On Morality

Originally published in Dawn, May 2008

According to research in the USA that I read some months ago, when the nation is going through a period of uncertainty, the hemlines of the nation’s skirts reflect this. The greater the uncertainty, the higher the hemlines. If there is a similar correlation between national uncertainty and the length of ladies’ shalwaars in our fair nation, then it would appear that we are in the brink of a national crisis.

I was recently present at a recruitment fair at a major national business school and can honestly say, hand on heart, that I have never seen so many ankles in one place in my life. Or calves either, come to think of it. As I stood contemplating this fetlock fetishists’ dream, I could not help but wonder: since when have Capri pants become acceptable attire for a job interview? Admittedly it was many moons ago that I was preparing for a graduate interview, but the guidelines at the time were to dress well but conservatively. It seems that the definition of conservative dress has changed considerably in the past few years.

And it appears that I am not the only one not wholly in touch with the sentiments of Generation insert-whatever-letter-is-fashionable-at-the-moment. A prominent local financial institution has recently issued a circular specifying in excruciating detail what modes of dress are appropriate for a workplace as lofty as theirs. And I will not go into the inherent contradiction between ankle-baring being perfectly acceptable for men and not for women in their workplace.

It appears then, that propriety and morality are not only interlinked but also not always congruent. Sometimes, what may be perfectly proper, such as a television actress dressing in beachwear when on a beach holiday, is considered immoral by certain sections of society, while at other times behaviour that may be morally acceptable could be considered improper in a given position, such as correcting the factual errors in Auntiji’s descriptions of the achievements of her children during a family dinner party.

One example of this dichotomy that I experienced was at a friend’s wedding in the capital city of our fair nation. There were 4 of us friends from university, who had planted themselves in a corner of the tent after dinner, waiting for the festivities of the mehndi to continue. There we sat, minding our own business, when one of the ladies seated to our right asked us to move away and find alternative seating. Apparently their menfolk considered it morally repugnant to have strange men sitting within striking distance of their women.

As these same women later got up to perform their prepared choreographed dance routines, I could not help but wonder that having strange men sit a few feet away was morally unacceptable to them, and yet dance moves that reminded one of Janet Jackson at her wardrobe-malfunctioning best for all to see was not.

And that, when it boils down to it, is the case with all questions of morality. Not only do measures of morality differ widely from person to person, but they also have umpteen shades of grey for each individual. Or perhaps it is a case of there being one set of rules for oneself, and another for everyone else. After all, if I choose to wear beachwear when going for a swim, everyone knows it is because it is the only sensible thing to do. But if a latter-day starlet were to do the same, it is obviously because she is no better than she is.

I do firmly believe though, that morality not only begins at home but also should stay there. My moral code is inevitably going to be different from pretty much everyone else, so really the only person who it can apply on is myself. So while I may think that ankle-baring trousers are not appropriate business attire and keep that in mind when evaluating a potential hiree, I am not about to take a big stick and start ankle-crackery whenever I see any.

However some things we can all agree on are just plain wrong. And I witnessed one such thing just last evening. On my way back home, I was caught in the inevitable gridlock that occurs when a traffic signal switches off due to a power cut, resulting in all vehicles choosing to move forward simultaneously and end up in a great coming together at the crossroads, and the accompanying wailing (of horns) and gnashing of bumpers. Into this breach strode, like an angel sent by Providence, a traffic policeman, miraculously still on duty at that late hour.

As he untangled the traffic, I turned to get a better look at this angel of mercy. And what I saw has scarred me perhaps for ever. The traffic policeman was devoid off all facial hair whatsoever! I have never before seen a moustachio-less traffic copper, and pray to God that I never do again. It was a near-obscene sight; it was as if the traffic was being directed by the emperor in his new clothes.

So for the sake of public decency I implore all traffic policemen, on the off chance that any are reading this due to their morning paratha being wrapped in it, to please desist from allowing a razor anywhere near their whiskers. For is traffic policemen’s moustaches start to shrink and disappear, surely the moral fabric of society is not far behind.

