Pakistani truck art through camera lens

Writer, photographer capture essence of trucking culture through colourful photographs

KARACHI:

While travelling through cities it is always fascinating to see a truck painted with drawings full of colours but there is a lot more beyond the truck art and people associated with it. With this fascination in mind, writer Zehra Nawab and photographer Annie Ali Khan set out to discover how this stunning form of art is produced.

Their photo exhibition, ‘Pilgrims of the Indus Highways’, was presented on Saturday at a session of Caravanserai — Kabul in Karachi at the Beach Luxury Hotel.



It was the start of the two-day Caravanserai festival, aimed at bringing together the cultural similarities of Kabul and Karachi. Caravanserai director Francesca Recchia said that the reason she chose Karachi is because it is a city with a richly diverse population. She added that she believes that Karachi is one of the most hospitable cities of Pakistan.



Khan said she believed that truck art is purely associated with the culture of Pakistan. “Questions keep arising in my mind about the truck art industry as well as the people whose lives revolve around these trucks, who earn livelihoods through these trucks,” she mused, adding that during the 20 days she spent visiting different places across Pakistan it became evident that the lives at addas, a place where truck drivers congregate, needed to be talked about and shown to the public. “There were different characters that we met throughout the tour, for example the people who make the keys of the trucks or the man whose job it is to clean the ears of the truck drivers,” she said.

Khan and Nawab’s photos depict daily-life stories, from a boy who greases the trucks to a truck driver, Khusahb, at an adda in Multan who has painted his bonnet black to ward off evil spirits.

“I believe the truck is a canvas that symbolises the confluence of culture — a culture which is common to these regions and stretches from Kabul to the Kanhya Kumari district of South East India,” said Nawab.

She explained that the truck art is not limited by religious or geographical boundaries in Pakistan and said the icons painted on trucks are usually universally recognised, for example those of Lady Diana or Benazir Bhutto.



She emphasised that each region in Pakistan has its own specialty, like metal work in Peshawar or mirror work in Rawalpindi. She mentioned that portraits made on trucks are usually done in southern Punjab and they went to Dera Ghazi Khan to locate Ustad Zahoor who is famous for his truck art. Nawab added that it was great to see him painting different silhouettes, from a Kurdish Rebel and Palestinian freedom fighter, to Benazir Bhutto and Nargis, a famous actress.

“We went to cities in all the provinces, from Pindi to Peshawar, Lahore to Multan, DG Khan to Quetta and from Mirpurkhas to Karachi,” she said, adding that at the addas people often asked them why they were interested in truck art rather than the miserable lives of the people associated with it.

Talking about a truck owner they met at an adda in Rawalpindi, she said, “Geographical divisions are porous in the truck world; Mistrii Rasheed, a Kashmiri driver we met at a truck adda, had his truck registered in Balochistan but was being painted at Pindi.”

The exhibition also showcased photographs by writer and photographer Suchitra Vijayan, who is working on a 9,000-mile pictorial project, ‘The Borderlands Project’, which spans the borders of South Asia. From Afghanistan and Pakistan to India’s border with Burma, China and Bangladesh to the occupied territory of Kashmir, all these boundaries have been explored and their link to violence has been examined.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2016.