From: memon@acsu.buffalo.edu (Naveed Siraj Memon)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Strawberry Fields Forever (1,2,3 + latest addition)
Date: 29 Aug 92 12:52:46 GMT
Organization: UB



Comments: This "series" was not planned at all. There was no part 1, part 2, etc
          I did not want to mislead anyone by naming it or posting it in the
	  first place.  But some of you have liked it so far and that is a
	  good sign. It is nice that the beginning of the end of my association 
          on scp will be a pleasant one.
          I am reposting the first article of the series with the remaining
          parts and some new additions, so now it is a combination
          of old hallucinations and new recollections. Part 1 was basically
          a response to Ms Alam. Infact that reponse got me thinking about a 
	  lot of things like the Bhutta-stand and smoking-behind-pardahz :) 
          The reason I am posting it in this format, is because once I leave,
	  someone can put this into the archives, if they think this deserve
          to be there. I received a lot of mail regarding this. I was not 
 	  expecting any. So thanks for your kind words. No offense is
	  meant to any race that calls Karachi their home. If Karachi has a
          multiracial
	  social fabric, and if I refer to one group, does not mean I am making
	  fun of them. This especially goes for aakhan at Wichita State.
          The Pathans I mentioned happened to be there, however I still dont see
          why Mr Khan 
	  thinks that it was derogatory.
          I feel sort of pretentious to carry this on like this, oh well, this
	  being my last month, I guess I deserve some bandwidth.

          Dedicated to sis Afshan, the poetess, who's mining for truth in the 
          serene rocky mountains the last we heard :)

	  		Strawberry Fields Forever

(part 1, that never was)
>Afshan. why'd ya mention ganDayriaaN man:)i used to know that stuff:)

You used to know that stuff, I used to dig into that stuff, literally. This
is way back when I was a kid, jab hum khobsurat thay :) I bought
daily groceries for the house starting from a time when I was eight. My
bonus of running errands(sp) was a bag full of gandayaries. You could tell
that a particular bag would have the juiciest gandayries if the thaylay-wala
had sliced the pieces side-ways instead of the traditional cylinder shape
that's ever-so-harsh on the gums. You rush home and wash the gandyaries 
with cold water, and then sit in the verandah and have a "party in the patio"
:), and you curse the flies, and you watch a local bout of patang-bazi in the
clear blue sky. This is way back when looking into the sky gave you a high,
and spinning around like crazy would not make you sick, you'll just laugh
and fall on the grass, and you'll carry on these little games you played with
the earth-worms and you would chase after a butterfly and throw it into spider-
web and you would get hold of the spider and feed it to the girgit(karachiite
lizard with an attitude) and put a string at the end of a big stick and
catch the girgit and force it to eat naswaar and watch it dance. Then to 
keep your taste buds busy you put a metal hook to the big stick and and head to
the sehan to that old mango tree but the stick is so big that it you get tired
after 3 seconds of holding it upright. Then you say "what the .." and then
you climb up the tree but the yellow ones are too far from your reach
and you dont want the girgit to lose the nasha and so you hold on to the
closest cayry(baby mango :)) and instead of coming down the tree the same
way you had gone up, you improvise and jump the 8 feet and OUCH you yell
a big behan at the top of your voice and you run into the house and you give 
the cayry your favourite side-way cut and you pour brown sugar on the cayry,
and then you re-unite with the girgit who is really getting down now. I go
close to her and she starts singing,'
"jhoom jhoom kay nachoN aaj gaayooN aaj gayooN khoosi kay geet ho".  Damn,
it is not a she, the girgit is a he, I should have known the moment it 
started singing. It is a Mukesh song not Lata. Oh what the heck, these days
you really cannot tell between a male-girgit and a female-girgit. Dont anyone
even remind me of Imrana Zaheer?  


