Winter less of discontent than of gloom

When was there a winter when I or someone from my tribe didn't use this as a title or a peg: winter of discontent? Winter comes and there's no escaping this phrase. Without our clichés to fall back on where would we be? But this winter comes with a slight variation. It is a winter of gloom, not because our circumstances are especially bad -- we've gone through worse times before such as in 1971-- but because the people of Pakistan have no one to look up to.

The greater threat is not from India, America or invaders from Mars but from our own incompetence. We've had incompetent rulers before but the present bunch -- and this is no exaggeration -- takes the prize. This is a country made dysfunctional not so much by its circumstances as its leaders. The phenomenon, and no other word comes close to describing it, of President Asif Ali Zardari: the question on Pakistani lips is, what have we done to deserve it?

But the Republic is not in mourning. Hardened by experience we no longer cry over our misfortunes. We take them in our stride: "mushkilein itnee parheen ke aasan ho gaieen" (my difficulties were so many that they became easy). One crisis after another is becoming Pakistan's natural condition. And here the credit must go to the resilience of the Pakistani people-- some inner toughness they possess -- that despite a never-ending series of troubles -- and there is no one to beat Pakistanis when it comes to enumerating their afflictions -- Pakistan continues to muddle through.

Reading some of the more over-wrought commentaries about Pakistan one would think this was a country about to go the way of Somalia, about to be overtaken by anarchy and on the verge of breaking up. But enter the heart of any city, small or large, and one would be struck by the vitality and energy of ordinary people. Life goes on. People work, beg, cry and smile and continue to laugh and flirt. But they don't moan about the misery of their existence as much as the chattering classes which, over the years, have turned moaning about the national condition into an art form.

Some truly fabulous songs continue to be written and sung. And music now reaches a mass audience. It may not be classical music but it is music all the same.

The amount of booze consumed in Pakistan -- and I am talking of a land under the benign rigours of prohibition for the last 30 years -- if put into statistics would astonish prophets of doom inclined to think that eternal darkness had descended upon the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the time may have come to openly confess that prohibition hasn't been the unmitigated success it was meant to be. It hasn't saved Pakistani souls --I suppose, the intended purpose of the exercise -- but the fillip it has given to drinking could yet do serious damage to Pakistani livers. Many of those who drink these days (although surely not all) do so with a certain ferocity, in a style often close to desperation, as if uncertain of what the morrow might bring.

Doctors of divinity should know enough about the human condition to realise that banning anything makes it more attractive. Virtue is an uphill battle, a cross to be carried by saints and evangelists. Vice, sadly, shapes itself more readily to the human condition. For this very reason it is nothing short of foolish to ban vice. Human society being the amalgam of imperfection that it is, it just cannot be done.

Why do we call the oldest profession the oldest profession? Because, despite the best efforts of reformers and other do-gooders down the ages, it has been around since man (and woman) emerged from the forests and walked the planet. Sensible societies regulate vice so as to be able to, well, regulate it. Societies like ours where there is no premium on acting sensibly launch crusades against vice to pluck it from its roots with the all too predictable result that instead of being contained, much less eradicated, vice goes underground and starts spreading like a virus.

This has happened with drinking. Drink never used to be hoarded in Pakistan. Now it is. This has also happened with the oldest profession.

Back until the 1970s Lahore had a section of the city, Hira Mandi or Diamond Market next to Aurangzeb Alamgir's Badshahi Mosque, dedicated to the imperishable arts of singing, dancing and related activities (what a wealth of meaning is covered by the phrase 'related activities'). And the aficionado who had his heart set on these things knew what he was coming for, and what he would get, when with impatient steps, the Badshahi Mosque in full view, he hurried towards the Diamond Market.

Ghalib had a mischievous sense of humour. "Masjid ke zer-e-saya kharabat chahiye…" (Under the shadow of the mosque would I like to imbibe…as if a lesser paradox was not enough to titillate his over-refined fancy.)

Then came General Ziaul Haq's ode to hypocrisy framed by the colours of an excessive religiosity. Some senior police officers then posted in Lahore, hand-in-glove with some holy fathers (why name names), keen to make an impression on Zia, focused their guns on Hira Mandi. They introduced irksome restrictions--- reducing the hours of singing and dancing, frequent police raids on 'kothas'---to make life difficult for the residents of the district. Sensing the winds of change, many of those residents moved out. The art of the courtesan, confined for generations past to a well-defined and easily-recognisable part of Lahore, now spread to other parts of the city. So much for the reform of Hira Mandi.

Not to forget another thing, if this section of Lahore had a virtue it was egalitarianism. It catered for both high and low. There were upscale paladins and down-at-heel warriors and such was the variety of the fare available that the cultural requirements of both ends of the social scale were adequately met. Just as, pockets permitting, one can dine at a five-star hotel or a roadside dhaba, there were choices on offer in the narrow streets of that quarter. Now culture of the sort Diamond Market was famous for trading in is out of the reach of the non-privileged masses.

And then we wonder why down-at-heel youngsters in the Frontier Province are being attracted to the Taliban. Well, if you were a young lad in your teens with no job prospects, with not the money or connections to go to Dubai or Korea, your future therefore dark and uncertain, wouldn't joining the Taliban be an attractive proposition? To lives without purpose, joining such a fraternity as the Taliban, can give a sense of purpose and, with a Kalashnikov in your hands, who knows, a sense of empowerment. The Taliban, let's not forget, offer food, company, training and the prospect of adventure. To top it all, they even give a salary which is more, I believe, than what a regular soldier or an FC sepoy gets.

This is not to glorify the Taliban. Far from it. Would someone like me be able to live in a Taliban-dominated society? I wouldn't be able to write nor hold forth, as I am presently doing, on virtue and vice. But at the same time, we achieve nothing by shutting our eyes to what's happening around us. The greater the gap between rich and poor in Pakistan, the more Pakistan becomes a country only for the rich and the well-connected, the greater the attraction of the Taliban for the kicked-about and downtrodden.

Aren't we aware that poverty and hunger are driving people to suicide in Pakistan? Now if someone wrestling with the idea of suicide because he couldn't feed his family, comes to know of a militia willing to feed, train and arm him, wouldn't the idea tempt him? Suicide bombing, we are told, is against Islam, as it surely is. Are hunger and poverty in line with Islam?

The danger the Taliban pose, their burgeoning power in Swat and FATA, will grow unless we stop taking orders, and dole, from America. And unless we cancel all the other principles of policy in the Constitution and replace all that claptrap with just two observations: Hazrat Omar's immortal cry---yes, you've heard it before---that even if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates he (Caliph of Islam) would have to answer for it on the Day of Judgment; and Hazrat Ali's equally timeless admonition that an un-Islamic government could endure but not one based on tyranny and injustice.

I know this is a fantasy, never to come true. Even so, it bears remembering that in the temple of Islam two central pillars hold the entire edifice aloft: freedom from want and freedom from injustice. If not these, the rest is all ritual and empty circumstance.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com