Carnage at the Carnival

Guest blogger Sohail Bhojani attended a fund raising mela, Lahore style, back in 2010. Here is his field trip report. 

Twenty million Pakistanis affected, total economic impact of a staggering 43 billion Dollars and the dreams of thousands of families washed away. A nation, already stagnant, set back by several decades. The stark facts which lead many a caring citizens to a recently held carnival organised to raise funds for our fellow-countrymen who had suffered enormously at the hands of the merciless floods. What your columnist witnessed that afternoon in the swank lawns of a swish Lahore hotel may not make pretty reading for a lot of his readers.

Approaching the venue, locating the epicenter of the carnival was easy. Shakira, (the Columbian diva who achieved modern age musical immortality with a song serenading the truthfulness of her derriere!) welcomed the attendees by letting all and sundry know that it was time for Africa. Having failed to find any obvious connection, I was left to conclude that this was, perhaps, a misguided effort to establish a tenuous, symbiotic relationship between the down-trodden people of Africa and the victims of the greatest national disaster to have hit our country. I guess it’s the best we can do till Shehzad Roy or some other teen idol releases another pop number to appeal to our national conscience.

The show was put on to show solidarity with the stricken flood victims and generate much needed funds. Instead, the pomp and wealth on show was enough to warrant a suo moto show cause notice from our higher judiciary. It seemed that the cause had been hijacked by designer ladies with designer gentlemen, designer children and designer domestic help in tow. The sheer quantum of top foreign labels they came armed would give a Harrods’ or Macy’s collection a good run for their money. The choicest rags and bags, timepieces and showpieces, eyewear and footwear, inner and outerwear, here, there and everywhere. It was part catwalk, part Hollywood-style red carpet, all pure pantomime. Almost as if the elegant world of haute couture continued to spin in its elegant orbit, unmindful of the backdrop of flood-inflicted devastation that should have thrown its axis off balance. Now don’t get me wrong dear Reader – there is nothing wrong with dressing well, looking good and having a ball. However, this unfortunately was not the time for it. 

All one needed was an excited member of some self-proclaimed fashion police squad to thrust a microphone in one’s face asking which brands one was sporting while supporting this cause nobile. Thankfully I was spared my fellow carnival-goers’ latest attempts to mispronounce names such as Hermes, Zegna and Aigner. Worse still were the none-too-subtle efforts of the happy folk at the carnival to push their branded merchandise in each others’ faces. After all, a lot of moolah had been spent in keeping up with the Jaans-es as well as the Joneses, and if bling had been procured, bling had to be flaunted.

By the way, this season’s accessory to-die-for, I was informed by a reliable source gracing the occasion, is not an uber-expensive handbag, a flashy pair of sunshades or those must-have party shoes. It is in fact, a Filipino maid (or two)! Our rampant fetish for all things foreign knows no bounds, even if it contributes to local unemployment. There is, however, hope for handbag lovers. Next year’s accessory to-die-for, I am again educated by the same source, is a Birkin bag, a bargain at one and a half million Rupees, enough to feed an entire flood-stricken village for months. 

I digress, dear Reader, but I couldn’t see how extracting one thousand Rupees (the price of the entrance ticket) from a one hundred thousand Rupee handbag can lead one to be satisfied with one’s contribution towards the cause. But then, perhaps it is too much to seek the spiritual when one is surrounded with so much of the superficial. We seem to have traded in our Qawwalis for Cavallis a long time ago. Hence no surprise that we were more interested in stepping on each others’ Prada-clad toes in blatant efforts at one-upmanship (no wonder the devil has a particular affinity for the iconic Italian brand) and seeing the world through dispassionate eyes hidden behind our rose-tinted Chanels set atop newly nipped and tucked and finely reshaped noses. Navel-gazing eschewed, colonic-irrigation espoused, it seems. Further digressing confession: I have labeled one of my wife’s friend’s husband Jimmy Choo – as much for his penchant for spoiling his spouse rotten with an array of products from the designer as for the fact that I never cared to remember his real name. I hope the (fashion) gods are forgiving.

Perhaps out of the frustration germinated from the sad irony of the situation, I managed to pick a fight – with a ten year old. He was part of a posse of schoolchildren, smart uniforms proudly advertising their pedigree school (one of the best educational institutions in the land it has to be said). His sin – queue jumping. However, I don’t think much heed was paid to my quick admonishment aimed at bringing about behavioral correction. He and his partners-in-crime simply sniggered and ran off to the next amusement on offer without remorse – happily oblivious to the hundreds of thousands of kids struggling post-flood to find their next meal. But then, should one expect anything else from these (hopefully) innocent souls, having observed their parents sashaying and shimmying, botoxing and liposuctioning their way through middle-age, seeking status and comfort from an OTT flaunting of material wealth, with taxes and the law being something that happens to other people.

Makes me think. Revolutions and civil wars are born out of a sense of injustice, inequity or imbalance. Ours can’t be far off if the wealth we have concentrated in the immaculately-manicured hands of a very elite chosen few (the carnival was to me an illustrative microcosm of this) and their growing propensity to flash it in the face of the suffering millions is anything to go by. Number 34 on the global country corruption index, inflation poised to hit 20%, less than 3 Dollars daily income per capita, 33% of our population living below the poverty line, widespread unemployment and illiteracy and countless dashed hopes – facts, along with Shakira’s hips – don’t lie. 

Time to wake up or watch out for our elected lords and masters in power.

Summer is Here, and Bijli is Not

As the mercury rises and the brownouts become longer, here is another one from the archives. 

I got an interesting forwarded email in my inbox for a change. It showed the skylines of various major cities of the world at night. There was the Manhattan skyline from New York, the Eiffel Tower from Paris, the Palace of Westminster from London, and from Karachi, a blank, black screen. This email was followed up in the next send/receive cycle by a single line email from one of my friends. All it said was, “Need a generator ASAP”. This was followed up a day later by an email detailing a scheme from a bank through which customers could get instalment loans for the express purpose of purchasing generators.

