From Lahore,
with Love
By Eff Cee
A Lahori visits Karachi
after long years to find much has changed in the
metropolis
This time I
had gone to Karachi after a lapse of eleven years.
And that too, for four days only. A busy whirlwind
of a trip it was to a dear city which, paired with
Lahore, was always associated with my childhood
memories.
In the month of June, it was almost an annual family
ritual to leave the long, hot summer of Lahore for
the cool breezes of Karachi. The two months off
from school meant at least a month-long stay at
our grandparents’. And what a delight to be
endlessly pampered by an old doting couple and their
three sons, all gone now! Life has become such a
serious affair that it is hard to believe if there
actually was such a time.
The fun started from the beginning. The preparations,
the ride through Mcleod Road and then the fight
among us, the sisters, for the window-seat on the
train. Of course, the trains were as unpredictable
and schedule violating as now, but contrary to the
present impatience, we used to pray that the journey
might never come to an end. But end it would, and
on a pleasant note: the Karachi railway station,
neater and for bigger it seemed to us than the one
in Lahore. The fleeting ride through the wide, wide
roads lined with tall, tall buildings. It seemed
another world, full of lights and delights, glory
and glamour. That after some time I used to yearn
for those old, unpaved streets of Lahore is another
story. Though a ‘pind’ in comparison,
it was a home to return to. Still Karachi remained
an important part of my childhood consciousness
and I could never imagine living totally without
it.
Eleven long years, and I could not get time off
my busy schedule to pay a visit to a dear city.
I had a return air ticket this time and found the
take-off as full of surprise as my landing at the
destination. I don’t know when Lahore stopped
being a small, cozy, self-contained habitation of
closely knit mohallas. Beneath me was a city sprawling
from horizon to horizon, seeming to have no end
at all.
The next surprise was the greenery planted outside
Jinnah Terminal in Karachi. But the delight soon
turned to dismay. The city was dirtier and more
dilapidated. No cool breezes welcomed me in the
evenings. It was hot, close and humid as much in
physique as in mind.
Now, we all happen to be a nation of myopic individuals
who proudly hold their individuality aloft. But
I was sorry to see so much of sneers and scowls
in a city known for its cool breaths and breezes.
To find the most literate of all our cities least
educated is hard to bear. And for all the distances
and absences, the type of relationship I have with
Karachi prompts me to speak my mind freely and directly.
These are the outpourings of a loving heart. But
born of a purely immigrant stock and a Lahori by
birth and education, I think I also have the requisite
detachment to view the mental scenario I glimpsed
during my brief stay in Karachi.
What pained me most about you, Karachiites is a
sense of your own superiority coupled with an absence
of tolerance for others. The first leads to the
second. Your complex makes you look down upon everyone
outside your narrow range of acceptance. Only you
are most honest, most sincere. All others are rude,
crude, dishonest, insincere, corrupt. Now, every
community has its fair share of roguery or piety.
We human beings are born flawed creatures, neither
totally good nor irredeemably bad. So, there is
hardly a question of anyone being superior or inferior
to others. We all are human beings and must be accepted
as such. To stigmatize someone as corrupt or crooked
is not only unjust but also beneath dignity.
I think this complex is born of a deep-seated sense
of insecurity peculiar to all immigrants. That this
fear should be transmitted down to the second or
even third generation is alarming. To think of others
as outsiders or treat them as squatters or bread-snatchers
is economically motivated. Instead of fear, you
should develop a healthy sense of competition. If
the poor and the landless from interior Sind or
rural Punjab, victimized for centuries at the hands
of landed tyrants and extortionists, enter the competition,
you should not mind them. Nor any such policy that
gives them protection and incentive to acquire education
and improve their lot through government jobs. The
policy, mind you, is operative in all our provinces
and is not meant to harm the interests of any one
ethnic group.
Make room for others, the way others had accommodated
you when, about 60 years back, ‘Gods’
land, for all its width and breadth, did constrain
you (Surah Tauba:25). Since then you have enjoyed
the fruits of power and prestige. Being the only
educated people then, you deserved it. It is creditable
the way you participated in the development process
of the city as well as the whole country. Now people
from other areas have also entered the field. And
why not? Karachi and Pakistan are for all of us,
rather than for a fortunate few. Come forward, brush
up your abilities and compete in this wonderful
land of opportunities God has bestowed on us. Don’t
you owe that much of gratitude to Him?
Remember, the reward lies in the hands of those
who work hard, and not idlers and tongue-wielders.
If government jobs are not easily available, try
other routes, explore other avenues. I know it is
hard to shed off a complex that has run through
generations — the sense of yourself being
a decent gentleman who can’t stoop to such
and such trade. This is a lame excuse for laziness
and lethargy. Learn the lesson of hard work from
your brothers, the Pathans. Why do they survive
under all circumstances? Because they don’t
shy away from the humblest of labor, the dignity
of which your education ought to have imparted on
you.
My dear Karachiites, I wish you could uphold the
culture or inclusion rather than estrangement and
exclusion. You go too far in your drive for derision.
You don’t spare even those from your own clan
and community whom you derisively label as Bihari,
Hyderabadi, Madrasi and so on and so forth. Why?
Just because they happen to speak Urdu in a slightly
different way? Why this cultural intimidation or
linguistic colonialism? For a language spoken over
large areas of the world, it is impossible to have
one uniform tone or accent. A language that cuts
itself off from the outside, nonnative influence,
dies a natural death. A living language changes
from people to people, places to places. It picks
up and absorbs local colors and cadences as it travels.
Look at the post-colonial English, for example.
The more hybrid, the more enriched. Any attempt
to purge and purify it would be ridiculous. You
cannot stop Urdu from becoming Punjab-ised or Pukhtoon-ed.
It is just because of its tremendous absorbability
that it has survived in the polyglot cultural scene
of Pakistan.
We must thank God for this multi-lingual scenario
where all languages inspire and enrich each other.
You complain that a Punjabi has got a ‘paindu’
accent of Urdu. You mistrust him when he pronounces
Lahore as ‘L’hor’. This is not
deliberate or mischievous. The city is pronounced
like that in his language. How can you expect a
non-native to speak another language with the same
sophistication as a native? The important thing
is that he is trying to speak it with effort and
eagerness.
What if he does not have the same tameez or adab-adaab
as you have? He comes of a different culture. His
has been a rural, land-related society. Community
consciousness and mutual give-and-take influence
his language to be informal. He does not know any
formal distances or emotional barriers reflected
in ‘aap-janaab’. And yet this ‘paindu’
is generous enough to accept Urdu and tries to promote
it with diligence. How far the Punjabi poets and
authors have contributed to the development of post-independence
Urdu literature of Pakistan bears witness to this.
Pain and pleasure combined to make my visit to Karachi
a memorable one. One afternoon, I went to the hospital
to see a cousin dying of cancer. I cried myself
hoarse at her deathbed. The same evening I went
to attend the wedding of another cousin. A grand
gala affair full of giggles and laughter. This,
undoubtedly, is life, an assortment of various colors
that differ in tones and shades, yet coexist. It
is an all-inclusive, all-accommodating affair. Whether
you like it or not, you have to accept it in its
entirety. Try to sift things apart and what do you
get? Nothing. (Courtesy The News)
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