Don’t be an Animal: A Guide to Social Etiquette for our Times

There was a time when a gentleman would take off his coat and put it on a puddle to allow the lady to safely cross without soiling her shoes. Regrettably from the point of view of the dry cleaning industry, those days are gone. However, we live in times when the cultured can still stand apart by embracing the spirit of the Gentleman of yore. Dress impeccably, groom meticulously and always, always behave faultlessly. 

The challenge lies in the fact that the world has changed immeasurably since the Victorian era, when most guides to etiquette seem to have been written. So what are the do’s and don’ts that a gentleman must follow in the modern age? Here is a brief guide to the basics, broken down into a handy set of sections: 

General Rules 

• Always wash your hands thoroughly after using the loo, regardless of what number it is. That means soap. Using hand sanitiser after a meal is not enough, either. What are you, Neanderthal? 
• Always hold the door for someone if you are first through the door, and always thank someone if they hold the door for you. This is not a ‘gender’ thing, this is a ‘being civilised’ thing. 
• Don’t swear unless you absolutely must. Never at a lady, never just to flesh out a sentence. Never for emphasis, never in front of anyone under the age of 16. Swearing is ungentlemanly, and shows that you have anger management issues and/or a limited vocabulary (well, of the non-swearing variety, anyway). 
• Nose picking and scratching oneself may be national pastimes, but stick to doing them in the privacy of your loo. Anywhere else is gross. 
• The use of deodorant is not a nice optional extra, it is a way of life like breathing, eating, sleeping and scratching oneself. 
• If you can queue in an orderly fashion when applying for a visa, or in another country, then you can do the same here. 

Telephony 

• Mobile phones should neither be seen nor heard. Annoying ringtones are annoying. Keep it silent as often as possible, and always at work. 
• Your phone may be smarter than the average politician, but stow it away. There is a point of view that placing your cellphone on a table (whether at work or at a restaurant) is as rude as plonking your privates onto the table instead. Keep it in the pants, an advice that is just as apt for mobile phone users. 
• Open plan offices are not for having conference calls. Book a meeting room and spare your colleagues the gory details emanating from your speakerphone. 
• Keeping checking your phone or, worse still, actively using it, during a meeting can be career suicide. At best, the message you are sending around the table is that there are more important things waiting for your outside the meeting room (not a good idea, even when it is true) or, at worst, that you would rather play Angry Birds than listen to the absolute drivel being spayed around the table. 
• Do not answer the phone during a social occasion or at the dinner table, unless it is an absolute emergency. If you must, apologize, step away, finish the call as quickly as possible and return with another apology. 

At the Office 

• Personal hygiene is a personal matter. Keep it so. We all know people who cut their fingernails at the office (I, too, have been guilty of this transgression). Don’t do it. The right time to do this is the half-time break in the football game in the comfort of your home. 
• Make eye contact. Your emails will still be there after this conversation is over. 
• Modulate your tone. All of your colleagues don’t want to hear about it. This also applies in all social situations. 
• Be on time, always, but especially in office situations. Value your time and that of others. In general , you should always be on time as a rule. Fashionably late may be fashionable, but it is not gentlemanly and is still no explanation for tardiness. 

Out and About 

• There is no call to be rude to a member of serving staff at a restaurant. They work long hours and are not paid all that well. They are not your personal whipping boys. Rudeness is never called for, especially to people providing you a service. 
• If service has been of an acceptable standard, tip 10% of the bill. You can skip this if the restaurant has added a service charge to the bill. At informal eateries, be more generous; those guys depend on tips for their entire livelihood. 20% is a good number to tip at the barbershop. It guarantees that the man will spend slightly longer on your bonce the next time. 
• The cinema is for watching a movie, not having a conversation (either in person or on the phone), tweeting, texting, FBing, Pinning, etc. Not even Roger Ebert relays his movie reviews over his cell phone while in the act of watching the movie itself, so surely your status update can wait 
• If you are late into the theatre, walk briskly to your seat and sit down promptly. You can greet your friends later. 
• Seats are numerically assigned for a reason. Sit in yours. This also applies to aircraft. 
• Obey traffic rules, they are there for a reason. It doesn’t matter if all around you aren’t; you must hold yourself up to a higher standard than theirs, your own. 
• The world is not your waste bin. If you have garbage, hang on to it until you can dispose of it properly, instead of tossing it out of your car window.

Originally published in Dawn, Nov 2012. The edited version (scatological references didn't make it for some reason) can be seen here: 

http://dawn.com/2012/11/04/etiquette-the-perfect-manners/

On the nature of the space-time continuum from a day commuter's perspective

There is something to be said about the infinite wait that seems to inevitably accompany a flight, especially domestic. No matter how late you leave home, no matter how long you dawdle at the coffee shop in the departure lounge, no matter how many electronic gadgets you carry, the aluminium phallus that we all seem you use more and more, deep vein thrombosis notwithstanding, seems to have this ability to play with the fabric of the space time continuum.

One part of this is, of course, that domestic flights seem to always leave slightly later than the advertised time. Presumably this is because of those of our fellow citizens who leverage connections in the all-powerful military to get themselves checked in before their inevitably tardy arrival at the airport, thus holding up departure. It's not like Karachi airport has a cavernous duty free where people can lose track of time...

The other part of this is the more interesting one, being that time always seems to pass much more slowly on an aircraft. And never more so when, like now, there is a technical glitch (landing gear on the plane has not fully retracted and we have to turn back; I look out of the window and see the Lucky Cement factory, pretty short trip, this). Even without the glitches, just about the best part of flights is that the slower passage of time means you can catch up on your reading or writing, or both in turn if your attention span has been irretrievably impaired by the relentless march of technology.

Flights also provide an ideal opportunity for introspection. This can be a mixed blessing. A flight of any description, especially a short haul flight where there is no planned nap, can be a recipe for disaster if something is weighing heavily on your mind. At such times, I find putting those deep, dark thoughts down on paper, especially in longhand, useful. It is almost like whatever fear is lurking in the back of your mind can do less harm if it is pinned safely down on paper. I wonder how people who don't feel the same way deal with their in-flight demons...

It is the random thoughts, though, that seem to spring up unexpectedly at these times. In fact, it is one such thought that got me started writing right now. As I sat in my seat minding my own business and discouraging conversation through big cans of headphones, I came across news of the postponement of the Beijing Marathon due to the approaching Party convention in that town. And as they do, random thoughts started to lead off from there. I thought of a colleague, who ran his first marathon the year he turned 30, and harboured a dream or running another this year, to mark the ten year anniversary of that event. He is, so he admitted, in no kind of form, but still harbours the dream.

My own dreams carry less of a risk of chafing related injuries. There is the novel that I have promised myself I will finish sometime soon (I hope that it will in time become The Great Pakistani Novel, but as time passes and words fail to accumulate on paper due to my own ennui my certainty is steadily dipping). I have become more touchy about the subject too; I snapped at Pallo the other day when she voiced my own secret thought. Like the Berlin Marathon that is likely going to be left unrun, my long cherished novel may be left unwritten too, unless i get my act together and fast.

