Disability Attitudes, A Contrast

The former Sunday Times sports writer, Simon Barnes, has written this about political correctness in Britain.  For a writer in such a right-wing magazine, he is surprisingly approving.  His son has Down’s Syndrome, which makes his shift in beliefs understandable.  Reading this made me think.

Among the surprising things about living in Pakistan is the attitude to disabled people.  In my very first visit, I stayed at a medical campus, in Lahore – don’t ask, it’s a long story.

The facilities for students seemed rudimentary at the time, but there was a fruit shop that sold fruit shakes, juices and anything else that contained the word ‘fruit’.  Placed under some trees, on a patch of waste ground, it felt idyllic.  Inspite of being near an expressway and on a busy campus site, anyone could have sat there and watched the world trundle by.

One of the guys working there had a problem.  One of his hands was a stump, missing all the fingers and thumb.  The guy used it to carry glasses and balance trays of drinks.  He never broke anything, the whole time I was there.

The point I want to make is that nobody dwelt on his disability.  Nobody patted his boss on the head saying, ‘you’re so generous employing that man’.  He was accepted as just another guy working at the fruit shop.  Everyone just got on with it.

In that same stay, I found myself on the sleeper train between Lahore and Karachi, heading for a job interview in that giantopolis.  This train was fairly new (at the time), it was clean, reliable and punctual, if somewhat spartan.  That was a step up from British trains which often felt little better than an excuse mill, apologizing for their very existence.  Even the excuses felt like excuses for excuses – we apologise for being late because the previous service was late.

Riding this train in Pakistan was such a contrast.

The steward on this sleeper had a problem.  He was deaf and unable to speak.  Fairly profound for a customer facing worker.  Not here.  He communicated in his own sign language, we pointed to what we wanted on the menu and made hand gestures for the number of dishes, drinks and so on.  He too made gestures, a bit like a magician trying to trick the eye, to confirm the orders and off he went.

I presume he was experienced because he was efficient and reliable.  The communication problem only meant finding other ways to generate understanding.  Again, nobody looked twice.

That’s not strictly true.  This was my first time in Pakistan, and I was astonished that a disabled man would be employed, let alone without some kind of fanfare from passengers or company.   Once again, everyone just got on with it.

It’s easy for someone in Britain to be sniffy about a country like Pakistan, in terms of its treatment of disabled people.  It can’t be called ‘disabled friendly’.  There are steps everywhere and lifts frequently don’t work, that’s if the riff-raff, i.e. regular service users, can be allowed to use them.  There are occasionally ramps for wheelchairs and mobility impaired people, but a carabine, climbing boots and ice axe are necessary to climb them.

Worse still are the numbers of people used by criminals as a source of income in begging rings.  Many of the victims are often deliberately maimed to make them more…productive, something touched on by Slumdog Millionaire.  It should be said, this is not only a problem in South Asia

Here’s the rub.  I have never heard of people with disabilities being the subject of hate crimes and accusations of malingering, swinging the lead and so on that emanate from British media and politicians.  Nor have I come across the kind of patronizing, self-congratulation that everyone produces when disabled people are allowed to work.

Life in Pakistan may be more hazardous and tenuous than in Britain (at least, until David Cameron became Prime Minister) and yet the general attitude toward them is healthier in Pakistan than in Britain.

Yum-Yum

Is it me or…

I don’t know how true this is in reality, but I’ve noticed something, a difference between British websites that post recipes and US sites that post recipes.   Perhaps it might be that I’ve only seen the really BIG sites, the one from the BBC and others from the big name TV chefs.

The US sites will tell you to use a can of this, a can of that and to buy the pastry (if you’re using) from the supermarket.  A load of ingredients will be anything but fresh and will have been processed to within an inch of their lives.

The British sites I’ve seen are, frankly, food porn.   They’re full of stuff the great British middle classes have come to take for granted in their food shows.  Balsamic this, Morrocan that and full of ingredients that nobody where I am currently living has even heard of .

Needless to say, the supermarket plays a large part in sourcing these things too.

On the whole, I’m beginning to find the US sites more useful because they’re more practical and less pretentious.   I can mostly get straightforward ingredients, fresh vegetables, fresh meat and fish (in the winter only for the fish).   I’m more likely to get what I need from my local vegetable walah or the nearby small shops than the supermarket – because the supermarket is 15 or so kilometres away and far more expensive.

Stalls like these are all over Pakistan. The veg is only couple of days old. Very handy and addictive if you’re a foodie.

Even if the recipe talks of tinned foods, I can get the fresh versions so it’s better and cheaper all round for me.

Another point is that anything that talks about using a food processer is out because I don’t have one.  Even if I did, the power supply is unreliable and there are frequent power cuts, sometimes scheduled, often not.  And they can last up to ten hours though more often it’s one or two hours.  So I have to do my cooking the old fashioned way.

All these factors became an issue when I was looking for something new to try because my repertoire as it stands was (is) getting a bit staid.

Chicken Pie, the cooking

I found this recipe on a site which I didn’t pay much attention to but I can’t find right now.  It’s not something I developed myself.