One more subject has, it seems, been added to the list of topics of conversation in parties and weddings everywhere. Everyone has an opinion on the ongoing power crisis to hit the nation in general and the city of Karachi in particular, and unlike the captaincy of the cricket team or the propensity for certain politicians’ hands to ‘accidentally’ brush against parts of their parliamentary colleagues’ anatomy and be caught on camera and put on YouTube, in this case there are no dissenting opinions. All parties agree that these power shortages are bad, but there is still considerable difference of opinion on what exactly should be done about it. 

My personal take on the situation is that since the major culprit is power theft thanks to the thousands of kundas being employed by our enterprising brethren everywhere, the first thing that needs to be done is to remove the illegal contraptions as quickly as possible. This does come with one caveat, however. A kunda being used by the neighbourhood children to illuminate their night-time cricketing endeavours is a perfectly justifiable use of state resources, and these should be exempt from this crackdown. After all, one should not forget the indiscretions of one’s own youth, mis-spent or otherwise. 

Of course, this may cause some complications if it comes to light (pun not intended, but I shall take the credit anyway) that many of the places of work and residence of our long-armed brethren, who would presumably be asked to help in this campaign of dekundafication are also on the list of sites to be sounded out.

One reassuring thing I learnt thanks to the recent power peek-a-boo being played out in this city is that you don’t fall off a treadmill if there is a power failure, even if you have built up a decent head of steam. Although there is a moment of existential crisis as you go from running full-tilt to being at a dead stop, but at least you don’t fall flat on your face. This is a bit of a relief to me, as I have got a suit for my wedding that is just a bit, shall we say ‘snug’, around the waistline, and I need to drop half an inch around my waist and then, more importantly, keep it off. I am assuming that all wedding venues have their own independent power supply nowadays. The last thing that I want is to end up having my nuptials in the light of mobile phones. 

On alternative, of course, is what I recently witnessed at a wedding; the whole venue was engulfed in total darkness, apart from the generator-fuelled (and very tasteful) lights illuminating the bride and groom in all their finery. So while it was totally dark for all the guests, the happy couple was wreathed in a most apt, surreal halo. This arrangement, of course, has the added advantage that the guests have only a rudimentary idea of the food being doled out to them, and hence are marginally less likely to find fault. Not to mention the video-photographer being thwarted in his efforts to commit to celluloid my battle with an unusually intractable chicken wing, which I did manage to win after a protracted tussle.

You know how people who have just had a baby are completely obsessed by it and can speak of nothing else? Sometimes I feel like the run-up to a wedding is quite similar. There are so many lists percolating in my mind that talk inevitably drifts in that direction, try as I might to keep all talk purely casual. And a new concern has been added to the ever growing list. Ample time must be allowed for in giving clothes, jewellery and all kinds of other orders for the inevitable delays that the craftsmen in question will smoothly blame on power failures; sitting in Ghayas the tailor’s atrium on the evening of your Valima waiting for the suit to arrive hot off the presses is no one’s idea of how to spend a couple of hours.

Everyone is dealing, it seems, with this on-again-off-again relationship that we are developing with electricity in their own way. Some are getting mad. Others are getting generators. I, to the considerable chagrin of those nearest and dearest to me, am managing somehow to find the humour in the situation, although it isn’t the easiest thing to do when dealing with marathon 14-hour outages.

Just last night, there was an electricity failure in our neighbourhood that went beyond the normal shedding of the load that is now so commonplace. One of the neighbours, Mr Nadeem, managed to pull a whole ball of strings and get a KESC vehicle to turn up in the middle of the night. I was on my balcony at the time, eating the much cooler night air, and heard the comment made by the foreman to the watchman of our apartment building. 

The foreman asked the nightwatchman if the electricity had returned yet! Yes, actually it has, and we are just sitting in the dark or with generators running because the sound of the infernal machines is pleasing to our ears, thank you very much! I could not help but laugh at the question. It is heartening to know that officials do not shed themselves of their officiousness even at 3 in the morning.

Happy-for-some side effects of this ongoing crisis will, I feel. include people remaining awake during hot summer nights with no cable television to while away the hours and seeking alternate diversions, and the more experimental ones amongst us welcoming the opportunity to shed as much unnecessary nightwear (and accompanying inhibitions) as possible. Consequently, I predict a miniature baby boom to augment the huge baby boom that our fair land has achieved over the last few decades.

Originally published in April 2008. Link to the edited version as published:

http://archives.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/080413/dmag1.htm

That's Just Not Cricket

Guest blogger Sohail Bhojani shares his memories of cricket, jingoism and Lahore

“The last ball coming up, 4 runs required…..and that’s a 6, and Pakistan have won. Unbelievable victory by Pakistan….”

Words immortalised by the inimitable Iftikhar Ahmed. Words, all those like me who grew up in the 80s, grew up on. Words that made all us Pakistanis feel, for a long long time, that all was well, not just with our cricket but with our then-undemocratically-ruled country at large. For those who cottoned on to the Indian connection in the lines written so far in this piece - well done. For this is indeed a piece about Pakistan and India. For these were the words certainly playing in my mind when I collected my small family and set off on what was our maiden voyage to the Wahgah Border (this is really how they spell it at the Border).

Frustration - desperate (last) minutes spent locating my 1992 Cricket World Cup replica Team Pakistan shirt - nowhere to be found. A decisive compromise (an oxymoron, surely) had to be reached. It came in the form of my Pakistan – Aik Junoon top, a sleeve of which came emblazoned with a popular music show sponsored by a popular American soft drink brand. Sadly, the thought of putting on the national dress never crossed my mind.

The trip, heading east along Lahore’s Canal Bank most of the way, had no chance of being a boring one. What with my five year old (going on fifteen, I promise you) insisting on playing his favourite MP3, a collection of 150 songs including Pakistani (Urdu, Punjabi Sindhi and Sufi), English, Spanish and Arabic songs as well as some Mozart thrown in for good measure. And as no self-respecting kindergartener’s collection would dig without the latest foot-tapping Bollywood numbers, we had plenty of those too to complete our in-flight entertainment. 