What is your long cherished dream that you are not doing enough to fulfil? Don't you owe it to yourself to do more? What will it take?

Those, ladies and laydas, are three damn crucial questions. And it is question three that is the hardest of all. You may well know the answer to that one, as i do when it comes to writing my novel, but then life interferes, just like it did this morning in the undercarriage of PK302. And what you do when that happens is what will define you. Not in the "what will my epitaph say" kind of way ( although in that way too, if you are lucky), but in a more important, and totally internal to yourself, kind of way.

Not Quite Lord's

Originally published in The Friday Times, February 2006, posted here with some rewrites and updates.

I am posting this today, on the morning of Pakistan's first Super 8 game of this year's edition of the 20/20 World Championships. This could very easily turn into a rant about the futility of having an annual world championship. It could also very easily turn into a lament of the fact that no international cricket has been played at the National Stadium Karachi in years, an exile that is not likely to end any time soon. 

I will do neither. instead, let this piece stand for what it was intended: a celebration of the spirit of the Pakistani; the ability to extract joy from the most difficult situation, the ability to be intractable and accommodating in the same breath, of rejoicing in the smallest victories, of letting passion always prevail over pragmatism and, more than anything else, being the eternal optimist, even when outwardly exhibiting pessimism of the worst order. 

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The crowds are surging, the Pepsi and pizza are flowing freely. The noise levels are at a crescendo as empty PET bottles of soft drinks are used as noisemakers, and every success for the home team is followed by a blast of music from the PA system that is accompanied by about 15,000 spectators singing along to the chorus. 

You would be forgiven for thinking that the scene is being set for the latest experiment in Twenty-Twenty cricket in Pakistan, but you will be sorely mistaken. The players are clad in white, and the encounter is set to last a maximum of 450 overs, not 40. 

This is test match cricket, Karachi style. 

If the headquarters of the Marylebone Cricket Club is the home of cricket, then this is the equivalent of the nightclub with scantily clad dancers where cricket would come to let its hair down. Figuratively speaking, of course. Not a stiff upper lip in the house and, once the initial euphoria of being at the venue had worn off, no polite applause for the successes of the opponents either. No prawn sandwiches in evidence (we prefer our greasy samosas), and keep slices of lemon away from our doodh patti, if you please. 

In Karachi, our test cricket heroes are made of different stuff too. The local favourite right now is Shahid Afridi, who is nobody’s idea of a typical test batsman. It is not that the crowd is not knowledgeable about the game, it is just that they have a preference for pyrotechnics and they are not afraid to show it. These fans will appreciate an Atherton-like attritional innings based on spending 15 hours at the crease to save a game, but we are a belligerent lot, and would much prefer a 15 over flaying of the opposition that sets the rules of engagement for the rest of the game. 

A boundary hit by the home team is not welcomed by grudging applause and a murmur of ‘Good shot, old chap’ here. Instead, like one, the crowd rises to its feet and proceeds to shout itself hoarse. The intensity of the cheering does not vary one iota either. Whether it is the first boundary of the day after losing 3 wickets in the opening over, or the runs that bring up a second innings 500 days later, the attitude of the crowd remains constant. 

And what a crowd, too. A far cry from the days when about 15 people saw Pakistan lose to England in the twilight in 2000/1. Several stands were full to capacity and, despite the tedium of the matches that had preceded it and the loss of 6 home wickets in the first session of the first day, continued to build throughout the day. 

It would be difficult to get a better cross section of Karachi society anywhere than there was in the National Stadium on that Sunday. There were the families, convinced by the children to spend their one day off in the week at the cricket, or having convinced their spouses that this is what the children wished, in any case. Then there were the students from all different parts of town, with painted faces and dressed in their Sunday best, hoping to have a few seconds of fame courtesy of imaginatively spelt placards urging television commentators to get haircuts. Best of all, though, was the older brigade, who had been present in the ground in the 1980s when Imran was steaming in from the University Road End at the peak of his powers. All these had been turned off coming to the stadia in Pakistan due to the lack of facilities for fans in the 1990s, and were now gleefully returning to the fold. 

Karachi crowds had also been alienated by the oppressive security that had accompanied international cricket in the city for years. And I for one was shocked and amazed at the ease with which we were allowed to the stands. No searching, no pushing and shoving, no parking cars half a mile from the actual stadium entrance. Not only was the security at the National Stadium much less intrusive than that which I faced at the England test match in Multan but, hand on heart, I have to say that I was subjected to more stringent security arrangements at Lords in the summer of 2001 when Pakistan last toured England. Believe don’t believe, as my Goan schoolmates would have said. 

Such was the laissez faire attitude of the local constabulary, that vendors of all kinds of goodies, from biscuits to soft drinks by way of ice cream and chocolate, were free to roam the stands to flog their wares at inflated prices to the assembled populace. And all it took to encourage a recalcitrant spectator who refused to sit down and thereby stop blocking your view was a few shouts of ‘oye boss!’ or a chana or three chucked good-naturedly in their general direction. 

At the close of day’s play we left the stadium with our ears ringing to the sound of plastic bottles used as percussion, a (really quite poor) song in our hearts and a spring in our step. The security personnel continued to be courteous and the parking lot emptied in an orderly manner. Miracle was rapidly following miracle, and top level cricket had returned to the city with a bang. Some will say I am a fool for choosing cricket over the Bryan Adams concert that took place in the city the same day, but I have no regrets. 

So when the summer rolls round again, and it is a Saturday evening in St. John’s Wood, and Freddie is steaming in from the Pavilion End to take advantage of the legendary slope and Old Father Time is looking down on Inzi facing him at the other end, the bat in his massive hands looking like a slightly larger than normal toothpick, you can be sure of two things: 

One is that the majority of the crowd will be genteelly getting into their first rendition of ‘Swing low, Sweet Chariot’ of the day, and the other is that, somewhere in the world, a small group of people will be jumping around, shouting at the television screen and singing, unfathomably to anyone who had not been there, “Eh oh, eh oh, eh oh aah, alley alley alley oh!” The Karachi Test Cricket experience is one that is sure to stay with you for a long time to come.

All’s Frere in Love and War

On a Monday morning earlier this year, the United States of America struck a major blow in the battle for equal rights among all men (and women). However, contrary to popular spin doctory, said blow was not struck through the storming of a compound in Abbotabad, and subsequent killing of a certain Mr. Bin Laden (or capture of his cryogenically frozen body, if certain conspiracy bloggers are to be believed). Instead, it was a true stealth action, and took place in the coastal city of Karachi, in two stages. 

I was driving down the Abdullah Haroon Road a few Sundays ago, and saw an amazing sight. A family was having a picnic on the grounds of the Frere Hall, complete with bedsheet, thermos of tea, and plastic bag of fruit. A child was doing laps of the bedsheet while his parents sat discussing whatever it is that parents of toddlers discuss when said toddler doesn’t need their immediate attention; probably the toddler (it’s sad how one dimensional most parents’ conversations are). I was gobsmacked, and nearly dropped my bag of chips, mobile phone, Coke and iPod. Good thing I had a pinky finger on the wheel, or the War on Terror would have claimed another to its list of victims in the shape of a lamppost. 

To those readers not familiar with Karachi and its various vagaries, this entire scene may not sound all that remarkable; after all, people hold impromptu picnics everywhere, and Karachi is no exception. I have myself seen dastarkhwan’s laid in locations as diverse as the grounds of the Karachi Zoo, the central reservation on Khayaban-e-Ittehad, and even the westbound carriageway of the Lyari Expressway and the General Ward aisle at Jinnah Hospital. It seems that as a city we are liable to break out the biryani ka pateela at the merest sign of greenery or a cool breeze. 

The remarkable fact, then, is not the act of the picnic, but the location. For years, since people decided that blowing up fellow citizens in the general vicinity of the consulate of what they consider to be the Imperialist Oppressor was a good way of spending their Monday morning, the grounds of the Frere Hall had been off limits to all except groundskeepers, security ehelkaars and sharpshooters. 

Long gone are the queues of US visa hopefuls that snaked around the said consultate, around the then Holiday Inn Hotel, across the road trampling over the verdant lawns that is now the Japanese Consulate and into Frere Park. The respect of orderliness and general discipline then on show by Pakistanis vying to shun their country for more disciplined and law-abiding pastures has always been an interesting study in the economic concept of incentives, and a stark contrast to their base state of fist-fights over jalebis at iftar food stalls and the jump-as-many-traffic-lights-as-you-can contests at Khayaban-e-Shamsheer. 

In a city where green space per capita is already in immensely short supply, especially for those who cannot afford the price of entrance into any of the exclusive “members only” green spaces dotted around, any such space which suddenly becomes inaccessible is a blow the magnitude of which cannot accurately be measured. That, coupled with the fact that for years the Frere Hall Sunday book market had been a happy hunting ground for that notoriously shrinking population, the person to whom reading is more than surfing the net for juicy Veena Malik / Rehman Malik tidbits, meant that the lack of access to this great Gothic edifice (apparently built by the same chap who also did the Merewether Tower) had rankled amongst a significant part of the population. However, with time, this too became the norm, and people adjusted to yet another infringement. Insidious, isn’t it? 

So why the change of heart? The fact of the matter was that the Uncle had moved house, meaning the security levels of this part of the world could be brought down a notch or two (one guesses that Japanese consular lives are a few billion yens cheaper than comparable US citizenry). As a result, a great blow was cast for eaters of aaloo qeema on picnic bedsheets all over the world, and another cut-price dating venue added back to the list of possibilities – these were innocent times, remember, before the scourge of Maya Khan was unleashed upon the green spaces of this fair city, and couples were free to walk, talk, and even (Shock! Horror!) hold hands in public spaces without fear of a flock of camera-carrying vigilantes descending upon them. 

This, in itself, though, is not the entire extent of the blow that was struck by the You Ess of Eh. Their new location, the exact contents and facilities wherein were a cause of great speculation in the early days (They have their own branch of Aghas! There is a cinema in there! A discotheque! A Starbucks! A Disneyworld!), is bang on the Mai Kolachi bypass. “So what?” I hear you say. At least it is no longer next door to KGS and the kiddies of the influential are not threatened by their manhoos saaya. Not to mention we can now drive to and from Sind Club in relative peace. 

All of this is true; however, there is on not-so-insignificant fact which needs to be considered here. A large part of the Karachi workforce, and almost all of those who work in the Financial Services industry, commute daily to and from the I.I. Chundrigar Road area, and large parts of the business community to and from SITE and Boulton Market areas. If you live on “this” side of the bridge, Mai Kolachi is the main route to get to and from work. For those on “that” side of the bridge, the equivalent route is a mix of Shahrah-e-Faisal, M.A. Jinnah Road, and now the Lyari Expressway. 

In the olden days, almost all anti-USA protests used to cluster around the Numaish – Tibet Center – Regal areas (and aspire to be hosted by the venerable Nishtar Park one day). This would result in traffic chaos all along the latter routes, with commuters being routinely stuck for 3-4 hours at a time, running rapidly out of both patience and CNG. Now, however, the tables have been well and truly turned. One side of the carriageway been truncated by over a lane thanks to blast protection barriers the likes of which have not been seen before, slowing down traffic on the homebound commute on a permanent basis. 

Not only that, the daily commute is now a permanent surprise. You never know which morning one side of the carriageway will be closed for no apparent reason, putting you in a tailback with nothing but inane radio presenters for company. And Fridays have become a complete lottery. All may be milk and honey in the morning, and chaos may ensue at lunchtime, or in the early evening. Many an executive has been held up for an hour or more on their way back from a Godless lunch, thanks to a sudden and catastrophic road closure just this side of Boat Basin. Verily, the shoe doth be on the other foot. Some have even been forced in to a detour that takes them through the mean streets of Shireen Jinnah Colony, a journey many of the ivory tower brigade are not quite prepared for. 

And there it is, the circle is complete. In one fell swoop, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves set free a major recreational center for the middle classes, made enormous strides in promoting reading among one of the world’s largest youth population, and also corrected the imbalance between commute times of those who live in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and those who live in Gulshan-e-Faisal. You can’t tell me all this was not meticulously planned and are just innocent by-products of a powerful nation selfishly annexing the best piece of land available to further its internal security agenda… 

The road to Freedom can take many an unexpected turn. In the case of Karachi, it was a right turn from MT Khan Road.

A truncated version of the same (edited for length) was published in Dawn in September 2012. The link to the published version:

http://dawn.com/2012/09/23/commuting-alls-frere-in-love-and-war/

The Week That Was, May 2007

In light of all that is unrolling across the nation today, I thought it might be appropriate to repost something that I wrote back in 2006, following on from three days of rioting after firing at a political rally. 

So why this piece, then? I guess it is to a large extent a damning indictment of myself and all other of the "comfortable classes", who are nicely bundled up in front of their computers, tablets and televisions right now, bemoaning the lack of cellular signals, thanking the Lord for BBM and Whatsapp and wondering whether Chairman Mao will be delivering tonight. 

Shame on us all, just as much as there is shame on the idiots who tried to set fire to the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce building. We will continue to live our insignificant little lives as idiots burn this nation to the ground. And all this while, the one being heralded as the Messiah of the Day addresses a political rally flanked by flags of various right wing Islamist parties. 

People keep saying that the life of the Prophet is an example for all of us on how to lead our lives. Well, as far as I am aware, he did not react with violence to offences being committed about his person while he was alive. neither should we. But react we must, for if we don't then it is inevitable that Karachi will turn into another Mogadishu. And we will adjust to that too.

Adjust. How I hate that word. 

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Talk about being out of touch with the man on the street.

The whole city was burning and here I was, catching up on my beauty sleep – at least I was not playing the fiddle, or whatever else Nero was alleged to have been up to, that misunderstood genius.

I have to admit though, that in theory I am extremely well-placed to comment on the latest head-rearing of violence in this fairly fair city, live as I do about 500 yards from the offices of a television channel that was besieged by a baying mob in all their gun-wielding, tyre-burning fury. But I have to admit that as I watched the drama unfold literally down the road from my apartment, I felt a strange disconnect; it was as if the pictures on television had nothing to do with the real world.

I have as much of a political conscience as the next guy, provided that the next guy has less political conscience than a newt. Actually, that my not necessarily be true. I don’t know how politically aware newts are. I do, however, have my own opinions, and they may not necessarily be based on what the talking heads on the many news channels, or the editors of the literary-minded publications have to say. I have certainly been living in this city for enough time to know exactly what event is going to spark what kind of backlash and what spin the various parties involved will put on the events.

So in one way I was not at all surprised at the events of this Saturday past. If anything, I was relieved that the events were not a lot uglier than they did get, and that the worst case scenario, of pitched battles along ethnic, not political, lines that could easily have taken place given the alarming amount of munitions floating around the city did not materialize to the extent that they could have. Although in time my worst fears do appear to be getting more and more likely; something I am praying subsides as quickly as possible.

And I do take strong exception to suggestions from some quarters that bemoan the inability of the residents of this city, or nation, as the case may be, to protest peacefully. I was in England when the anti-globalisation protests there got extremely ugly, and most of us remember the scenes from Seattle a few years ago. Not to mention the annual free-for-all that is the marching season in Northern Ireland. Although we do have a long way to go in terms of allowing people the right to protest, whatever their opinion, we must remember that outbreaks of violence at such occasions are not a problem limited to Pakistan.

And it must be said that some of the reporting on view at the various channels was pretty farcical. A case in point: a correspondent on one of the channels was reporting from the site of a recently-concluded gun battle near a bridge, and all that the anchor seemed interested in was whether the said correspondent was on top of the bridge, or underneath it! And on another channel, a high-ranking government official was dragged over hot coals – not for the content of his report to the press, but for the fact that a large portion of it was in English! I can only assume that either his report had nothing which could be held open to criticism, or that the correspondent found himself unable to decipher his heathen code. Yet another anchor referred to the 9mm handguns and Soviet vintage AK-47s as “the latest weaponry”; I guess he has not really kept up with the crime statistics of the city since about 1990, or maybe this says more about the Karachi mindset – we have been through a lot in the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the sight of a ‘TT’ does not even shock one when someone in the motorcycle next to you at a traffic signal is carrying one casually in his hand much like a mobile phone (this really happened to me a couple of weeks ago).

It is amazing though how the residents of this city manage to find silver linings in the unlikeliest places. One of the ways in which this manifested itself was that many people I have met remarked that, due to the trouble causing many offices and factories to remain closed, there was enough electricity for residential consumers to get by. Hence, in this city that it seems faces a perpetual electricity shortage, there was a spell of 72 hours in which most parts of town faced zero load shedding. A case of being thankful for small mercies?

A more likely explanation, though, is that the KESC staff responsible for switching off the power to various parts of the city could not make it in to work, to operate the said controls. The picture in my mind is a mixture of a console akin to that operated by Homer Simpson at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, and an elaborate command and control measures, complete with a briefcase of localities and outage times and timings, referred to by insiders as the ‘electrical football’.

The rumor mills, too, have been working overtime this past week. If the fruit seller is to be believed, the military is about to roll into town to take over proceedings. However, the same fruit seller did tell me on the best authority the day before that the bridge I drove across to work this morning had been blown up by miscreants, so I am not sure if his source, the vegetable seller, is all that reliable.

Maybe it is true that watching fictional violent images on television makes one immune to the real thing when broadcast on the same media, or maybe it is that things in this city have been a lot worse in the dark days of the 1980s/1990s. Either way, my abiding memory from this past inglorious week was not a scene of murder or mayhem, but this: on Friday night, at a local dessert joint that is normally the haunt of teens which too much time and money on their hands, there was barely enough room to stand as families packed in to take advantage of the impromptu extended weekend to grab a scoop of late night ice cream.

Perhaps the residents of this former city of lights, now a city of electricity shortages, are just increasingly fatalistic. Perhaps they grab any slice of pleasure where they can. Or, more worryingly, perhaps the gap between the two sides of the bridge is so great that events on the wrong side of the tracks do not even register on the radar of the blessed.

Originally published in The Friday Times, June 2007

Peroxide Nation

There is a saying, that one learns something new every day. My something new learnt for today is that this saying is true. 

My something new learnt for yesterday, though, was not so much a new learning as an epiphany. There are, in all probability, more blondes in the city of Karachi alone than there are in the whole of Sweden, and I have to thank my friend Silas the Albino Monk once again for putting so succinctly in words the thoughts that were on the tip of my head. 

This realisation came to me in a sudden flash of, what else, blonde. In this case, the flash came from the hair of a mother and daughter pair who were behind me in the cramped aisles of a local supermarket. Thanks to their overzealousness to reach the Slim Fast shelves, the daughter did her best to hack me off at the ankles, using her shopping trolley as battering ram. There is a time and a place to be run over by a blonde bombshell, unexploded or otherwise, and it is normally a desert island with a notable absence of things such as irate mothers with too little sugar in their systems; unfortunately, the main aisle of a crowded supermarket did not qualify for these, or any other less printable reasons. 

As I turned round to issue a mute protest at this, what I consider to be the greatest discourtesy that one shopper can do to another (except perhaps reaching over someone’s shoulder to grab that last bottle of peroxide blond hair dye from the shelf), I was literally frozen in my spot at what I saw, to the considerable chagrin of the diet-conscious duo; for what I saw was a sea of gold. I believe the industry term for this is ‘streaking’, which if you have witnessed cricket at Lords on a sunny Sunday afternoon, has a completely different, alcohol fuelled connotation. There were at least a dozen women in the aisle that goes from one end of the supermarket to the other, and all but one of them had some variant of flax in their locks. 

Flax! Thought I. It was like that (really quite average) movie Children of the Corn, with a town full of creepy blonde children with telekinetic powers that I saw in the Summer of ’96 just because there was a crackdown on pirated movies on my local video wallah and every release of Pulse Global got rented by default. And throughout my day, open as I now was to this new phenomenon, I saw they were indeed everywhere. From overzealous blonde streaks to full-blown Golden Sunrise and everything in between, it seems that our women are taking to the bottle en masse. 

I wonder what this growing trend can be attributed to. Not being of the female persuasion, I cannot claim any insights into a woman’s mind beyond those that one gets via osmosis through living in a house full of women all his life. I would like to think that I am neither a misogynist nor a chauvinist, but I do fear that some of what is to follow may result in the ashes of certain items of intimate apparel being delivered to my door. For I feel that this trend can be attributed to one of three things: frugality, insecurity or sheep-walkery. 

