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.