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A Theatre of the Absurd

@maraybhai100 uploads reels that resemble no other in the prolific world of Pakistani memes. Pakistani memes, like their Indian cousins, are brilliant nuggets of self-reflective humour, reaching their true genius during the recent skirmish between India and Pakistan. Maray Bhai’s reels have more in common with the existential Theatre of the Absurd than the usual amusing reels.  

They are off-the-wall, pure chaos beginning in a calm pseudo-scientific tone using Google Maps, and the Solar Smash app, as if about to offer a solution to regional crises. They soon derail into an existential distraction, as the lines he draws over countries, turn into doodles of animals or people. Behind the levity there is the shadow of real regional issues and the existential threat of war and nuclear annihilation. 

The Theatre of the Absurd describes plays written in the aftermath of WWII that reflected a chaotic, and illogical world, where one accepts, with sarcastic laughter, a world without purpose and without meaning. Its precursor, Dada Art, emerged from the despair of WWI, also depicting an absurd nonsensical world of chance, randomness and illogic.

Earlier still, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland pseudo-logic presented as rigid whimsical rules, leads only to chaos and confusion. The world is waiting in a T.S. Eliot Wasteland, choosing whether to part one’s hair in the middle or on one side.

Today memes, described by novelist, Patricia Lockwood as a kind of “communal mind” has given authorship to anyone and everyone - to react to, or learn to live with, the new absurdity and meaninglessness of life. She speaks of the addiction to scrolling through memes, in the hope that one will bring an “indestructible coherence” to the chaos, and reassurance that we are not alone in this bewilderment.

Donald Trump could easily be a character played by Moin Akhtar in Anwar Maqsood’s Loose Talk, and Netanyahu a villain from The Simpsons. A generation has grown up with Umar Sharif’s edgy deadpan humour that replaced the idealism of Ibn-e-Safi’s Imran series. Sarcasm has long been embedded in Urdu literary tradition. As far back as the 17th Century, Mir Jafar Zattalli dismantled the sanctity of the post- Aurangzeb Mughal Emperors and their courtiers with his sharp satire. Akbar Allahabadi lampooned the Brown Sahib, a term to describe natives who emulated the western culture of colonialists “B.A. kiya, naukar huye, pension mili, phir mar gaye” (earned a B A degree, became a servant, received a pension and then died}

The artist Iqbal Geoffrey – provocateur and absurdist - sought to destabilise the systems of the art world. He once announced in a London newspaper a date and time when the paintings by another artist at the Victoria Miro Gallery, would be his for one hour. Geoffrey stood there silently for fifteen minutes and then left. In another gesture, he placed an advertisement in a Pakistani fashion magazine, for admissions to a new art school, only to reject all the applicants since art schools do not produce artists. A human rights lawyer as well, his written submissions to the judges must have puzzled them, filled with sarcastic neologisms such as “the Gore-MINT off PACK-A-SATAN flouting our Supreme Court Orders”.

Maray Bhai says he is employed by aliens whom he serves from a charpai on the moon. The aliens order him to attack Israel. He decides that since Israel is very hot he will first cool it with snow using the Solar Crash app. He accidently selects the wrong icon and instead burns a hole through the earth, killing one billion people. All he can do is say oh sorry!  and laugh. Scale becomes trivial and systems reveal their fragility. Maps become a tool of surveillance and control, capable of godlike destruction.

It is not so outlandish in a world in which the US president Donald Trump can kidnap the president of another country and Israel is champing at the bit to destroy Iran, a country 80 times larger than itself.  

Pakistani memes are more than just a bit of fun. They are a congregation of the helpless. The only illusion of power in this tangled existential comedy that is revealed a scroll at a time, is the uneasy "laugh of liberation".

 

Durriya Kazi

February 8, 2026

Karachi

durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

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