It’s dead easy and came out really well.

The pie filling was dead easy to do.  I only had to fry the onions and begin frying other veggies in butter before adding water and a stock cube.

I didn’t realise the difference frying in butter makes.  I normally use extra virgin olive oil, which I’ve come to love.  Butter brings out something very different in the vegetables a really sweet aspect I didn’t expect.

The chicken itself was a bit harder to do.  Because the recipe calls for cooked chicken,  I boiled it for an hour before using it.

Then I had to begin frying it in butter and add flour & milk.  This is something I’ve never tried before ; I found it comes out as more exotic and exciting than it has a right to be, a creamy, thick mixture which gives the dish a sense of luxury.  Though, I think I could have used a bit more milk than I did.  I found the 125 mls in the recipe to be…I won’t say inadequate but I found it wasn’t enough.  Maybe it’s just me.

Normally, when I do pastry I mix the butter and flour with my hands to prepare the breadcrumb-like mixture.  After adding water or milk (depending on what dish I’m doing) I usually mix it with a fork or a spoon because I really dislike that slimy, nasty seeming mixture on my hands.  However, my pastry never comes out as easy to roll later on.  So this time I did it all by hand.

I think I’ve learned something new here because my pastry has never come out so well.  Mixing it by hand, making it into dough (even though it’s not dough) by hand makes all the difference.  I could do it with a thoroughness I’ve never been able to achieve before.  The results were excellent later on.

I found this to be a great recipe; straightforward, practical, warming and tasty, luxurious even.   It’s become another staple in my recipe list.

Here’s the recipe itself.  Apologies to whoever developed it, I never expected to be writing about it so I didn’t save the link.  Sorry!

Chicken pie

When it’s done, the pie should look something like this…

Ingredients
Serves: 8

• 2 sheets shortcrust pastry
• 60g butter
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 sticks celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 chicken stock cubes
• 500ml water
• 3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 225g cooked chicken, cubed
• 3 tablespoons plain flour
• 125ml full fat milk
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano

Method
Prep:20min  ›  Cook:1hr  ›  Ready in:1hr20min

1. Preheat oven to 220 C / Gas 7. Roll out one piece of pastry and place in a 20cm pie dish and set aside.
2. Place 1/2 of the butter in a large frying pan. Add the onion, celery, carrots, salt and pepper. Cook and stir until the vegetables are soft. Stir in the stock cubes and water. Bring mixture to the boil. Stir in the potatoes, and cook until tender but still firm.
3. In a medium saucepan, melt the remaining butter. Stir in the chicken and flour. Add the milk, and heat through. Stir the chicken mixture into the vegetable mixture, and cook until thickened. Add fresh herbs. Pour mixture into the unbaked pastry case. Roll out the top piece of pastry, and place on top of filling. Flute edges, and make 4 slits in the top to let out steam.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 180 C / Gas 4 and continue baking for 20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown.

Caffeine Fixed

Ahhh coffee. One of the world’s favourite drinks, though I don’t know if it’s more popular than tea.
But here in Pakistan, I do admire the way people have with coffee. They can make a cappuccino without a machine. Which is more than I can do. You mix your dry coffee with a couple of teaspoons of milk and beat hell out of it with a teaspoon until it’s peaky like heavy cream. Add hot water and yum-yum it’s delicious.

I’ve tried to do this myself and met with degrees of failure from horrible to marginal.

The king of coffees or not…this is my favourite

This afternoon I put two teaspoons of ‘Douwe Egberts’ (my coffee of choice)into a cup, mixed with two teaspoons of water, a little sugar and a dash of milk and began beating. It looked like melted chocolate but never thick cream. It even frothed for a moment when I poured in the water.

The flavour was no more than ok-ish. The froth didn’t last and the creamy, velvety consistency in my mouth was missing. My wife enjoyed it but I’m not satisfied. Next time, I’ll put in the coffee and sugar, mix that, add a teaspoon of milk and then beat the life into it. Or maybe I can buy an electric whisk to do the job for me.
I’m not a long time caffeine user. I only discovered the joys of the liquid form drug almost nine years ago. After that, there was no stopping me.

A supremely better coffee than I can make

Plain, cappuccino, mocha, latte…I love them all. But not espresso. Espresso is too intense, too bitter, too nasty for my mind to suck in. Over ten years ago I made the mistake of having a double espresso by accident.

It was a branch of Café Nero in Heathrow Airport. I was there for some time waiting for my Tube (the Underground system) connection to central London. I would kill time by trying this legendary hot drink. When it was my turn to be served I asked for the espresso only to be asked how many shots I wanted. Shots? Shots of what? I didn’t expect this so I asked for two.

I quickly learned why this is served in such a small cup. I drank it, took my time, I had to it was impossible to knock straight back. The bitterness, the pungency overpowered me. I spent the rest of the day trying to undo the flavour assault I’d subjected myself to. It was still on my tongue and in my stomach eleven hours later.

