Why having writers block as a Pakistani is so much worse

Let me be perfectly clear. I hate the thought of being a writer nearly as much as I love the idea of it. I’ve been told I can write, only to wonder why people keep fucking saying that. And from these completely batshit building blocks, I built myself a full-fledged, genuine writers dam, because blocks are easily surmounted and therefore for pussies! I say 'dam' because my thoughts are just a torrent, a veritable deluge of random bullshit and pointless ponderings which somehow like any actual torrent, forcibly forge a path through solid earth (in this case my brain)to actually flow. So naturally, I built the strongest possible impediment for them I could, confident that I was merely storing them for when I have time. From travelling/ university /feeding the dog/ destroying brain cells/ friends/ family etc. I thought  I’ll get to them eventually, whence (yes, motherfucking ‘whence’) I shall organize them, build concrete, profound ideas and construct ingenious, intricate plots, and write the desi equivalent of the great American novel, whatever the fuck that would be. (For the purposes of this post, I’m a keen builder apparently. Just go with it.)

And let me be even clearer. This was a truly terrible idea. When I checked behind my great wall of self-sabotage, I realized “oh, look at that. My thoughts have turned to sludge.’ Torrent, meet life. This wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was I didn’t really give a shit. I thought hey, the old imagination is still good to go; powers of observation are still working. Fucking free refills! And so, I carried on with life, still thinking that I’ll write, someday, when I have the bloody time, because obviously, as you get older you get timier right? Right? That’s just how time works. (Don’t look smug) I scribbled out irregular little self-indulgent nothingness and some other meaningless bullshit. 

Eventually any small little ounce of creativity left was focused, with no real effort either, on mostly ironic postings and assholic little comments here and there and of course reactionary trolling. Oh how I love being reactionary, especially if something really gets me going.  You see, creatively, anger is like my Pac Man pellets and idiots are my  inky blinky pinky and clyde.  Your misguided view on social justice, misinformed take on current events, repost of viral whatever, is my sustenance. 

"Career, LOL!"

So my writing “career”  was going nowhere. And little stoned spurts of imagination were, perhaps understandably, overpowered by that random Jackie Chan movie with the Street Fighter II Homage (Here you go. Seriously. He even plays Chun Li. Go Ahead, I’ll wait) and Slaughter in San Francisco (Chuck Norris’s first starring role, where he’s dubbed by a British guy. It’s like a stoner take over the Star Movies control room every Friday at 3 AM) I figured, I have the tools. The ideas will come, the stars will align and I’ll be on my way. It was the perfect storm of ignorance and negative fucks given. 

Until one, very recent day, when a colleague, who happens to be a bit older, and I had a discussion about Karachi. More specifically about how she felt Karachi is no place for strangers who haven’t grown up here, as it’s almost impossible to form meaningful connections with people whose capacity for thought exceeds the average goats  (who are somehow frighteningly smart and ruthlessly obnoxious in Karachi). She also posited that Karachi is an impossible city to love if you haven’t grown up here (she grew up around Pakistan as her family moved a lot and is originally from Peshawar) Now my defense of my acclaimed beloved and most fruitful muse were mere sputtering’s and mutterings of such gems such as “it’s a fast life, you gotta keep up” and “it’s about the people in your life’. So real solid chunks of grade A horse manure. The plain truth was I was at a loss. I had nothing of consequence, leave alone substance, to say to defend a place that I love.

Spurred more by irritation at myself than by genuine anger, I thought this should be the fire I’m looking for to reignite my creative spark. Then I marveled at my fucking awful sense of metaphors (seriously, construction, molesty priests, anal inflammation. Bravo for even reading this far.)  Then I got down to business! And to paraphrase Lt. Aldo Raine, Cousin, Business was…Fucking bankrupt. Seriously. It was like my brain had a fire-sale with my thoughts while I wasn’t looking (and presumably laughing at British Chuck Norris). I sat there staring at my laptop screen like I was at work, suddenly all the way back at that proverbial first square with nary any writing to show for it. My great dam had only served to make all that juicy thought flow more prone to evaporation, as it all got steadily replaced by real life shit like work and responsibility. (Like really we needed another reason to hate rain) 

And then. It hit me. It didn’t even hit me; it smacked me in the face like that giant fucking trout from the Sicilian message scene from Godfather. Stop reading and go watch it, I’ll wait. Wasn’t that the greatest fucking movie you’ve ever seen? If not then this is where we part ways. If yes, let us proceed.

