Kalasha: Happiest people in Pakistan? 

LOST TRIBE OF ARYANS LIKE THE YAZEDI

Sexually liberated women, colorful clothes and lots of festivals -- happiness comes easy to this animist tribe living in Chitral

By Jini Reddy 28 March, 2011 PHOTO ESSAY SEE PHOTOS HERE

Kalash-chitral-Pakistan-dance

The Kalasha are an animist tribe living near the Pakistan-Afghan border. Said to be descended from Alexander the Great's armies, they have been given government protection.

Gul Sayed, 25, sports a grin a mile wide as she hugs me, a lone foreigner in her home.

She is a member of the Kalasha, a peace-loving pagan tribe living in the remote villages that lie between Northern Pakistan’s Chitral Valley and the Afghan border. 

She’s dressed in a black robe embroidered with rainbow threads, a beaded headdress adorned with cowrie shells and colorful necklaces. 

Rumour has it the blue-eyed, fair-skinned Kalasha are the descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great. But unlike their putative bellicose ancestors, the country’s smallest minority group -- numbering around 3,000 -- prefers to make love, not war. 

Proud of their warm, caring, crime-free culture, these could just be the happiest people in Pakistan.

 

We sing, gossip and sew. No chores— Gul Sayed, member of Kalasha

Sexually free

Take the tribe’s approach to matters of the heart.

Loveless liaisons hold no appeal for the spirited Kalasha women: "We choose our husbands, and if they don’t treat us well, or it doesn’t work out, we can leave and find a new partner," says Gul, as her two friends, teenage mothers Farida and Asmar, nod and blush. 

Nothing to shout about if you're a Western woman, but under rural Pakistan's strict Islamic code, it's a radical divergence from the norm. 

Here in their rustic one-room homes in the valley of Rumbur, the ladies clutch calm, cherubic infants, the progeny of such liberal unions. 

They live in tune with nature, amidst fields filled with crops, walnut, apricot and mulberry trees, and flanked by fast-flowing streams. 

From the terrace of Gul’s house, a web of channels and aqueducts fans out to distribute water to everyone in the village.

In the distance stands a mill, and further away a darkened temple, its wooden statues and altar stained with the blood of goats that are occasionally sacrificed to honor the Kalasha’s spirit ancestors.

The fair-skinned Kalasha are said to be descended from the armies of Alexander the Great.

Pastoral lives 

As we nibble on grapes and apples laid out on a rug on the floor, Gul explains that she has just returned from the seclusion of the Bashali, a house at the bottom of the village, where the women are quarantined during menstruation or pregnancy. 

You’d think being viewed as impure, as Kalasha women are during this time, and forbidden to mingle with the menfolk, might dampen their spirits.

But no. It seems the Bashali is the perfect excuse for women to chill out. "We sing, gossip and sew -- no chores," says Gul, smiling. 

Up in higher pastures, a shepherd, who like most Kalasha men wears the Pakistani garb of shalwar khameez, is tending his goats.

Managing livestock is the main occupation of the men. "My husband has six cows and three hundred goats," says Asmar. 

And from the rooftop of Gul's house, I can see what the women do when they’re not in the Bashali, or gathering water, fruit, or firewood from the forests.

A couple of meters below, a girl is milling maize to make flatbread to be eaten with vegetable and goat curry, honey and tangy goat’s cheese, or tea, for a Kalasha-style Continental breakfast.

On a roof to the left, another violet-eyed beauty is bent over a sewing machine, her eyebrows knit in concentration as she adds a rainbow-colored border to a dress.

By her side a wizened old woman sits with a loom between her legs, weaving black cloth for the new clothes they will wear for the three-day Joshi Spring Festival. 

Dancing and festivals make up a bit part of the Kalasha lifestyle.

Parties through the year

The Kalasha love a knees-up. Joshi, held in May, is one of four major festivals celebrated by the tribe. "We seek the blessings of our gods and goddesses for the safety of our herds and crops," explains Gul. 

At the break of dawn on the first day, children gather walnut branches and flowers to decorate their homes, and the doorway of the temple. 

