Identifying rascality —Ejaz Haider

Identifying rascality —Ejaz Haider

My larger point is: how many of us would not lie if lying were to save us from going under? None of us is “respectable” or at least has always been so, and that cliché about let he who is without sin cast the first stone holds even today

Is there a perspective on the Meera episode other than what the media is dishing out and on which basis the woman has become a laughing stock?

First, let’s get some facts straight and see if the same set of facts can be used for a more sympathetic, if not condonable, view of the woman.

It is a safe bet that she is lying, not just about this marriage but also about being paak-saaf. If she is a virgin then I am St Paul.

Her incomplete Geo TV interview, which at some point gave her a migraine, and in which she swore upon her mother’s and brother’s and her own life that she is unmarried and a virgin before asking the interviewer to switch off the camera is yet another proof, if proof were required, that she has got herself into heavy shit and is now doing whatever she can to get out of it. It’s quite another thing that, caught as she is in a morass, her struggle to get out of it is only pulling her down further.

[As an aside on media ethics, a point I don’t see being raised so far, let me put it on record that it was obnoxious conduct on the part of the channel to (a) run the tape beyond the point at which she requested that the camera be switched off; and (b) for the two news anchors sitting smugly in the newsroom, smirking and making comments about her and by doing so going past their professional brief. This is of course an issue that needs a separate discussion.]

It is very likely that Meera has fleeced this guy Attique; it is equally likely that the guy married her for his own pound of flesh (no pun). Of course, it is easy to hang, draw and quarter Meera; not only because despite our modernity we remain entrenched in the culture of spectacle but also because when it comes to a woman, especially a loose one who has got her comeuppance, most of us begin to personify the worst of Victorian morality.

That Meera is loose and knavish we have been told. Consider now another set of facts.

She was born a woman with no money, no education and no family background in a massively class-based society. At the minimum this is disadvantage raised to power four and would weigh down even most men through one lifetime; for a woman, such conditions mean virtual death even at the moment she is born.

A society that does everything in its power to deprive those who are not born with the right credentials with any possibility of social mobility should not expect that someone born in the gutter, but with the will to move up, would not, on the way, break norms and short-change everyone.

Law is an ass and tends to take a snapshot view of things. But a society that is more empathetic, in theory, would consider a longitudinal design while judging someone. This is not to say crimes and misdemeanours may be allowed to go unpunished. Just that while we are preparing to throw someone on the ground and stomp on her, we might want to consider whether the person is innately evil or has been conditioned by us to lie and cheat because that is the only way to survive and move up.

Attacking Meera from all sides is the game in town. Her English-language skills are being sniggered about, sometimes by those who, on pain of death, can’t speak or write one straight sentence in that language – or, for that matter, any language known to man.

Exhibit: A City42 reporter got hold of Meera’s emails to Attique. He said something to the effect that since this is Meera’s “English” you [viewers, presumably] should not be surprised. And then he proceeded to read them out and his own familiarity with the English language made my stomach churn. But he had the upper hand and was obviously enjoying himself at the expense of a fallen woman.

Meera, I am told, once said, when asked about her education, that she has “done intercourse”. This and other such gems have made her a butt of jokes. I know lots of “respectable” women, born without Meera’s disadvantages, who have been to great institutions and also “done intercourse”. But their respectability, begotten of right credentials or money or contacts or all of that combined and much more, shields them from the harsh scrutiny of this society. There are stories here that would make Meera look positively like an angel.

Many of us, men and women, would swear upon this or that, like Meera is doing, to get out of a bad situation, especially one of our own making. That’s a moment when one can either choose to give full vent to one’s fury at someone trying to insult one’s intelligence or temper one’s anger with pity for that person. At least at that moment that person, one assumes, is scared; in case of a woman, she may revert to her ways but that moment, I would tend to think, is a flicker of realisation.

Of course one can argue that such flickers of realisation don’t matter, and I agree. Meera is not someone who will make a good wife, to put it in a traditional way. I will also consent to the fact that it is virtually impossible for the law to take cognisance of anything but the immediate and the visible. So, Meera may be punished if found guilty of fraud etc. But it is our attitude, as a society, that needs to be questioned because we love to see another in misery and take perverse pleasure in it.

My larger point is: how many of us would not lie if lying were to save us from going under? None of us is “respectable” or at least has always been so, and that cliché about let he who is without sin cast the first stone holds even today.

Ejaz Haider is op-ed editor of Daily Times, consulting editor of The Friday Times and host of Samaa TV’s programme “Siyasiyat”. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk