Grace under fire

GUNJAN VEDA

March 18, 2015

AP“In Pakistan, even under the shadow of the gun, people treat outsiders with grace and warmth.” Picture shows policemen standing guard as a health worker gives a child a polio vaccine in Karachi, Pakistan.

Pakistan is a complex nation but ten days are enough to find that while politics, religion and life itself have changed, its people haven’t

It’s been a little over seven years since I was here last. As the car moves from Wagah to Lahore, I see few vehicles on the road.

“It’s the fuel crisis,” Kamran, a strapping Lahori, explains. “The Pakistan State Oil only had reserves for three days. They say it was because of [a] lack of planning.” Whatever the reason, Lahore had little fuel left. People had stopped going to offices, public transport was off the roads, and queues at a few petrol pumps stretched for miles. The CNG rickshaws were still plying, but with LPG cylinders.

Worse still is the electricity situation. In Gulberg, one of Lahore’s most affluent areas, load shedding is over 11-12 hours every day. In Karachi, it is 5-8 hours and in Larkana, 14 hours. The incessant hum of fuel-guzzling generators is one’s faithful companion in Pakistan.

Lahore looks much as it did seven years ago. The wide, tree-lined streets, the hustle and bustle of Ichra (a local bazaar), the haggling … I could have been in Sarojini Nagar, Delhi, but for the difference in the dresses and the tehjeeb. Everywhere I went, people spoke with utmost graciousness. The poorest shopkeeper, the seemingly illiterate bus driver, the fearsome security guard — I saw no one cursing, shouting or being even remotely rude. If there is eye contact, a ready smile and an asalaam waalekumcome your way. And if they figure out that you are a foreigner, you become their guest.

All-pervasive fear

After the Peshawar attack, fear is palpable. Children shudder to go to school. Parents make them touch the holy Quran, utter a dua (blessing) over their heads, and send them out each morning. The added security outside schools does not reassure them. Many point out and say, “What choice do we have? We can’t stop sending children to schools.” Fear is all-pervasive and yet has not dampened the Pakistani hospitality. It has not yet translated into a ubiquitous suspicion of strangers and foreigners.

For an outsider, Lahore is still a historic city that you can wander around with relative ease. Unlike in Karachi, you see people walking about. More importantly, you see women. Most of them are burqa clad or have their heads covered — unlike in the Lahore of 2007 — but they are visible. In Karachi, the few women I encountered were on local buses or behind the tinted glasses of cars. In Clifton, Karachi’s poshest address and in Zamzama, you saw a handful driving cars. Yet the markets were full of women.

My host, a well-known, young author told me that in Karachi, women wore jeans, short-sleeved outfits, even capris. Behind the veil were women in the most modern dresses, made-up faces and stylised hair. But when they travelled, the burqa provided anonymity and safety. Men didn’t leer, no one knew their identity, no one could comment on their dress. Just like the city, its people too lead a dual life — one indoor and one out of doors. When times are uncertain, kidnappings commonplace, and when bullets and bombs become so familiar that they no longer paralyse you with shock, anonymity provides security. So men drink, women drink and smoke cigarettes but within the four walls. Youngsters have Facebook accounts but with fake identities. YouTube is banned, but everyone uses a proxy to watch videos. Large houses have swimming pools, but on the beaches in Karachi, women go into the water in burqas. There was a time when in multicultural Karachi, religious leaders had issued an appeal for women to use costumes to prevent drowning. Now, of course, no one would even dare to recall such a request.

In Karachi, as in the rest of Pakistan, life goes on, but with caution. Freedoms are curtailed till people find ways to circumvent restrictions. They lose some space and yet they regain some semblance of what was once their everyday life.

In Karachi, the spectre of the gun dogs you at every step. Police patrols, heavily armed rangers, gunmen behind pickups and in cars, homes with high walls and barbed wires define Karachi, at least to me, the first-time visitor. There are other things that strike you such as the wide roads. Even in the old city there were six-laned roads, the sheer number of shops and markets, the beautifully decorated trucks, buses and rickshaws. Yet, even as you savour every morsel of the sumptuous halwa pooriserved for breakfast or admire the beautiful truck art, you feel the presence of the gun. My host told me of an interesting incident. “The first time I visited Lahore, I was shocked. The homes had low walls, little fencing, and open gates. In Karachi, we have always lived behind barbed wire, high walls, and padlocked doors.”

“Despite guns being around everywhere in Karachi, people carried on with their lives as if everything was just fine. Perhaps, this is what life in a conflict zone is about and this is how we survive”Every time I looked around in Karachi, and to some extent, in Pakistan, I saw guns. It’s true that these guns were for the safety of people, but they had me on edge. Yet, around me, people carried on with their lives as if everything was just fine, as if they didn’t even notice the guns. Perhaps, this is what life in a conflict zone is about and this is how we survive. Perhaps this is necessary to retain one’s sanity and life.

Ten days is too short a time to understand a place and Pakistan is a complex nation. I claim no understanding of its people, or its politics. I have no answers when people ask me why they support terrorists, why they won’t let go of Kashmir, why things are breaking down. I only know what I experienced. It was a country where even under the shadow of the gun, people treat outsiders with grace and warmth. Where the media, just like the media here, makes every effort to blame “the other” for everything — from border violations to terrorist activity in Peshawar. Where the common men and women are just as curious about us as some of us are about them. The questions I was asked were not about Indian politics or Kashmir or terrorism. They were about the language we speak, the food we eat, the clothes we wear. They were about our similarities and differences. They were about Bollywood. “Bollywood movies are the best, but Indian serials, too much artifice! Now, Turkish soaps, you should watch.”

“Have you seen PK? No!” That was almost a cardinal sin!

Did I travel alone? “Women in Pakistan don’t travel alone.”

Didn’t I feel scared travelling alone in a new country, especially one that is often regarded with so much suspicion?

Being afraid

How could I? How could I when the only thing I encountered in this country was love and acceptance? When village women rummaged through their treasure chests to bring me the best honey they had collected? When bus drivers stepped out into the cold night to get a special adrak ki chai (ginger tea) made for me? When taxi drivers refused to take money as I was a guest? When the hostesses on my luxury bus conspired to ensure that the Pakistan Rangers would not discover that I was a foreigner — else I would have to step down and go to their checkpoints for a series of formalities? When the security guard at Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s mazhar in Karachi went to her seniors to get special permission for me to click pictures because I had come from afar? When the head of airport security and an entire van of policemen accompanied me to my hotel in Mohenjodaro because my escort hadn’t turned up and I was their mehmaan? How could I be afraid?

This, perhaps, is the one thing that hasn’t changed about Pakistan in the last seven years. I wasn’t afraid then and I am not afraid now because while politics has changed, religion and life itself has changed, at the most basic level, people haven’t. They are just as welcoming now as they were then. Just as warm and just as friendly.

(Gunjan Veda is the founder director of Indiareads.com and the author, with Syeda Hameed, of Beautiful Country: Stories from Another India. She was formerly Officer on Special Duty with the Planning Commission.)