ONCE UPON A time in Pakistan...
June 2009: In a quiet little village Ittan Wali, district Sheikhupura, Punjab, while working in a field, she had an argument with some women. It was an apparently little thing, but it was anything but little. She didn’t know that her life was going to change, irrevocably, in those few minutes. As she picked up an old, used glass to drink water, the women objected.
Was it a class thing, the hierarchy that decides who drank from which glass? Here, it was a matter of faith. Religion was the determinant: she belonged to a faith those women considered inferior to theirs, and ergo, lines had to be drawn whose hands and mouth touched that glass. Body parts become impure as per the way you…
