More of the Same

MARCH 2002 - Haven’t you ever wondered why people who may approach you from the wrong end of a one-way street will glower at you and mouth obscenities even as you avert a head on collision? The question of their being in the wrong or your being in the right is of course never under discussion. It is simply one more occasion where we display public aggression, particularly when we are in the wrong. It is the same attitude that prevails at most other times – only the settings change but the manners maintain a dismal low. Observe the same churlish behaviour at any traffic crossing, at any public place and you continue to wonder why is it that every Pakistani gets out on the wrong side of the bed everyday. Of course there are no explanations.

Recently, a friend about to enter the foyer of a hotel saw another gent lunging for the same open space – but from the opposite end. He stepped aside to let him have the right of way, which going by the book, was not his in the first place. The lump of lard – that being the appropriate description, charged through with the same subtlety as bulls display in china shops and rolled through, having achieved what his pea-sized brain must have regarded as a supreme victory. My friend, the dopey, thought a slight nod from the bullhead might have been a possibility – even he understood that a thank you was simply out of the question. These are puzzling things to us even though we are at the receiving end of rank bad manners throughout the year. The irony is that good manners are free and cost you nothing, but then why should cost be a factor to reckon with when we all know that money has no class and mostly no standards. Look at the people inside the Mercs in Pakistan and you will understand.

There has to be a medal instituted for those salesmen who can attend to a dozen customers at the same time, juggling scores of questions without losing the thread of a streams of conversation utterly at conflict and confounding in the extreme. It is at such times that the customer who arrives at number five will invariably cut into a conversation about price or size going on between the shopkeeper and customer number two, only in turn to be cut by customer number three who cuts into customer number seven who has just arrived and butted in regardless. In all this, the shopkeeper too is a major offender, happy to quote a price to you, grab the money from customer number nine, pay customer number three and pocket the payment from customer number six, without missing a beat. This human juggling and breaking of all codes of what might be termed civilised behaviour in many parts of the world, goes unchecked and only rises in popularity as the Ummah plunges ahead chaotically into a century they don’t recognize.

Actually the more you think about this, the more you despair. So perhaps it is best not to think of it at all, but it still makes no sense why people do it. One could even understand it in a culture where time is money, where speed is of the essence, where getting ahead can lead to fabulous riches, but what about here? This is the land where the advantage of the world’s fastest photocopier is nullified within moments by peons who move at the same speed as rocks stationed in sand - where all will come to nothing because the photocopied document will eventually mean nothing since the one it is intended for, will not read it for hours, if not days. And having read it will not take any action on it if action is required. Why is everyone in Pakistan in a hurry to get nowhere? People will overtake from every possible side, cut lights, break all the rules in the book – and those outside it, break speed records and sometimes necks, all for what? A few minutes? Ten minutes? Then what? All the risks taken, all the abuse hurled and received, all the hassle, all that frantic scrambling – what does it all mean in the end? A fat zero. But we all indulge in this national disease of pushing, shoving, jostling to get ahead, but get ahead to where? We should understand that the country has been going round the same circle for years and years, which is why everything looks the same, feels the same and is the same. Sometimes the faces change, although Sharifuddin Pirzada who must be over five hundred years old, remains the formidable exception. Whatever, the act remains the same. It is perhaps the one great consistency in a country of great inconsistencies. But what does it mean? I have no idea.

Earlier this year, someone sent what was called, ‘The paradox of our age’ and it was thought provoking. ‘We have taller buildings,’ it read, ‘but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine but less wellness. We spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom and lie too often. We have been all the way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbour. We have conquered outer space but not inner space; we’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul – though in our case, we have polluted the air and polluted the soul, but which came first, we don’t know.

In this melting pot of our national aspirations, there is talk about going back to the vision of Pakistan as seen by that frail old man who founded this improbable country. But who is going to take us back and when the next elections throw up the same oily faces and the same greasy palms will be fondling fat contracts, lucrative deals and shady business deals, who will stop them and tell them that this is not the vision of a new Pakistan? Some countries find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. It seems to me we never got off them in the first place. Our problems are beyond solution and no amount of talking will ever get us even within miles of what that dream was all about. The world is full of good-intentioned people but you need an army – forgive the imagery, of do-gooders; men and women who convert ideas into action. Of those, there is a perpetual shortage and the words of the President will not cut through the walls of hate, selfishness and bigotry that we have raised in our lives. The trouble is that talking about what ails us cannot be undertaken without it sounding like a sermon – a product we have in disgusting surplus quantities and without talking about our situation, how in the world are we ever going to cope with the ground realities? We have banned the Jihadis, but what happened to the blasphemy laws, the Ahmedi and Shia witch hunting, the dogmas that hold us in thrall, chained to our rotting world? Who is going to set our spirits free? The answer? It’s more frightening than the question.