So What?

MAY 2001 I am all for this IT thing that’s got everyone running for cover and I am all for systems that work wonders and for the new fangled technology where everything that you want to know can be made available by simply pushing a couple of buttons. In all these technological sweeps that now run the lives of people in Pakistan – the minor minority of course, since the masses are somewhere over there and no one really cares what happens to them, time has been shrunk and then shrunk again. It takes seconds to carry out tasks which earlier took days, but having said all that, the question is, so what?

Firstly there is this time thing. Each city within the country and then each organization within each city has its own time programme and nothing is going to alter that too much. Islamabad for example has a languid pace of doing things and there is no hurry to get the work done because this is Islamabad and things move, well sometimes only it seems. There is no babble of voices, no frenzy of activity but a rather cool and detached mindset. This is probably so because it is populated by people who are programmed to achieve nothing except pass time. It is also home to the bureaucrats and other technocrats, both local and foreign varieties, who are passing through between assignments, so nothing tangible exists and few tangible relationships endure. Because what you may decide today will not be implemented for considerable time, a certain ennui prevails and a kind of levitation takes place where his highness of whichever department or ministry it may be, will be a few feet above the rest and closer to the crest of the Margallas which are usually on fire most of the time. The wretched of the earth who populate the roads and public places and whose fates are placed before various official factotums daily, shuffle about their lives, much the same way as generations before them. Their ancestors trod on dirt tracks, they crawl about on asphalt. Nothing much else in essence has changed or will change for that matter.

It is in such a background that a printer, for instance, a proud representative of the new age, that can print 100 copies a minute, becomes obsolete in my opinion. It may indeed print 100 copies before you can say ‘Charlie’s Aunt’ but the question is, having done that, so what? What’s the next step? Most likely the 100 copies will then be shuffled off to some dreaded and grimy plastic tray where it will lie till various hands will punch, hole or thread various tags and pieces of card to it of varying colours and deposit it in another repository where it will pass into oblivion. Or in the rather heady scenario, where paper will actually move – a phenomenon rarely observed in the city, it will pass into the hands of a peon, who is already half-dead of heat, malnutrition and a lifetime of servitude. He will, in motions of a slow classic dancer, move at a pace that is close to being stationary, towards a bicycle which should really be deposited in a museum and not be allowed on any road and in the next few hours, actually mount the beast and pedal at speeds that could earn him a ticket for obstructing traffic in advanced countries, to where the paper is to reach. Should he achieve this rather improbable feat, the earlier scenario will be enacted at speeds even slower than before and more sleepy people will move in a trance doing something or the other which will result in largely, nothing. In the context of such daily reality, 100 copies a minute starts to lose all meaning and for all the difference it will make, there might as well be one copy every 100 minutes.

Of course compared to Islamabad, which is also stoned most of the year, through a mixture of power captured quite easily and the abundance of the good weed. The weed comes courtesy of the Potohar and power capturing is now a kiddy game. Consider, what it took the CE to topple the heavy mandate. Three jawans who clumsily clambered over a rickety iron gate and vaulted across into PTV, a few grunts and noises and some threatening body postures and the entire government machinery came down like a house of cards – actually not quite accurate. A house of cards would have lasted a little more.

The situation in Lahore, the other city that matters, is of course electrifying compared to Islamabad and the pace of life here is giddy compared to the country’s capital. How much that pace is can be judged by the observations of people in Karachi who think Lahore is populated by cows and feudals moving at a pace that would put most snails to shame. In their opinion, the cows move at faster speeds than the feudals who hardly ever move at all. As for the people, those lovingly referred to as ‘commoners,’ don’t know most of the time whether they are coming or going. This is not hard to understand because neither does anyone else in the country including the rulers, though in their case they are often worried they might be going when they think they are coming. Although files have been known to move in the provincial capital – there is now irrefutable evidence that at least five files were spotted in the last fifty years that were actually on the move, that about sums up the rest of the activities. The prevalent philosophy, which has a large gathering of ardent devotees, is to do nothing at all. This unique positioning on life flows from such staggering facts as the weather. Most Lahorites can either do a job or face the heat. They are genetically incapable of doing both things at the same time. At 40C most Lahorites start to drift into a state of semi-consciousness. At temperatures higher than that, they simply cease to exist and their brains, not very active throughout the year except when a brawl has to be triggered off, simply wilt under the pressure. That may explain why Lahorites look like cows wearing the kind of looks cows wear when they have been milked without really being aware of it. If they are not melting down, they are far too occupied swatting at mosquitoes of which variety there are some lethal numbers, which refuse to die like that thing in The Terminator. Most Lahoris believe that the Municipal Committee or whatever is the new cunning name by which it plots and plans against the people of the city, have spent years cloning a mosquito species that will annihilate the populace one day. Those who live in Lahore will agree that the Committee is quite capable of such demented diabolical thinking. Of course when Lahorites are not turning into petrified and very liquidy jelly, they are drowning in the monsoons or losing their necks, which are cut at electrifying speeds by some of the sharpest strings sharpened by glass shards that are used to float paper into the sky. Only people with twisted visions of existence could figure out such macabre activities.

Against such a giddy concoction, 100 copies a minute makes even less sense. In any event, it is the firm belief of every one who lives here – we shall not add and works here, because that activity has yet to be fathomed, that there is no point in doing any work because nothing really works. Even if it does, work requires some rudimentary form of discipline and most Lahoris will commit suicide before submitting to discipline. Lahoris feel that the countries which are disciplined have no end to their problems and it is far better to just carry on meandering all over the place, without purpose or direction, because that’s a far better state of being. The only other serious contender to that situation being the provincial vision of a heavy duty lunch washed down by buckets of lassi, belches loud enough to wake up most of Miani Sahib and then oblivion – the last great dream of all aspiring Pakistanis.

As for Karachi, what can one say about a city that has neither water nor power?