Frugality could be a reason, for grey shows up less when hair is of a lighter hue, thus entailing less frequent visits to the “beauty pall-er” – and pall-ers they are indeed, for their work is frequently quite ap-pall-ing. Insecurity with ones’ self image and the desire to follow an ideal of beauty that stems from the West is, of course, not something that is restricted to our nation, for the same is true most famously in Japan. The possible linkage between many Pakistani blondes being of “a certain age” and the quality of Scandinavian cinema intended for “mature” audiences in the era when their now-menfolk were in their adolescent years is not really a discussion for this forum. 

However, I feel that the most likely reason for this growing trend is the bhhed chaal mentality that a large part of all society, not just ours, has been cursed with. In the first instance, the women most likely to choose a lighter hue for their hair would be the ones who spend a significant part of their time in the West, the better to blend in. These ladies are the most likely to be the opinion leaders in the highest echelons of our society, and their preferences and trends would then filter through to the rest of the population. Their men also spend a lot of quality time in the west, so this could be a subconscious effort to keep the men on the straight and narrow but still give them a pale shade of a forbidden fruit. 

Whatever the reason, this tendency does appear to be spreading. Colouring of hair for reasons other than to stem the flow of time was, a few years ago, considered the preserve of the affluent ladies that lunch. No longer, though. Any salon worth its salt now has, I am reliably informed, a dedicated staff who deals with turning their clients’ coifs a lighter shade of pale. And it would take just one quick stroll round Gulf Shopping Mall to confirm that the recipients of these image transplants are getting younger. 

Of course, that is neither here nor there, for is it not said (often by the folically challenged) that one should never trust or do business with anyone who changes hair colour to hide their age; for if the person can lie to themselves, then they can do the same to you. 

In closing, I would request my female readers two things: firstly, please don’t send me any hate mail; my credit card bills are traumatising enough as it is. And secondly, before you reach for the bottle, consider the damage that you are doing to your roots, and I don’t just mean your follicles.

Originally published in Dawn, April 2008. The link to the edited article, as published, is below:

http://archives.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/080420/dmag6.htm 

…And not a drop to drink

If climate change is a sign of the impending Apocalypse, then it may be a good idea to give up the day job and take up residence at a convenient shrine, seeking absolution and enlightenment (but no longer in moderation) or, failing that, some good music and passable narcotics, and here is why. This summer monsoon has hit the City of Intermittent Lights well in the month of September fashionably late, much like a minor celebrity. This coupled with the fact that the Gulmohar was still flowering well into August are clear signs that all those B list Hollywood movies where the flipping of the magnetic poles / stopping of the flow of the core of the earth / cessation of the North Atlantic Current causes all manner of special effects are about to come true. 

It is a strange sight in this town to see people waiting for their morning bus wearing leather jackets that are so well endowed with tassels and zippers that they would put any Hell’s Angel to shame. And with the chill being precipitated by precipitation, the city’s traffic police take the opportunity to break out of the tedium of their normal uniforms, and sport trendy white rain slickers instead, with the kind of detailing on the sleeves that is seen either in Gaultier Couture shows or on dolls’ clothes. 

Here comes the hotstepper

And ‘tis a time for the policemen to be even busier than usual, for it takes the merest downpour to reduce city traffic to a post-apocalyptic state of quasi-anarchy not seen since the days of the Mad Max movies; indeed one would not be surprised to see a likeness of Mel Gibson adorning a city minibus any time soon, bearing down on the unrighteous with an expression of holy (and anti-Semite) malevolence. And even his credentials as a lethal weapon would be tested to the full, having to travel from Tower to Gulberg on the top of a bus, having been relieved of his cell phone and wallet somewhere on the way on the back of an equally lethal weapon put to his well-coiffured head. 

Even a couple of centimetres of water provide enough fodder for the population of this town to seek entertainment. Normally, this starts with many of the side streets of the city’s business district turning into sporting venues, where local children could participate in prestigious events such as the All New-Challi Short Course Swimming Championships and the Guru Mandir Steeple Chase. My perennial favourite, however, remains, the Motorbike Dressage event, where, in a supreme exhibition of man and machine as one, the protagonists assumes a variety of callisthenics-inspired postures atop his noble Chinese-engineered steed in order to avoid the spray from the soiled road soiling his attire. 

National Aquatics Center, eat your heart out

However, the hardy perennial Sidewalk Spectator does not seem to be deterred as easily, as could be seen by the number of people who spent a large part of their Monday peering over the edge into the city’s first, and most infamous, underpass. Not that there was much to see; the drainage problems that had led to it being dubbed the city’s newest municipal baths appear to have been alleviated. 

This being the peak of wedding season, the rains did manage to put a damper on proceedings for some, while those who had managed to book an indoor venue patted themselves on the back for their amazing foresight. For the terminally antisocial such as myself, this provided the ideal opportunity to beg off such engagements, citing the inclement weather as an excuse. Legend would have you believe that if you eat directly out of the pan, it will rain on your wedding day, especially if you scrape the bottom. I wonder how many grandmothers spent these past few days chastising their grandchildren with endless ‘I told you so’s’. 

It is interesting that we greet newly-married colleagues much as we would newly bereaved ones, with a half-hug and a forced rictus of a smile that seems to say that we do not wish to intrude upon their private grief(!) any more than we have to. The words spoken at such times are also as stereotypical, and have probably been unchanged for as many centuries. It is quite entertaining, I have to say, to be at the periphery of a wedding reception and watch the couple and those greeting them alike to fumble through platitudes, purses and pockets while they exchange good wishes and envelopes, it never being clear which of the two is the more welcome. 

I wonder sometimes if the stereotypical exchanges between people on such occasions are due more to their own preconceived notions than social norms. At a wedding I attended some years ago, the exchanges between his (Caucasian) bride and the wedding guests were probably the equivalent of a couple of undergraduate level courses in psychology and sociology, not to mention a study in how different generations interact. The oldest generation would speak to the American bride in Punjabi, and be completely satisfied with nods and smiles in return. The next generation down would speak to her slowly and loudly, as if making a transatlantic call on a bad telephone line. One generation further down, the conversation would begin in English and, thanks to her knowing a few Urdu words like ‘yes, no, and thank you’, would turn into a bit of a competition to explore the depths of her linguistic knowledge, while the youngest of the ‘grown-up’ generation stood by, their faces brimming with embarrassment at what their elders were making them live through. Pretty much a masterclass in what was once called the ‘generation gap’. 

Thankfully the wedding was not rained off, which is more can normally be said for the first working day after the downpours. After all, enjoying the rain with a plate of pakoras and a cup of steaming tea is one of those little pleasures in life that everyone can enjoy; for that time you don’t need to be worrying about whether the basement car park is getting flooded, or if the electricity is going to fail and for how long, or if you will have to wade to work the next day. For those glorious ten minutes, all that exists in your universe is a cup of tea to keep your hands warm, some rapidly cooling dumplings that must be consumed before they grow cold, and the sound of the rain, muffling the usual chaotic noises of a city going about its daily business and placing you in your own little oasis of calm.

Reason enough to pull a sickie

20 Questions (and random thoughts) that come to mind when driving on the streets of Karachi

Remember your childhood? That wonderful, sepia-coloured time when there was only one TV channel, which used to show one cartoon a day (at 5 pm), and Sesame Street on Fridays after Gillette World Sports Special? We didn't used to have PlayStations and social gaming back then, so we used to make up all sorts of games, for which the most advanced technology required was some paper and a pencil. 