A couple of frantic but well-directed phone calls to my military contacts the day before ensured that we drove past the droves of the honest Common Man and the honest Common Woman, past the car park for civilian vehicles, indeed past the imposing barricade with the imposing STOP sign manned by an imposing quartet of Pakistan Rangers soldiers. Though not a supporter of the VIP culture prevailing in the country, I must say that securing easy access and the best seats in the house did feel a sinful pleasure. I am, however, hereby forever foregoing my democratic right to criticise my President for proving that a rickshaw can double as a maternity ward the next time VIP vehicular movements inconvenience mine.

The fact that I am committing this confession to paper is proof of a conscience still stirring somewhere deep inside. And if there is yet hope for a cynical, existential-angst-ridden yuppie like me, there has to be optimism that this nation’s youth (there are 120 million Pakistanis under the age of 30, a substantial demographic dividend) will one day lift us out of the mire that we have created for ourselves. This confidence flows despite yours truly being patently culpable in making his five year old believe that phone calls and networks get him preferential treatment and exemption from queuing up like mere mortals. 

Time to take in the surroundings before the main event. First thing noticed was Segregation with a big S. Missionary school style. There were 2 enclosures, one for the honest Common Man and the other for the honest Common Woman (the VIPs, your columnist included, were exempt from this enforced moral code, possibly by virtue of being neither honest nor common). I guess a more logical way of going about this would have been to have one stand for families and one for others (mainly boisterous lads out to have harmless fun). But then logic has always been forced to beat a hasty retreat wherever officialdom has tried to manage Indo-Pak matters.

More heartening to see was a portrait of the founder of the nation on the bridge crowning the entrance to the stadium (again, that’s what it’s called at the Border) as opposed to a picture of our last slain ex-Prime Minister. I live in trepidation that my kids will grow up thinking that she was the most important personality in our history (although I have the deepest respect for her contribution to the country). We have even officially ranked her third on the list if we go by airport nomenclature – Founder of the Nation for Karachi, Poet of the East for Lahore and now Daughter of the East for the federal capital. 

The next thing to hit me was the sonic-boom-level din generated by hidden speakers blaring out national songs. It was only later that we figured out that, in yet another effort to control our environment, the noise was maintained at a gazillion decibels to drown out the patriotic songs being played equally loudly on the other side of the fence! Both sides creating hardships for themselves in an effort to win an un-winnable contest – so no change there. Would it not be better for both parties to agree on an equal but lower noise level and achieve the same objective? But this small step would only be a few giant leaps away from a mutually agreed disarmament programme, and we can’t have that dear Reader, now can we?

The hidden DJ responsible for song selection should be fired forthwith as the music being played was most forgettable and decidedly average. Only after suffering numerous unremarkable, obscure numbers was the crowd whipped into a frenzy by a rendition of Dil Dil Pakistan by Pakistan’s first boy-band. My thirst for golden oldies such as Sohni Dharti Allah Rakhay and Jeeway Jeeway Pakistan, however, remained unsatiated. I will not be hypocritical here and say that I did indeed catch and recognise a couple of catchy Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) movie songs emanating from India.

Getting the crowd going was not left solely at the mercy of the musical genius though. We had not one, not two, but three cheerleaders, aided and abetted by an accomplice on dhol. All green kurta and white shalwar clad. All toting national flags. All sporting flowing, silver beards, a la Chacha Cricket, our national cricket mascot (couldn’t our cheerleaders follow a music band other than ZZ Top in making their style statement?). At least their outfits were not sponsored by electrical goods brands or soft drinks and their acts, although monotonous after a while, were not crass like those mercenary cheerleaders from the Indian Premier League (IPL) across the border (the boys in green were almost as voluptuous though). They did display their names on their shirt-backs like footballers and it was amusing to find out that they shared the same surname (Ali Wahgah, Amir Wahgah, Asif Wahgah – the Wahgah Boys?). And you could not fault them for industry and effort, despite the fact that they were fighting on multiple fronts – doing better than their Indian counterparts on the other side of the divide and capturing the attentions of their local audience in a bid to be crowned the unofficial champion of the cheerleading troika. Ergo – lots of chants of Allah-o-Akbar and Pakistan zindabad and after a few practice swings, my five year old joined the happy mayhem.

Let the games begin. Bugles aplenty. And what a show the best of Pakistan Rangers and India Border Security Force put on. The pomp, the dash, the sheer panache (I steal with pride the slogan used by the annual British armed forces show) was simply mesmerizing. Even the Gawking Goras (there was many a brave tourist in attendance) were left gob-smacked. 

I can only describe the pageantry as part pantomime, part circus-act and part war minus the shooting. War because the fate of an entire nation’s pride that balmy afternoon depended on our soldiers’ ability to outshine their Indian counterparts on crucial criteria such lung capacity (essential to outlast the opponent in the military drill shouting contest), hamstring flexibility (needed to raise one’s leg high enough to touch the forehead with the foot) and the noisiest shiny boots (feet have to be slammed repeatedly and with violent force on unforgiving tarmac). 

Your columnist can confirm that the Indo-Pak border version of the can-can is every bit as good as the Moulin Rouge. No wonder only the tallest men with the broadest shoulders and the proudest facial hair make the cut to serve their country. I felt humbled by the soldier whose entire military career would culminate at the Wahgah Border without a shot being fired in anger and an arthritic heel as a long service award to boot, no pun intended. 

I am happy to report that we won the contest by a conclusive landslide. I have tried to remain as objective as possible in this assessment and not drawn the conclusion just because I happened to sit on the west side of the LoC. Our men in dark grey outshouted the enemy in every single drill call by a distinctly measurable number of seconds. They were taller, broader and altogether more impressive. So who cares if a comparison of few economic indicators remains unfavourable. They can have their GDP, FDI and literacy rates. We have the bigger lungs, the stretchier limbs and altogether more formidable heels. They have the IPL but we get to play our home test matches at Lords’. We even trump their tennis queen Sania with our very own ace Shoaib. 

