THE ART OF BALANCE

When society strives to transform itself, there are always forces that resist change, and art usually finds itself in the eye of that storm, challenging traditional definitions of aesthetics or presenting new interpretations of events and experiences.

Today the world feels as if it is being torn apart. “We are surviving as if in a daze,” as Frantz Fanon explains it. It is speculated that since 3600 BC the world has known only 292 years of peace. In many ways the wars of the distant past would have been more horrific than the wars using modern weaponry meting out instant death. Conquerors routinely brutally slaughtered prisoners of war by the thousands. So why are the present wars so traumatising?

Partly, we are lulled into a false sense of security by the increasingly comfortable lives we lead. However, it mostly happens because of our visual access to war and its effects. Embedded journalists ensure that the battle comes right into our lives through the television screens in our homes or the papers delivered to our doorsteps. In the middle of breakfast or halfway through a phone conversation or homework with the children or a social evening with friends, the infamous ‘breaking news’ shatters our chosen moments of peace, leaving us feeling overwhelmed. Graphic images of war and disaster find their way into newspapers, lying casually on a table or in the hands of a vendor at traffic lights.

For the last decade or so, young Pakistani artists have heroically tried to respond to the impact of these images and events, trying to suggest ways to contextualise them, suggest possible responses, or simply recording their own sense of horror or protest.

There was a belief that facing grief, fear, and death was, what Aristotle called, cathartic. However, there is growing evidence that images of violence, in the political arena, daily crimes, cinema, video or computer games, are no longer cathartic, but traumatising or brutalising, becoming the ‘new normal.’

Is war the only experience of our times? Art expresses and reflects but also has the power to heal. One of its roles is to embody symbols of civilisation and draw attention to the eternal wonder of nature. Are there not also farmers planting rice fields, dhabas brewing tea, young people falling in love, village women embroidering their wedding clothes, bankers going to work, musicians and singers filling the air with melody, flowers blooming on treetops — all in the midst of this seemingly endless carnage and moral imbalance? Is this not the larger human endeavour — hope in the midst of despair, choices of being? There are heroes outside the battlefield, and we crush their spirits daily by heaping despair, by rendering them invisible.

There is a tradition of healing the human spirit in our society, through music, dance and poetry which come together most inclusively in the Sufi traditions of this land. Recently the war was brought to the heart of these centres of peace — the shrine of Lal Shabaz Qalandar, where 88 seekers lost their lives.

One would think that the Aulia and Sufis, many of whom chose to settle in remote areas, managed to escape from the vagaries of their times, absorbed in tasawwuf and zikr, composing poems of love. But in reality they lived in times of great political turmoil and intrigue, terrible wars, invasions and massacres. The flowering of Sufism was between the 12th and 16th centuries, the times of rival caliphates, assassinations, brutal Mongol invasions that slaughtered thousands and burnt libraries, and they had to constantly migrate to survive.

Rumi was witness to the destruction of Baghdad and had to flee for his life; Amir Khusro was an integral part of the courts of eight warring kings, and even took part in the war against the Mongols in 1285; Bulleh Shah’s time was marked with communal strife between Muslims and Sikhs. Yet, they only spread the message of love.

The Sufis taught the powerless to sublimate, but they did not turn their backs on their times.

Baba Farid writes:

I thought I was alone who suffered.

I went on top of the house,

And found every house on fire.

Bulleh Shah writes:

The soil is in ferment, O friend

Behold the diversity.

The soil is the horse, so is the rider

The soil chases the soil, and we hear the clanging of soil

The soil kills the soil, with weapons of the soil.

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai reminds us:

True, the river has gone dry,

And worthless plants have begun to flourish on the brink,

The elite merchants are on decline,

And the tax collectors have disappeared,

The river is littered with mud,

And the banks grow only straws

Maulana Rumi writes:

I’m sick of mortal kings.

I long to see your light.

With lamps in hand, the sheikhs and mullahs roam, the dark alleys of these towns,not finding what they seek.

Our times may not make room for new Sufis to emerge, but art throughout human history continues to restore balance when it is lost.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist and heads the department of visual studies at the University of Karachi

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 26th, 2017