The Rainbow’s End

OCTOBER 2004 - It does not matter whether you are out to buy something for Rs. 20 or Rs.20 million. The bright chances are, that you will get the rough end of the deal. This is the daily, common experience of thousands and thousands of citizens that is now just about as standard as generals becoming democrats.

Last week, looking for a last minute birthday present for a friend at one of Lahore’s swankiest stores, I finally selected a set of glasses. It took the store quite a while to locate the set, which was all right as I admired the range of fancy frying pans. However, they didn’t have a dozen, so I had to settle for six, which they had. Running late, I asked if they could possibly gift wrap it and was surprised and relieved to learn that they could. The shop assistant next showed me two sheets of gift-wrapping paper. One was so badly crumpled that it was pointless to use it and the other was a florid pink, the colour you would use to pack naughty girlie wear to an amorous young thing. I reminded the assistant that the gift recipient was a flourishing 60 year old. He shrugged and said that was all the paper they had, meaning take it or leave it. I took it. The bright side of the story is they could actually provide gift-wrapping service, so let’s all be grateful that such things are now available here. The down side is that having provided the service, what stops us to ensure it runs properly. Surely asking for a choice of, say four papers is not being too demanding?

This week has seen the unveiling of a new Japanese import, a range of cars that start from a basic price tag of Rs. 1 million. On the day the range is announced on a two page spread, there are two distributors for Lahore with just two phone numbers apiece and no address. All day, all four numbers are constantly busy. It seems everyone is calling them. Sometimes late in the afternoon, contact is made and an address obtained. Why the address is not there in the first place, beats me. By about 6 pm when I arrive there, bedlam reigns supreme. Like the housing scam that had Lahore in a deathlike grip last month, there are hordes of people, pushing, shoving, and yelling. Only one vehicle is on display. There are no brochures. All gone. Just photocopies of a price list and another one of features are available. Period. Would you be asking for the moon if you asked for a brochure? Here you are, being asked to cough up Rs. 1 million going up to Rs. 1.4 m for a set of wheels, but sorry you can’t have brochures. You don’t even dream of a test-drive because that animal does not exist here. How are you expected to make an educated choice between this vehicle and the four others in similar price ranges that exist in the Pakistan market? The answer of course is, you cannot. You simply take a chance and make a purchase but not before you cough up the sum required, the extra charges you have to pay for freight from Karachi – about Rs. 10,000 one hears and if it is the white colour you desire – a colour I thought that was so ordinary that no one really wanted it, then another Rs. 50,000 for being white. The cherry on the top is what is now referred to as the dreaded ‘On’. The blackmail part of all car deals in Pakistan. In the case of the new entrant, it is already being quoted at Rs.140, 000. So basically, a Rs. 1 million car may actually cost you Rs. 1.2 million and you still have to comprehensively insure it, the premium of which should topple you over to the other side of the ditch.

Pakistani citizens have for years been at the receiving end of raw deals. Those who have dared to own a car have had to pay through the nose, assuming of course that we still have noses, ours having been rubbed into the dust so many times by deceiving and lying leaders who assume power or sometimes even win it and then start fleecing us, economically and otherwise. In the car racket, the government has simply cast aside its responsibility. Stories of massive payoffs to Islamabad by the car manufacturing mafia are rampant and true. Task Forces set up to alleviate the suffering of hapless consumers have neither performed the task nor had any force. Their role has been to buy time, make suggestions no one wants to listen to and retreat into the labyrinths of bureaucratic sewers. In a few months, all is forgotten. The mafias live to thrive another day, the citizen lives on to get shafted once again. Life moves along in the Islamic Republic. Those of us who do manage to procure a car, having endured all that is now commonplace, know fully well that the price they have paid is not remotely linked to the quality of what they have purchased. As usual, the big, bad corporate world wins. You lose. What can you do about it? Well, nothing really because neither are we willing to coalesce for a common cause and neither are we willing to take any strong steps to end this exploitation like refusing to buy the products. Unlike the US where Ralph Naders took on the establishment and where there is still some respect for the rights of ordinary folk, nothing quite like that has happened here and neither will given that they go on winning and we go on losing.

And it is not just buying cars or glasses where you feel the pain. There is simply a kind of silent disease that has spread right across the social strata that is hard to understand, but if over simplification can be forgiven, a lack of pride in what you do and a lack of will in doing it right, seem to be the most common ailments. A social scientist may define it better. A reasonably decent enough (although one hears disturbing reports about all the guest houses that are popping up all over the country) guesthouse in Islamabad, where many of us stay while on short trips is a classic case in point. Although they even know us by face, yet it is always the same. Table lamps without lamps, switches that don’t work, cannot work. Fans with only one speed. Windows that are jammed and cannot be pried open unless Godzilla is sharing the room with you. TV channels that are so blurry you think the transmission was coming from some far-flung galaxy and showers that are clogged. Realising like only Pakistanis can that there was no point in asking the authorities to fix it, I opened the shower and did a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation job on it. It revived, the blocked arteries opened up and water flowed out happily. However, it was either scalding or freezing so a kind of Indian war dance was what it looked like in the end. I offered to fix up their next shower when checking out and told the girl at the counter that she should put me up in another room next time. She giggled and the matter was closed.

In the context of the country showers or gift-wrapping paper are not of much consequence and are the ailments of the well heeled in our society. Among the other 99 per cent, life is too serious a business to joke about. We may succeed in securing better showers, but there is no doubt that the huge bulk of this exploding country are destined for a miserable future, uniform or no uniform. There is no pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. There isn’t even a rainbow.