Shaken, not stirred

JANUARY 1997 - The news that 34 people died in Hyderabad the other day after drinking home-made liquor has been carried on the front pages of all Pakistani newspapers. That the dead are mostly young people who were addicted to the poisonous brew adds another sad dimension to this human tragedy. There will be the usual noises from all around, an enquiry whose result will never be revealed will be held, the offending brewer and/or seller will be hauled up and jailed and after some time, as soon as the incident is pushed back, will be allowed to go scot free, after duly bribing the many petty officials who will secure his release. Those who are dead, are dead. Their families will live with the tragedy for years together and accept it with the stoicism that is very much part of this country’s national makeup. Another bloody chapter of our daily life would have been successfully negotiated.

We have a problem with liqour and have had it for years. On the one hand, we have to stop denying that we have no use for it, because we do. The number of the faithful who depend on the stuff for pleasure and entertainment is on the rise and there are reports of periodic shortages of liqour every time the Assemblies are in session in the various cities of the country. Whenever the ruling junta wishes to hide the hordes of unruly parliamentarians, it resorts to the two oldest tricks in the book. Wine and women and not necessarily in that order. The important thing to remember is that this is usually followed by acute shortage of the stuff that cheers and things don’t settle down till the junket is over, the no-confidence move is successfully avoided and life returns to normal. It is no better towards the end of the year when prices sky rocket and boot leggers have a field day, charging twice as much and more for the popular brands. Such is the acute demand for the spirit of life that some members of the diplomatic community in Islamabad have made this a regular and lucrative side business. This has been going on for years and apart from some feeble attempts to check it, nothing has been done to put an end to it (not that one is necessarily against it). It won’t be an exaggeration to say that many people have made fortunes from this trade and continue to do so. Not to be left behind, our frontier brethren who are great business people, have converted the odd smuggling racket into a whole hearted drive that ensures safe transport of millions of litres of fire water to all parts of the country. Everyone knows where you can get the best ‘Stolle’ and hang the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. That country may have been destroyed forever, but no one can deny that one of its side effects has been the flooding of Pakistan with good, fire-inducing liquor, usually referred over the fashionable phones as ‘V’ as opposed to the regular ‘W’. Not that the local brands are too bad, as any law abiding citizen will tell you, but the Russian brew is the stuff that dreams are made of.

What makes Pakis helpless when it comes to imbibing liquor and rock solid when it comes to pork or ham ? Both are equally forbidden yet any self respecting Paki will rather die than touch the meat, but tell him that a drop is available and he will tear down the walls to get to it. A friend who claims to be a visionary in such matters said that because there was a substitute for the meat, it wasn’t hard for Pakis to deny themselves that experience, but where the fire water was concerned, there was no choice. It was either that or bust and no Paki, if he could help it, wanted to go bust. Not a wholly inaccurate assessment of a weird situation supported by the fact that Pakistanis will travel for hundreds of miles in foreign countries just as long as they are assured that the meat they are buying is halal. That much is certain but the same folk will happily toss a couple of cubes in a tumbler and watch the golden liquid pour down, warming the cockles of their blessed hearts without feeling the slightest guilt.

As far as the government is concerned, and let’s face it, the government is never concerned, the situation is, if you will excuse the expression, really rum. There are the breweries that are happily producing the stuff, well not quite happily because they seem to get into all kinds of jams every now and then, particularly when AZ (anyone remember him ?) was rumoured to have shown more than a passing interest in the production and sale of fire water in the country. Whether he eventually got into it and drank of its deep and soothing economic gains is not known, but it was common knowledge that breweries were being shut or threatened because they weren’t doing exactly what he wanted. As for its Christian population which can have permits issued, everyone knows that what they purchase usually ends up in the homes of non-Christians. The middle men make money and the silent (in this case) majority have a good time. Again there can really be no major surge here in tourism until the government can relax its liqour policy which is not going to happen. So other than members of Alcoholics Anonymous, not many foreigners are going to be hitting the country come the 21st century.

Against this background it is not difficult to understand the kind of lurid stories that make the news every now and then. These will continue to appear and private enterprise of a dubious kind will find a way to meet a market need, ideology or no ideology.