King of Sweets – Gulab Jamun is now Pakistan’s National Sweet

Farahnaz Zahidi January 13, 2019 Leave a comment

A perfect gulab jamun, not hard at the core, not mushy and soft to break down, is now Pakistan’s national sweet

In the midst of macabre headline news, Pakistan’s favourite comfort food made it big. The nayi government of naya Pakistan ran a poll on Twitter as the naya saal (New Year) ushered in: “Which should be the National Sweet of Pakistan?” There were three options: jalebi, gulab jamun, and barfi. More than 15,000 people voted, and gulab jamun won with 47 percent votes.

The poll I subsequently run on my facebook page had just two options: gulab jamun contended only by barfi. Gulab jamun won by a whopping 79 percent votes.

However, are polls on social media enough to decipher what is Pakistan’s favourite indulgence when it comes to a sweet tooth? There has been an uproar among social media users who complain that there was no national consultation in this important existential debate. However, at grassroots level, gulab jamun does seem to have tugged at the nation’s heartstrings. Mithai sellers and caterers confirm that gulab jamun is indeed the hottest selling item [pun intended] as they taste best when warm, bordering on hot.

The historical origins of gullus, as gulab jamuns are often fondly called, are often traced back to the times of Mughal emperors, particularly Shah Jahan. Folklore has it that Shah Jahan’s royal chef accidentally fused elements and by a stroke of fate, a sweet from heaven found its way on earth. Other food historians claim that its origins are Turkish or Persian. As diverse as the language in which its name is taken, which is Urdu, gulab jamun seems to be wrapped in layers of culture and history. Whatever its trajectory may have been, it is part of the very essence of happiness in the subcontinent.

Gulab jamuns are like all good thing in life. It has to be just right, and one mistake can be unforgiving. A perfect gulab jamun requires technique, skill, precision, accuracy, and above all patience. They cannot afford to be hard at the core, but also cannot be so mushy and soft that they break down — just like a well-rounded person [pun again intended]. The reduced milk — khoya — which forms the basic ingredient of the dough of the tempting dessert, is derived after painstakingly cooking milk till it evaporates, leaving behind khoya. Once these dough balls are fried and are light brown, or blackish if it is a kala jamun, they are then soaked in sugar syrup. The syrup was originally rose-flavoured, which gives it the suffix “gulab”.

Now, the rose essence is optional. But the sugar syrup or “sheera” as we Pakistanis lovingly call it, is a must. As an avid gulab jamun fan said when asked why she loves, “the sheera drips into my soul… it makes everything seem alright”. Warm it a bit and it melts in the mouth. Put it in zarda (sweet saffron rice) and a bite with tiny gulab jamun makes you thank God for the good life. Have it after dinner or compliment it with chai. Gulab jamuns allure you. It is perhaps these enchanting qualities of the gulab jamun that make it the popular choice.

As a barfi lover, it is not easy for me to accept the supremacy of this King of Mithai. But one has to accept that gulab jamun has a more comforting and satisfying feel to it.

Gulab jamun being crowned as Pakistan’s national sweet has led to debates across borders. Nations across the subcontinent — India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and of course Pakistan — are claiming that it belongs to them. The debates on social media are often divisive. Everyone wants to establish that the home of the gulab jamun is their country. The gulab jamun smiles on, basking in its golden glory, while its lovers’ squabble like the “raqeeb” (adversary) in Urdu love poetry of yore would fight for a claim to the beloved.

Fact remains that Pakistan has taken the lead and gulab jamun is now, officially or semi-officially, Pakistan’s national sweet. But looking at the glass half full, here’s what is great about this phenomenon: If in nothing else, Pakistan and India may find themselves on the same page, for once, when it comes to the love of gulab jamun. When all else may have failed to build bridges, this gastronomic delight may do the trick. How sweet!

http://tns.thenews.com.pk/king-sweets/#.XDxKp7hS81k

A packed December – When Non-Resident Pakistanis Flock to Pakistan

Farahnaz Zahidi January 6, 2019

A month of homecoming, packed with weddings and socialising, can be overwhelming for the visitors and the hosts

Pakistan is living with a big hole in its heart. That hole in its heart is Pakistanis who have left for greener or richer pastures, grazing in the economically lucrative lands in Europe, USA, the Middle East, or even down under. With each person who leaves, this hole widens. Rarely do you come across a Pakistani family that is still “whole’. At the hands of this exodus, we have missed out on our best.

