The Daily Grind

Looks like another busy day. Woken up at 6 by my mother, way too early. I feel like saying, Ammi, I'm in medical college now, can you please lighten up? But I don't say that, of course. If I did, I'd have no more than 20 seconds to live. You can never really mess with my mother about school matters. She's always had this uncompromising attitude towards parhai likhai. A bit overdone, if you ask me (but no one does). Without a word, I get up.


Soon, I'm back on the street again. Before long, the traffic signal at gora qabristan comes and hits me like a kick in the crotch. What is the bloody point of this signal except to be an instrument of torture? Resigned, I settle into line as we inch and crawl while the light goes through a million and one cycles. Does this really help anybody? Why can't a gentle giant come pick me up and put me down on Khalid bin Waleed? I try to seek solace in Nayyara Noor's voice: Kabhi hum khoob-surat thayyy / Kitabon mein basi khoshboo ki maanind. Accha bhai, theek hai.


OK, here comes that guy again, trying to sell his Heralds. I smile, so he starts showing me his magazines. Then, as if on cue, he looks around conspiratorially and gives me a glimpse of ’If I am Assasinated' by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. I go through my routine and politely shake my head. He goes through the rest of his and moves on. He is replaced outside my car by a beggar girl, late adolescence. I wonder what she would be like, washed.


Eventually, I'm on Khalid bin Waleed. Once this milestone is reached, the trip is pretty much downhill, except for having to negotiate the occasional rikshaa on Stadium Road. I'm late this morning. I park and run and try to sneak into the lecture. The door makes a noise to wake the dead, like it always does. Dr. Abbasi, who cannot possibly think less of me than he already does, turns away from the blackboard and gives me his familiar how-can-you-live-with-yourself look. I head for the back benches, like I always do. The lecture turns out to be surprisingly good. I sit behind Shabana and get treated to the smell of her deodorant. Shabana always gives off a pleasant and soothing aroma even though - or perhaps because - it comes from her armpits. The fragrance helps me reflect appreciatively on the ambience of the lecture theater - the noiseless air-conditioning, the grand benches made of flawless Burmese teak, the imported carpet that is vacuumed every night, the fiber-glass blackboard, the ornamented panels, the tapestries of raw silk resplendent on the walls.


I return to Earth when the next lecturer walks in - a matronly, middle-aged woman who cannot teach to save her life. She is reading off her transparencies, trying to put us to sleep. My attention wanders and I zone out. In my mind's eye, Javed Miandad is hitting Bob Willis for six - off a yorker, mind you (I know, go figure). The matronly teacher drones on. My nose starts to acclimatize to Shabana's armpits. Then: Imran Khan to David Gower . . . Pitches outside leg but moves a mile to clip the off bail . . . Then it happens again, in slow motion . . . I see the bail in vertical ascent, spinning.


As I exit the lecture hall, I run into Anita and ask her if she would like to have lunch and get married. "In your dreams", she says, and reminds me that I have to go to Orangi for the afternoon. She walks away, laughing. So now I find myself sitting in the bus, waiting for everyone else to come so we can all go and do this health survey in Orangi. What's the bloody point, I ask Sheheryaar, who comes and sits next to me. Nobel Peace Prize, he says. I tell him about the bhikaran at gora qabristan. After a few minutes, our supervisor Dr. Tahira shows up and we are ready to leave. She apologizes for being late. Her son just got six points from Grammar School, you see, and she was busy giving out laddoos. She passes around a box for us, which doesn't get beyond Sheheryaar. We drive out of the campus and are soon coasting through SITE. Sheheryaar is in grand form today. He convinces the driver to stop so we can buy somasay from the roadside. Dr. Tahira warns us about eating from street vendors. I've already had hepatitis, so I ignore her and dig in. After a short while, we arrive in Orangi, reportedly "Asia's largest urban squatter settlement" (although you get the feeling that the people who make this claim have probably never heard of Bombay or Calcutta). Unsurprisingly, the landscape of Orangi is dominated by naked children, stray dogs and refuse. Cloistered in this air-conditioned bus, my classmate Naureen starts talking about the oh-so-tragic disparity of wealth in developing economies. It is tripe, recycled commentary that we have all heard before. That Naureen spends most of her spare time insulated in Sind Club makes this especially nauseating. Behind her back, Sheheryaar and I gesture to each other with dry heaves, mocking the urge to vomit.


