Death knocks the door

If there is one thing that gets me grinding my teeth in and about Pakistan it is the number of needless deaths in a range of accidents that go from hundreds dead in a tanker explosion to the three of my family and friends that have died in the last two months. All three should be alive today, and two of them would have been had they been wearing motorcycle helmets (the third was a careless driver) and that is where we are going this week, Dear Reader.

It was Sadaf that went first, riding on the back of the bike carrying her baby in Karachi. She was riding sidesaddle, was thrown off, hit her head and was dead by the time she got to hospital. The baby suffered cuts and bruises but otherwise not seriously injured.

Then it was Sister Violet. She was the Mother Superior of the Dominican Convent in Bahawalpur and we had been friends for 20 years. She was sidesaddle as well, knocked off and died in hospital three days later of massive head injuries. The news came to me at 10.30 pm last Friday evening as I sat with friends in Islamabad and has weighed heavily ever since.

Neither prayers or sympathy is being sought here — what is done is done and cannot be undone. Both these women would be alive today had they been wearing crash helmets. Both were intelligent, sensible women — Sadaf a staff nurse — and neither could ever be considered rash or thoughtless. Yet neither gave a second thought to riding on a motorbike, one carrying an infant, without a helmet. Women just do not wear helmets. Not the done thing. Not part of the culture is it? My niece, who I spoke to in the aftermath of both accidents rides to the side with her baby and no helmet either. Again neither she or her husband are short of the sharps — he is a medical rep and she about to open a beauty salon business — but again neither gave a moment’s thought to the safety of themselves despite the deaths of two people close to them in a variety of ways.

There were pursed and lips and disapproving looks when I flatly refused to allow my own daughter, here for the summer hols from the UK, to ride on a bike without a helmet. Miss N has been sat down and told in words of one syllable that she is not allowed to ride on any motorbike with any friend or relative without the bone dome. Given that she is 10 it might be a tad tricky finding one that fits her and if that is the case then so be it — no helmet no ticket to ride. The same gimlet-eyed conversation was had with the Missus. As a parent and a husband, I have a duty of care to those nearest and dearest to me and I am damned if I am going to find myself standing at a mortuary slab contemplating the smashed skull of my youngest child or my wife.

A few years back there was a wonderful holiday in Vietnam. Taking the taxi to the hotel, two things were obvious — this was a bike-and-scooter country, and everybody yes everybody, wore a helmet. Drivers and passengers. Kids. Everybody. And nobody rode to the side. There were shops selling helmets of all descriptions seemingly every couple of hundred yards — and they were doing business. Later and in conversation with a Pakistani friend who had spent years in Vietnam, she commented that helmet wearing was the law and the law was obeyed. Deaths from head injuries associated with motorbike or scooter accidents were miniscule.

The law was obeyed. The last time there was legislation enacted regarding helmets in Punjab it was both widely ignored and ridiculed — men riding around with saucepans on their heads to the obvious amusement of the on-looking police. To date I have never, at least in Bahawalpur, seen a woman passenger on a motorbike wearing a helmet. Neither have I ever — ever — seen a child wearing a helmet. Life is cheap in Pakistan, not even worth the price of a helmet. Tootle-pip and oh…carry on regardless.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2017.

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