Fragmented families suffice with Whatsapp calls and Facetime connections. Most of our friends of school and college are somewhere far away. Every other home has children who have left for better education and exposure, with parents very aware that once they go, they might make new homes in faraway lands. Yet we are making these choices, every day, seeing this migration as the chance at better lives and better futures.

Yes, Pakistan is indeed living with a big hole in its heart.

But come December and that hole starts to fill up — unnaturally and temporarily.

Birds, mammals, fish — the animal kingdom is full of examples of seasonal migrations. Humans have a history of doing it too — for agricultural harvesting, for grazing their cattle, for finding summer or winter jobs.

But what is happening in urban Pakistan is unprecedented. December is the month that non-resident Pakistanis choose collectively to visit their birthland. This includes our children who are studying in universities abroad or offspring who are working abroad — they get their winter break in December. While this should mean a time for families spending time together and re-bonding, it often does not end up being so, as social commitments seem to multiply by a hundred, if not a thousand, in December.

On an average December weekend, people are invited to anywhere between two to four weddings a day. With weddings come preceding or subsequent shopping sprees. The fact that Pakistanis who are now used to cooler climates request that relatives in Pakistan keep weddings in winters, and want to visit a city like Karachi not when it is 40 degrees Celsius but a milder 15 degrees is understandable. And so it is.

Overcrowded shopping malls and eateries, breakfasts, brunches, lunches and dinners. Traffic on the streets. Late nights. On the peripheries there are the day trips to beaches, farmhouses, or even the occasional trip to a village or a smaller town, because we love to romanticise villages, poverty, and the ‘colourful culture of small towns’. Even Karachi’s infamous viral fevers, cough and flu cannot deter the incomers nor their hosts.

What does this mean for us the resident Pakistanis? Put in simple words, we have to put our lives on hold. While we continue going to work or running everyday errands, we have to accommodate a lot more and wish that each day was not 24 but 48 hours.

As Pakistanis, our most important and unavoidable way of showing affection is feeding people. The stomachs of our guests from abroad go into culture shocks as instead of soups, salads, sandwiches, less spicy and less oily food, they are offered nothing less than nihari, qorma and katakat, dripping in oil and followed by halwas in desi ghee. No amount of antibiotics they may have taken in precaution helps. It is tough on the tummies, but saying no is difficult to the overzealous resident Pakistanis. But it is not really anyone’s fault. This is our way, as a nation, that we show love and care — we feed people. Also, if we don’t offer a meal or go to meet our guests, it will be said “yeh log buhut badal gaye hain” (they have changed).

There are, you see, dynamics of Pakistanis who live abroad. If they left Pakistan 30 years ago, they have an image of Pakistan frozen in time. Their relatives who were young teenagers listening to George Michael and Madonna when they left are now gray-haired and popping blood thinners into their system, parenting children who are millenials. Of course Pakistan has changed, and yes the people have changed, because societies are fluid and not static. But there is an unsaid pressure on those still living in Pakistan to pretend that we are still the same.

It is also not easy for those visiting Pakistan. Too many people to visit, to meet, to give gifts, to stay connected with. Too many obligations. And at times, if not always, the pressure to pretend that they are still connected to these people in terms of culture, whereas the reality is that exposure and life experiences change us. We evolve.

While this December influx of people means an air of festivity and excitement, more money coming into Pakistani economy, and lots of feasting and meeting-up, it can be overwhelming for both the visitors and the hosts. Why not have weddings in March or September? Or visits to Pakistan in February or October? Too much of a good thing dilutes the effect. Let’s space it out, shall we?

PS: Relatives, siblings and friends visiting Pakistan in December, please don’t write me off after reading this, and believe me when I say I love you all visiting. Promise.

http://tns.thenews.com.pk/packed-december/#.XDxJpbhS81k

No time to sensationalise – How Media Reports Suicide

Farahnaz Zahidi December 16, 2018 Leave a comment

The journalists reporting on suicide in Pakistan are not really trained to do so. They are learning as they go along by trial and error

 

Death induced by suicide is a life cut short by self-directed violence. It finds its way in the newspapers and news TV channel segments readily. Often mediapersons reporting it do not know what an important part of the equation they are: With every suicide, there is an unfortunate but important duty laid on the shoulders of the mediaperson working on that news story. Will this opportunity be used to raise awareness, and perhaps help save lives from a similar fate? Or will it be just another sensationalised bit of news?

The choice is ours. We, the journalists, have important work to do in society as relayers of information. This must be done carefully, consciously, and sincerely.

But when it comes to mental health issues, particularly suicide, is it really the fault of the journalist, when he or she has never been trained in the subject?