As the sun rises, the villagers drink goat's milk and the men light a fire on the altar of the temple. They make offerings of goat’s blood, wine and honey to their spirit ancestors.

Then the fun begins. Girls gather in groups, clasp each other’s shoulders and dance, stomp and shuffle in circles. The men beat drums, play flutes and clap their hands to cheer them on. 

Year round, the Kalasha dance their way through a stream of festivals and rituals, and socially and culturally, theirs appears to be a joyful existence.

The only shadow on their rich, textured lives are the attitudes of some local Muslims towards their beliefs. 

"They  call us 'Kafirs,' unbelievers," says Gul, who like many of the Kalasha are fearful of their Islamic compatriots who live outside the valleys.

Still, times are changing.

In years gone by the Kalasha were threatened with forcible conversion to Islam, now the tribe receives government protection, improved health and education services, and -- bar an isolated incident when a Greek volunteer was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2009 and later released -- are largely untouched by the region’s political troubles.

Left to get on with living life to the brim, the Kalasha do just that, with compelling devotion.

getting there

Travelpak, www.travelpak.co.uk, based in London, can organize tailor-made tours to Pakistan, departing from anywhere in the world.

A two-week trip, taking in the Kalasha Valleys of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Northern Areas, costs from around US$1,600, excluding the cost of international flights.

Pakistan International Airlines (www.pia.com), Emirates (www.Emirates.com), Gulf Air (www.gulfair.com) all fly to Islamabad from destinations within Asia.

Jini Reddy is a London-based freelance journalist, writing on independent travel, personal development, wellbeing and lifestyle, for assorted newspapers, magazines and online media.

Follow Jini on Twitter: @Jini_Reddy 

Jini's website: www.jinireddy.co.uk

Connecting With Horses Is Like Living in a Fantasy Novel

Judith Tarr Mon Feb 24, 2020

Visiting the Horses by Adolf Heinrich Claus Hansen (1915)

Deep-down, in it for the long haul horse people have a look to them. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they aren’t all leathery whipcord types in well-worn breeches or a cowboy hat that’s seen a thousand miles and expects to last a thousand more. But you can spot them. It’s the way they stand in a crowd, not making an effort to be visible, and probably not saying much; giving way when the crowd pushes, but not letting themselves be pushed. They have a core of quiet to them.

It’s the way they talk, too, when you get them to open up. It’s not easy if they don’t know you. Oh, they’ll happily talk horses for hours if you’ll let them, but that’s surface stuff. The real, deep stuff, they save for people they trust.



All horse people, even longtime horse people, aren’t in that category. There’s a large contingent of empiricists, for whom horses are just horses: nonhuman animals, servants and sports equipment. Many of them are trainers, and very successful ones. They’ve mastered the art of getting horses to do what humans want them to do in ways that satisfy human standards of performance.

The counterpoint to the empiricist is the devoted hobbyist, the lover of all things horse. This person may come to horses early or late—as a child or a mature adult—but they truly love the species and will do anything for the horse or horses in their care. Whether they’re well off or making personal sacrifices to keep the horse bills paid, their horse gets the best of everything. Maybe they’re into shows or events. Maybe they’re happy just being with horses.

For them, horses are loved like children. They may actually take the place of human offspring, in the same way owners of pets call them “fur babies” and refer to themselves as parents. To the empiricist, a horse is essentially a Skinnerian machine—stimulus in, response out—but for the hobbyist, the horse is, in a quite literal way, family.

Human family. That’s the lens, as it is with the empiricist. The love of horses still centers the human.

When the lens shifts, then you’re looking at deep horsemanship. Horse at the center. Human wants and needs still very much present but making the horse the priority.

And then the story shifts toward what we (and definitely the empiricist) might call fantasy. “Anthropomorphism,” says the empiricist. Projecting human thoughts and feelings and social structures on a nonhuman animal.

Which is what the empiricist would say of the hobbyist, too, but there’s a difference. Deep horsemanship is:

Standing in a high pasture in a circle of mares. Feeling them rooted in earth, but poised between earth and sky. Realizing that they choose to show themselves to you.