 So yeah it hit me really really hard in the face. I happen to live on what journalists up and down the planet swear, is the single most dangerous slice of land around. A veritable goulash of terror, poverty and popular discontent, with a hearty dusting of broken politics and soupçon of corruption (That’s French for shitloads right?) The meanest, brownest, conflictingest, most nuclear armed collection of conservo-nuts and liberal fascists thrown together, in the Green shorts with the white trim, standing at 5’10 and weighing in at 300: the self-proclaimed purest of the pure. PAKISTAAAAAAAAN. Now let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuuuuuumbbbbbbbbbbbleeeeeeeeeee! Sorry couldn’t resist. But you get it don’t you? If I live on the edge of civilization itself, then I oughtta be the best goddamned writer in the World. Pasternak, Poe Hemmingway, they thrived on conflict and hardship (seriously Poe life's is like a far grimmer version of Oliver Twist, if Oliver had died a horrible death) Seriously, any of us could be kicking writings ass!

 With all that free terror, and cut and dried dangerous living, we ought to be doing a book a minute. Prolific, 'War and Peace' sized works of profundity and cultural magnitude. Giant, comprehensive tomes on the nature of civilization itself and its malcontents. Historical and philosophical works to rival the likes of Gibbons and Des Cartes. The rise and Fall of The Lala Empire. Or like a Hulk Giant Size Special. Just imagine.

However, let me be realistic for a few spare moments. No.Such.Fucking.Luck. None. Here we all our, somehow carving out bare existence from this hollow of depravity, this sub continental shit fest, surviving in the lowest possible human terms and yet somehow motherfucking Poland has almost 5% of Nobel Prizes for Literature. That’s like 5 prizes! From a nation of just 38 million, that, let’s face it, has been kinda coasting along on its World War II cred. I mean Boo fucking hoo. Your country was the Alicia Silverstone of Western Europe, because clearly, everyone wanted a piece back in the day.  You should be flattered!* and then a bit of Communist iron handedness and boom 44 years later Democracy. Easy peasy Japanes…oh ok, that might not make out too well in World War II story. We’ll leave that stinker well alone. Point is, we’re way way behind, as this chart should demonstrate indisputably, thanks to its complete lack of metaphorical dead weight.

See? Right there. According to my cutting edge math (Pause for sniggers) and most media ever, anywhere, our beleaguered shameboat of a country should be as knee deep in works of cultural and historical magnitude as it is in Bin Laden’s family apparently.(seriously, what’re we up to now? 7 kids and 3 wives or something?) But you and I can see past the statistics. We know it’s just another indication of the collective slothfulness of our people. Yeh Qaum kasay theek hogee? How will this nation be repaired? We simply wallow in the muck, depriving the rest of the world of important things to read on their iPads. Their economies wither away while we could be propping them up with the billions of dollars millions of Amazon store sales would undoubtedly bring. Their brains lose the capacity to absorb information as their attention span shrinks to the convenient length of a cat sized video. High school dropout rates soar as do crime rates, all because we deprive them of the intellectual stimulation that we should logically and ethically be churning out at Foxconn level speeds, all thanks to that most generous of muses :Collective unending Misery.

Or maybe, as bad as shit can seem at times, news of our death has been greatly exaggerated. We still go on with our lives, working, playing, praying, raising families and cursing the Pakistani Cricket team, not really bothering to channel the constant bombardment, of both the metaphorical and terrorist variety, into pages of meaningful musings, or Hollywood thrillers. What a waste. All this material. And nothing doing. Fucking writer’s block.

*Totally fucking with you poland
**Go fuck yourself Bangladesh, we were rooting for you!