Journalists have “beats” to report on; health is an important beat — public health, sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and other sub-specialties under the health beat.

However, there has been no formal training of Pakistani journalists to date on how to have mental health as a beat, and how to report on it. If a journalist has organically acquired a certain sensitivity to report on delicate issues, then he or she will apply it when reporting on suicide as well. Yet journalists may often get lost in the quagmire of details when reporting on a suicide. Details like the where, when and how. The opportunity of raising awareness on the issue is often lost in such reporting.

This year in June, fashion designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain died by suicide just days apart. There have been relatively well known Pakistanis who died after committing suicide. This has shed media light on the subject. A study on ‘Newspaper Coverage of Suicide‘ done at Sindh University by Mahesar RA states that “One person, after every 16 minutes, dies not merely because of accident or any other disease but intentionally because of suicide [sic]”.

However, the journalists reporting on it in Pakistan are not really trained to do so. They are learning as they go along by trial and error. The subject of “suicide” — and mental health on the macro level — is staring at us in the face as an unavoidable news beat. But the lack of training leaves means we are making mistakes.

Reporting on suicide, and mental health issues, is a huge responsibility, as well as an opportunity to make a difference. These are not stories to be sensationalised. These are not lifestyle or entertainment stories.

One of the most common mistakes is extreme positions taken by the media when reporting on suicide. One extreme is stigmatising and re-stigmatising both the person who committed suicide as well as the family. The sad music while reporting on suicide on tv, the hackneyed jargon, the nuanced but audible judgment in the news report — it all shows a lack of objectivity.

However, the other dangerous extreme is romanticising the act of suicide — of glorifying it, and instead of presenting facts about this act of extreme self-directed violence, perpetuating myths about it and calling it a “choice.” With the suicides of the aforementioned celebrities (Spade and Bourdain) experts began talking about the risk of triggering what is called the “Suicide Contagion.”

Experts of mental health affirm that suicide (of one or multiple well-known people), can lead to an increase in suicidal behaviour among people who are already at a risk of it. Thus, it is important that these news reports do not just mull over details and allude to it as a heroic act, but present the fact, which is that suicide is, in a majority of cases, linked to mental health issues.

Suicide almost always is not something that happens suddenly out of the blue. It has been considered by the person earlier. There may have been warning signs which people close to the person may have missed. An article published by International Journalists Network titled, Guidelines for Reporting about Suicide, aptly suggests to journalists that they must not suggest that a suicide was caused by a single event. “Suicide is complex, and is often the outcome of different causes, including mental illness — whether recognised and treated or not,” says the article.

Giving details of the method employed for the suicide may also contribute to the suicide contagion. Graphic details and photographs are not only disrespectful and insensitive to the deceased and the bereaved family, but also end up giving ideas to those who may be thinking on the same lines.

Care must be exercised even when writing an obituary for the person who left this world — whether as a journalist on a news platform or as a friend or peer on the many social media platforms. Be careful of the language you use. And most importantly, focus objectively on that person’s life instead of the methodology of death.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s then presidential nominee, Arif Alvi, had publicly suggested a readily available 24/7 psychiatric helpline in September 2018. In November 2018, the President, while addressing the 22nd International Psychiatric Conference organised by Pakistan Psychiatric Society (PPS) said that everyone should play his role for establishing a healthier society in the country. The government can and must play its role too in this regard, and the media can play its role by reminding policymakers and those in positions of power to recognise that mental health must be put on the forefront of the list of priorities when it comes to public health.

WHO’s 2014 report, “Preventing suicide: a global imperative” estimates that for every suicide there are at least 10–20 acts of Deliberate Self Harm (DSH). By this estimate, there may be between 130,000 to 270,000 acts of DSH in Pakistan annually. This means that there are signs before the actual act of suicide is completed. Journalists must include then, after consulting a mental health doctor or therapist, some points about how to recognise the signs that a person may be inching towards suicide, and what can be done to help such a person. The reader can also be directed towards Suicide Prevention Helplines.

Reporting on suicide, and mental health issues, is a huge responsibility, as well as an opportunity to make a difference. These are not stories to be sensationalised. These are not lifestyle or entertainment stories. These are stories that come under the beat of “health”. Once journalists recognise this, the reporting will become more responsible. Most importantly, out of these dark and seemingly hopeless news stories, there can emerge a ray of hope — the hope that if reporting is done intelligently and carefully, it may help spread much needed awareness. It may help someone out there. It may help save a life.

http://tns.thenews.com.pk/time-sensationalise/#.XDxIJbhS81k