. Never have I gained comfort anywhere nor will I ever; I am a traveler, my morning is somewhere else and so is my evening.
3. There will be thousands of destinations and thousands of caravans; Your gaze will try finding me but no one knows where I’ll be.
And the best:
4. Those who remain jealous of me: Stay that way. Time is on my side.
That’s like Urdu for “Stay mad.” Perfect.
(via Brian Slawson)
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The Fact of the Matter: Yellow Rain - RADIOLAB -
One of my cousins posted about this Radiolab story on Facebook… thought I would comment on it quickly-
You tell em, Kalia. They handled this terribly, and I’m glad you made that clear. Most of the dialogue in this country about anything US diplomatic history-related is mishandled and misguided, even when its searching for ‘truth’. This is no news; the US has no peripheral view, and it is both oblivious of it and damn proud of it. It simply sees what’s in front of its face, and what’s in front of its face is short-sighted self-interest. If you cannot picture yourself or your family within a story like Eng’s, it’s not hard to unconsciously fall into this line of thinking.
So while I was very disturbed by their challenging of Eng and Kalia with insensitive questions (that, to be fair, they did make clear would be asked), what particularly surprised me and enraged me was their reflection afterwards, when Krulwich explicitly said: “It is not fair to ask us to not consider the other stories and the other frames of the story…. Her reaction was very balancing, but her desire was not for balance. Her desire was to monopolize the story.”
Jad was getting very close to the conclusion they should have ended with (and I really like what he said), but I don’t think he ever really reached that conclusion. You end the segment feeling like on the whole, they still think that even though they have to respect the suffering of others, Western scientific conclusions about the world are still to be taken as unquestionable fact. Which means the personal experiences of small, poor, dirty yellow people in the dysentery-infested jungles of Southeast Asia should always be taken with 100 grains of salt. Because clearly they don’t have the mental capacity to know whether or not giant clouds of shitting bees flew over their heads.
Anyway. What a shame.. progress always seems so elusive.
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