Lucky Seven

SEPTEMBER 2000 - The news from the USA is that seven members of the Army band that had flown to New York to perform in the 14th August shindig, have disappeared in the middle of the night from their Brooklyn residence ! As the embarrassed army officials accompanying the band run about tracing phone calls and questioning suspects, hoping against hope to round them up, we can view the matter with some amusement. Can anyone really blame the seven for taking a chance for a better life ?

The 14th August parade in New York, has been a bit of a farce ever since someone came up with the bright idea that we must celebrate the big day. From whatever I can recall, no 14th August ceremony has been without bickering, mud slinging, accusations and mismanagement. For many years now, various organisers who have taken it upon themselves to put this show together, have ended up fighting one another with petty and publicity seeking politicians joining in to create more confusion. At no given time at no given year, has anyone ever been certain who exactly was in charge of the 14th August show. Consequently there have been public showdowns and general mayhem with half the stalwarts occupying centre stage and just as many others trying to upstage them, if you will excuse the rather unfortunate pun. The brothers Haq, of the Ijaz and Doctor variety, decided long ago that this was one event where they could muscle in and give a helping hand to perpetuate their Daddy’s rather thin claim to greatness. Every year, as far as I can recall, one or two of the Haq brothers are in the Big Apple, riding a truck and waving to the crowd, who are either yelling obscenities at them (if they are from the other side) or waving flags if they are their own. Speeches, without which no politician can survive, have been a regular feature, and there have been no famines where adjectives were concerned in describing the late ruler’s sacrifices for the glory of the motherland, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Islam, not necessarily in that order. Self development, in which subject the late ruler, was a genius, is never mentioned and neither is the large bulk of properties and bank balances ever the subject for any debate, heaven forbid. Instead it is good old rhetoric and the same meaningless drivel that is force fed to those suffering the event, there or even here.

Not having had the financial clout to be in NY for the big do this year, I settled for the sleepy capital instead and made the mistake of attempting the journey from Rawalpindi to Islamabad on the evening of 14th August, only to escape two hours and deafened ears later, from a point somewhere around Faisal Mosque. There was an endless queue of cars, scooters, trucks and buses heading to Islamabad, for what reason, one couldn’t quite figure out. Mine was not very patriotic since all I wanted from my country’s capital that night was one halfway decent restaurant and a meal. Not much considering we live here and pay our taxes. While at one level it was nice to see that the spirit of independence was alive and kicking in the much used and much abused people of the country, it was also despairing to observe a complete breakdown of order in the behaviour of the people, with little or no consideration for others present. While cars, loaded to the gills, snaked their way to the great capital, scooters and motor bikes, performed dare devil stunts in and around the stranded cars. They weaved in and out of traffic, threw fire crackers under cars, caused any amount of near-accidents and took chances, not only with their own lives but with those who were not part of the carnival. It is not a nice experience when a cracker explodes under your car. I stopped thinking of the possible fall out of this foolish and very popular pastime and visions of a petrol tank catching fire were quickly extinguished. With the police utterly and totally helpless to do anything – how powerless they become when it suits them, the result was not unexpected. In the end, a merciful break in the traffic and a fast and dangerous right turn, put me back in the direction of the somnolent Rawalpindi, where half an hour later I discovered the spirit of independence was waging a weak battle.

What were we all celebrating ? Freedom ? From what ? Hindu yoke ? Really ? Was it not true that one yoke had merely been replaced by another ? We had escaped one potentially exploitable situation, only to find ourselves in another and while we may have been at the receiving end of the majority in India, we had fared not much better here, where successive politicians, generals and officials had continued to tighten their nooses around our necks. It is surely easy to understand that those who were out ‘celebrating’ had not questioned what they were celebrating. In a manner of speaking, the chaos and the disorder is touching because the young, who really have nothing much to do, are driven by a desire to make something of a day which seems to lose its meaning as we meander along going downhill steadily. In that sense, the seven musicians must have weighed the consequences before taking the plunge. Should they stay in the motherland, play ‘Mera Lal Dopatta Mulmul Da’ or fry burgers in a seedy Mexican-run hole on the edge of the border, for half the wages and an uncertain future ? That they have chosen the latter, is not without meaning. They are not the first ones to do so and over the years, many have made a trip abroad, part of a delegation and then disappeared at the first chance. In a way, I hope the seven are not found. They may not make the big time there, but they might find the opportunity to make an honest living in an alien culture and eventually even succeed. There are any amount of Pakistanis now comfortably off, who escaped in great desperation from their country to seek a life elsewhere. No one readily wishes to migrate because your land, howsoever horrible it may have become, never ceases to draw you back, but Pakistanis are looking at other lands and other cultures because the majority of them understand too well, that there is nothing much for them here, never was and never will be.

So to the seven who are somewhere, here’s hoping you don’t get nabbed and once you are done with the burgers, perhaps you can regroup and do what you probably do well; play music even though music and the army are contradictions in terms.