(part2. repost)
On our way to Hill Park, a favourite spot for our weekly girgit-hunt,
was the Khooni Jheel. Legend had it that that one fine muggy evening
a young boy was fishing by the lake when a giant turtle bit on his foot 
dragged him into the lake, thus giving it the name, khooni jheel.
The winds of change may have swept Tariq Road. The place where the giant
monster feasted on the poor kid's leg, there may well be a video-arcade,
but the only turtles around are what we now know as the role models for our
geekazoid younger generation, the ninja turtles :)

70s were a great time to be a kid growing up at Tariq Road. Kids were kids. 
The VCR had yet to plague the innocence but you could hear Saturday Night 
Fever from some dubai-return's open window :)

Kids of the neighbourhood improvised any fun that was
affordable. So the girgits of the neighbourhood succumbed to our sadistic evil
rituals. Pretty soon the grand council of kids gathered from far off 
un-heard-of territories of Nursery and Kashmir Road declared the girgit an
endangered specie and the hunt restricted to the monsoon season. The next target
our innocent and vicious little minds could think of was the bakreeyaNz(goats)
in a local rayvaR(herd) that the owner used to leave for "grazing" the gandee
gali. Yes there was a time when alternate streets in the Tariq Road area
were meant for garbage disposal. Everybody's backyard was basically a heap
of sanitary napkins and 'baloons' ;), you cannot believe what a 12 year old 
can learn in such an environment. Many a evening was spent milking these goats
and waking up the khan-baba who owned the herd. He would throw stones at us and
we would show him our respects by crossing our arms and giving him the intimate
signal :). Of course after that, our next stretegic move was that of 
slipping out of our chapalz(assuming that we were wearing any when we left home)
and run like hell.


Another famous pathan in the neighbourhood owned a bhutta-stand(corncob).
He had the most sizzling concoction in one of his chutnee-containers. Being
broke as a 10 year old, the most change I ever had was a chavanee(25 p) 
A good sized bhutta was more than bara-annaz. Though my chavanee brought
on a frown on the gajak-vendor's face, this khan-baba with a red-mehndi-
colored-ZZtop-beard was kind me. He would find a small deformed bhutta 
put it on the flame, dip in into the chutnee-container and hand it to me. First
bite into it and .....ariba ariba ariba. I was speedy gonzalez. It was hot!
damn hot! smoke coming out of my ears hot. I guess you get the picture.  
By the time I am done with my bhutta, I am exhausted. Thirsty as hell! I dig
into my pockets, and find some loose change. Head to yet-yunder pathan who
owns a gola-ganDa stand. He looks at the 13 paisas and looks at me, and 
ignores me. I pull his shalwar. He knows I mean business. He says something
about my sister, gets hold of an ice cube, puts a piece of cloth that has
not been washed in a long time, over the ice that sits on a blade and does 
his thing. The glasscup under the blade gets filled with crushed ice and I tell
him that I don't have a sister. He smiles that "you'r alright kid" smile
and gives me a bonus topping of condensed milk, and crushed pistachio. 


Lousy lazy hot Karachi afternoons forced us to search for shade.
One peepal-ka-payR(tree) provided just that. It was a favourite spot for
the mohallay-kay-aavaara-laRkay and I. Actually we had climbed upto to top of 
our favourite tree so many times that our body weight had created a
perfect hideaway all the way up in the tree. Getting hold of cigerattes was
not too difficult but did not want the butts to give us away. The guys smoked
dried stems of a weed that grew on the peepal. I did not like it too much,
it was too strong. My brothers had already been caught smoking and though I 
had enjoyed the sight of mother's chapal and brothers' heads, I did not think
that I would survive her chappal. The best part about the tree was 
togetherness, sharing our personal secrets with fellow 10 year olds. Eversince 
that age I learned that dirty jokes always helped in breaking the
ice. I also promised myself never to pretend like a grown up and tell one of
these jokes to break the silence over the dinner table. It is not a pretty 
sight to see your parents choke on their food. 