Sitting all night with a dying horse, remembering all the years together. Waiting for the morning, knowing it will be the last. Being with her all the way to the end, however horrible those last hours may be.

Standing beside a horse who has gone down and can’t get up. Watching her slip into a dream—her first in days, because horses can’t get REM sleep while standing, and she hasn’t dared lie down for this exact reason: that she won’t get up again. She runs in her sleep, though her hindquarters are no longer working. Suddenly she whickers, as a horse does when she sees a loved one. Then she calls, a loud peal. And then she goes quiet, though she’s still alive; she’ll need your help to finish it. And you know: the ones who have gone before have called her home.

The loved horse is gone, suddenly or more slowly. Your heart has a huge hole in it. But within days, you’re driven to do something. Make a call. Check a sales website.

And there’s one. The person you called just hung up from another call: a horse is available, exactly what you’re looking for. Waiting for you. Needing you.

Or there’s one entry on the sales site. Not even the type or breed or age you were looking for. But you can’t get the horse out of your head. You contact the seller. You get answers to your questions.

The horse is deep in your head. You dream about her. Long before the papers are signed, she’s yours. She was always yours.

Morning in the foaling pen. Newborn lifts his head, looks at you. You know exactly what he is and who he is and that he’s for you. Or more precisely, you are for him. Anne McCaffrey wasn’t kidding. The eyes really do swirl at Impression.

Riding in the arena beside the pen with the mama mare and her three-day-old daughter. Daughter sees you riding and pitches a screaming, leaping, furiously jealous fit. And you realize she’s outraged because you’re not riding her. And even more outraged when you tell her she’s too little. She has to grow up.

Introducing visitors to a five-day-old foal. Visitors stand around talking. Except one. And you see that this baby, who has never been more than a few feet from her mother (and at this age she wouldn’t be), is over a hundred feet away. She has herded the visitor into a corner and is keeping him there. Claiming him.

It takes a few weeks, but in the end he admits: She’s in his head. He’s dreaming about her. Will I possibly consider selling her? Not that it’s even a choice. She’s made it for all of us. At five days old.

Deep horsemanship. A little like Impressing dragons. A lot like living in a fantasy novel.

Judith Tarr is a lifelong horse person. She supports her habit by writing works of fantasy and science fiction as well as historical novels, many of which have been published as ebooks by Book View Cafe and Canelo Press. She’s even written a primer for writers who want to write about horses: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. Her most recent novel, Dragons in the Earth, features a herd of magical horses, and her space opera, Forgotten Suns, features both terrestrial horses and an alien horselike species (and space whales!). She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a blue-eyed dog.

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• THE HUNGER GAMES

The Revolution Will Be Dramatized

Bethany C. Morrow

Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:00pm 30 Favorites [+]

Screenshot: Lionsgate

Catching Fire came out November 2013.

Mockingjay: Part I came out November 2014.

In between, Mike Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Ferguson Uprising took place.

This essay is about what it was like to live in an America that can rapturously and enthusiastically consume and cosplay revolution, and can look on real world resistance with disdain.

The first installment in the Hunger Games cinematic franchise was compelling, to be sure, but it was admittedly a bit underwhelming. For a story about a nation that punishes its citizens by dividing them into districts and then pitting their children against each other in a televised battle to the death, the first movie seemed to intentionally shy away from capturing the heinous nature of it all. It was dust-bowl bleary, certainly, but Katniss’ home in District 12 felt like stylized, not institutionalized, poverty. Once in the actual arena, it even felt a bit bright and breezy, portraying fellow competitors—you know, other children who were fighting to the death—as Katniss’ antagonists much of the time, and showing the Capitol—the seat of power responsible for all this—in short, visually captivating bursts, usually when Haymitch was soliciting donors to send Katniss gifts when she put on a good show.

Where the novel had been arresting, the first film went to great lengths to be another world, giving me pretty constant reprieves from the supposed oppressive injustice of Panem.

