Finding spaces

Anew pizza joint opened in the city last week, one of a global chain and nothing remarkable in that you may think

Anew pizza joint opened in the city in the last week, one of a global chain and nothing remarkable in that you may think — pizza parlours are two-a-penny. Family pressures prevailed and we duly rolled up a couple of nights after the opening to find the place packed. And I do mean packed. It was standing room only the customer seating having proved inadequate to demand as I waited to place my order. The staff were rushed off their feet but polite and efficient, nobody was complaining and people were obviously happy to eat their food in what may be described as organised chaos. And then I noticed the blindingly obvious. Women. And girls.

Scientific it is not but a scan of the customers suggested that more than fifty percent of those munching their pizzas were female. I scanned again. More women than men? Well that is certainly what it looked like. The men were in a minority, most of them eating at tables-for-two in a side aisle in an interesting reversal of the norm. Usually it is the women that are shuffled off to areas at the back of eateries, certainly eateries of local origin which, despite some having what are euphemistically called ‘family areas’, are never used by any families of my acquaintance.

Back home and pizza eaten ( …excellent should you be wondering) there was another flash of the blindingly obvious. It came with the realisation that what I had seen earlier was just a version of what I had been seeing for years albeit on a scale exaggerated by the newness of the establishment. Go wherever you like in the country that has (dread word) western branches of fast food franchises and you will find women and young girls. Older women with children, younger singlies in posses and just sometimes a lone woman hunched across her laptop or tablet oblivious to the world around her.

It is not only the western outlets that are picking up the female rupee. The smart and very local burger emporium at Welcome Chowk gets my custom on account of decidedly superior products, and as I wait for the goods there are invariably tables with all female occupancy. Same with the very popular chicken place at Fowara Chowk. And the place opposite the main gates of the hospital. And the gloomy coffee shop. So it is not just that these places look ‘western’ in that they are brightly lit, generally clean and offer grub that is mostly palatable that the middle-class and nouveau-riche can go and strut their stuff, male and female, it is something about the nature of the space.

Women — and here I surmise — use these spaces that also happen to sell food because they are safe. They are a public social environment that is unthreatening where women can go singly or in groups in an assumption of safety. This is not to say that there will be no harassment by men/boys and doubtless some women reading this will have tales to tell that offer a different perspective, but the rise of fast-food culture has probably unwittingly created a space for women that was not there before.

All that said these culinary paragons are not for all women everywhere because you need to be relatively rich to pass through their portals. And most people — women — are not relatively rich they are relatively or extremely poor, and would be horrified at the thought of spending Rs500 on a burger half of which may not get eaten anyway.

Fast food is not a proletarian leveler in Pakistan, more it is yet another emblem of the great divide between rich and poor. It is also symbolic of globalisation and not just of brands, but a creeping homogeneity that is to be found wherever one goes, a universal sameness albeit with local colours and textures. It is that monochrome which carries a patina of brightness into which the women who were in our brand-new pizza-joint are buying. At the same time they are buying into a corner of socio-cultural change. Disapprove all you like, but the ubiquity of fast food is here to stay — and so are the women comfortable in their space.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2016.

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