In fact, it might be an idea to have the newly wed Mr. & Mrs. Malik help with the ceremonial flag lowering, not unlike ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange (that ubiquitous SRK even beat us to that). That would be some coup in terms of promoting cross-border harmony; probably the most memorable since President Musharraf, the epitome of sartorial elegance in an Amir Adnan sherwani, ambushed Prime Minister Vajpayee at the Khatmandu Summit with that handshake.

Still, dear Reader, I ask. Where did it all go wrong for the inhabitants of the Land of the Pure? How can two nations, sharing the same date of birth, genetic code and history could, in a relatively short span of sixty odd years, be travelling in opposite directions in terms of global importance, economic power and, most painfully, optimism about their future? 

And then the flags came down. They were respectfully folded and packed away till the next day when all this would be repeated. The satisfied audience made its way out of the arena, having tired itself out cheering every single soldier whose war chant lasted longer than his Indian counterpart and every single soldier whose gravity-defying standing kick went flying higher than his Indian adversary. How those turbans stay connected to the heads throughout the performance shall remain a mystery to me. There were even photo opportunities with horse-mounted guards for kids who had enterprising parents, again lending a circus-like feel to the parade. Alas, the worst violator of the sanctity of the drill turned out to be the fruit of my own loins, bringing an end to the proceedings with his innocent but well-timed demand – “Can we now go to Joyland please?”

Made me remind myself of yet more immortal words, this time from the great Doctor Mohammad Iqbal:

Tujhay aaba say apnay koi nisbat ho nahin sakti

Keh tu guftaar, woh qirdaar, tu sabit, woh sayyara

You bear no comparison to your ancestors…..And that perhaps, dear Reader, is where we have gone wrong. I think. Or where we can yet go right, if the next generation can manage to bear no comparison to the one that preceded it.

Ten Things I Hate About Karachi

Originally conceived for, and published in, Dawn, this was supposed to be a top ten. As such things do, things spiralled rapidly out of control and one or two brainstorming sessions later became a top 20 as there were too many things to talk about. After much haranguing from my editor, it was reduced back down to ten. Then, the bane of all rambling-on-and-on writers everywhere, the dreaded Word Count Limit came into force, resulting in a further truncation and bringing the final list in published form down to five. Perhaps, in time, the remaining 15 shall also see the light of day…

There is a city that often will convince you that you are living in a Faustian nightmare of souls stained and damned. Its residents take a near-perverse pleasure in recounting the latest horrible incident to befall them or a close relative on the streets of this town. Urban legends mix in with true tales of horrible goings-on, and each take on mythological proportions. Its beaches are littered with the detritus of a million shattered dreams, their sands stained black by a million broken ideals.

A little to the West of this city, lies Karachi. Like a younger sibling eager to please Big Brother B, this city too has its share of carefully cultivated irritants designed to make life interesting for its residents at every juncture. After a meticulously developed and executed research program that involved a total of two phone calls, I have compiled the following top five list.

5:         The Red Light Carousel. That is the official name of the continuously changing fairground ride that stopping at a traffic signal earns you in the City of (KESC-willing) Lights. The varieties of human, animal and mineral wealth that are on display at the average intersection are too many to list, but the irritant-in-chief for me is a double act. The first phase is an invasion from the Planet of the Apes. A handler will deposit his pet monkey upon your windscreen, trained to place its bum in a manner carefully calculated to ensure maximum smearage, and then ask you for money in order to take the creature away.

In the second phase, a street urchin (Urchin: n. A prickly creature that is difficult to shake off once it latches onto you) falls upon your windscreen with all the glee of a wedding guest when faced with the last gulab jamun, insisting on cleaning your windscreen with his/her handy squeegee, laced with a liquid on whose origin it is best not to speculate. The incremental cleaning affect of this treatment is debatable, but at least, in the manner of the socialist programs of the old USSR, it redistributes the bum smearage from the monkey in a more equitable manner.

4:         Mobile malls. What the hell is that? A mall that moves around to a new neighbourhood every so often like a carnival?

3:         Graffiti glorifying dubious ‘gangs’ of youths who are affluent enough to afford spray paint, and mobile enough to place their strange tags on walls in the most exclusive parts of town, private security guards notwithstanding. These MTV-watching, wannabe-brother-from-the-hood types and their antics are abhorrent to me purely because their antics exhibit a distinct excess of money and lack of respect for other peoples’ property combined. Not to mention a proliferation of swearwords that often accompanies their inkings, which further underlines their lack of maturity and complete absence of creativity of any sort. These self-styled streetwise creatives have probably never even heard of Banksy.

It's sad that a style of personal expression that is synonymous with urban decay in the Western world has turned into a bourgeoisie indulgence closer to home; the real ghetto youth can't afford cans of spray paint. 

This is not to be confused with a city quirk that is common to this region and always provides a welcome diversion, especially in inner city traffic jams: advertising graffiti in the Urinating Dog style – so called because it was made famous by wall chalkings proclaiming all passers by to look at the dog that was urinating on said wall - often there would be no dog, but a dozen or so people doing their business against the message.

The graffiti most often advertises cures for “secret illnesses”; raising the question: if the illness is secret, than how can it be known, let alone cured? Also common are advertisements for aphrodisiacs and other ‘performance enhancing drugs’, clinics specialising in a narrow range of (embarrassingly well-described) male illnesses, and specialists of reversing the effects of black magic, begging the question: where do specialists of bringing into being the effects of black magic advertise?

2:         The Persistent Panhandler. This is a specie that is different from the regular alms-seeker, in that they are equipped physically and emotionally for the long haul. If your window is turned up, the better to protect you from the heat and our ‘TT’ wielding friends whose need for your mobile phone is greater than your own, the Persistent Panhandler will start with a rousing spiel in an exotic dialect, exhorting you to loosen your purse strings for the sake of their ailing/starving/both family.