When I joined the rest of humanity in appreciating the finer powers of coffee, I made sure I kept off the rocket fuel espresso. Instead I fell for the more luxurious end of the market – mocha, cappuccino, latte, all full fat of course.

Of course it’s full fat! I’m drooling just looking at this…

Starbucks has no presence in Pakistan or in Lahore that I’m aware of. Instead, the most prevalent coffee chain is ‘Gloria Jean’s’, which I’d never heard of before I arrived here. A night out with friends put me in touch with their ‘Very Vanilla Latte’. What a coffee (albeit with enough sugar and fat to stop an elephant). Wow.
So now I am a confirmed coffee lover but not an addict because when I need to be refreshed, to get my thinking cap working, or just revive me it’s tea I turn to. That said I do love coffee because for me, it’s a great treat, something out of the ordinary, especially when it’s done properly.
So I just have to learn to do it, then don’t I?

Water, water…not more bloody water

The monsoon is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  When the monsoon strikes, each storm has a ferocity, an energy and volatility that is exhilarating, visceral.  This is no genteel storm that announces itself and stays at a distance for you to watch in the stadium without getting wet.  These are up front, in your face storms that force themselves on you.

When the lightning comes, it covers the sky in a tree of power, energy and light – from east to west.  Or put another way, it cascades like a waterfall of pure energy from one side of the compass to the other.

For a brief moment, you watch a waterfall of electricity in its purest, rawest, uncontained and dangerous form.  If storm chasing is thunderstorm as snowboarding or base jumping, then watching these storms is thunder and lightning as close in spectator sport.

A downpour shot with a flash, so everything lights up like a diamond. No, it wasn’t deliberate.

British storms can be small scale, almost polite in comparison.  I say this because the thunder storms, the rain storms I’ve seen with my own eyes don’t compare to anything I’ve seen here in Lahore, Pakistan, northern Subcontinent.  What in Britain is a heavy, torrential downpour of the sort that makes us say ‘the heavens opened’ is, in Pakistan, a moderate, middling storm.  The truly torrential downpours are what it must be like to live inside a washing machine during the rinse cycle.

To get an idea of what it’s like, take a middling size bucket of water and fill it to the top.  Get the largest household sieve you can find.  Maybe a colander, anything that has lots of holes and can hold water, even if only for half a second.  But it has to be fairly large.  Then you pour the water from the bucket into the sieve or colander (how you hold the sieve / colander whilst pouring the water is up to you).  What you’re seeing as the water rushes through each hole is an approximation of a northern Pakistani rain storm.  If you can film it with your mobile phone, you can even watch it later and get a better idea of what I’m trying to describe.

The streets flood in minutes.  It’s then that you realize the roads here double as dry river or canal beds. Cars and trucks double as motorboats.  The only form of transport that can negotiate this torrent as if it isn’t there is the ‘humble’ donkey cart.  Donkeys and horses can wade through the water, find their footing in a way that even a 4×4 cannot.  And the cart itself, like a sailing ship, can get soaked without the engine burning out.

Pakistanis love the rain, they run, play and dance when it arrives.

The streets flood during this deluge because the drainage system simply cannot cope; either because it’s lousy or non-existent.  If you know your history, you’ll know that public drainage and sanitation, indeed the planned city, was invented here in Pakistan by the ‘Indus Valley civilisation’ .  You can see the remains of drainage channels and public baths at Harrapa and Mohenjo Daro.

What you’ll see there is channels on either side of the street that carry away waste water.  Unfortunately, whilst the rest of the world has (or maybe has not) improved on this, Pakistan by and large hasn’t.  Not really.  And so the streets flood with rainwater mixed with sewage.

Then there’s all that dust.  If the monsoon was all you ever saw of the Subcontinent, you would think you’ve arrived in a real life Atlantis where the city is doomed to drown.  If you never saw the monsoon and only saw the Subcontinent during the long dry spells, you would think you seeing a desert in action and wonder at the existence of any greenery at all.

The dryness creates dust.  Mountains of dust.  Dust that is so ubiquitous that if you left it alone, you’d quickly lose sight of your floor, the roads and buildings would be buried in months or perhaps a few years.

The rain turns this into a mudbath.  The floodwaters turn a muddy brown and when they melt away, roads resemble dried river beds with the tell tale patterns left by running water.  Each surface open to the skies resembles a carefully disguised concrete and tarmacked beach.

I grew up on the coast near a tidal salt marsh.  When it rained or merely threatened to rain, the scent in the air was pungent with salt and dank, musty growth.  It wasn’t an unpleasant smell but it would clear my nostrils.  In Lahore, during and after the rain or maybe even before the rain, the air itself is thick with the perfume of the soil.

I only noticed this after a former work colleague quoted E M Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’; a female character says the smell of the monsoon is like nothing she’s ever experienced.  Forster was right.  It’s not a sweet smell but it’s not pungent either.  It isn’t rotten with decay or seasoned with salt and undergrowth.  It’s the odour of all that dust and dirt.  ‘Mitti’ is the local Urdu word for soil and clay.  Sometimes people will say to each other ‘Kees mitti ke bunni ho’…’what clay are you made from?’  The dust and soil are also called ‘mitti’.