Bus Lane Blues

I have recently met someone who spent a few years in the USA and moved back to Pakistan a couple of months before 9/11. This gentleman is very fond of pointing out how we less developed nations are different from the North American or Western European nations, normally in a bad way. I often find myself disagreeing with his pronouncements, as I feel that the comparison is not a fair one, especially as the ‘decadent westerners’ are as bad in some respects as we are in other. However, he has set me thinking into the different ways in which we Pakistanis approach certain things as compared to the aforesaid westerners.

I witnessed an excellent example of these divergent approaches this morning. On my way to work, I, for the first time in over a year, noticed that a bus lane had been drawn on the street. I am positive that this lane had not been drawn overnight; it is just that it came to my attention only today, for reasons which follow.

Rush hour traffic had started but the intensity of the traffic was not at its peak yet. That, however, did not stop the average Karachi commuter from judiciously using their horn to clear a path for themselves down the main thoroughfare. A traffic policeman (wearing a helmet even though he was on foot, for some reason) was doing his limited best to cajole, coerce and censure the motorists into come semblance of order. Then, suddenly, he dropped all else and bolted across to the left of the road and began a bizarre combination of semaphore and Sheema Kirmani at her foot-stomping best.

Sleep deprived though I was, his frantic actions did manage to penetrate the fog surrounding my brain to the point where I was impelled to turn my head in the direction where his attentions were focused in order to find out what the fuss was all about. The object of the officer’s attentions was a city Green Bus. At least, it had been green once. Now the colour on the outside was a mere shadow of its former self, much like the air conditioning and level of comfort inside. However, instead of asking the driver of the said bus to pull over so that he could extract his morning pound of flesh, the policeman was frantically waving at the bus driver to divert from his present course, and to use the bus lane instead of the main thoroughfare which he had thusfar been driving unconcernedly along.

His actions immediately reminded me of the returned native of my own recent acquaintance, and the differences between our nations and the nations of the West that is, depending on your point or view, either enlightened or decadent. Bus lanes in the West are designed to help bus commuters avoid the worst of the morning rush caused by motorists, whereas here their raison d’etre appears mostly to keep the pesky buses sequestered to a part of the road where they can be of least inconvenience to the motorist. Then again, maybe I am being gratuitously cynical. Maybe bus lanes are a pill that must be forced down the throats of commuters who use public transport, for their own good. You’ll thank me in the end, you know.

Before I could spend any more time ruminating on how the same situation can be grasped from both ends of the stick, however, my attention was further distracted by another example of the Great Pakistani Business Establishment (Creative Naming Division). The premises in question was that of the Abraham Lincoln Ayurvedic Hospital. Philistine though I am, I am pretty certain that the 16th President was never one for curing diseases though the use of secret herbs and spices, although he is said to have held a séance at the White House, if the History Channel is to be believed. Incidentally the herbmeister-in-chief at this establishment was called Ibrahim – probably the happy coincidence that prompted the unusual moniker.

I have to say that Mr. Abraham, in choosing Ayurvedic medicine as his profession, missed his true calling. Had someone spotted where his true talents lay at the appropriate age, he would surely today have been a Creative head a major advertising agency. Of course, he is advantaged by the accident of location in that the peepul tree outside his establishment not only provides shade (and countless ingredients, presumably) but also a perfect position on which the hoarding boards professing his wares can be arranged for maximum effect with the minimum of fuss.

Regardless of the positioning, though, it is the design of the boards that always bring a smile to my face. For instance, their miraculous weight loss product is advertised through a billboard which shows a thin woman, of the type that is said to reside in every fat one, stepping out of the skin of their erstwhile host by unzipping her much like a ‘fat suit’ from a bawdy Hollywood situational comedy. This is just one of many similar adverts for products as wide ranging as a bracing tonic to unleash your inner muscleman (graphically represented by a person skinnier even than I effortlessly lifting an enormous barbell) to a hair growth product (with a satisfied customer driving along in a convertible, wind sweeping his enviable locks), which are placed in pride of position on the tree and then on other parts of the sidewalk on a strict rotation basis. Of course, a perennial favourite is Ayurvedic Viagra, a bargain at Rs.10 per capsule. They (the ads, not the capsules) never fail to perk me up(!) in the morning, in preparation for the day ahead.