The volume level is carefully modulated to penetrate the windscreen of your vehicle as well as cut across the inane ramblings of the dubious-accented “arejay” on the city’s 89^th FM station (does the man realise that a counter revolution is an effort in support of the status quo, or did he pick the name for his show because it sounded cool? The latter, I assume). If the exhortations fail to move you, he/she is equipped with a fistful of rings with which to rap on your screen in a manner aimed to make you worry for the continued existence of your windowpanes.

The only saving grace in the panoply of persistent panhandlers is the subspecies Hejarah Chechodamus, commonly referred to as the Witty Eunuch. These creatures normally sashay up to you in some style, and their opening salvo is normally a flirtatious comment aimed at your appearance. Seeing a friend turn increasingly brighter shades of pink upon being referred to as ‘the one with intoxicating eyes’, ‘Frenchie’ or likened to a Bollywood hero is worth the price of admission, although having their attentions turned onto you can sometimes be less than enjoyable (especially is your friends sing songs at you about intoxicating eyes for the rest of the evening).

1:         The fact that, when all is said and done, this city is unique, and insidious to boot. You may moan and groan all you like about all the things that you are irritated by on a daily basis, but when you come right down to it, there is no other place like it. I for one know that I could never call any other place, ‘home’.

International Women's Day - Equal in Inequality?

As I flicked channels last night, I came across a rerun of a morning show in which the guest for the day was the host’s maid, accompanied by the maid’s mother. Once I had figured out that this was not some new low in terms of paucity of content but a special “International Womens’ Day” episode, two thoughts crossed my mind. The first was, ‘this maid is definitely going to ask for a massive raise in the next week or so.’ The second was, ‘how come there is no “International Mens’ Day”?

Before a morcha forms outside my door, let me hastily add that I am not some chip off the misogynistic MPA bloc. I am as much pro-feminism as the next guy (as long as the next guy is not a chip off the mysoginistic MPA bloc). It’s just that, there is no day for celebrating masculinity the way there is a defined day to celebrate femininity. And, especially in the lawn exhibition season, when the credit card bills mount and the car availability shrinks, it would be nice to have a bit of a celebration to.. err… celebrate.

Imagine the scene: a morning show hosted by a man who thinks Shahrukh Khan spends his evenings looking in the mirror working on his impression of said host. He flicks his hair back, being theatrically tousled by a breeze, and introduces as his guest for the day the boy who cleans his shoes. The boy, accompanied by his father (who is also employed by the host as the carrier of a pedestal fan to ensure a gentle hair tousling breeze is ever present wherever he goes), states over and over that the host is a great employer whose shoes are never too muddy. The host spends two hours looking patronising and feels his duty to underprivileged men duly discharged.

International Mens’ Day would also be the day when hundreds of urban begums would seriously jeopardise their paraffin manicures to celebrate masculinity, as their cooks would have the day off, they would need to spend the day slaving over a hot telephone ordering in food for the day (prepared by men in takeaway kitchens – after all, if Portugese grilled chicken vendors don’t give their staff a day off on the International Day of the Worker, then this would be a far cry indeed). Job done, they could then coo about how they gave their staff the day off to celebrate the occasion with the rest of their lunch party crowd.

There would also be a series of television shows celebrating manhood, but not in a Ron Jeremy kind of way. These would largely be watched by women, as their airing would clash with some form of televised sport or the other. After all, even watching the World Paint Drying Championships would be a more enjoyable option than having multiple channels airing shows with more or less the same cast of characters in each, mouthing the words to their last hits (from maybe two years ago), interspersed with commercial breaks that are longer than the programming it is designed to supplement.

International Womens’ Day is, after all, supposed to celebrate the struggle for liberation and equal rights. Which is why, perhaps, it is celebrated the most by the ones who have the most of both. In a society such as ours, then, where both are lacking, surely it makes sense for those few who have a modicum of either to celebrate their blessed status. For we are all equal in inequality, are we not?

Originally printed in Dawn, March 2011

Karachi Counterpoint

There is a famous saying: “Nothing changes; nothing stays the same”. When I sat down to put pen to paper today, this phrase kept coming back to me, for I was writing about the different things we Karachiites do to amuse ourselves. Even the most blessed among us would not disagree that day to day life in the City of Lights (and it seems like I am the only one who uses this former name any more) is more stressful now, than ever before. And yet there is this nagging feeling in many; that this, too, shall pass. And, like the generations that have gone before, we Karachiwallahs of today are as determined to enjoy our times of peace to the fullest as we ever were.

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. When I was growing up, weddings were rescheduled at the last moment due to the venue being in a ‘curfew’ area. Now, weddings are rescheduled at the last moment as the venue has been changed into a high security zone and all bookings unceremoniously cancelled.

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. A generation ago, ‘going crabbing’ meant going out into a rickety launch, laying some traps down in the Kemari harbor, and catching what one caught. With the harbor waters now resembling the contents of the average septic tank, this is no longer possible, so you have three options. The first is to go out into the harbor in a rickety launch, and eat crabs that have been caught earlier in the day, several miles away. This is still as much fun as the original, with all the benefits of the sea breeze, the journey itself, etc.

For those who prefer to be able to see what they eat, the captains of the ship (somehow they all seem to be called Saleem) will also happily come over to your house with their trusty kerosene stove, and cook the goodies in your kitchen, clean plates and all. And if even that is too unhygienic for you, just ring up a new service advertised on a website for snobbish Karachiites, and have the finished product delivered to your door.

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. Street food remains king, whether it is on ‘food streets’, or just regular old streets, where food can be bought. You can enjoy a gourmet meal at a bistro on a food street with a high cover charge (the better to keep out the riffraff), or a bun kabab (diesel fumes thrown in for free) at a street-corner where the seller has been using the same family recipe for three generations. Which tastes better? The answer to that lies in the tastebuds of the beholder.

