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.