Playing with fire

JANUARY 2002 - Lahore has had a four-day winter. There was fog, there was sharpness in the air and there was the unmistakable feeling of genuine, true-blue winter. But after four days, it was all over. The fog drifted away, the sting in the air vaporized and while it was still kind of winterish, it wasn’t the real thing. A few days later, the fog having lifted, the sun came striking out and suddenly it was a spring day. The kites immediately went up and the pre-Basant ritual started to unfold – a few weeks early of course. During all this time, there has been no rain; not a drop of it. Wonder what curse the Ancient Mariner has put on this city. Towards the end of this month’s first week, the skies have turned gray and low clouds have languidly remained suspended in mid air, but there has been no rain – just a sprinkle and that too gone before you could reach out and grab a raindrop.

As you near Lahore on the Motorway, a wall of smog strikes you long before the unmistakable stench of the tannery factories gets you, even through closed windows. It is pointless to think where the foul liquids that the tanneries eject eventually go, because that is another painful subject. The Ravi is poisoned and quite dead. The smog, almost a Lahore trade mark, is created, by among other things, the burning of Lahore’s refuse, which is our way of getting rid of rubbish. Now, mountains of refuse litter the sides of the Motorway and along the banks of the wretched Ravi and they burn all day long and far into the night, sending up wailing clouds of gray black smoke that mingles and multiplies and forms a thick blanket over the city and its environs. Smog is the patron saint of Lahore in the winter and summer, although dust is not too far behind to claim this dubious honour.

People who travel to this city from places where there are no trees worth the name, do find Lahore enchanting and happily green, but that is only in comparison to where they are coming from. The fact is that the city has rapidly declined into a smog-dust and rubbish laden metropolis. While we all rejoice and sing in praise when we see the mechanical cleaners sweeping the city’s main boulevard and other areas that the affluent and well-heeled use, there is little to comfort when this miniscule activity is compared with the much larger problem that remains without a solution. It is also a wonderful sight to see the cheerful yellow trucks of the PHA – Parks & Horticulture Authority to those of you not well versed with the ways of the winning Mr.Lashari (he is PHA’s moving spirit), dosing plants and trees with gallons of prime quality water, but this is window dressing at best and is only there to please the ‘gentry’ and the powerful men and women who like to see water arcing into the sunlight and falling on dusty shrubbery. No, Lahore is slipping into a cesspool of its making and the effect is now physically evident every day of the year.

You don’t have to be Noah’s grandfather to recall that Lahore had fierce winters a few years back. There was no mistaking the bite in the air and it was foolish to venture out on a winter evening without a bulky overcoat and muffler to keep you warm. Gloves and mittens were very much part of winter wear and if you traveled from say the High Court to the Canal, you could tell with eyes closed that you were passing by GOR because there would be an appreciable drop in the temperature. Today if you spot a man in an overcoat you would be quite right to call the Mental Hospital and ask him to be removed to that cheerful facility. Lahore’s severe summers were followed by torrential monsoons and before long, the evenings would turn chilly, the woolies would tumble out and a full winter was upon the city with rainy and windy days sending a chill up every spine and turning children’s cheeks apple red. There is no such thing now. The summer has no end and before it can mercifully fade away, it is back. Lahore’s spring is now confined to a few short days and is gone before you can suspect it is here. Then it is summer and everything that comes with it.

While any number of pundits are moaning and groaning about ecology and global warming and whatever other damage that we are happily inflicting on the planet, it seems cities like Lahore are far beyond any hope. While millions have been poured into utterly useless landscaping, importing date palms and building fountains – all this only on selected and privileged areas, no serious plan has been put into practice for as basic a thing as garbage disposal. Half-baked schemes have been floated from time to time and all of them are well remembered for being such great failures. Garbage is somebody else’s problem. It’s like the refuse that everyone diligently sweeps out of their homes, drives and gardens onto the road, washing every thing down with criminal quantities of water – which is fast running out – the idea being that once it is out of your house, it is not your problem. Multiply that by the number of times this activity is religiously performed each day and you can begin to get the grim picture. The system of gathering the refuse and disposing it off is slipshod and erratic and woefully out of sync with the scale on which this scourge is gaining ground. Since we live for the moment, we are unable to see beyond our gates or our doorsteps and the problem simply multiplies. No one is ready to think beyond the immediate and no one is prepared to mount a serious campaign to take this problem head on. There is a kind of inevitability to it as if the problem has become so large that nothing really can be done about it. Therefore, there is nothing we can do about it and the best way out of a bad situation is to look the other way.

Pakistanis waste no opportunity to hold forth on matters concerning the deterioration in the country’s climate and rainfall or lack of it. This year’s start and the closing months of last year have produced no rain and, in the higher regions, correspondingly, no snow. The country’s climatic situation is alarming and the effect is no longer subtle but very visible and very serious. From the far corners of the north to the deserts of the south, the change is there for all to see, but each one of us has to stop blaming somebody else for the perilous world we have created for ourselves, and after we are gone and six feet under, for our children and their children. There is no shortage of calls that are issued every other day and we have our misplaced notions of jihad, but where there is most need for such thinking is precisely where we find ourselves sorely out of step. It is important that we all take small steps starting now to ensure that we don’t litter the country, we don’t do anything that adds to the decline we are already suffering from. If we don’t wake up – and someone will have to slap us very tightly, we may never survive the onslaught. Nature is not forgiving and we are not God’s chosen race. We have to stop passing the buck, stop being passive and do something concrete to stop the rot. Next time you want to chuck out that cigarette butt, think again.