And when it comes to eating out, nothing beats the Chinese restaurant. These purveyors of Hot and Sour Soup and Chicken Manchurian are the great social levelers of our times. The preferred restaurant of a family spans the entire age spectrum, sometimes four generations can be seen contesting the last piece of spring roll. And not only do these restaurants help bridge the gap between generations, they are second only to the seaside in equaling socio-economic divides. People will drive great distances to partake of the Sticky Chicken from their preferred restaurant-in-a-bungalow, and think nothing of sitting cheek-by-jowl with another family from a part of town they may not even have heard of.

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. Weekend afternoons can comfortably be whiled away at the weekly bazaar. It used to be held on a Friday, and now is held on a Sunday. What remains in common is the fruit and vegetable stalls, the booksellers from Khori Garden, sorting through whose wares can easily take up half a day if you are not careful, the street urchins willing to carry your bags for you, and the outlets selling cut-price cooking oil. What has changed (other than the day it is held) is the proliferation of shops selling the castoffs of European charity stores, from clothes to broken-down toys, always worth a rummage just in case you can find a working Lightsabre.

Nothing changes; nothing stays the same. Hundreds of families still ‘go to Clifton’ to ‘eat the air’. The Hully Gully and the Pirate Ship are still there, only now as an aside to the Ibn e Qasim Park. However, just like that huge clock tower in Makkah does not at all steal the thunder from the reason you are there, the huge expanse of grass, even in a city as devoid of them as Karachi, does not detract from the dodgem cars.

Of course, the Ibn e Qasim Park does not open till the late afternoon. So, if you want to sneak away from college for an illicit date (complete with school bag and uniform in some cases), there is only one venue for you, just as always: the zoo. There are plenty of secluded spaces where a bit of sneaked hand-holding can be managed away from the prying eyes of school groups and Maya Khan-types, and so what if Anarkali has departed for the great big herd in the sky? In her place you have two new pachyderms to make friends with; Madhubala and Noorjehan. Not to mention the half-eunuch, half-stuffed fox that is Mumtaz Mahal, always worth the (two rupee) price of admission.

At the seaside too, some things change, while others stay the same. Sea View no longer has the beached shipwreck so many Karachiites grew up with, although the camels and horses remain. Hawkes’ Bay and its associated beaches have not changed much at all in the last few years (the absence of lifeguards and the sad news stories of drowned picnickers included), complete with snake charmers, hawkers and pye-dogs. And, although Paradise Point has lost a lot of its mystique as the iconic blow hole has eroded away, and Devil’s Point its cachet due to a nice smooth road leading weekenders thence, there are few things the residents of this city would rather do than head for the seaside when there is some leisure time to be had.

That, then, is Karachi in a nutshell. A city which finds stability in its instability, constancy in its change. And, of course, for its ‘entertainment starved’ population, its leisure wherever and whenever it can be had. 

Originally written for Dawn, 2012. 

Raphsody from Bohemia

If you listen to certain FM channels that cater to a highly anglophile crowd, you would in the past few months have, on your way to and from work, regularly heard a song in which the female vocalist expresses a yearning to return to the 1960s and be a free spirited bohemian punk rocker type.

The fundamental conflict between flower-wearing free spirits and angry young punksters with gravity-defying hairdos aside, the spirit of the song is right enough. It seems that every generation of young people in the West have been defined by certain shared modes of cultural behaviour that not only differentiated them from the preceding generation, but also defined them in a way that expressed their own creative spirit.

There were, not necessarily in chronological order, the mods and the rockers, the swingers and the hippies, the yuppies and the Goths. More recently, it’s been the adrenaline junkies and extreme sports fanatics (I don’t think a catchy phrase has been invented for them yet, unless they can be called Generation XYZ) that have defined a new generation of Western youth.

Closer to home, however, our youth cultural movements have been slightly different. In the 1960s, it was the “Teddy’s”, with the fedoras and swinging suits. These were replaced in the 1970s with the Saturday Night Fever inspired “Hippies”; not true hippies with their bell bottoms and tight shirts, but the long hair that completed the look certainly led many mothers to exclaim ‘Yeh kya Hippy jaise baal rakh liye hain?’. I am reliably informed by Silas the Albino Monk, a man of more advanced years than me, that if you went to the more reputable barbershops in Saddar and asked the gentleman addressing himself to your hair for a “Hippie Cut”, you could close your eyes and be assured of getting the right coif.

The 1980s were culturally relatively barren, what with the pervasive culture being that of the AK-47; although the mullet did make its blighted way over to our shores. And while the 1990s were to a large extent about rejecting one’s traditions and embracing those of the west, the noughties have seen a resurgence of pride in one’s culture and roots. It appears, then, that the Pakistani youth culture has largely been an imported and slightly watered down version of the youth movements in the West. Perhaps we are caught in a landslide, with no escape from reality; not even of the chemical sort most favoured by the Woodstock faithful.

What the hippy culture and its associated bohemian sub-culture was about, though, was changing the world through non-violent means and expressing one’s creativity. It was about challenging the status quo, of believing that things could be different and that the difference could be driven by oneself. And if that is your yardstick, then certainly Bohemianism in Pakistan is almost pandemic.

I can sense the readers’ disbelief as they read this. But you, dear reader, have to be aware that you are reading an English language daily in a nation where the official yardstick for being considered ‘literate’ is the ability to write your own name. You have probably been to all the right schools and come from the right side of town. You are the one who applauds the ‘resurgence’ of theatre in Pakistan, only to spend the entire show with your nose glued to your BlackBerry. You are, in fact, the “square” that constrains the free spirits of the bohemian and stop them from soaring.

Now that I have insulted you, let me explain. The expression of the creative spirit exhibited by the slogans and stickers on youths’ motorcycles, the Tony Manero-esque attention to their personal appearance, their endless optimism, are all indicators that the youth of this nation, particularly the working class youth, are desperately trying to express their creative spirit. Anywhere the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to them.

Nowhere is this clearer than the graduating classes at NAPA, the National Academy of the Performing Arts. Most of the students come from middle class and working class homes, and many have a job that supports their education in the creative arts. Speaking to them, one can sense their enthusiasm, their idealism, and it is contagious. They may, some of them be seeking jobs in the mainstream creative fields, but there is a creative fire that burns so fiercely within them that one almost has to avert one’s gaze.