One of those games was called kasauti, known in the vernacular as "Twenty Questions". One team would think of something (animal or mineral) and write down the answer on a piece of paper, and the other team then had 20 questions in which to guess what it was. Ever since then, the number 20 has held an almost magical quality about it for me, and for any list, especially of questions, to have occult significant, it surely must also comprise of this magic number. 

The first two of these questions occurred to me almost simultaneously a few days ago, followed swiftly on by the thought "Do these important existential conflicts keep others awake at night too, or is it just the KESC?" So I thought to jot these questions down, and lo and behold if I didn't come up with exactly twenty. 

So here it is, in all of its glory. The magical list of questions (and other thoughts) that dog you on the mean streets of Karachi. 

------------

1. Why is there always a bus parked on Khayaban e Shahbaz, on the corner of Shahbaz and Hafiz? 

2. What exactly is achieved by running a red light when the counter shows that it will turn green in four seconds? 

3. What part of “nahin karo beta” don’t you understand? 

4. Thank you for flashing your lights at me. If only they were tasers, I could have been vaporised and you could have moved one car length ahead in this queue... 

5. Why don’t people realise that driving with a high beam blinds oncoming cars? More likely, they don’t care... 

6. Why do you creep forward one whole lane when joining a busy dual carriageway? 

7. Ok seriously, if you park your car illegally, blocking off the road for dozens of people, does that affect the acceptance of your namaz? Why couldn’t you just have left home five minutes earlier? 

8. Is there a connection between lack of food / water / nicotine and the ability to see the colour red? 

9. How much does it cost to fix the brake light wiring of a motorcycle? Is it more than the price of a human life? 

10. Why must big cars be driven by even bigger assholes? Seems like there is no other point of commonality as this phenomenon spans all demographic boundaries. 

11. Khayaban e Iqbal (yes, I didn’t know of the name change either – the stretch between teen talwar and the underpass) is a red route (tow away zone, no questions asked). So then why do the four (on average) traffic policemen on duty there assist people in parking on the red route instead of towing their ass? 

12. Why is the least spot of rain like the precursor to a Noah-esqe deluge in the minds of drivers who use I I Chundrigar Rd? 

13. Why do parha likha people merrily drive up the wrong side of the road to avoid a 40 yard detour? If they turned left instead of right, there was a u-turn opportunity literally 20 yards down the road... 

14. Will people ever stop staring at me like I am mental when I give way to right at a roundabout? 

15. Why must you go up the wrong side of the road in a tailback, thus clogging up traffic on both sides for half an hour? 

16. What part of “No Entry” don’t you understand? (particularly for Zamzama, Shamsheer and Mujahid) 

17. Will the Jam Sadiq Bridge ever be in a good state of repair? (I dare not check the name on Google Maps for fear that has also been changed) 

18. Is that patch of road leading from Burns Road to Urdu Bazaar one way or not? 

19. There are few ideas that can be considered dumber than the Tariq Rd / Khalid Bin Walid Rd one way system. Until you visit Khayaban e Shamsheer. 

20. Oh, I am so sorry. I never got that memo about your father having purchased the road.

Pi in the Sky

My views on Booker prize winning books are quite well documented. With a few notable exceptions, they are mostly homogenous, following similar narrative tracks and quite often a sentence structure that can charitably be described as derivative. Many of the recent ones have featured sub-continental locations and themes, and have been by South Asian authors, and as a result that derivation is quite often from the author of the ‘Booker of Bookers’, by way of a certain Mr Garcia Marquez. As a result, I am jallofied from doodh, and avoid like the plague anything that has its roots in magical realism with an Indian flavour, when it comes to my reading. Therefore, picking up “Life of Pi” was a mistake on my part. 

This is a mistake that I made a few years ago, and am happy to report was one of the best ones of my life. Having had a couple of conversations about the book recently (and more on this later), I once again asked myself: How did Yann Martel take a premise which is laden with the promise of turgidity of Arundhatian proportions, and turn it into what I can only call an unqualified triumph, and also win the Booker on his way to it? 

The answer to both lies not so much in the story itself, but in the manner of its telling. Prologues can be a tricky proposition, but there is one to start of this book that has to rank amongst the finest ever written, when it comes to setting the tone for a novel, and getting a reader’s attention. Once you have piqued the reader’s curiosity, and established one or more characters that the reader would be interested in knowing more about, that in itself is half the battle. 

The second key is the believability. Strange as it may seem, somehow this story about the most improbable of things, a boy being cast away on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with only a Bengal tiger for company along the way does not, at any point, seem so fantastical a thing that it must be fiction of the sort that tries to ground itself in the real world, and fails miserably. The style of the narrative is again at play – when a novel is written in the form of a journalist taking down an eyewitness account then, once you have accepted this as fact, the rest seems to just be a natural progression. 

The third key, to me, is the pace of the narrative. Life of Pi is not a slender tome (although not in A Suitable Boy territory either), and yet the narrative canters along at a pace which does not give the reader much pause for wondering whether such phenomena actually exist in the natural world (most of them do, actually). Suspension of scepticism is key, and once achieved, your readers are then eating out of your hands much like a tame tiger would. 

Perhaps most importantly, though, this is the story of the indestructibility of the human spirit, even under the most appalling of circumstances. Thanks to the prologue, the reader knows that all will be (a few psychological scars aside) well in the end. And when you marry that to a sledgehammer of a final act, the masterpiece is complete. 

If you are going to take a risk with one award winning book this year, let it be this one. A word of warning, though: not all award winning books are this good (although some are pretty damn fantastic), so don’t go out and blow your entire personal extravagances budget for the month on other winners. Pick and choose, and you may find another star amongst all the derivative rubbish. 

Postscript: 

I have recently heard some worrying news: a movie adaptation is being done of the book. The worry is on two fronts. Firstly, I am yet to see a movie adaptation of a book that is as good as the original volume. Even movies which are great on a standalone basis (Jaws and The Godfather come to mind) have books which had a depth that could not be matched. It would seem, therefore, that a movie would need to be in the ‘all time great’ category to come close to the written word version. 

Furthermore, there are some books which, when you read them, you think must be unfilmable, and Life of Pi falls in that latter category, to my mind. After all, how on Earth do to make a film about a teenage boy cast away on a lifeboat with nothing but a Bengal Tiger for company? Having Ang Lee direct would help, in theory. He may have an inconsistent track record at delivering box office, but he does manage to tell a story well, and remain faithful to the spirit of the original. So I YouTubed the trailer  with some significant trepidation, expecting that kid from “Slumdog Millionaire”, improbable special effects, and some dubious liberties taken with the content. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Hjrs6WQ8M&feature=youtube_gdata_player

So far, so good. If the trailer is the only thing to go by (which it is, for me) at least I am not tearing my hair out quite yet. There is still a long distance to traverse in terms of expectations of quality, but on the basis of the available information, I am willing to let it slide so far. Only time will tell whether it can approach the peaks of The Godfather, or is destined for the scrapheap a la What To Expect When You Are Expecting... 