Our class has been assigned the task of measuring the health status of Orangi Township using door-to-door health interviews. I have been paired with Naureen. We have been given a street map, which we now follow to a house that has been selected by random sampling for inclusion in our survey. A teenage girl answers the door. She sees me first and wraps her dupatta to the point of suffocation. Then she sees Naureen and relaxes. Naureen introduces us and begins asking about how many people live there and if they cover their garbage. Things go smoothly for a while, then an old gentleman with a flowing white beard and a crooked walking stick shows up. It looks like he lives here and is returning home. He stops a few feet from us and starts eyeing us suspiciously. I introduce us but he remains distant, not warm. So I decide to resume the interview and ask the shy teenaged girl how many children she seeks in her reproductive career. The girl breaks into a smile, tightens her dupatta again and looks away shyly, but the effect of this inquiry on the old man is incendiary. He immediately comes to life and starts screaming at us to go away. He takes a step towards us and Naureen starts running. I hesitate, and get hit on the thigh by the old man's stick. A crowd gathers. I internalize my anger and catch up with Naureen to go to the next house on our list.


This place is more run down than the first. The frontage is unfinished brickwork, no windows, and a burlap curtain in place of a door. A little boy comes out when I call. I ask him koeey bara hai? He goes back in and returns with his father, a polite, forty-ish, dark and overweight man in pale green shalvar kameez and Eagle chappal. We are invited inside. There are no chairs, so we sit on the chandni that stretches across the floor. I lean against a gaow takya; Naureen settles against the wall. There is a TV set in the corner, covered by a meticulously embroidered doily. An empty box for a Panasonic VCR lies beside it but I don't see a VCR. Naureen begins the questionnaire. Is your wife related to you? Ji haan, mamoon ki larki hai. Are the children well, have they been sick? Khaansi zukaam hotay rehtay hain, kuch dehaan nahin diya. I ask him where he gets medical attention and he tells us about doctor Inayat. Ji woh khandani doctor hain, aap jaisay MBBS nahin hain. Then more questions from Naureen. I pay attention for a while, then my mind wanders . . . Andy Roberts to Zaheer Abbas . . . Zaheer steps down the wicket and, with his signature backlift, hits Roberts for six over long-off. I am fully aware kay Zaheer ka baap bhi yeh shot nahin maar sakta, but there he is in my day-dream, humiliating Roberts. I recover to hear our interviewee offering to make us a sharbat of unripe mangoes, which Naureen politely declines. Naureen wants to visit doctor Inayat. We thank our host and step out into the sun. I complain about the glare, so Naureen offers me her sweat-covered sunglasses. I hesitate, but then realize it's estrogen sweat, and slip them on.