That morning, though, what really made my day was the sight of a couple driving to work in their Suzuki Alto. What makes it so special, I hear you ask. Well, the lady of the house was at the wheel, while the gentlemen rolled gently about in the passenger seat, snatching a few extra precious moments of sleep. I can only hope that the roles get reversed on a strict rotation basis, with both husband and wife getting equal opportunities to doze and drive.

And people still say that we are a backward, regressive nation! 

Originally published in The Friday Times, circa 2006

What's In a Name?

Is the changing of street names across Karachi a slippery slope which ultimately leads in the direction of the very identity of the city being threatened? And, even if it is not, is it an acceptable phenomenon?

There I was, sitting in my office, minding my own business (literally) and cursing the ineptitude of Pakistan at Test cricket, when the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation decided to throw a further furball in the mouth of my malcontent.

We received our first ever electricity bill.

On the face of it, this is not really an event that would cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it did get me started on a train of thought which I feel compelled to share. On the bill, our street address was recorded as ‘McLeod Road’. My immediate thought, when I noticed this, was, ‘I wonder how many people (besides my own ignorant self) work on this road who know that it is/was/should be called McLeod Road, and not I.I. Chundrigar Road at all’. Following closely on the heels of this thought was another: ‘How common is this phenomenon, and should we care?’

Answer number 1 is: not many at all, but more than expected. In a poll conducted at a gallop, less than 5% of people who have their own transportation knew what I.I. Chundrigar road was called before it was called that. For people who travel by bus, though, the number was greater, as some conductors still insist on calling it by the old name. Similarly, people under the age of thirty were more likely to be ignorant of this fact.

Answer number two, undoubtedly, is: fairly common. A cursory look at bank branch names and the more battered signs on business establishments, especially in the older parts of town, would testify readily to this. Stratchen Road is now Mohammad Bin Qasim Road; Bunder Road (Named not for any simian connections, but for the fact that it led to the harbour) is now M.A. Jinnah Road. Also, there is Elphinstone Street, better known as Zaibunnisa Street, and Dr. Daudpota Road, formerly known as E.I. Lines. And, of course, who can forget Drigh Road, a.k.a Shahrah-e-Faisal? The list goes on and on.

Digressing a little, even the names of roads that have remained unchanged have been affected by the inflections of the populace. Burns Road is now universally ‘Bunceroad’, and those bus conductors and old timers who still remember it by that name call McLeod Road, ‘Macklow Road’. This seems to suggest that such name changes are, at least to some extent, part of the anthropological evolution of a city, as local tongues change names so that they can be better wrapped around them.

On the topic of anthropological evolution, then, we come to the crux of my thoughts over the past few days. Have we, who have scoffed at the Hindutva-isation of India, ignored a similar malaise which has been creeping up on us all the while? Or is our own rewriting of history, in street name terms at least, a natural progression of a city constantly redefining itself? In other words, should I be employing this piece to glorify this trend, or to gripe about it?

My first instinct is to gripe. I am acutely aware that changes in street names are often a reflection of the changing balance of political power in the city and the nation as a whole and, being both aware of the damage that politics has caused to the fabric of the city in the past and politically apathetic in general myself, I am cautious of any moves which could polarise, jeopardise or any-other-ise the city. 

 

Also, having freely and happily derided every one of our Neighbour to the East’s changes of city names, I am more than a little worried that my house may have been made of glass after all. This feeling is made even more acute when it seems that roads and roundabouts are being renamed throughout the city either after someone wielding a chequebook, or after the neighbour’s cousin’s son-in-law’s uncle of whoever is in power at the moment.

And speaking of roundabouts, the submarine roundabout continues to be called that, despite the fact that neither submarine nor roundabout remain any more. This is, I feel, a case of the mind sticking to what is familiar, in the way that old-timers still use the colonial street names. So that, too, would appear to be a name that is fated to be lost; it is a mere matter of time. After all, why should my daughter, who was born after the submarine ceased to be, have any reason to call it that? She has no mental reference point such as I do.

