Progress Report 1: Kumail

The subject of this report will be codenamed Kumail in the interests of the individual’s anonymity. The areas covered are Kumail’s lifestyle, general development and well-being.

First Impressions of Subject

Kumail arrived in the UK wide-eyed and innocent; you could say he was Bambi in human-form. Unfortunately he did not eat grass of which there is plenty, just the food in the fridge of which there is just what fits in the fridge. The initial impression was therefore of a happy-go-lucky youth skipping through a forest stopping occasionally for a fridge feeding frenzy. However, those new to the subject should note that if poked with a stick he is prone to become a rabid nationalist and is a different proposition all together. Though this can be alarming, the fiery rhetoric can be tuned out and it soon fades of its own accord as he starts feeling peckish. Such an episode should last no longer than 4 minutes.

Visit to the Subject’s habitat
After ensuring my poking stick was left in its case at home I journeyed to Bradford “The city of dreams” on the National Express magic carpet ride.

My re-acquaintance with the place was bittersweet. There was no commemorative plaque marking my stay at my old halls of residence. This is largely due to the accidental demolition of Shearbridge Halls in favour of a car park. Whilst weeping for the state of civilisation I searched for Kumail everywhere in JB Priestly library. There was no trace of him so I called him to meet me. When I mentioned I was outside the library there was a long pause on the other end of the line, almost as if he was searching his memory. My head was bowed in my fevered emotional state as the thought of the car park preyed on my mind. The spell was broken as a voice emerged from a red pair of eyes behind a curtain of hair “Asif bhai, hi, are you OK?" Bambi had obviously been burning the candle at both ends. It is a mystery how he navigates his way round the campus with his hair-obscured vision. I think he must have evolved some sort of sonar ability. I noted with relief he had no utility belt, we’d all been worried that if left alone he would indulge in his habit of fighting crime for snacks.

When we arrived at his digs it was predictably deserted and his room was quite neat. It seems word had gone out that the “eagle has landed” or “code red” or whatever army term was taking his fancy to ensure my investigation avoided controversy. The subject stated the kitchen was tidy. This was instantly confusing- mainly because it wasn’t tidy. He absent-mindedly opened the fridge helping himself to cheese marked “Zack” with a grace suggesting the manoeuvre was well-practiced. My hasty suggestion to eat out was accepted (readily). As we ambled towards lunch I subtly probed him about what he was up to when not standing bolt upright saluting the Pakistani flag and belting out the national anthem in an Irish accent. He said he was keeping fit, writing essays, growing his hair and saving money. He directed me to a restaurant and we had some medium spiced tandoori fare. Kumail seemed emotional throughout the meal. Any concern I had soon evaporated when I found his nationalistic tendencies did not extend to the spices found in Pakistani cuisine.

FND
On our return to the deserted halls we continued our chat, if only to break the silence the exclusion zone he had placed around me had created. It turned out to be most illuminating and positive. He mentioned something called the FND, a Muslim prayer group called Friday Night Devotion. He said people there were so ecstatic with spiritual fervour they appeared almost intoxicated by it, even speaking in tongues (more investigation needed).

We had a video call from Kumail’s parents. They were pleased that a person of maturity, judgement and wisdom had called on their son at such a critical stage of the impressionable lad’s development.

Influences
We then encountered Tommy, Kumail’s hall mate who had returned from playing football earlier in the day. He was chatting to a sleepy chap canvassing support for his campaign to become an elected student union rep. Tommy was exchanging pleasantries like “so you’re doing this for your CV then?” I then saw the candidate manage to look both sleepy and uncomfortable at the same time- a feat I had not seen before but resisted the urge to applaud. It was all very relaxing except I was slightly concerned the naked careerism displayed would rub off on young Kumail. Especially considering he is already planning to be a benign dictator of Pakistan and has opened several Swiss bank accounts in preparation. At present these accounts only contain 2 for 1 pizza vouchers but he must not go unchecked- vigilance is the key. The thirst for power must not overwhelm balance and good judgement.

As the evening drew in he seemed disappointed that the study group session he had arranged with his pals had been cancelled, by way of consolation I took him to see a film called “Legion”. It was so terrible I was screaming inside throughout, not least because it gave me flashbacks of the red-eyed demon greeting me in front of the library. All that screaming meant I was tired on our return to base. I took the liberty of shooting a dart containing a tracking device before I nodded off in the back of his neck (note to self: remember to sterilise in future). This enabled me to have data on his movements and heart rate ready for when I awoke. It showed the subject had been oscillating between the kitchen and his room all through the night. The chilling part was that the data appeared to show he was asleep the entire time.

After refusing the offer of Kumail’s artery abusing omlette special I found myself alone in the “tidy” kitchen. Moments later a student called Zack appeared. “You must be Kumail’s cousin?”. I confirmed I was, prompting the observation: “But you’re a fully grown man!?” I did not understand how his mind worked and decided I wouldn’t try. Privately, I congratulated my hormones for having done their job. You never know with all the oestrogen in the water nowadays. On the whole he Zack seemed fine and not necessarily an individual Kumail should be protected from. Zack’s cheese should however be protected from Kumail.

Conclusion
In conclusion it was a useful visit, Kumail seems fine and I am pleased with his interest in Friday Night Devotion. There is no need to worry about whether he is eating properly as he takes this responsibility seriously. His friends seem fine and are steadily turning him into a strange Irish Pakistani hybrid. This probably should be stopped but I am too curious to see the end result of this bizarre experiment. I am sure he said “What's the craic Asif bhai?” when I met up with him. I can’t be sure though, because the hair/red-eye combo took up much of my mental processing power leaving little spare capacity to focus on his Irishness.

2010 Resolution

On the train this morning I was just mixing thoughts in my head and I resolved to treat each and every day as a complete fresh beginning in itself, no matter how well or badly each turns out. It felt such a simple thing- a resolution that is easy to remember and fun to keep. It's bizarre how the more familiar you are with the world/locality/routine/people around you the more subtley you are distanced from it. Things slowly become automatic so that you can feel like you are living your life in a kind of dream, you don't see the world as keenly as when things are new like it is to a child or a traveller in a totally different place. A child has perceptiveness but lacks understanding and wisdom, and adult often has understanding and sometimes wisdom but often the perceptiveness is blunted. A music and visual artist called Laurie Anderson, said to be an artist is to pay attention. She said that it's fun to be an artist and everyone should be one. I think the phrase "paying attention" can conjure the image of being in a classroom and concentrating but it doesn't work in when it comes to taking the world in because you can't do that when you have tunnel vision. However lightening yourself from the illusory concerns of the of the past and future lets you be alive to the present rather than going through the motions like driving a car until you park up at the end of the day. Anyway I was mulling this over when I saw an article in the internet edition of The Independent about new gadgets that will be available in 2010. One was called a Life Recorder, it's a pendant to record images, sound and conversation around you as you go through the day like a personal black box. If I hadn't been thinking about being connected to reality earlier, I would never have understood why someone would have decided to market this tool. In my opinion though, it's a bad name and therefore not the best way to market it. By implication, to buy it is to accept life is a confusing haze to be pieced together at a later time, that life is so hectic we may as well give up being in sync with it. Instead, it could be pitched as a super-handy recorder to store thoughts and things which strike us and emerging ideas. Of course to do that, you have to pay attention or be alive to the new present in the first place (which I find slows time down!). It's not to record the now, it's to record what you made of the now.

Life Recorder to record everything does have value for some people. A guy in America called Studs Terkel, a humane man in the US who has sadly passed away used to record everything and treated everyone as new and valuable. When he came to talking to people he made sure he encountered people who were ignored, people who history does not record. He recorded everything for 40-60 years. It is interesting to hear how sounds change and how people speak changes over time. His work is immense and of great renown and a museum has opened to house it.

Intelligent Hip Hop is not an Oxymoron Which is not a Spot Cream

These videos are serious and a bit funny too. I'll add some funny ones that are a bit serious later.

The Society of Friends International- Defying Conventional Wisdom for over 300 years!

I'm a member of a group called Society of Friends International (SOFI) which has been set up by 1st generation immigrants from the subcontinent. It’s become very successful with members from all over the world. When it was set up having "International" in the name must have seemed ambitious but it's worked out well. In fact it's so popular that there is a freeze on new members. The idea is simple:

It brings people together for cultural events containing music and poetry and of course food but there has been stand up comedy and dance. Its greatest success are the well-organised and varied group holidays that have attracted many new members and have bonded people together through shared experience. The context of being somewhere new has made it easier for SOFI members unfamiliar to each other to approach one another and chat.

