Published in The News on October 30, 2000
I meet all kinds of people at wedding and valima parties. Some of them are the types who have never read a book in their lives (except to pass school examinations). There are others who have an intense aversion to reading anything, not even daily newspapers. Many over fifty-five have already had a coronary bypass operation. Some believe that a man isn't a man unless he has ten children from one wife.
A growing number of others have been brainwashed into believing that the best way to enjoy life is to persuade others to look and live like they do. This means no TV, radio or newspapers and absolutely no shaving of facial hair. The result is that they haven't laughed or heard a joke for years and go around looking sad all the time. Mercifully, it's been ten years since I met the man who wouldn't allow his wife to answer the phone owing to his strong belief that if a woman said 'wa alaikum salaam' to a stranger on the phone, her marriage was automatically annulled.
But I'm sure there are thousands in Pakistan who'd cheerfully shoot their wives for looking out of windows or venturing out of their houses alone. In short, most of the people I meet physically be in twenty first century, but for all practical purposes their minds are just like those of men who lived in the Stone Age. But occasionally I do come across people who read newspapers or watch CNN and BBC and even the National Geographic Channel. Sometimes it's a pleasure to find intelligent men who have definite opinions on such topics as what could have been done to avoid the 1971 debacle or why capital punishment should be abolished. Obviously, I rarely meet a man over forty-five who is computer literate.
In fact, in the opinion of most of my friends and acquaintances, a computer is something that helps you send messages across the world and enables you to talk to someone in the US almost free of charge. In such a dismal scenario, it's natural that I should come across people who believe that the country is going to dogs and the best thing to do for all Pakistanis to migrate to the US or Canada. I came across such a person the other day. He's forty-five, highly illiterate (practically no schooling), a man who (before the age of 35) was a regular visitor to Bangkok (to visit its mosques and tombs, as he would tell his wife).
Then, suddenly, he became a convert to the currently popular philosophy of living a miserable life. The signs of prosperity (a mild heart attack and a protruding belly) had been visible on him for five years. Then, suddenly, the small shop he had inherited from his father had increased in value to twenty million, and this he had sold and remitted the amount to Canada where (he said) his money was safe and away from nosy tax inspectors.
He intended to fly there at a moment's notice. I pointed out to him that a coronary bypass operation (which was in his stars if he didn't give up his present sedentary lifestyle) cost ten times more in the West than it did here. I also told him that outside Pakistan the tax people were ten times more efficient, than those who were bothering him here and the penalties for tax evasion were correspondingly higher, but he was impervious to reason.
He would have to pay taxes and bills on time, he would never be able to indulge in power or gas theft, he'd have to stand in a queue for the meanest of tasks, and servants would be very expensive, so he and his wife and children would have to do the dirty work themselves. This, too, didn't have any effect on him. Some people like to learn the facts of life the hard way.
