A slide into the abyss

How far and for how long will we maul IK and his government? They are here and have managed to remain till now. They probably will manage some more time in power too and may even get to complete their five years as long as they have supporting patrons. At least that is the larger sense. Whether that is the case is open to question. In which case simply the weight of it all might just bring them down. But there isn’t anything more that can or should be said about the incumbent government. In reality there is little to tell about them. So on to other stuff.

There surely isn’t one Pakistan but two; or more appropriately, there is one Pakistan, the real one, that most of us have long broken out of and are loathe to either think or revisit it. It isn’t too far; just outside of our gated communities. Every major city of Pakistan now has islands of prosperity where elites dwell in their make-believe world. Lavish facilitation through looking the other way has enabled developments over acquired or usurped lands or those handed out by the state to the selected few to turn them into dream living for those few who can afford it. Golf courses are an essential centrality around which dot bungalows for those with money. Others simply spread around the undulations to mimic an Alpine village. Just that the stench and the polluted sky above keeps reminding that someone stole our skies as we slept. And we have slept long.

As one emerges from such a community one comes across the real Pakistanis. Clothed mostly in second-hand wear-able(s), hawked aplenty on the sides of the roads and avenues thronged by multitudes, tells you the first story of this nuclear nation. The area that I live close to has this vast ten-lane highway connecting the twin cities and those inhabitants of these gated communities who must commute daily to their work in the Capital. The planners have constructed multiple crossovers and flyovers to connect the ordinary folks on both sides without disrupting the flow of traffic for the privileged. Not that it happens, it was the intent. A visiting dignitary noted clusters of idle men sitting by the roadside in the morning sun and wondered if these men had nothing to do. They mostly don’t. In an ordinary world it would be considered unheard luxury.

The exit ramps from the signal-free expressway are lined by impromptu bazaars which have attained life of their own. Hawkers and stalls of marketable items string along the paved and carpeted part of what was meant to be an extension of the freeway. The exit ramp is no more; you are in the midst of a long bazaar. Another law functions here; or not at all. Not a soul is around from the Police Station which sits in the middle of one such clover to check this illegal spread. Or, the police may well be a part of this enterprise. The law enforcement machinery is pretty sensitised to where there remit ends, letting things be beyond it. The most powerful pass through these areas every day reinforcing the age-old maxim — to each his own.

The crossover bridges, numerous along the entire stretch, are hardly used to such purpose. Mostly pedestrians simply walk across the road and over the dividers — young, old, women and very small children, alike — and play with death as they save from one and another vehicle whizzing past them at great speed. Many die but the habit just doesn’t relent. They will stop the traffic for a couple of hours keeping the body in the middle of the road and begin their dangerous game of death again. Then there are those brave young men who are nonchalant in how they just amble across dismissively thumbing those in their flashy cars inviting them to take them on. Such is the play of death.

Not a soul from police is present to keep order. They conveniently disappear to keep trouble out in such fraught environment only to make an appearance when a VIP must traverse through and a ‘route’, as it is called in local usage, must be instituted. The VIP gone, they are back into the safety of their dens. It is like denying a haunting truth that you want to keep out and not acknowledge. There are piles of filth of which stench from the long decayed compost slowly melds to form a perpetual backdrop of their existence. ‘You’ as a casual passerby may notice it, not them. To them those are the sights and smells of their being.

‘They’ have been robbed of their dignity of life for long and they don’t care anymore of what becomes of ‘you’. They know their survival is in collective existence and ‘others’ will always be ‘others’. If God forbid, one of you was to ever get into a life-threatening situation as may happen from time to time, especially with your womenfolk along, see how they simply stand around in a circle witnessing your pain. The womenfolk are an added attraction. This is a nation irretrievably divided into two social classes entirely alienated from each other. Yes, a few shelters and some free food is what the government offers them in charity but that only perpetuates their poverty. Rather than give them work or skills we only ease their forever poverty. When will there be a trigger for a clash, is anyone’s guess.

And what do ‘we’ do? We play our games of the elites which revolve around duty-drawbacks, subsidies, SROs and NROs, exclusive clubs and their cocooned worlds; our golf and polo and the Sunday Brunches and the spirited evening get-togethers with not a worry in the world to bother. Except what will multiply wealth and how. Patronage, power, influence and benefit are all knit homogenously into a self-serving and a self-sufficient system of elite capture even as the wielders talk of their pain for the poor. Institutions bolster each other as they fight between them to carve more turf and hence greater influence and resource. This Nero-istic playfulness will do to Islamabad what it did to Rome.

The flour and sugar crisis is typical of this insensitivity. The rich manipulate the poverty of the poor into greater riches of their own. This isn’t new. It happens every year. Taxes and duty structures at an astronomical level continue to steal from the common man. Tabdeeli is only in convenient sloganeering. Those in power will not reform, restructure, downsize or cut perks but will kill the poor while making up their deficits, whatever that means. Lifting millions out of poverty and quoting China is an insult.

In the meanwhile, impromptu bazaars will keep coming up and the line dividing this society will deepen even more. Till those on the spurs and exit ramps extend out to the freeways and take them over, forever. Adios, sliver Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2020.

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