Catching Fire was the second novel in the Hunger Games trilogy, and it ground almost to a complete halt for me. Bluntly, Katniss performs a long, laborious, completely uncharacteristic wallowing act that felt very much like a middle book trying to rustle up enough story to justify the fact that there are three books. Because the hard part is apparently not being poor, oppressed, and living in a world where you’re too disconnected from your fellow countrypeople to effectively fight back. The hard part is having to say you’re in love with Peeta. She could not get into it, and I, in turn, could not get into that.

But the film adaptation. We bookish types like to bandy around mantras like “the book was better,” as though it’s a golden rule, like no film has ever improved on its source material. That’s just not true. I personally have several examples of movies that are better/more effective/more compelling than the novels that birthed them, and that’s not even speaking to adaptations that are simply as good. Catching Fire, the movie, reined in Katniss’s pity party and apparent willingness to jeopardize the family she went into the arena to save in the first place, and it made the games themselves feel real.

Importantly, it made the world in which the games could exist feel real. It was darker, and more violent… and to be honest, I was kind of amazed at how well received it was. It was, after all, about a revolution in the making. It was about a police state, in which there were no devil’s advocates arguing that there might be a few bad apples spoiling the bunch, or a few good guys mistakenly on the wrong side. There was an oppressive, dehumanizing, antagonizing, intensely penalizing power majority that was altogether wrong—and America celebrated it.

Three finger salutes went up all over the country.

Not only was it a hit, Catching Fire was praised for disallowing the viewer any distance from the violence. The District 11 execution that marks the first bloodshed in the film is heralded for being the focus of a steady frame—as opposed to the shaky cam employed in the first movie—and for being a moment during which Katniss was, as one review mentioned, “made to fully realize the capability for cruelty inherent in the government of Panem.” Yes, a set of doors closed before the bullet left the chamber—it’s PG-13, friends—but the effect was palpable. The viewer was spared neither that this was a full-scale terror, nor the immutable truth of the wrongness of military brutality being used against civilians.

That execution of the elderly Black man in that scene is meant to be impactful, but it knocked the wind out of me. It reminded me that in the real world, in real life, in my country, we have been terrorized by the repeated slaying of Black men, women, and children, at the hands of law enforcement. That in the film he was pulled from a crowd and made to kneel before being shot in the head did not feel fictionalized enough. It did not feel extreme or hyperbolic when as a child I’d seen footage of four cops beating a man until he was disfigured and required mobility aids. A country that could see that, acquit the perpetrators, and then demonize the community’s response, was telling you that time does not heal institutional and intentional wounds. It might infantilize you with admonishments to leave the past behind, but there is a straight line between chattel slavery and Jim Crow and refusal of civil liberties and lynchings and overcriminalization and economic disenfranchisement and cultural erasure and sustained gaslighting and mocking the very concept of reparations. And so while someone divorced from the reality of incessant oppression can split hairs and argue semantics, for me, there was nothing sensational about that execution. That my country could be riveted by Catching Fire’s unapologetic centering of such a killing—provoked in the film by a whistle and a salute of solidarity that tacitly defied the Capitol, and carried out in front of his own community, as District 11 was apparently the Black district—filled me with a wonderment, and a kind of cautious energy.

The optics hadn’t been accidental.

The themes couldn’t be overlooked.

Surely, all across the country, my real country, a realization was—forgive me—catching fire. Surely.

Fast-forward to August 2014, and the killing of Mike Brown. The first wave of the Ferguson Uprising, a series of riots that took place in Ferguson, Missouri over the course of the next five months, began the next day. It had been nine months since Catching Fire came out, but as the second film in a series, its popularity had persisted, as had its publicity. Surely, that same overflow of support and recognition was going to rise up, I thought. Surely people were going to raise their hands in solidarity, and disallow history to repeat itself. It wasn’t going to be mostly Black Americans decrying this most recent slaying by a police officer. Surely the public wasn’t going to stand for the victim blaming and character assassinations it had permitted in the past.

Then the nation’s most celebrated newspapers informed me that Mike Brown, the teenage victim, was no angel.

Then the media and various personalities denounced the community’s response, and the anger, and the riot.

