A Visit to Pakistan: “Sunshine and Rain at Once”
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry,
Pittsburg, CA
It’s not how busy you are or how fast you’re moving. It’s how effectively you are advancing in the right direction.” - Robert K. Cooper, in his book, “Get Out of Your Own Way.”
Yes, most of us are our own enemies. We accuse the whole world except our own selves. The biggest obstacle often is man himself. If he only learns to get out of his own way, life would brighten up substantially for him. My visit to Pakistan this time was Sunshine and Rain at once.
This time my one-month visit to Pakistan in mid-February came after two years. It was altogether a different kind of experience. I found it hard to recognize or reconcile myself with the fast pace with which the country appeared to be changing. I found the country changing rather too fast. And the change was visible in the Punjab, the province I visited. From freeways to sky-touching plazas; from bridges to overhead passes; from shopping malls to metros; from emerging new towns to towers, from wearing branded-clothes to eating-out in expensive restaurants; name a thing, place or person that was not found entrapped in a mode of transformation. The people and places and politics, in fact, all appeared to be engaged in sloughing themselves.
And the change was also visible in the lifestyle, and in the social and moral outlook of people. This change, no doubt, appears to a visitor like this scribe as a healthy and positive sign. But all that glitters is not gold. Illusions are always deceptive. Pakistan, indeed, is changing, but with a bias. This change, as I found very clearly, suited only the rich and the privileged. I lived in Islamabad comfortably in a house that by all standards could be compared, if not better, then at least equal to anywhere in a European country, including America. A chauffeured car, and lunch and dinner at places like Islamabad Club, Roaster or at the Minal with the erstwhile students, now retired from high positions, definitely presented a rosy but deceptive perception to me. Servants and maids at your beck and call, I found it hard to be living in Pakistan. Certainly, this was not the Pakistan I had left behind. The reality lay hidden somewhere. I did not have to go very far to verify all this.
The next door house in Islamabad being under construction revealed the whole truth. Chatting with the brick-layer and brick-carrier, I asked them a few questions about their life and daily earnings. The middle-aged brick carrier who amazingly carried 20 bricks at a time on his back got paid by the contractor to the tune of Rs. 800 per day, and the mason about Rs 1,600. I had paid Rs. 800 to a barber in F-7 in Islamabad just for my hair-cut about Rs 800, for a less than 15-minute job. When asked how much he got paid, another trench digger, replied: “The contractor pays me Rs.200 for this six-feet ditch.” A bread costs you Rs.250 and a big bottle of water Rs. 250.
In the sweltering heat of Pakistan these days, mere one kilo lemons cost Rs 200 in mild hot places, and in Sukkur they shoot up to Rs.400 per kilo. So exploitation of the need and miseries of people is the key to success. From doctors, to advocates, to politicians, to businessmen - all are shamelessly and mindlessly engaged in this practice. There is no fear of law or of God. Uber and Careem cabs have further impacted the poor taxi-drivers, and have driven them out of job, as informed by a young driver who had an associate two-year college diploma. “Why don’t you join a service, or do something else?” I asked him innocently. His reply was classic: “You need hundreds of thousands of rupees to get even a menial job. And I have a family to raise. Uber guys have newer cars and people prefer traveling in them.” He spoke like a professional economist when he further supplied me the cause that had added to his economic woes. He said, “Ever since the government lowered rates on savings in the banks, people have begun making money by investing it in plazas, cars and rental properties. So the formula is, you make money and make assets by hook or by crook, and sit on your butt and play politics. Politics is the best means to get into power and power is a sure way to mint money.” He was not very wrong.
The designer and their replica shops are minting money. There is a fashion craze in the youth. Thanks to the media and designer culture, even the poor are not immune to the sickness. One big-belly cloth merchant attracted my attention when I overheard him saying something very odd and unusual as my wife was busy in selecting some items. “The real lords/badshads are these sale-persons of ours. We, who are billionaires depend on their whims.” He did not stop here but continued, “I have told these scroungers/sales persons many times that when you eat a piece of chicken, do not leave any meat on its bones. The meat thus left attracts jinns, and this is prohibited by our Prophet (s)”. It was hard for me to digest all this, so I interjected politely and said where he had left. “How about if some meat left on the bones attracts the poor, hungry cats or stray dogs? I do not know about the jinns, but for sure I know one hadith of our Prophet (s), in which he gave the good tidings of jannah to a bad woman who had quenched the thirst of a thirsty dog.” Never had I wished that earnestly as I did at that moment to be an official of a taxation department because the exploiter had himself bragged about being a “billionaire.” The system works perfect for the corrupt and for the powerful and for the privileged.
The Epidemic of Inequality and Corruption: The word-picture drawn above does not mirror the life as lived by a majority of people in Pakistan. The truth dawned upon me soon. Pakistan is trying to move fast, and in this craze, is sacrificing direction to motion. My visit to my native house in a mohallah in the inner city of Rawalpindi, confirmed my concerns. Once wide streets surrounded with open spaces where we played cricket and kabbadi, had now turned into narrow and congested lanes. The houses which once looked spacious and well-lighted, now were transformed into dark dens. People living there, and engaged in the struggle of day-to-day-life found the solution to their lodging problems in the wake of extended families, to going vertical, rather than horizontal. Old foundations, supporting upward construction, have brought darkness and gloom in their lives; and have put them in the hazard’s way at well. New communities are for other class of people. Water, the elixir of life comes with a price; people with pale faces, and children aspiring to have the luxury of munching on a potato chips’ bag, and the youth glued to the I-phones, or marauding at mid-night in the streets with the motor-bikes bought with loans, is the picture of real Pakistan. The roads often stay clogged because movement from one place to another without a vehicle has become impossible.
People’s sociability is reduced to the minimum. The gas prices and the cost of Rs500 to Rs750 per one-way visit within a city to a relative or friend is a substantial burden on the wallet of a person with limited or fixed sources of income. The cynic Hasan Nisar is absolutely wrong when he is heard chirping, “Real problem of Pakistan is not of economics, it is of akhliaqat/morals.” Nonsense. Morality is intrinsically linked with economics. A hungry man is more dangerous than an angry man.
Sipping a cup of tea in the house of my neighbor in the inner city, I found this place, teeming with children huddled up in small, dark rooms, accommodating four families. This phenomenon is not restricted to one particular city or house. 80% people of Pakistan living in big cities are now confronted with this implosion of social, environmental, moral and ethical problems just because they somehow get doomed due to lack inequality and unfair distribution of resources, a process created by the insensitive and callous leaders and their self-serving faulty and unjust economic policies. Anger, frustration, compromise with evil, resignation to the kind of life they are living, are not good signs. The youth is fast becoming cynical as opportunities to improve are now strictly getting controlled and monopolized by the super-rich and corrupt people at the helm of affairs. So there is God’s plenty in Pakistan, no doubt, but it is only for the few.
(Continued next week)
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