(part 3. repost)
After the brothers were caught smoking, they found themselves on a train to 
Petaro on June 29th 1976. I can see cleary now, the rain had stopped, Karachi
had had it's record rainfall of 8 inches in one day. After they left the 
house felt empty. All the fun was gone, the pillow fights, the hide and
seek, the patang baazi boarded that train on that soggy afternoon. Maybe
it was a part of childhood that came to an ubrupt end, cause the next time
the brothers visited us over the winter break, they were not kids anymore. To me
they were'nt grown ups either. But they had been through a rigorous initiation
of the real hostel life and the seniors and the bhains(seniors are refered to 
bhai-jan but what one hears is bhain). It was hard to relate to their fauji 
style hair cut and their tales of cutting classes and their secret trips to 
Hyderabad to watch the movies. In a way I felt jealous of their new life. It 
seemed fun, almost mystical. 

The parents sensed that I was alone, so they did what any parents would do, 
they bought me a dog. A labrador(sp). A real cute animal but it was a bit 
curious about everything. It had to be returned to the pets clinic after
it bit a lady in a shuttle-cock burqa. The thing was just too confusing.
I remember opening up the encyclopeadia(sp) for the first time to look up
the section on dogs and found that labradors were hunting dogs, this mutt
was more into chick hunting I suppose. It was hard to return it to the
pet shop. I was fond of watching the veranda-light reflecting in its thick 
shinny black hairy coat.

The brothers and dogs came and went every summer. There was nothing stable
to hold on to.  The house was full of other people that seemed to be invisible.
Dad's side of the family. Kids are always turned off by these folks. 

Next 2 Brittanica was Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape. My first book. And what an 
initiation into the wonderful word of adolescence(sp). 12 and learning about
monkeys in heat. This book is why I had a bigger laugh when Wayne shwinged at 
Babia-Majora, not so much so at Babe-raham Lincoln though. Soon the Study had 
been thoroughly sniffed from top to bottom and all the tota-pages in all the
books including Grays(sp) Anatomy, marked for future reference. Too many 
detailed accounts by Erol Flynn(sp), so little time. I had a renewed respect
for Dad. The guy had taste. It grew everytime a new treasure was uncovered. 
Over the next couple of years, I lost so much weight that had to be taken to
a renowned child specialist. Why the hell did she have to treat me a like a 
child and ask me to cough. I did'nt have throat allergy, it was'nt flu season
either. Her hands were so cold. I felt so ashamed. I was 12 goddamnit. I was 
a man. I deserved more respect than being used like just another piece of meat!
Did'nt she read Desmond Morris. Later that evening, I over-heard mom mention 
the DoctoraRNi was still un-married. That explained at a lot of things. 
  
(latest recollection > part 4)

Friends my age were going throught the same turbulations of newly
discovered feelings for the opposite sex. Tariq Road was still a popular hang 
out but even closer to the neighbourhood,the roonaQ persisted.People had still 
not moved to Defence and other affluent neighbourhoods, people were holding on 
to their dubai-earnings. There was something about Tariq Road in those days. I 
cannot put my finger on it now, maybe it was all middle class and everyone
dressed the same. Or maybe it was the best of times and you did not think about
it much.
   
I remember one Eid, every kid in the neighbourhood rented a bicycle for 2 hours.
My chachaz were cheap. The total Eidee never amounted to a double digit figure. 
This khhachRa rental bike was the only thing I could afford.The 20 mile bicycle,
ride, the obligatory bootal(soda) was pretty much all the fun that our Eidee
could buy. We felt liberated with these bikes though.Hill Park was the favourite
hang out because earlier that summer when it rained, all the guys noticed that  
in a single car parked in the parking lot, overlooking the Karachi skyline, a 
couple was having the time of their lives in the back seat. One friend's 
precision guided ghulayl(sling) shot hit the guy in the behind after breaking 
the car-glass window. He never saw us because it was raining. It was'nt going to
be a pretty sight if he had decided to run after us, especially with what he 
was wearing. So this Eid we joked and hoped to run into him and his VW Foxy.