The roads don’t take long to dry off, especially under that merciless sun.  Sometimes they’re helped along by tankers sucking the water from the road; so the water becomes merely hazardous rather than impassable.  Once it’s vanished into the air the water must go somewhere.

That’s where the humidity kicks in.  The Pakistani writer Tariq Ali once described Punjab after the rains as like living in a sauna.  I didn’t realize how right he was until my second  summer here.

In 2010 the monsoon seemed to dump the Indian Ocean on northern Pakistan.  In its eagerness to obey the laws of gravity and return to the Indian Ocean, the water forced its way through and past everything in its path.  The destruction was breathtaking, even if I only saw the video footage on TV.  Towns and villages looked as though they’d been trashed by a retreating army caught in a rout.

Then came the humidity.

After taking a shower, the atmosphere in anyone’s washroom would be filled with water droplets gently breezing and swirling in the air currents before settling on the wals and windows to resemble perspiration.  After the rain, especially the monsoon, the whole city, indeed the whole province of Punjab, is one open air washroom with all that water floating around in aerosol form, looking for any surface to collect on.  It might be the cold glass of air conditioned rooms or cars.  More likely it’ll be your clothes and skin.

In five minutes you might feel that familiar, clammy sensation you get when you walk into a house that’s not been properly dried out.  After ten minutes you notice the beads of sweat and water on your forehead.  After fifteen minutes your clothes need drying out.  Later, the humidity was overpowering.  If my clothes and my skin had become flecked with black  mould, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I notice it goes in cycles.  My first monsoon was nearly bone dry.  ‘Don’t tell me, THIS is the famous monsoon?!!?’  I wondered what all the fuss was about.  That was in 2009.  2010 isthe closest I’ve been to living like a fish since I arrived here.  The atmosphere was filled with water.  In fact, the rains brought with them the widest spread single natural disaster ever when floods destroyed the homes and villages, crops and livelihoods of 20 million people in one go.

The next couple of years were not as wet.  2013 was another washout.  The humidity had the quality of a solid wall, you could see and almost touch it in a way that you can see and touch a solid object  Even more so than fog.

This year, we’ve had the humidity but not the rain.  Thunderstorms and heavy rain are frequently forecast, but never or rarely materialize.  When the clouds arrive, the rain spits and spots but never deluges.  As though an invasion has failed.

Perhaps next year will be sunnier and the year after will make us all feel that the sea is descending on us, one phase at a time.

The streets are where it’s at

When I was a kid, I remember a couple of hawkers coming around my street selling vegetables, bread & pastries and paraffin, nails and other household stuff. I remember too the ‘rag’n’bone man’ yelling ‘aneeeyol’rag’boooooooone’ at the top of his voice. Often dodgy looking guys who would drive slowly so you could catch their attention and get rid of that old mattress, fridge and other junk you’ve been hoarding for twenty years.

Over the years they fell away as they retired or as supermarkets of one sort or another took their trade. The street fell silent too because of the aging population, fewer and fewer children made noise as they played football, cricket or just running and riding their bikes. Now (some might say) buffered by an over protective environment because of a fear of what can happen, they’ve found other things to do, the internet, TV and computer games;

When I moved to Pakistan, I had a shock. My street is full of life, every single day and up until darkness, there’s always something going on.

At the crack of dawn, it’s the minivans running around picking up children for school. Dozens of them fight their way through the narrow little streets of my colony hoovering up every last child on their list.

As I’m writing this, there’s a chap selling brooms, floor wipers and dusters from a bicycle that he’s pushing. He’s yelling at the top of his voice. If you hear a kazoo, it’s someone selling balloons, small toys and the like from a huge pole he carries on his shoulder.

In a few minutes the rubbish collectors, the kuray wallahs, will come through, collecting everyone’s rubbish by hand, dumping it onto the back of a donkey cart to be hand sorted later. This is done by families. You see men, women and their children carting rubbish bins, bags and all manner of refuse. These get to me because the children are destined to do this for the rest of their lives, they have no future and they don’t know it yet. They have no education and no chance.

Every so often you hear someone yelling “TV remote….” He’s selling TV remotes and small electrical goods. He might be riding a bicycle armed with a car battery and a small loudspeaker over which his recorded voice sounds like a warning of an alien invasion crossed with a DJ’s scratchmix.

Sometimes someone will come round to buy your old newspapers for recycling, or to sharpen your knives with his bicycle powered sharpener.

Sharp as a blade or your money back…or not. The mobile knife grinder

Then there are the fruit and vegetable wallahs, who come around each day yelling as far as I can tell “aloo, piyaaaaaaaazzzzzzz” or “kele, saib….” In distinctive ways. Just like the rag’n’bone man of my childhood. You can rarely get fruit and vegetables from the same seller, be it from a donkey cart or a roadside stall. They’re always separate. I have no idea why.

Schools regurgitate their charges after about 1:30PM, so the children some have relief from the brutal heat of the day. That said, they probably suffer enough in their classrooms, where cooking a chicken is easy enough…just put it in front of a window and the direct sunlight will brown and cook it perfectly.

That’s because schools often save on fuel by not using their generators during the frequent powercuts.

At around this time, the roads are choked with the minivans, cars and motorbikes bringing children home. After that, my street livens up with the shouts, cries and laughter of kids playing cricket, badminton, riding around on tricycles and bicycles or just chasing each other with their lollipops and icecreams…which they’ve got from a chap that pushes a cart selling traditional ice cream and lollipops.

Later they’re out in force playing street cricket, with bat in hand chasing the ball wherever it flies, into a front porch, down the street or behind them, directly into someone’s hands. You see all ages – toddlers, 9 year olds, teens and adults playing this. Pakistan is truly obsessed with the game.

In the early evening, you hear the various pedal pushers that sell branded ice cream from coolboxes mounted on tricycles or you’ll hear the chimes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played by popcorn wallahs, who sell the stuff I’d only ever seen in cinemas.

Live fire range…thgat is a fire in the box and that cart is wooden…selling roasted nuts in the street, that is a

In Winter you can get nuts, chickpeas, roasted sweetcorn or sweet potato (always sold by different wallahs) roasted and cooked by a fire compartment mounted in the wooden handcart.

Others then sell what are called ‘jalabees’, eyewateringly sweet sugar sticks, but I haven’t seen them on my street.

Then there are the really unusual things you see only rarely.

All aboard…a definite size difference here

The two that stick in my mind would be the camel ride, for children. They get lifted onto the back of a camel and ride up and down the street at a leisurely pace. Trying to get a camel moving any faster is far easier said than done, they don’t take telling from anyone.

What are you lookin’ at, matey? I wouldn’t argue with this one either

And the snake charmer.

One afternoon, we heared some loud, strange flute. I asked my wife “what’s that?” When she replied, ‘I think it’s a snake charmer’ I lost control of my senses; becoming a little boy filled with wonder. I absolutely HAD to see this. I grabbed my phone to get a video of the guy and his snake.

I was so struck by this that I almost forgot to film it. I had never seen anything like it outside of a reptile tank in Britain.

On the other hand, some years ago, after driving through some streets to see the woman who would later do some cleaning for us, I looked in my rear view mirror as I slowed my car down. Darting across the road I spotted a mongoose, brown, looking like a large polecat or ferret. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen one.

(right NOW…the subsi wallah, vegetable man, is yelling “alooooo, piyaaaaaazzzz…”)

I live on an ordinary, suburban Pakistani street, not amazingly posh; a bit rough around the edges, perhaps. There are other places where the money is more obviously on display, but they are quieter, less characterful with less life. It feels human and alive. I prefer this and I wouldn’t be without it.

So cool, it’s hot

So that’s decided then. Britain is going to have hotter, dryer summers as climate change advances. At first you could be forgiven for finding the sun bed and a cool drink to say ‘I’m gonna enjoy this while I can’. And that’s ok, that’s perfectly natural when you’ve lived in some parts of Britain that haven’t seen the sun in generations.

As anyone from a hot country will tell you, you can only do that for so long before you end up looking like an over cooked beefburger. You need something for those moments when you’re not lying on the sunbed and the sun becomes an enemy to be feared and fought against.

Perhaps I can be of help. Let me present to you, the Shalwar Kameez,

I present, the Shalwar Kameez

all the way from Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan. The country may have struggled with it’s lot over the years, but Pakistanis are past masters at handling heat.

Handling heat, the Pakistani way…Labourers cooling off at a leaky hydrant

I’ve lived in Pakistan for five years. Five whole years. Let’s look at what that means. It means I’ve endured five summers here. Just think about that, five summers of heat in the early to mid forties Celsius. In Britain, we think if we get temperatures of 30° we’re having a heat wave. In Pakistan, that really is pretty cool.

Five years of power cuts – or loadshedding as energy rationing is called here – every few hours; this ranging from 20 hours a day just after the 2013 elections to just a few hours off during the month of December.

How does anyone cope? It’s in the clothes. In Punjab, the traditional dress is the sarong, which you do see from time to time in Lahore. Seeing big burly men wearing skirts when they’re standing outside their houses can take some getting used to. It’s a reminder that the world is anything but boring.

More famously, the other ‘traditional’ dress is the shalwar kameez. I put the word ‘traditional’ in quotes because the shalwar kameez isn’t traditional to this part of Pakistan; it’s a recent import. Though this misses the point.

The Shalwar Kameez is a remarkable item of dress. Depending on what cloth it’s made from, it can be tough, light, very smart, workmanlike, warm, cool; all of these and it gives more freedom to your body than anything else you can buy…except the famous British birthday suit.

First, the practicals. A shalwar kameez is a smock with a pair of baggy trousers. Just imagine Scrooge in the middle of the night, but a more colourful night shirt and something baggy to match – and that’s what you’ve got.

I wear a shalwar kameez all the time. Not the same one, you’ll be relieved to hear. I do have a few that I like to wash from time to time.

At its freest, it can feel like you’re not wearing anything. There’s no tightness in strategic places, there’s no restriction on how to move your limbs, apart from your muscles, joints and age.

If you’ve been sweating buckets, a breeze, ten minutes under the ceiling fan or (better still) the air conditioner can revive you. Your shalwar kameez actively helps this because it will cling to you to help the air get to the wet bits; it billows in the breeze to help direct the air to your, err, hotness.

If you’re working, it doesn’t get in your way. If you’re relaxing, you barely notice it.

The shalwar kameez scores in other ways too. You can have the boring “I don’t really like colours” look with some nice and drab browns, greys and olive greens. No one would ever notice you’re there.

If you like a bit of colour, that’s ok too, cos you can get some amazing colours and patterns to give even Picasso a headache. Pakistani designers really are that inventive.

Ignore the beard…the outfit is great for summer, smart, casual and formal

When you go to any formal occasion and the guests are wearing their shalwar kameezes, you know you’re under dressed if you’re wearing a collar and tie. On the other hand, if people are just chilling out (remember that forty odd degree heat, ‘chilling out’ is not just an Americanism) you know you’re over-dressed if you’re there in a T-shirt and jeans.

This one’s for the ladies…The designs for female shalwar kameez can be ‘wow!’ inducing

The baggy trousers and blousy shirt isn’t just a summer thing. You can get thicker cloth, heavy cotton and pure wool for example, to keep you warmer in winter. It does help to put something underneath it because that way you’re less likely to notice the chill in the weeks long Lahore winter.

That’s the beauty of the shalwar kameez, you can get away with it. You can wear as many layers as you need without looking and feeling like a spaceman in orbit. There are the textiles and colours to give you anything you could want, you just have to know where to look.

Why do I wear them? For all these reasons and because I find it an essential part of dressing for the climate. There really is nothing wrong with wearing a T-shirt and jeans, if you don’t mind sweating like a pig and having to wring your clothes out every few hours.

My experience is that as great as a T-shirt and jeans is, it’s great for a nice warm day in Europe not in the searing heat of high summer. In Pakistan, you can get jeans made from cloth so thin, you can almost see through it. But it’s still too much; too heavy, too restrictive, too tight – even after you’ve sweated off those extra kilos.

The final piece of evidence is this, when you’re out and about in your shalwar kameez, you can daydream about being in some far, distant country where they serve tea so milky it could’ve come out of the cow five minutes ago; where the tobacco is sold in ropes, not boring old cigarette packets and the idea of a good night out is cattle raiding in the next valley.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I give you the Shalwar Kameez. An outfit for brutal summer heat, real freedom for your limbs and an active imagination. What else could you want?

Rock’n’Roll Everyone!!

I’m about to spill a deep family secret. But only if you promise not to tell anyone. Promise? Sure? Here goes…

My wife and I went for a qinqi ride this morning. It’s pronounced chingchee, not kinky so get that thought out of your minds!!

Thousands of these run around Lahore…they have great air conditioning Photo: Stephen Phillips

Why keep a qinqi (I know it looks strange, but it’s Chinese and it really is pronounced chingchee, I promise!) ride secret? It’s class consciousness, if you ride a qinqi you only do it because you can’t afford anything better, like an auto rickshaw (called took-took elsewhere in the world), motorbike or a car. This being Pakistan, status is VERY important and ‘what will the neighbours think?’ is something that keeps people awake at night.

The ride; yes, the ride. First off, you’re thinking, “what is a qinqi?”. To cut a long story short, it’s a motorbike rickshaw. A motorbike with a lightly built box on wheels at the back instead of a rear wheel. It can carry…livestock, people, large milk churns, chairs, pipes…you name it, it can go by qinqi. Maybe not a herd of elephants. Possibly one or two but not a herd.

Yes, the ride.

The Man and his Qinqi…they help people make a living and others to get around. In Lahore’s breath stifling traffic, the riders have lungs of steel Photo: Stephen Phillips

We sat in the back, which faces the road. It’s only then you realize how small these things are. Sometimes you see three or four people jammed in the back and another three or four jammed in the front. My wife could sit comfortably with about an inch of head room, but I had to be jammed in because the qinqi wallah was unwilling to peal off the roof. I had to tilt my head to one side for the whole journey, it had to be jammed back into place with a hammer.

You feel really exposed because everyone but everyone looks at you. When I’m driving a car, I do it myself, to see who’s there and who’s using it so I can’t complain. So my wife said, ‘be formal, because everyone looks!’.

We eventually got going. Wow! Being open to the road and riding in something that shakes you up even on a nice road can be really fun. The air conditioning is the best yet, and you get a totally immersive experience. Or put another way, you’re utterly open to the elements. If it’s windy and raining, you get soaked like a ship in a heavy swell.