Feasting Faster

It’s back. Like one of those Hollywood summer block busters, sequels and prequels with more special effects than lines of dialogue which return annually and monopolize all conversations for a few days, such is also the fasting month. In the lead up, it is all that anyone can speak of. There are groceries to be shopped, banana prices to bemoan, samosas to freeze, dates (of the eating variety) to horde, alarms to set, prayer rugs to dust and schedules to adjust. Scheduling; that is a major part of the buildup to Ramadan.

Remember the Government’s ill fated attempt to introduce daylight savings time in yet another insane bid to save electricity? Well, daylight savings time doesn’t help when a large part of the maid population of this country refuses to move their clocks forward or back as the case may be. And this problem wasn’t confined to the domestic help population either. The only card showing sehr and iftar times available in my house that year was printed according to the ‘old time’ (the clerics in question thought daylight savings was some sort of Zionist conspiracy theory designed to get their prayers to the ears of the Almighty an hour late); thankfully the variance was caught before 4 am wake up calls were set up.

If you are not self employed, the first question on everyone’s minds is what will be the revised, and truncated, working hours? And then, based on those, when can one be reasonably expected to make one’s escape, for the salaryman, the fact that Ramadan offers an opportunity to get home at a decent hour and a) take a nap b) potter about doing some housework c) watch sports on TV d) take another nap e) read through that book collection lovingly collected through a combination of visits to Sunday Bazaar and Liberty Books is almost as great an attraction as the divine promise of salvation and blessings.

Ramadan is also a time for second chances. Remember all those new years’ resolutions made all those months ago? It is time to dust them off and have another crack. Jog after iftar, anyone? Or how about reading the Quran for ten minutes each day? Getting home from work at a decent hour we have covered already. Also on the cards: spending more time with the kids/spouse/parents/friends/self. After all, the devil is tied up (hard to believe if one follows our politicians continuing to form), so you have only yourself to blame for any ensuing failures.

However, one can always cast blame for one’s failures onto other, non-hellish but equally damnable sources. For, like all best laid plans, factors outside one’s control come in the way. Like last year, when my plans to go for a jog were scuppered by the park’s lights not being switched on during the hours of taraweeh. And emergencies at work kept cropping up preventing me from leaving at a decent hour (after all, the survival of an organisation comprising of thousands of employees hinges solely upon my presence in the office). So, m’lud, the blame for my ever expanding girth lies not on my shoulders, but those of the municipal authorities, the makers of tasty deep fried goodies, and the manufacturers of comfortable mattresses promising lifetime guarantees.

And then, on the first working day of the month, comes the obligatory list of iftar deals at the various eateries of the city in one’s email inbox. There is the usual all you can eat pizza and fried chicken and ‘special deals’ at buffet restaurants which are a rehash of their normal offering. At least an hour can be whiled away discussing the relative merits of each deal in detail, which is a good way to spend the first caffeine free work day in God knows how many aeons.

As an aside, a close friend of mine, now a reformed weight-watcher, once decimated 18 of the best pieces an ubiquitous American fried chicken franchise could offer, washing it down with unlimited supplies of an ubiquitous American fizzy drink brand , Ironic that the said franchise is a highly popular destination for concluding ones fast observed in the name of the Almighty as its outlets have been arsonificated many a time by bigoted zealots in the name of the Almighty.

One thing is for sure – going out for a cup of coffee in Ramadan is an extremely difficult proposition. All the cafes are packed to the rafters with those of us who are not packing the mosques to the rafters at taraweeh time, with the result that those cafes which have an inflated sense of their own self worth seem to swell up even more, with a resulting reduction in the seating room available within. And they are full of cigarette smoke to boot, as people catch up their 24 hour quota of nicotine in the hours of darkness. Not the best recipe for a non smoker who prefers some peace and quiet of an evening, the better to have a conversation in.

Speaking of prayers, one of the hottest Facebook issues trending presently (now there is a social media mashup if ever you had thought of one) is the threatened sit-in by a group of ladies in protest of the denial of segregated prayer space for female fasters at the city’s trendiest coffee joint. Appropriately so, as the rising trend of protest sit-ins is already on the cusp of being elevated from a mere fad to a bona-fide expression of democratic right and will soon be ranked with its older cousin, the walk-out.

Interesting point to ponder – the quality of parking witnessed outside mosques at taraweeh time is probably the worst possible, causing certain streets to clog up to the point of impassability. At the same time, the only reason why there are not similar snarl-ups outside the more popular coffee shops is the presence of valet parking at those locations. QED: the solution to parking issues at taraweeh may simply be to provide a valet parking service...

All too soon, Eid will roll up. More food to be consumed, ever increasing the risk of catastrophic waistband failure in the trouser department. After all, no weight could have been lost in the fried food paradise that was the month of self discipline, and certainly getting any exercise would have proved to have been a distant dream. And now, there is shopping to be done, traffic to be fought, henna to be applied, relatives to embrace and the promise of two to four days of getting lots of sleep, watching sports on tv… this is all sounding eerily familiar, isn’t it?

What is it that they say about best laid plans?

Originally published in Dawn, 2009 - updated slightly, with input from Silas

Getting Things Off My Chest

Warning: Contains strong language

I once likened Karachi to a Faustian nightmare; it was a tongue-in-cheek statement at the time, but one that clearly is not that far from the objective reality of our times.

Love the country as I do (for no real reason, I sometimes feel; thanks to the amazing lack of governance that a succession of corrupt and mindless governments, both civilian and military, have exhibited since I have sambhaloed hosh), I have to admit that sometime you really hate the idiots who populate this nation. And last night, while being cut up on Khayaban e Shamsheer by a Hilux with no number plates full of Kalashnikov wielding thugs, I found the right words to articulate much of what is wrong with this nation.

Privilege.

The word has its origin in Latin, when it meant “private law” – and that is the malaise we suffer from, individually and collectively. The laws of the land, fucked up as they may be, are largely an irrelevance. Unlike what our study of history tells us, when this used to be true for the influential, in today’s Pakistan this seems to cut across all socio-economic boundaries. Perhaps there is no truer indicator of a state that is on the verge of failure.

I have to admit, I was not having a good day at the time of this epiphany. The lynching of a mentally disturbed person in Bahawalpur somehow got to me, the most cynical person that I know. Coming down Shamsheer is my normal commute home, and nearly being rammed into by a pickup truck full of people carrying weapons of questionable legality is bound to unnerve for at least a few seconds. And then came on the radio an ad for education and immigration to Malaysia. So sad is our state that we are happy to move to a fellow developing nation with problems of its own, and a patchy inclusiveness record to boot.

