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.