Most attractive to me and many others is the deliberate spirit in which things are done. Life is busy, so it's a vehicle in which valuable things often pushed in the background can be expressed: religious tolerance, the encouragement of inter-generational mixing and the collective exploration of things that are new. The new things tried means there is a strong possibility of failure and discomfort. The stand up comedy that was booked was awkward because it there was almost no respite from taboo-busting material that was often just plain vulgar. However it was tried, something that was totally alien to many members in terms of form and definitely content was experienced, now it is no longer so strange.

The SOFI newsletter is open for anyone to contribute to. It is an outlet for talent, views and humour which the older generation with their history of hard work and struggle are not credited with. Equally valuable is the news of members it carries. Through it joy can be shared and support networks for difficulties friends many be experiencing can quickly develop. This accepting notion of friendship is so simple but so necessary today. Strangely, I can imagine people thinking it is radical, particularly in London which can be very lonely for the young and the old.

The current trend of individualistic pleasure seeking has its place but things have been skewed a little too much towards it. The clearest example of this is the ever-growing festival going crowd, who despite gathering in their thousands to enjoy themselves, do not enjoy themselves together, it is the individual experiences they seek. The drugs allow them to escape from themselves and their rigid perception of things; the people around them are the backdrop- there to enhance the experience rather than to be part of it. It's perverse to me that an opportunity to meet so many different people is passed over and in favour of a very private drug-induced experience. People are so much more interesting. My experience of festivals left me perplexed at how opportunities to have far more potentially rewarding experiences are wasted. People are to be taken sparingly, but binging on alcohol and drugs is far less daunting. The perversity of this seems inescapable.

However, SOFI and I have to be humble as the most radical experiment in friendship are also called the Society of Friends but are probably better known by their alias which is the Quakers. They have been around a bit longer- since the 1650s and now have a quarter of a million members spread thinly across the globe (their presence is most common in Bolivia, USA, Kenya and Britain). They are committed to the principle that individuals must make up their own minds. Though it sounds simple, the seriousness with which they have pursued this ideal meant they have always been an incredibly radical group. It was a bold experiment.

The combination of practising friendship and making space for individuals who do not agree with prevailing orthodoxy or with views of people within the society itself has led to interesting results. It’s a wonder to me that the society has survived. I’d expect the value the group places on respect for individual views to put too much strain on friendship between members; and friendship after all is the central point of the group. Their bravery in questioning things leads them to participate in or support civil disobedience which must take its toll, but they have survived and are still going strong. Another aspect of the group is that it is run on democratic lines and no decision is made until everyone agrees but this has not led to inaction, in fact they have initiated a huge number and variety of ventures. They ignore rank and status, in the past members were called “thou” regardless of titles any friend possessed. Their way of dealing with persecutors was to meet them face to face, surprisingly this sometimes worked, even with fierce opponents who were challenging the very foundations of society.

A clue to their survival apart from their mutual respect is the fact they update their outlook from time to time in response to changes in the world around them. Here’s how they describe the process: “Pressure for revision has always come from the generality of Friends, but each revision has met with resistance from some who had lived with the old words and had found them entirely satisfying. Nevertheless, it has been the experience of Britain Yearly Meeting that necessary change has, despite occasions of great tension, been effected in love and unity.” Their shared faith is also a balm that soothes fractious differences: “Friends find unity in the depth of the silence, when the worshippers are truly gathered and deeply centred on the things of the spirit. We struggle with differences in our meetings for church affairs and here, too, as we consider what action we are called to take over issues that confront us, we know the experience of unity in conviction and purpose. It is a unity which is not to be found in optional attitudes but in discovering the place in which we can stand together.”

The Quakers seem optimistic to the point of naivety in their faith in human decency. It can be seen in their hope that things would change as a result of a few people practising friendship, which was and still is assumed to be a private matter of minor consequence in public affairs. However, it has effected real change and must have lent some flair for enterprise and organisation, some of their achievements are listed below:

• Set up the first anti-slavery society
• First people to plead for the abolition of the death penalty
• First group to propose a free national health service
• Initiated prison reform leading to recognition and treatment of mental illness
• Went to jail to establish the right of conscientious objectors
• First group to invent the idea of offering humanitarian aid to civilians devastated by war (in 1870-1 they brought food and clothing to both sides in the Franco Prussian War)
• Collectively awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1947
• Currently fighting for everyone to have the option to divert the portion of tax currently going towards funding war to peace building initiatives
• Set up Amnesty International
• Greenpeace
• Cadbury Plc
• Clarks, shoe manufacturer
• Barclay’s Bank
• Friends Provident
• Lloyds Bank
• Oxfam
• Rowntree’s
• Sony (formerly Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo); TTK's founding board chair was Tamon Maeda, a Japanese Quaker.

