I took to the habit of underlining the text and scribbling in the margins while reading a book a little late in life. Once you have given in to this practice, it prevails over the aesthete in you who would have wanted to keep the book neat and its covers tidy. It turns you into a slower reader as well. It may also be a little jarring for someone who borrows books from you, besides being frustrating for yourself if you are lent a book, from a library or a friend, that you cannot mark.

What do we normally mark, highlight, underscore or scribble about when reading a text? Something that resonates with us at a personal level, adds to our knowledge about the subject being examined, gives new meaning to our emotional or intellectual experience and challenges with evidence the dominant narratives of society and polity in our times. Finally, we highlight to cherish something that is beautifully and/or convincingly written, whether the prose is simple or imaginative. In this context, Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra is posing an enormous difficulty for me these days in terms of what not to underline and what not to make a note of.

Mishra’s book, that takes us back to the 18th century in order to begin the analysis of the present, is an informed critique of the shortcomings of the project of modernity and establishes the inadequacy of liberal rationalism to explain this contemporary age of anger, bigotry, hatred and violence in which we live across the world. He discusses the selective prosperity in human societies that continues to cause humiliation and powerlessness among the majority and the equally brutal nature of Western imperialism and its reaction in the shape of movements such as, for instance, militant Islamic groups. Mishra has offered an objective and substantiated response that effectively dismisses, in my humble view, the range of reasoning and reflections shared with us in recent times, coming from thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek and writers such as V.S. Naipaul.

I am sure to refer to this important work of Mishra’s again on some occasion. His expanse is large and he demands some truly transformative thinking at the global level by international political stakeholders, and leaders of institutions and individual thought. However, in Pakistan, we cannot sit by idly waiting for action to first be taken at the global level. Indeed, there is an association and a connection between our circumstance and whatever is happening on the world stage. But in our case the challenge is most immediate. The total extinction of a liveable society is conceivable like never before and descending into a complete and irrevocable social and political chaos is increasingly plausible.

In Pakistan, we are angry like the rest of world. But the way we celebrate ignorance majestically, and legitimise intolerance extensively, is incomparable. A large section of our educated middle class can demonise an endearing young girl who gets shot for campaigning for girls’ education. Our journalists can offer rationales for people being lynched in a bazaar. We witness a steady decline in our society, which is both unnerving and fast.

I am haunted by something that Mishra quotes in his book from The Futurist Manifesto (1909), by the Italian poet Filippo Marinetti who was an admirer of his contemporary, the Italian Fascist poet and war hero Gabriele D’Annunzio. Marinetti proclaimed: “We want to glorify war — the world’s only hygiene — militarism, patriotism, the destructive acts of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas for which one dies, and contempt for women. We want to destroy museums, libraries and academies of all kinds.”

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad. His collection of essays Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan was recently published by Oxford University Press

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 7th, 2017