On the other hand, there are new names which not only catch on but are also embraced by one and all in a remarkably short length of time. A classic case of this is Schön Circle, which, despite being named recently and a clear case of corporate name-dropping, has been absorbed into the Karachi street lexicon in a manner that makes it hard to believe that there was actually a time when the name did not exist., and still persists even though the Circle, and Schon, are both long gone.

What, then, makes some names persist, and others fade away? Why are some names met with instant acceptance, and others are consigned to be used only in maps and official documents? I feel that the reasons are, in each case, unique. Bunder Road was, of course, immortalised in song, which can never hurt. In other cases, such as Schön Circle, perhaps, a landmark was just crying out for a name. The circle may now be long gone, but the name shows no sign of weakening its grip.

I realise that, in my own meandering way, I am no closer to reaching a conclusion on whether these changing street names are a first step towards the ‘Mumbaification’ of the city, or whether it is a case of a city forever on the move running to keep up with its own evolution. I guess in the end that is a decision that each one of us would have to make on our own.

None of this explains, however, why ‘Marine Promenade’ was renamed ‘Beach Avenue’, and that, ultimately, makes my mind up. A lot of street name changes are arbitrary, frivolous, unnecessary and unwelcome. They remove the romance and history of the city with banality or, worse, barely suppressed political rhetoric. In other words, what I call the ‘Mumbai Syndrome’. I do not think that the city is due to be renamed ‘Kolachi’, or ‘Krokola’ even, any time soon, but I still feel that in most cases this reverse colonisation is either unnecessary or unwelcome, or both.

What this means in the short term, is that I need to think of a suitable story for my daughter, so that she too can call the submarine roundabout by its proper name. Suggestions to this end are welcome. 

 

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Originally published in The Friday Times, 2006. This was the first ever piece of writing of mine that was picked up by a mainstream publication, so it's particularly close to my heart. I have tweaked a few words here and there to bring it a bit up to date. 

It's a Secret

You know that whole Men are from Mars thing that sold a lot of books and helps justify a lack of effort to understand each other for men and women alike? It’s a load of humbug. Men and women are alike in many more ways than they are different. It’s just that, for some areas, men have better brand managers. 

Take this whole thing of how men make better confidantes, because they keep each others’ secrets much better than women. Makes for a great extension of the old chestnut about how women gossip and men don’t. And hence, since men don’t gossip, they do far less bean spilling also. So the theory goes, anyway. 

Granted, there is some part of the male psyche which takes a request to keep something to yourself quite literally. This is normally great, but when this is used as a ploy so that said fact can be publicized to as wide an audience as possible in the strictest confidence, can be a bit of a dampener. So here is a tip: don’t swear a guy to secrecy unless you really, really mean it. This genetic anomaly could also be the reason why men have garnered the reputation for keeping secrets. 

Unfortunately, just like many other theories (the world being flat, Pakistani batsmen being able to bat with the tail, etc), this one is also not really true. Men are as bad, if not worse, when it comes to letting slip juicy tidbits of information, at the right moment.  And here is proof that this fact is acknowledged at some subconscious level by women – all the situation and romantic comedies you watch never have a best-friend-and-confidante character for the female lead that is a heterosexual male. 

Of course, the brand managers for the male gender have also carefully cultivated an impression that men don’t have the capacity to empathise. The better to watch the cricket unfettered with. And it is hard to confide in a gender whose reputation is that they, famously, don’t give a damn. Makes it kind of difficult to have a confidante when you are pouring your heart to someone on the phone, but cannot be sure if the emotions they are sharing are because of what you are going through, of because City just scored a fifth goal. 

Again, this is all a clever piece of image management. If it wasn’t, my friend wouldn’t have sent me a message after that game which was only half gloating, with the other being an acknowledgement that he understood. Didn’t stop him rubbing it in, of course; what kind of friend would he be if he hadn’t? As that world famous philosopher Homer Simpson famously said, just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand. 

As I type this, part of me is desperately wishing that someone would take this shovel out of my hands. There are some trade secrets you don’t let out even under pain of death, like who let the dogs out, and I fear that this just may be one of them. But it had to be done. After all, how else could I conclusively prove that men can’t keep secrets? Unfortunately, I too have fallen prey to the spin doctor, and don’t have sufficient empathy for the predicament I am about to place myself in. 