A company with no Quaker links:

• Quaker Oats! (despite having a Quaker in it’s logo)

A pattern of their history is that they never sought control of the organisations they created. This was because they discovered friendship, equality and giving orders were incompatible. This was especially true as organisations grew beyond a certain size. Businesses they formed and controlled were initially very successful partly because they benefitted from the goodwill and trust their integrity engendered- they did as they promised. However this same integrity meant the quality of relationships with employees and customers they sought were incompatible with expansion at all costs or with maximising profit. Most Quakers have now moved into the service and caring professions. Similarly, Pennsylvania founded as a Quaker colony, remarkable for its unusual peaceable attitude towards Native Americans and for its exceptionally democratic government is no longer a Quaker Colony. They lost control of it because their approach meant they were unable to play politics.

The experience of Quakers, whose tolerance of internal disagreement is outstanding, suggests there is no need for friends to think alike, if that is, friendship is seen as an exploration rather than a search for security and if each partner is recognised as having equal dignity. While making their minds up for themselves, they made the listening to the opinions of their friends an essential part of their method, and the ‘Quaker Faith & Practice’- a core publication of the society emphasises that they be of both sexes. This was a radical outlook when Quakers were first formed, unsurprisingly by a man and a woman.

Unfortunately I have no record of them organising package holidays, a strange oversight in such an admirable society..

Nothing says I'm important like mutilated jasmine.

I'm off to Karachi so there will be a run on demand for jasmine flowers. God knows how many will die in order to be strewn in my path when I arrive. You'd better buy some jasmine quick before their prices rise on the international market. Just an insider tip.

Well Done Gran.

Last weekend we had a fundraiser that also doubled as a night of appreciation for the founder of the charity organisation responsible for it. She's run it for almost 40 years and it was about time she got some thanks. The founder is a family friend who is like my grandmother really, so I got to do a little speech in her honour. It was a promotion from my usual chair stacking, banner sticking and general errand running. I wanted the audience to properly "get her" so I put a bit of effort into it. The reaction was interesting, I was surprised by the bits the audience were keen on and the bits that seemed to pass them by. And I also realised eye contact seems a bit scary for many in the audience, especially for the "youngsters" as they are called, so I ensured it was always fleeting.

My gran was funny as usual. Some of the women who run the organisation are actually a hinderance and cause her some grief. One of them loves doing speeches and thrusting herself forward whilst actually doing very little if any real work. Her speeches are about admin really but go on far too long and can be patronising. Anyway I enjoyed watching my gran taking out her hearing aid for the duration of that lady's chat on the mic. She did it so she wouldn't fume and get stressed- it was a sensible precaution but it made me chuckle. She wasn't having her night spoilt.

Ramadan Scandal

Major scandal: I've spilt printer ink on my carpet and now need to buy nail varnish remover to try and get rid of the stains. In my frustration at the ink-spillage, there was nothing to do but happy-slap a burka woman during Ramadan. In the ensuing melee I found that she had pancakes in the lining of her religious dress. It soon became clear to me that this sister was snacking during the fast. What was worse was that she had secured the pancakes to her burka using the syrupy topping. Urghh! It was a mess. That's not all: each pancake had a list of top-ten admonishments to give passers-by who look unclean. Yeah I know, I thought they could do that stuff off the top of their heads too. But no, it seems they use flour and egg mix based prompts.It was an unholy mess of sinnilisciousness. And ink annoyance.

By the way happy slapping is not a scandal, it is a natural reaction to the situation I found myself in. Please don't mention my pettiness, give me Argos vouchers instead.

A Dose of Marcus Aurelius

A Contented Life

If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature . . . you will be happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.

Take away the complaint "I have been harmed," and the harm is taken away.

True colours

I am currently green with envy but blue with scurvy, so am in fact a nice turquoise.

It's just not right.

Brethern and sisteren, the jewel in Chicken Cottage's crown, Tooting branch, has been shut down. I hope it's temporary, there's a police cordon and the windows have been blacked out, plus a police van is parked outside with a satellite dish on top. Serious stuff. I nervously asked a policeman what happened, he said a stabbing took place last night. He then asked if CC is my restaurant of choice, I nodded "I've got to go to Dallas chicken now". He paused seeming to understand the gravity of the situation, adding solemnly "not the same is it?"

People, why can't we just get a long/eat in peace?