Journey Gear Up: Pakistan

Epictober 2011: Experiencing Pakistan - Post 1 of 8

Today I toasted my mug of chocolate milk to discovery. I appreciated the fact that I have been given a foothold to climb one step closer to a dream. At this point, it would be a shot amiss to discuss the dream but it would make sense to talk about a certain goal. It has been hard to understand and truly learn about Pakistan from my natural vantage point, i.e., a nice, comfortable, apartment in a safe and cosy district of the cosmopolitan city of Karachi; and surrounded by my Playstation 3, laptop and smartphone. One can only learn so much through books, television and newspaper stories. We have to see only as far as Karachi to realize how many misconceptions people hold about the level of safety in the city. Yes, it did get quite messy recently but generally, life continues like it would in any other over-populated, sprawling, third world city.

Moving on to the main point here, the goal is to shun a few more stereotypes and arrive at more concrete conclusions about how life really is in Pakistan. This month of October for me will be a time when I shall be traveling to many cities and smaller towns in Pakistan, and also probably be the first time when I won't be living as a tourist in my own country. This opportunity promises to be one where I can sharpen the outlines and add more color to my descriptions of this lively painting. In a country which loves gossip, tall tales and enjoys bliss in its ignorance, it is challenging to write or talk about it in meaningfully accurate ways.

A first hand tour promises to be an experience where one can exercise some good balanced judgements on these stereotypes. From my easy chair in Karachi, I see Lahore as a forsaken city, blanketed in a plague so intense that it can go into apocalypse mode. People of Gujranwala just seem like jolly, good natured Punjabis who love food and kites. The "Peshawar Portrait" in my head exhibits RPGs and turbans in a game of hide and seek. I hope to discover things more cheerful, well defined and hopeful, respectively when I travel inland.

In an official sense, the purpose of this trip is to work on the execution of a national project and gather a more thorough understanding of consumer markets. This cannot be compared in magnitude to my study of the retail environment of Dubai in June, a plastic city with no original culture and exhibited by a self-consuming essence of capitalism. In many ways, that trip was a tourist retreat with many days spent in modern shopping malls and fast food restaurants. A forced melting pot of many cultures, it effectively masked Dubai's own. But the kind of trip I am currently about to undertake will break me away from the more liberal constructs of society, and put me in a relatively more unknown playing field. Aside from a deeper understanding of the core of Pakistani society, culture and history, I find this as a golden opportunity for myself to gain first hand experience of the challenging and complex environments of emerging markets such as Pakistan, and to navigate my way around it.

Discovery of new frontiers is the goal for me this October, in dimensions which are professional, cultural, historical, and traditional in ways that I have never attempted before. Currently, I'm relishing the challenge and hope I come out in November as someone who has discovered more in himself than the places he's been to. Hope to share some stuff when I get to the other side in November, or perhaps in between if a window of opportunity opens.

An Idea Grown in Exile

It has been many long months, and how I have longed to fill this space of mine. I had easy excuses at the start as I was extremely busy, loaded with assignments, reports and presentations to the point that I had to skip a night of sleep completely, on two occasions. However, I went on to visit Dubai with my Retail Management class after the end of term and that left me with loads of thoughts which I could pour out here. However, I chose not to. The trip left me with many mixed and conflicting emotions, which I often cannot describe myself.

After I returned, my mind became a shell. Empty, devoid of thought! It was just this state in which I could not write at all. Perhaps I will discuss these past four months on a separate occasion, but now I must move on to the real purpose of this post, which has also, more or less, been the purpose of my blog. In the later half of this period, void of writing, I really wanted my next post to be a story and not some log about myself and my obsessions. Many ideas came and went, one of them however, has grown in my mind and I am working on it. However, I feel that it will become excessively long, and may be delayed by some more weeks, maybe months (I really hope not..) before it's complete. But I wish to post this little (read "puny") excerpt that charts the beginning of what I feel is one of my better ideas to date. Hopefully, when you next get to read this it will be part of a much larger plot that will capture your fancy. Let me know your thoughts... gibberish? promising? etc.

*Clip clop, clip clop* the sound of horse hooves resonated loudly in my left ear which was glued to the floor. That is the sound I hear every time I stretch my memory back the farthest I can, the very beginning. *Clip clop, clip clop* it continues, always haunting me, playing at the edge of time itself. *Clip clop, clip clop* the horses went, marching in rhythmic fashion, as if to establish a state of orderliness which signified authority. An authority that dictated that what I remembered from then on was to be the only truth of my life, what I was, and what I was ever going to be.

*Clip clop, clip clop* the sound of their hooves shot like the strokes of a blacksmith’s hammer on my head, magnifying the pain in my skull. As the hammer fell harder, it broke the rhythmic charm of the marching horses, forcing me into a state of uneasy consciousness with my eyes still shut. Still in terrible pain, I tried to gather the rest of my senses to get a bearing on where I was. I rested on my stomach with my left cheek plastered firmly on a moving floor. The side of my face touching the floor felt numb; I tried to find my hands in the overwhelming void and felt them move somewhere above my head. My fingers touched some moist hay and a cold, metallic surface.

*Clip clop, clip clop* the horses trotted on ever so passively, that I felt my world go into a blur of black and white. I felt a breeze flowing on my face, which drew away some of the numbness. With my eyes still shut, I tried to form a more complete picture of my surroundings. In my state of limbo, I could feel myself moving as the horses marched on behind my back, and rocked whatever was carrying me, to and fro. The air was cold, and I could feel no light from behind my still closed eyes. I tried to stretch my legs, but cold metal bars prevented my feet from going any further. Although alarmed, I rested my bare feet on the cold bars to bring some feeling back into them. A loud neigh from a horse suddenly raised my senses but I still kept my eyes wired shut, and desperately wished for some answers to present themselves when I opened them.