Even on a nice road, my brain felt rattled. Someone once described riding on a qinqi as like being in a liquidizer. Now I know why. The regular auto rickshaws have a modicum of suspension. Not much, but it is there. Even so, going over bumps, unmade roads and dirt tracks stops being fun when your head falls off and rolls around on the floor. The qinqi is happily suspension free so each rise and fall in the fabric of the road, each little piece of tarmac, the vibrations of the engine and the motion of the vehicle goes right through you. It’s bearable on the nicer road we rode over, but on a bumpy, cratered, pounded road it must be hell. Sit on a washing machine in the spin cycle and you’ll get an idea of what I mean.

And have I mentioned the air conditioning? My, it is truly, powerfully impressive. When the box is in motion, you get a thirty mile per hour wind through your hair regardless of the weather conditions. OK, it only works when you’re in motion and sitting in the frequently pointless, interminable traffic jams is not for the faint hearted. But compare that to a car, where the aircon pumps out warm air after 25 minutes of motionless idling.

They’re not boring…every inch of this is decorated in some way Photo: Stephen Phillips

When you ride in a qinqi, you are often riding in a mini artwork. There’s a tradition here of painting trucks and old busses in bright, occasionally gaudy colours with birds, palms, eyes, fish, mountains, falcons and lions & tigers painted on every available surface.

You don’t really see it on auto rickshaws but you do on qinqis…and mine was no exception. See the photos with this post. It was black and painted with spots of red, yellow, blue in wonderfully abstract patterns all over the vehicle.

Colourful…Qinqis are sometimes covered in meticulous paintings Photo: Stephen Phillips

You could put this in a gallery in the West and it would get rave reviews in the media for being so, well ‘ethnic, real, authentic and colourful’.

When we returned to our car, we both said aloud “aaaahhhhhh, proper suspension!” but we didn’t mention the aircon.

Did I tell you about the aircon? Oh and remember, don’t tell anyone that I told you.

A Hole Where the Heart Should Be

An elderly family member, the Patient, has a heart problem; in fact he’s getting over a bypass. An infection has proven pretty stubborn and needed minor surgery to deal with it. Naturally my wife and I took him to Lahore’s premier heart hospital, the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC for short).

It’s a medium sized, somewhat rambling venue that requires a good map and a GPS system to find your way around. It could have been built fifty years ago, given the architectural style. Even if it was built in the eighties, the scruffy, dim, oppressive nature of the place doesn’t exude modernity.

It’s remarkably impersonal, like a truck driving thru the rain, where people are thrown off the wheels and body of the hospital like rain water. There’s nothing welcoming or even human about it.

I don’t expect hotels and comfortable lounges, just a bit of humanity.

For Americans, Australians, Germans, pretty much anyone visiting the UK one of the big complaints is that the British don’t do customer service. With us, you get what you’re given or go without.

If I thought Britain was bad at public service, then Pakistan is positively medieval. Most people assume the organization they work for exists in a vacuum and the service users are a nuisance that get in the way of the real work; drawing the salary, looking busy and generating tons of pointless paperwork.

You see this in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. Caring, it isn’t. If you’re there to see a patient or have an appointment with a medic, forget an organized, coherent response. The quality of information depends on who you ask. If you have an appointment you’ll be played like a human pinball sent from this desk to that office to another ward up and down stairs and don’t think about using the lift.

The security guards often talk to people as if they are in a Prisoner of War camp. Entering the surgery ward, prior to the Patient’s appointment, the guard on the door held us back saying ‘only one of you can go through, he (the Patient) can go but you can’t’. As if a heart patient can deal with everything himself.

Later, a second guard sees us in a doctor’s waiting room and pulls my wife and I out of the room to talk to someone senior. ‘You can’t wait here, (he says to the Patient)’. Pointing to me and my wife ‘you have to wait elsewhere’. In Britain we’d call him a little Hitler.

A surgeon carries a little girl to an operating theatre with an attendant in tow. They’re followed by the child’s mother, who is stopped from going anywhere near theatre. She’s clearly worried, heart broken in fact. But she has to wait alone in a corridor.

I first saw the Chief Surgeon in action two days ago. He loudly berated the Patient in angry terms for daring to appear without an appointment and in front of other people; an insult in this culture. He seems to have anger issues, sometimes resembling a medical Incredible Hulk, other times being fairly calm and restrained.

Another thing about organizational culture in Pakistan is that everyone wants to be a boss. Car park attendants will direct you to park in this spot, not that one for no obvious reason. When you switch off the engine they’ll tell you to move forward…when you’ve moved four millimeters they’ll tell you to stop. The key issue here is control. An awful lot of people have no control over their everyday lives so they exercise it in the tiniest of ways where they can.

The Chief Surgeon gave the Patient an appointment for midday telling us to be on time. After waiting in three separate waiting areas for 90 minutes, the Patient had his procedure. It took only ten minutes.

I have in the past sat in a waiting area for four hours for an orthopeadic check up. Whilst it wasn’t fun, at least I knew I was in the right place at the right time and would see the right man. At the Punjab Institute of Cardiology there is no such guarantee. We had no information to say where we had to wait, where we should go or where the procedure would take place.

