Home #itscomplicated rests on one conviction: Pakistan-home to over 240 million people, 70-80 languages and fascinating natural diversity cannot be reduced to a breaking news ticker or international headline. Riverine forests sprout alongside embankments; corals lie near the Balochistan coastline; mangroves grow within the Indus Delta. Wildlife is astonishing; snow leopards, markhors, brown bears, Asiatic black bears. Then why do we rarely hear about these? Instead, why do stories about Pakistan inevitably produce caricatures of bearded terrorists, ragged children threading through polluted alleys and non-agentic women who require "saving"?
It's high time that the stories changed. Home #itscomplicated features a versatile slate of Pakistani storytellers: doctors, screenwriters, journalists, filmmakers, scientists, intelligence personnel, actors, academics, entrepreneurs, home-makers, students, and authors. These voices don't undermine the strife: hunger, terrifying normalisation of violence, rampant hypocrisies, problems with privilege, judgmental tendencies and more. That's mostly the frontstage though, the part we hear about. Home #itscomplicated, simultaneously opens a window to the backstage, where we discover stories of love and wounded attachments, courage and quiet desperation, the pursuit of purpose and the skills essential to survive.
Ultimately, we meet some of these survivors-stars born out of anarchy-who aren't voiceless but as Arundhati Roy puts it, are "deliberately silenced," or "preferably unheard."
Ultimately, there is no simple, linear way to tell stories of people's edgy yet soulful relationship with Pakistan-#itscomplicated. This anthology embraces that messiness, breaking through cookie-cutter narratives to make sure lesser-heard voices start getting a seat at the table.
