Reality

The more I talk to ordinary people here the more I think this place is going to go up in flames. Well, let's see. At the moment I remain convinced that there's more to be said for actually living a life than pursuing the theoretical one I've become immersed in once again (of course, both are infinitely preferable to the vacuousness of the bourgeoisie).

Last week I went to someone's house and met one of the typical Lahori "aunties"; when asked if she made all the food herself she said, "Well, yes, to the extent that I was in the kitchen" (ordering the cooks, no doubt!)

Talked to the driver. Wanted to know what life was like back in the villages. Awful, he said. There's no life there. All life is in the city.

"But what's the difference ?"

"Over there one person works and ten live off him. Over here ten work and one lives off him."

"What else?"

"Here people need money to survive. There, we all survive because we have are own wheat. Without money people here are nothing". (I thought of Marx: Time is everything, Man is nothing)

"Will you ever go back?"

No, the city stinks and the more you have the more worried you become but, but.."

"But what?"

"But I'm a human being " (with those words he grinned and held his hands out so that the palms were faced upwards..as if the very word 'insaan' (human ) necessitated an opening up). "Who doesn't want things". But then he laughs, everyone here is a crook..who is to say that if I have things I won't become like them".

Now he was warming to this theme of city/village.

"Yes, and another difference, I nearly forgot. If city people have a lot of money they feel restless in their soul and want to go somewhere or do things they haven't before. But we, we villagers, if we have lots of money we want to do nothing but sit at home. Yes, that is all we dream of doing."

"Why?"

"So we can sit with our parents."

"What about your friends?"

"What friends can poor people have? Whoever is with you for the moment is your friend. Today it is someone , tomorrow it is someone else. We are like birds, free."