Perhaps one day in the PIC, an old man will be found who had waited 40 years to be seen, but couldn’t get anyone to tell him where he should go or who he should see. He would be forgotten about and turn up to everyone’s surprise having been living off dead rats and begging from visitors.

Not everyone can be used to paint this picture. There are people who will help you, at the right price. There are even some who will help you for the sake of being good at their jobs or because they really do care, but not many.

This experience is not unique and is not limited to hospitals, Organisations here are generally unresponsive and behave like a blinded rhino waiting in the queue for Disney Land. It illustrates a rather sad fact about Pakistan and it’s attitude toward people. It’s a frequently feudal minded abuse culture where human beings are at the bottom of everyone’s priority list.

Making money from poverty

I live in Pakistan. Each day I see a lot of poverty, much of it pretty dire. When I first saw it I felt guilty that in my own society we had so much, where this one has so little.

My very first visit here was way back in 2004. On my second or third day I found myself in Karachi for a job interview. At the railway station, the man who would become my brother in law found us a taxi. Inevitably, we had to stop at a traffic lights in the middle of the city.

At this point, we were swamped with beggars, one of whom was bumping the passenger side front window of the car. His arms were unnaturally short and the nail on his right thumb seemed amazingly over sized. Then I realized it wasn’t his thumbnail; it was the bone showing through his skin. Both his arms had been amputated.

This was the first time I had seen such a thing and it left me in tears.

Now, after living here for five or so years, I am hardened to it. There’s something else that I didn’t realize ten years ago that I know now. Begging here is a racket.

It’s easy to think such a statement is hard hearted or callous and it feels callous when you ignore a polio victim waving his shriveled left leg at you. However, I was told this by my family and by other Lahoris. Pakistanis are amongst the most generous people on the planet; so I don’t believe they would say such a thing unless it had a kernel of truth.

I’ve seen groups of beggars gathered on the grass verge beside a traffic lights counting their money with their handler. You know something is going on when you see what looks like a rag tag group of desperately poor people handing over wads of cash to such a well dressed man.

For that matter, when you see 2 fashionably dressed men dropping off an unkempt, filthy old man beside a traffic lights from a nice Honda Civic; you know they’re not doing this from the goodness of their hearts. It isn’t that kind of country.

A regular at a crossroads (or chowk in Urdu) near where I live is an old woman who looks like she must be in her seventies. She walks with stoop. Her age battered face might have been stiffened on one side by a stroke at some point. She’s a regular fixture on the chowk.
One afternoon my wife and I were passing our bank. We saw this old lady marching along the service lane and climbing the steps into the bank. Into the bank!? What would a beggar want a bank for?

Perhaps it had something to do with the mound of notes and coins I’d seen her changing with a security guard at a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station some months earlier.

And then there are the children, sometimes pushed into it by family members. You see groups of them roaming the streets with their hands out or asking for money to buy food.

Asking for money to buy food?…”why not buy them something?”, I hear you ask. Here’s the catch. They don’t want food. I’ve seen with my own eyes how their expressions change and they lose interest when you give them food; and I’m not the only one.

My wife, work colleagues and pretty much anyone I know will tell you of a beggar rejecting food because they want the money; or where they’ve taken the food back to the shop to return it for a refund.

This isn’t to say all beggars are fleecing the public. Quite plainly, many are. On the other hand we’ve fed others because they seem to be at the end of their tether. Sometimes it’s the story they tell you, more often it’s the look in their eye or the fact they are individuals who turn to you in the street. Professionals are brazen about it, amateurs are not.

The pros really are good at it. They know who to approach and who to ignore, going after well dressed people or foreigners, like me. They only tap the windows of big cars and mostly ignore smaller cars although that depends on the traffic in front of them. They’re very good at reading faces and know if you’re going to shell out or not. Some though are tenacious, tapping your window for an age trying to get your attention.

A few techniques to watch out for.

There’s the ‘I’m selling this, but I need roti (a flat, unleavened bread eaten with salaan, a gravy dish with chicken, vegetables or lentils, the main meal of most people)’. When one or two people tell you this, it might be genuine. When dozens and dozens say exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, it sounds more like a sales pitch.

There are the signs carried by others, telling of some family disaster. Usually these are carried by people who cannot read and write.

If you’ve seen “Slumdog Millionaire” you’ll be familiar with the disability scam; where children are deliberately maimed to make them more valuable for begging. People are more likely to pay up for a kid without legs than they are for a fit, healthy 12 year old. Not to mention all the polio victims.

And I haven’t mentioned the door-to-door street beggars that ring your bell and bang your front gate after the heat of the day has passed. Or the eunuchs.

Giving money to people apparently in distress is very easy and it can sooth the conscience for a time, but it’s not always for the best. Some could well be loners, many are run by criminal gangs and so only see a tiny proportion of the money given to them. It’s impossible to tell one from the other.

My default is that I never give to beggars when I am alone. Instead I rely on the antennae of my wife, who’s usually very sharp at telling the wheat from the chaff. She is far more skilled than I am, even though I’ve been here for five years.