That, to me, is the true bohemian. Someone who expresses their creativity and believes in fantastical dreams in spite of the risks that such dreams may pose to their ability to provide for their family. Just a poor boy from a poor family, who makes true sacrifices in order to pursue his passion, yet needs no sympathy. Someone who gets to their college via a 90 minute bus commute in 40 degree heat and 100% humidity.

That is a very different breed from those that drive in their air-conditioned cars to air conditioned coffee shops, drinking climate-controlled beverages and talking about how awful this country is and how there is no hope, with black 110 thread-count Egyptian cotton bands tied to the arms of their designer tops as a token of protest at whatever is the fashionable protest of the day.

I believe that there are those that are truly bohemian, and those that play at it for a while before returning to their ivory towers. And while the latter are necessary grease to the wheels of the bohemian spirit in a nation such as Pakistan for they are the ones who sponsor and attend plays, concerts and festivals and allow the former to earn their daily bread, their role is no more than that of the moon to the true bohemians’ sun. For the glory of the prawn sandwich and Primo Mocha brigade is a reflected one.

As for me, I am just an average salaryman. I may have my moments when I daydream about giving it all up and writing the Great Pakistani Novel, but I know that this isn’t real life, this is just fantasy. I do not feel that fire that you need to risk and reject everything in order to express your creativity in an urgent and immediate manner. Yet.

But maybe that will change. Maybe Beelzebub really does have a devil put aside for me. 

Originally published in Dawn, June 2008. When I wrote this, I was quite pleased with myself at the result, what with the interplay between the title and the actual wordplay. Clearly I was being too subtle, as the editor changed the title! Too clever by half, me. 

Link to the published version: http://archives.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/080608/dmag3.htm

Not New Year's Resolutions

If there were an annual prize for breaking New Year’s resolutions, I would definitely be on the long list each year without fail, possibly never to win until I became a doddering old coot on whom the jury finally had mercy and delivered a lifetime (non) achievement award, just to put me out of my misery. As the days grow short and a slight nip starts to appear in the evenings, the time has come to once again have a keen and honest look at the months gone by. In the interest of not jinxing myself, these are not “new year’s resolutions”, but merely observations on the year gone by. Any implication of resolutions is at the sole discretion of the reader, and the author cannot be held accountable for any failure to comply with any changes in self, behaviour, habits or lifestyle implied by what follows.

Number one: If you do not exercise, your trousers develop an irritating habit of shrinking in the waistline area whilst hanging in the closet. And, following some kind of perverse law of nature, the better stitched the trousers, the greater the tendency to shrink. What exactly is the correlation between spontaneous shrinkage in fabric and lack of exercise is not clear yet, but I am sure there is some university somewhere conducting research into this.

Number two: Television is not your friend. Sure, after a long day’s work there is nothing more tempting than to just veg out in front of the screen, flicking channels and watching morning show reruns that run into each other, but it is ultimately a means of reducing your brain to mush, and your attention span to that of a fruitfly. There is a reason why it is called the idiot box, and that reason is how compelling watching people bounce off big red balls and into a swimming pool can be.

Number three: Books are not just for reading in the loo. And newspapers are not just for scanning over a Sunday morning coffee. Both deserve an investment of time and an effort of engaging brain cells. In this age of smart phones and angry birds, even that previously exclusive domain of the printed word, the aircraft, has become largely eroded by games and apps which require ever shorter attention spans, and the ability to revert to a previous save point at the slightest sign of trouble. Not a great teaching tool for our children in the game of life, but a compelling escape from the same for the kidults. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are no save points in the workplace (or at home either, for that matter).

Number four: Farmville isn’t real. The time spent fertilising mythical crops and asking for fictitious nails to build make-believe horse stables can be better utilized in so many ways that there are not enough column inches available to recount them all. That said, let me just alt-tab to see how my Aloe Vera is getting on…

Number five: On the same note, friendships should not occur in the ether, but in the flesh. Social media may be great in breaking down borders, but if something is bothering you it is better to talk it out with a friend over a cup of coffee than to tweet about it, just like it is better to invite people to your wedding through the old fashioned “phone call” rather than setting up an event on Facebook and letting people RSVP.

On that note, it seems that there are tiers to wedding invitees. There are the ones who you really want to be there, who are personally handed an invitation by self or member of family. In the next tier are the ‘good-to-haves’, whose cards are dropped off by a driver or runner. Next in line are the ‘I need to invite these guys, but don’t really mind if they don’t turn up’ category, who are sent a scanned card via email. And finally, the lowest of the low, are the Facebook invitees, whose count never even makes it into the catering calculations. 

[Of course, this just shows that I belong to the 'uncle' crowd. Younger colleagues inform me that for their weddings, the Facebook invite was for real, and people thus invited were not only expected to turn up, but actually did.]

Number six: Sleep is good, but spending time with people you care about is even better. Although ideally the first meal one should eat on a Sunday is dinner, that would mean that the one day that you actually can spend some time at home supergluing your fingers together in lieu of fixing the ironing stand, or helping in the Grand Appliance Defrosting Marathon by identifying jars of expired red curry paste, is instead spent having strange dreams that leave you with no recollection, but an uneasy feeling that lasts the whole day.

That said, it is always fun to snooze in and out of a football match that you are interested in but don’t care about, and I have been waiting to try out the napping capabilities of the new recliner…

Number seven: Dentists cost money. A lot of money. It is ultimately better to spend three minutes a day brushing your teeth in the evening, and perhaps taking on dental floss, than to spend several session in the chair having stuff drilled, probed and stuffed. Unfortunately, this does eat into time that was otherwise dedicated to watching people bounce off big red balls into a swimming pool / breeding virtual sheep in your second not-real farm. Is the reward worth the sacrifice? This jury is out on that one…

 Number eight: Friends don’t grow on trees (although some of my most memorable photos are of friends hanging from trees, oddly enough). They are a rare and precious commodity, worth their weight in gold (even more so if they suddenly drop 30% of their body weight – you know who you are). As such, the effort of will required to stay in touch with them is fully justified, and is the right and proper thing to do. The evening commute home is normally a good time for this, and certainly a better use of those minutes than listening to the banal banter of radio presenters with affected personalities.