Bit of a Catch-22, that.

A Necessary Evil

 

Sometimes, dear readers, one’s scruples can be such a pain. Case in point being my almost obsessive insistence on buying only ‘original books’; no toilet paper-grade pulp and cyclostyled print for me. The reason is partly respect for intellectual property rights and partly that for my own eyesight. The end result, however, is that each book purchase that I make is a sizeable chunk of my ‘personal extravagances’ budget and therefore not an unconsidered expense.

I have been burnt more than once, mostly by the Booker-hopeful sub-continental authors, who seem to have all ghol-ke-peeo’d the formula for success in that esteemed award: forbidden love in tumultuous times, gratuitous and affectedly convoluted use of words, a dash of paedophilia thrown in for good measure, escape from one’s problems only to come back to them later in life to achieve a measure of closure. Sound familiar? Even good writers, too many to count, have fallen into the trap.

But it is not only the hopefully-intellectual books that can prove to be a major waste of the world’s remaining rainforests, and my remaining hair. The traditional ‘airport books’ (domestic: 150 pages; international: 300 pages) are generally seen as only marginally more palatable than the food on aircraft. Every so often, however, there is an exception to the rule. A few years ago, you couldn’t move without being trodden upon by someone with their nose buried in either “The Da Vinci Code” or one of the dozens of spinoff books it spawned. People bought, borrowed, or stole a copy just to see what the fuss was all about, and a phenomenon was born.

It was a nice enough book – no great need to engage many grey cells, puzzles that were hard but just about crack-able by the reader a couple of pages ahead of the protagonists (thus allowing the reader a warm glow of intellectual superiority), and a good pace to the narrative. Pretty soon, Dan Brown was the new John Grisham, and the pre release buzz for his newest books and movie spinoffs was enough to rival even the bespectacled student wizard himself.

And then, falling victom to the hype, I spent 900-plus hard-earned rupees on a copy of “The Lost Symbol”. Really, what was I thinking? I should have just borrowed a copy from some poor shmuck. That’s two months’ worth of mid-morning makai I won’t be seeing again in a hurry. What a disappointment. And what a sad indictment of the general state of humanity that it still topped bestseller lists worldwide almost a year after publication, when this piece was originally written.

By all accounts, this book represents a return to (bad) form for the author. People who have read his other, earlier books (and I have been burnt by hot milk and so will blow on milkshakes to cool them down too in the future) tell me they were equally as execrable. I hope to never find out at first hand.

One must acknowledge however, that the Dan Browns and Stephanie Meyers’ of this world do perform a valuable service. In this world of instant gratification and 280 character attention spans, getting millions of people to actually pick up a fat-ish book and have the will power to read it through to the end is an achievement in itself. And there is always the chance that once somebody realises that the Balrog in their own imagination was much better than that which could ever be shown on celluloid, will be encouraged to let more creatures that exist on the printed page come alive in their mind rather than on the flickery screen of a pirated DVD.

The fact that there are not enough dorky kids out there for whom The Famous Five are close personal friends is a constant worry for me. There is a whole generation which seems to treat books as something to be endured at school, and instead bury their nose in a flickering screen of some description, be it a mobile phone or a gaming device. The greatest blessing of books such as “The Da Vinci Code” is that it gets people talking about the book, and as a result places the published word on the top of peoples’ consciousnesses again, if only for a short time.

In this day and age, anything that gets people excited about reading cannot be entirely evil, not even a book whose dénouement is obvious from the moment that the protagonist’s plane begins its final approach in the first chapter. Although I am concerned about the whole iPad / Kindle revolution that is sweeping across large parts of Europe and North America; LCD screens look hell-bent on replacing printed matter, and I am not sure if that is a good thing. I am fairly certain that a battered old display would never be as welcoming a friend as a tattered old paperback, dog-ears and all.

Anyone want to buy a hardback first edition of “The Lost Symbol”? Only one careful owner from new…

Originally published in Dawn, November 2010