My most favourite friend in the neighbourhood was a christian. His family hailed
from Lala Mosa in the Punjab. My friend was much younger then me, and like 
myself he was the youngest of three sons. We shared our disgust for out baRay
bhaijans slapping us around if they were having a bad day. 
This family was amazing. My freind who could not have been more than 8, too care
of the daily chores, the cleaning, and cooking lunch.The parent were working in 
the Gulf. The house was run by my friend and his two elder brothers, who were 
my age. Though we were close, the neighbourhood bullies will always
pick on each other and if my friend got involved, viola, we had a inter-
religious warfare. It was funny because we made up by the sun-down before the
nightly hide-n-seek and lets-piss-of-khwaja-sahib-by-ringing-his-bell-and-
running-way-when-he-comes games started. Actually dad was the first victim of
this game. This is way before I had befriended the galli-kay-chichoraz. The 
next door kid,[whom we called PakoRa because of a massive head wound that
never seemed to heal] tied a string to our kundi (lock) and holding the other
end of it in his hand found a hide-out across the street. Dad never misses the
9 o clock sadrnama. Every couple of minutes, there is a knock at the iron front
door. He must've checked the door about 10 times and was puzzled at this
phenomenon. About 10 pm his paymana of sabr had labraized and he said out aloud
"mard kee aik din kee zindagee memon
kee so din kee zindagee say behtar hay". Out he goes of the house with a 
hockeystick and as soon as there was a knock, he lunged out of the door with a
big oooo mayN tay taDi ...action. Ofcourse there was no one to be found. But
he did see the string and followed it straight to PakoRay Mian. Dad never
raised his hand on anyone so he felt went back into the house with a khisiana
smile. 
 
I felt that PakoRa was my type of a guy. An expert avara-gard.
PakoRa was my next door neighbour and soon we became patang-bazi(kite) partners.
We looted patangs and made some mean manjha(specially made thread for kites,
saadi with a sharper touch). Actually it was easy to make manjha. We stepped
into our backyards(gandi gali) and collected all the light bulbs and medicine
sheesheez (bottles) that we could lay our hand on. They were crushed to a 
powdered form. Then head to the kitchen to prepare lai (gum) with rice and
some other gooey ingredients and into the steaming pot of lai went the powdered
glass. PakoRa was famous for his patang baazi skills, especially he
was an expert at paich laRa-ing (mid-air kite-fights). The reason was quite
simple. PakoRa's mother, a successful businesswoman, managed
her own fleet of fishing boats, and the thread that PakoRa used in his paiches
(fights) was made of synthetic plastic that came from fishing nets. 
This thread had grooves over it because they were meant to be woven 
manually by fishermen. PakoRa made great use of this thread. Instead of shouting
'voo kaata', he would go 'vooo lapaiTa' with a 'come to papa' smile on his face
every evening. The grooves made it very easy for him to get all the kites that
he wanted. Basically it was like fishing kites out of the sky. 

Strange days were in store for us. By 77, gardish e zamana looked
dad in the eye and shoved him into the unemployment line. The ameer ul momineen
spit in his face when he refused to beg forgiveness
for being a peepla. Some other newspaper editors found themselves on the street,
while the tele was showing zulm kee dastanaiN and qurtas e abeeyaz(the white
papers), others were getting their last paychecks. Somehow the reaction of the
people around me, was mixed. One person in the admission office at Habib School
in Karachi commented "aaj to bahut dinooN kay baad, daT kay khana khaiN gay
." Earlier that morning it had been announced that Bhutto had been hanged. 
School were cut short, and it was a rare scene to see both dad and mom pick 
me up after school. I asked dad, why the guy was so happy. I'll never forget 
the look in his face. He had suddenly aged to a broken old man. 
Strange, though it may seem, but as a child you are indifferent to such
events, it is as if, you have the knowledge that things will turn out to be
ok in the end, despite being introduced to new menacing terms like Martial
Law, and Reham Kee Appeal. Sayr Been added a chilling touch to the evenings.
Azhar Lodhi was no help either. The way he pronounced the CMLA's name, I was
convinced that he was refering to God. Little did I know that for a long time,
the difference between the two would be hard to tell.






Naveed

PS:  :)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan