Transitory World

APRIL 2001 - In a transitory world, Pakistan must rank high in transitory value systems. Every day there is more and more evidence that suggests this. No one, from one end of the land to the other, believes in any thing that lasts beyond a few hours – and in rare cases, beyond the day. This may also explain why we are perpetually in a hurry, to go nowhere as the writer, climber Galen Rowell put it so well a few years ago.

Earlier, last month on a PIA flight from Dubai into Lahore, we ran not into turbulence, but dispirited staff. The airhostess serving our section wore a crumpled uniform and an even more crumpled look. She was sullen and depressed. My fellow passenger, more animated than I was at the sight of someone who was clearly unhappy to be where she was and miserable to be dealing with the likes of us, doling out food and tepid drinking water, asked her why she was unable to smile. In return he received a scowl and half a cup of coffee. He didn’t take the hint and pressed the point a few minutes later, when the PIA staff having finished lunch, were taking a break in the galley. She said, ‘I have applied the brakes on smiling today.’ When he persisted, she told him that earlier they had carried the Pakistan cricket team to the UAE and the crew had been all smiles and attention only to be treated with disdain and ordered about by the half-literate thugs who now wear the national colours. She said they were boorish, uncouth and made sure they were continually served with this, that and the other. He sympathized but added why were we getting the thick end of the stick when we hadn’t even asked for a paper napkin. She smiled tiredly and shrugged her shoulders. End of episode.

Firstly, the poor girl does not know that the cricket team is hockey players in disguise and secondly, between all of them put together – if there is such a state of being, the team fighting all the time with whoever they can find, they total less than intermediate in terms of education and even less in terms of good behaviour. No one would expect wrestlers for instance to be anything but louts, so why expect eleven morons from being anything but morons? Wearing white gear doesn’t make you a gentleman any longer, but then who can explain it to the PIA airhostess who is also at the other end of receiving BS from her chain of superiors who happen to be working for an airline where the Managing Directors come and go faster than aircraft landing at Heathrow airport. Surely, in a transitory land where there are no values left, PIA’s high command must by now have set a new record in speedy appointments and speedier dismissals. What is it with the hash-induced air of Islamabad where the good weed grows in abundance that compels the twitching rulers to change teams at PIA? How can any organization ever hope to settle down when it knows that those who are laying down rules of procedure could be gone next morning? How can there be team spirit and team building in such a farcical atmosphere? PIA has enough troubles already, with its creaking aircraft, its ramshackle systems – the computers, bless them, are constantly down, its over-staffed, over-paid and under-utilized personnel and its downward plunge that plummets the national carrier to lower and lower depths. How can any one working in such a de-motivated atmosphere have job satisfaction and provide satisfactory service like our airhostess who refused to smile. There is now another change at the top. I can’t any longer remember who has replaced whom and whether Mr. Sher Afghan who a few months ago was extolled as the answer to all our prayers, is still holding a boarding card. Why can’t Islamabad make the right choice and then live with that? Why must there be daily surgery and a state of constant uncertainty hanging over PIA like smog that now hangs over the once pristine capital? Either they should entrust the airline to, for once, the right team or sell the damn thing, lock, stock and barrel to whoever is foolhardy enough to buy it.

Of course no such thing will happen and we will continue to lurch forward from one bad experience to another. The affairs of the national cricket team and its shaky, self-hyped structure have collapsed. If anyone can name the current Pakistan side without making five errors, I will institute a prize in his honour. Even the selectors probably have little idea. Incidentally who are the selectors these days? I have no idea and neither does anyone else. If anyone should have been sacked, it should have been the big boss at PCB, the happy, shoot-from-the-hip Mangla Commander who has reduced the national team into a rubble heap. He epitomizes the spirit of transitory behaviour perfectly. Sack him, appoint him, sack him, appoint him. Throw him out, replace him. Replace him, throw him out. Moin is Captain. No, Waqqar is. No, Inzy is. No Waqqar is. What is this? A three legged race in the kindergarten class? The amount of officials appointed and dismissed now number more than the ones who used to be invited to cricket camps. The national side is now a national joke. There are widespread stories of chaos, betting, mismanagement, politics, money, player power, intrigues, back stabbing, vanity – you name the vice and it’s there. Sacking glory boy Miandad (remember he was going to steer us victoriously through the next World Cup?) is not the answer. Getting a foreign coach, another of the PCB Chairman’s favourite Quixotic ventures, is also not the answer. The top man should accept responsibility for the mess he has landed us in and quit honourably. He did accept his responsibility for the fiasco in Karachi when England played, but carried on blithely and laid the blame on some other midget in the big machine. Like PIA, the problems run deep and while the country has to accept that its armed forces have special powers by which they can solve any problem, PIA and Pakistan’s cricket are not going to be among the two trophies they can hang on their walls when their innings is over.

No one, in PIA, PCB or Islamabad believes in long- term measures. Because their own power is so transitory and because no one really believes the sun will rise tomorrow and light up the halos around their heads, the spirit of ad hoc chaos reigns supreme. So, the long line of batsmen come and go, as do the MDs, Chairmen and other paraphernalia, while institutions built by others with hard work, dedication and commitment, fall like our wickets do when unknown and mediocre small time players destroy yesterday’s heroes.