The law clearly does not apply to those in Mercedes and Land Cruisers. They travel about town with private armies, mush as one would in Mogadishu, and the rights of other road users melt away in front of them. The law also does not apply to those whose license plates are green in colour; their private armies are paid for by the taxpayers (like myself who, by virtue of being salaried, cannot indulge in our other privilege – income tax evasion as a matter of business as usual). For this lot, having all traffic move out of the lane that they currently occupy is not enough. Their trailing vehicles will have the other motorists off to a side, leaving an extra lane clear; after all, the “VIP” mustn’t breathe the same air as the people who pay his salary.

The law also doesn’t apply to you as long as you can play the religion card. Please note, though, that the religion in question needs to be a mainstream sect of Sunni Islam, or you are basically painting a big ass bullseye on your forehead. You can literally get away with murder as long as you claim that you committed it to protect the True Faith. You can build illegally on stolen land, cause a public nuisance, break noise pollution laws, park illegally in the middle of the road stopping all flow of traffic, as long as you are doing it in the alleged performance of what you consider to be your religious duties.

[Aside: The good news(!) is that ‘brothers’ from all parts of the world consider breaking the law justifiable, as compared to turning up early and finding a proper place to park: 

http://home.cabbiescorner.com/home/post/2011/12/01/Cabbies-at-UWS-Mosque-Obey-Religious-Laws-Over-Parking-Rules.aspx]

Anyone ever heard of the Rights of the Neighbour?

At the lower end of the spectrum, things are no better. We steal electricity, jump traffic lights or simply pretend they don’t exist, litter, encroach, build illegally, and whatever else our mind leads us to do. Nor are the ‘middle classes’ free from blame. What is even better is the impunity with which we disregard the law. We will not pay our electricity bills, but if you dare to disconnect, we will come out onto the streets, burn tires, stop traffic, destroy public property and give TV channels breaking news fodder till you relent and let us continue to steal electricity.

And then we wonder why supply is so much less than demand when it comes to electricity.

This is building up to a common theme. There is a fundamental lack of civic sense among us Pakistanis. It wasn’t always like this; there was a time when there was a huge amount of inclusiveness, compassion and fellow feeling. Unfortunately, all this was before I was born. A lot of people blame Bhutto the First, followed up by Zia, for our many malaises. I don’t have enough knowledge to comment, so I will pull an Imran Khan and limit myself to listing out problems in this rant, rather than suggest solutions.

Our dearly departed Prime Minister was famously quoted as saying to a CNN journo “why don’t they, then?” when told that a survey showed that most Pakistanis would rather live in another country. The reason, you smug piece of shit, is that we love this country too fucking much. Those of us that actually have a means to an exit, anyway. Or those that aren’t busy beating schizophrenics to death and then setting fire to the remains, the better to show how well we are the guardians of a faith whose meaning, lest we forget, is “peace”.

Mr Gilani got one thing spot on, and that was the pulse of the nation. I don’t give a flying fuck about my fellow citizens, how they fell, and why. I am going to do whatever the fuck I want to do, and is somebody gives me a hard time about pesky things like the law, well, we have ways of dealing with those kinds of people.

It would ironic if it wasn’t so fucking sad. Islam is arguably the religion where the social contract is most central to being a good believer. And a nation formed in the name of that faith, which puts itself on a pedestal as the theykedaar of that faith, has a populace that is increasingly getting divorced from this fundamental tenet.

Love thy neighbour, and pray like you have never prayed before that it is not already too late.

Life's a Beach

In case you didn’t know already, we Pakistanis like to do things differently to the rest of the world. Our talk show billboards feature men who look like walruses instead of women who look like models. Our overpriced lawn exhibitions have larger stampedes than the Harrods sale. Our wedding guest lists feature not only people we have not met in ages, but also people we actively dislike. And, more and more often, we go to the seaside, not for the beach, but for the hut. 

Talk Show Promo, Pakistani Style. Seriously though, who is this guy, and what is his deal?



This stampede is to buy clothes at full (over)price. Go figure.



In the rest of the world, people have residences on the beach, where they live, or run boutique hotels. Not so here. In Pakistan, we have huts on the beach. A lucky few own their own, and the rest rent, steal or borrow theirs. Top companies (and clandestine government agencies too, allegedly) have their own dedicated hut as a management perk, often booked months in advance. And there are gated hut communities, where entry is as restricted as the best beachside residences anywhere else.

The best huts, the coveted ones, have their own power supply, running water, air conditioning, and other mod-cons. Others are no more than a weatherbeaten exoskeleton with a roof and the obligatory verandah. And just like having a Neelam Colony right next to a Zamzama is perfectly natural, so too can two such huts be right next to each other, awami yang cheek-by-jowl with elitist yin.

The quality of the hut can often determine whether your beach plan will be a resounding success or an unequivocal failure. People have been known to feign a relative’s terminal illness to skip work just because a prominent FMCG’s hut was up for grabs, while others have been ‘called away for urgent work’ at the mere smell of the musty cane sofa in Munnoo uncle’s one-room wonder. In fact, some people will often ask which stretch of beach a hut is on, and which multinational owns it, before committing to turn up.

The reason for this is not the mere fact that our beaches are undeveloped and there are no facilities around. In the ‘good old days’ (you know the ones, when children spoke to their elders with respect, there was not so much fuhaashi on TV and party slims was the only junk food around), our aunts and uncles were not that bothered about whether the hut had satellite TV or not, but a hut there had to be. And if not a hut, at least the gatekeeper at the French Beach could be given a bit of pocket money to let us use the verandah of an unoccupied hut. After all, you don’t need changing rooms when your swimming costume is the shalwaar kameez you arrived in and scheduled to be your attire on departure to boot.

So why the insistence on the hut? There are a couple of practical reasons. 90% of Pakistanis, male or female, are afraid of all animals, male or female, that are not already on their plate. As a result, the raised surface of the hut provides a useful barrier between themselves and the dogs, horses, mongeese, camels, killer jellyfish, known locally as “blue bottles”, and other citizens of our beaches. 

A Karachi beach, complete with flora, fauna and beach huts of all description

Secondly, it is vital for our aunties to have a place where they can sequester their daughters of marriageable age, lest they spend the entire day in the sun and turn their skin black as coal, hence ruining their chances of landing any suitable match completely. After all, the dusky hued Bollywood bombshells adorning lawn billboards all over the city are not exactly the Pakistani aunties’ idea of suitable bahu material.



Also, on an emotional note, we need a hut because there are key components of a day at the beach that cannot be accomplished without it. Principal among these is the eating of the pateela of biryani / qeema on melamine plates while seated on a dastarkhwaan. Also featuring prominently is the exchange of gossip, resolution of old feuds, initiation of new ones and making of matches by ladies of a certain age. What remains eternally endearing though is the aunties’ beseeching of the young brigade to stay away from the water, and loud chants to invoke the Almighty’s help in keeping the clan safe for the day from the wrath of the waves after their inevitable refusal to comply.

Also vital in the beach experience is the hurling of imprecations at the youngsters for dragging sand on to the verandah floor. We are probably the only nation where people go to the beach for the day, but refuse to have anything to do with the sand. Like I said earlier, we Pakistanis like to do things differently to the rest of the world.

Originally published in Dawn, 2011