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.