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