I have recently been informed that Denial is not a river in Egypt. Hopefully, Optimism is some form of topography somewhere in the world (answers on a postcard please). So I will end this year in hope. That researchers find a way for trousers to automatically adjust to your waistline without resorting to elastic waistbands. That cable operators reduce the quality of channels available even further (if that is possible) so that there is one fewer rival to picking up a book. That birds lose their anger, and make believe farms their addictiveness. That friends pick up their phones, and calls get returned sooner, and coffee plans materialise. That Sundays are lazy, yet companionable.

That new year’s resolutions last a year, and are fulfilled.

Originally published in Dawn, January 2012

http://dawn.com/2012/01/01/off-the-rack-true-resolutions/ 

Flip Flopping Fundamentalism

This is not really that great a time to be writing about religious tolerance in Pakistan, seeing as how it is dangerously short in supply. Perhaps that is why, after a hiatus of over a year, I am putting something up here. This piece was originally published in The Friday Times, where the editor at the time (in my view) butchered it badly, thus pretty much putting me off writing for that publication for life. 

This is also a tribute of sort to my unofficial copy editor for many years, Silas the Albino Monk, who will need to stock up on the max strength sunblock now, for fear of blistering his delicate skin. 

Any time that I feel that I, as a moderate, (dare I say it) secular Muslim, I am in a dangerously shrinking minority, I walk around the office, look underneath unoccupied desks, and am immediately reassured that I am not alone. 

Unfortunately, unlike the bombs and brimstone brand of Islam that shakes its hook at us regularly from our television screens, the gentler face of the Faith is much lower key. It is like a secret society whose members keep their heads down, hold down steady jobs and ride the bus to work every morning. However, like all secret societies, even those which are themselves unaware of their own existence (as this one surely must be), there are hallmarks whereby members of this society can be identified by the cognoscenti. The Society also does not, officially, have a name. 

Naming a collective after an item of clothing that can be used to identify them is a tradition with a long and distinguished history. There were the Redcoats in the days when wearing bright outfits to the battlefield was considered to be a good idea,  the Green Berets of the American Military, the Orange Order in Northern Ireland, and, in recent years, the Bloods and Crips of US gangland, and the Trenchcoat Mafia of Columbine High School. Therefore, for the purposes of this piece, I too will call our lot, be they much less violently inclined than the names I have just mentioned, after a piece of kit that distinguishes them from the rest. 

I shall call them the ‘Chappal Brigade’ or, affectionately, the CB.

Sometime around the lunch hour is when they begin to manifest themselves in offices all round the nation. For this is the time of the afternoon prayer, and the first time when the gloves come off. Or the socks and shoes, anyway. They are then replaced with the footwear which gives the Brotherhood its name and, in most cases, stay on until the end of the working day. 

The reason for the change of footwear is not just simple expediency. Sure, the fact that it is easier to slip in and out of a simple pair of flip-flops for ablutionary purposes is a factor. But there is also prudence in the act, for your normal office footwear is nothing if not hideously expensive, and repeated exposure to water will only result in a damp and damaged shoe with a seriously shortened life. In addition, left unattended, nice shoes are much more likely to attract the unwelcome attention of footwear bandits, for whom the entrances of mosques are a favourite hunting ground, than tatty old flip-flops. The sound of a freshly watered pair of flip flops may be one of the most distinctive in the modern Pakistani office building; there may even be a correlation between the moisture content of the footwear and the devoutness of the wearer, but that would be going into the realms of conjecture.

Although the footwear is the most distinctive part of their attire, there are other clues that can tip one off that a person may be a member of the CB. Chief among these is the handkerchief, used both for wiping off excess ablutionary waters and for protection from the sun and, on Fridays, the prayer mat, for the amount of people in the mosque on a Friday invariably spills out into the streets.

On a Friday, when the Godless or, like me, the Godawful, are making their way to Sakura, Flo or Aylanto, the CB slowly builds in numbers, arriving in ones and twos, flip flops in place, handkerchief now doubling as a head covering, prayer mat lodged under arm. It is ironic that in the business district of Karachi one of the largest congregations on a Friday lunchtime is directly opposite a franchise fast food restaurant that is a particular favourite of the band of merry men whose preferred form of protest is to burn all things heathen. Although a goodly number of the CB do make their way into the aforementioned restaurant for some post-prayer fried chicken, most of them return to their offices for the subsidised food offered there or, as a treat, visit one of the many greasy spoons designed to offer good food to the office worker on a budget. As to the quality of the food and the reasonableness of the prices, I can personally attest to both.

One unwelcome side effect of this phenomenon is that, if one carelessly stands downwind of the shoes and socks thus left lying around to catch the unwary office worker, the aroma that wafts its way towards you can best be described to those of a delicate constitution as ‘not pleasant’. 

Still, this is a small price to pay for the warm glow that somewhere out there a veritable army of householders is quietly going about its business of making ends meet, from paycheck to paycheck in most cases, while at the same time they are equally quietly, and probably with equal determination, continuing to practice their religious beliefs with the minimum of attention being called to themselves or their practices. 

The CB, in many ways, typifies the ‘silent majority’ of this country. It is not that they do not have a political conscience; just yesterday I met one of their ranks whose words hurt some quarters so much that they employed both sticks and stones on him. Eventually, it was not the broken bones that deterred him as much as the fact that there was a family at home to provide for. And that, eventually, is the nature of this collective. They are much too pragmatic to be militant; too fettered by the mundanities of everyday existence. And they are for me the face of devout Islam. And I, for one, can put up with the sight of colleagues walking around in flip flops accompanying their shirt and tie for the pleasure of being in on the secret.