Whatever hope I’d nursed in those first awful hours bled out. Whatever I knew and believed about the socializing agent of entertainment media, and the fact that messaging is of paramount importance in either perpetuating the status quo or laying a foundation for re-education and enculturation—it hadn’t happened. If it takes exposure to get to awareness to get to empathy to get to solidarity to get to action, America’s progress was always slower than I wanted to believe.

By the second wave of the Ferguson Uprising, spurred by a grand jury declining to indict the officer responsible for Mike Brown’s death, it was November, and Mockingjay Part 1 was in theatres. Katniss Everdeen bellowed, “If we burn, you burn with us,”— but outside the dark theater, the world did not come to Ferguson’s aid. The country did not rally to stand against the militarization of the police force, or the separate set of laws under which officers had proven to operate. Those who came did so to document, to photograph, to disseminate, and then to talk about it somewhere far away, from a distance that allowed “civil discourse” to seem like a solution. And while it would be unfair to say that Ferguson wasn’t a “come to Jesus” moment for anyone, nothing swept the nation but viral images of alternately defiant and devastated protesters, of disproportionately equipped police officers and National Guard service people.

America, it turned out, was less concerned with the death and terrorization of its citizens even than Panem. Revolution was a high concept, meant for splashy acquisition deals that would become blockbuster YA novels and then glittering film adaptations. It was to be consumed, not condoned.

How very Capitol of us.

Recently the long-awaited prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy was finally teased, and it turned out that the protagonist at the center will be a young Coriolanus Snow. As in future president and villainous oppressor of Panem, Coriolanus Snow. And seeing as the author lives in the same America that I do, you know what? That tracks.

It’ll make one hell of a movie.

Bethany is a recovering expat splitting her time between Montreal, Quebec, and upstate New York—yet another foreign place. A California native, Bethany graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology (but took notable detours in the Film and Theatre departments). Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, Bangor, in Great Britain.

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NFU TACKLING THE FARM AND CLIMATE CRISIS

https://www.nfu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Tackling-the-Farm-Crisis-and-the-Climate-Crisis-NFU-2019.pdf 

AOC takes down Ted Cruz over coronavirus comment: 'I’m surprised you’re asking about chromosomes given you don’t believe in evolution'


New York congresswoman questions qualification of Mike Pence to head government response

Andrew Buncombe Seattle Friday 28 February 2020

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has delivered an online lesson to Republican Ted Cruz after he questioned her authority to comment on matters of science.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s decision to appoint vice president Mike Pence to spearhead the administration’s response to the coronavirus, many have questioned the move.

Some claimed that as governor of Indiana, he failed to act quickly enough to tackle an outbreak of HIV in his state in 2015 that eventually infected more than 200 people, some of whom were drug users who had been sharing needles.

“I don’t believe that effective anti-drug policy involves handing out paraphernalia to drug users by government officials,” he said at the time.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter: “Mike Pence literally does not believe in science. It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures
Show all 15




She added: “This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have.”

Among those to jump to the vice president’s defence was Mr Cruz, the right wing Texas senator who is a staunch Christian, and who in 2016 was Mr Pence’s first pick for president, before he switched support to Mr Trump.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts Trump for exploitative State of the Union Address ‘prizes’ and claims he is giving out cash to black Americans at rallies

“As you are speaking as the oracle of science, tell us, what exactly is a Y chromosome,” Mr Cruz said to Ms Ocasio-Cortez in the first of a trio of questions.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who once worked as a waitress, responded: “Sen Cruz, while I understand you judge people’s intelligence by the lowest income they’ve had, I hold awards from MIT Lincoln Lab &others for accomplishments in microbiology.”

Watch more

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AOC launches plan to block non-progressive candidates

AOC defends Warren against ‘misogynistic trope’

“Secondly, I’m surprised you’re asking about chromosomes given that you don’t even believe in evolution.”

She finished by saying: “Sincerely – an Intel global finalist, a fmr multi-year intern for Sen. Kennedy, a cum laude dual major in Economics & International Relations, a fmr Educational Director for national organisation, Who to you is “just a bartender”.

“And also your colleague.”