Doctor Inayat's house is in a neighbouring lane. It is pointed out to us as the house next to a bent-over little girl who is defecating. But for the excrement, the place has quite a presentable facade. An old man lets us in. The interior is roomy and comfortable. There is a set of sofas, a coffee table with a pile of Akhbar-e-Jahan, a steel cupboard, and a telephone. Doctor Inayat is sitting on one of the sofas, speaking on the phone. He looks handsome, intelligent and well-fed. This man is a quack, but this is Orangi, so we accord him the respect we would normally reserve for a heart surgeon. He hangs up the phone abruptly when he sees Naureen. After pleasantries, I ask him about his professional background. He gives us a knowing smile, as if to say the question was fully anticipated. He then lights a Gold Leaf cigarette and leans back. "Hamara to khandaani paisha hai, virsay mein mila hai." He is not a hakeem, he says, but a 'khandaani' doctor. He is like us, he stresses, except that we learn our craft in college while he learnt it from his father and grandfather. Like us, he prescribes medicines that can be bought at a chemist's shop and, as with us, many of his patients get better. In his experience, many ailments respond to vitamin B-complex. He talks with ease and confidence and, except for that first moment when he abruptly hung up the phone, seems comfortable with Naureen's presence. He expresses interest in our survey and offers to help. We get up to leave, promising to arrange a meeting between him and our supervisors. Once we are out of earshot, Naureen and I have an argument about Doctor Inayat. People like him exist because of the placebo effect, I tell her. No, they fill an important niche, she counters. You just can't see it, she says, irritated.


We are both feeling thirsty, so we stop for drinks at a paan ki dukaan. In the distance, I spot Bilal and Zeenat and wave them to come join us. I ask about their progress with interviews, but Bilal isn't forthcoming. Instead, he wants to know how I'm studying for the FMGEMs, the examination that will take us to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He says he's trying for a 90, wants to be an ophthalmologist in America. I mock him. Dream on, I say. Then everyone falls quiet, for no obvious reason. Zeenat buys some bubble gum. On the paan vala's radio, Munni Begum is singing Muzaffar Akbarabadi. Ay meray hamnasheen chal kahin aur chal / Iss chaman mein ab apna guzara nahin.


On the way back, we are regaled with more tales of Dr. Tahira's six-pointer son. Apparently, he is thinking of Princeton, MIT, Stanford or Caltech. And Harvard, of course, except they are stingy with aid, you know. Sounds painful, I say to Sheheryaar under my breath. "Pehlay A-levels to karay," Sheheryaar whispers back. Naureen finds her opening, and starts talking about this cousin of hers at Princeton who shared a study group with Brooke Shields. According to Naureen, when you ask this cousin about Brooke Shields, he's like "Oh, yeah, Brooke Shields, ho-hum" - can you imagine? "Maybe you should introduce him to that bhikaran of yours," Sheheryaar whispers into my ear, sending me into convulsions of laughter.


Back at college, the grades from last week's end-of-term test are on the notice board. Anita is on top, as usual. I love her, but her better grades rankle. Not far removed from the grades is a prominent notice about the first years staging 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by the late Oscar Wilde. Not far removed from that, a gaggle of anglicized first years is chatting excitedly about it. Pretentious dimwits, I say to myself, nauseated. I decide to settle in the library and read my copy of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine for a while. One paragraph, then two. Then: I'm bored. Through the library's windows I can see some classmates gathering in the courtyard. It is late afternoon in Karachi, at a time of year that passes for winter around these parts. The fading sunlight angles into the courtyard, playing on the rich red marble and imitation sandstone to create a quiet and awesome mystique. Romance is in the air but, what with the grades being out and all, the atmosphere is wasted on us. I step out to join my classmates and find them indulging their hopes and ambitions, like they usually do. Then, within a few minutes, everybody starts mocking everybody else, like they usually do. Dream on, we say to each other. Inevitably, grades are discussed. In this cruel drama, as in every struggle for survival, there are winners and there are losers and, thanks to the posted performance descriptors, by now everyone knows who's which. This post-mortem of academic fortune has become a ritual practiced after every test. The winners act like they haven't won - they're courteous and civil and, boosted by unquestioned triumph, can afford to play down their victories. The losers, however, are devastated all the same. They look like they have come to sign the surrender of Dhaka. They are humiliated, their lives ruined, their dreams shattered, their self-esteem shredded to worthless scraps. Or so it seems.


Finally, ghar vaapsi. Luckily, the return raasta is fairly painless. The dreaded right turn at gora qabristan now becomes an effortless left at Yasmeen Lari's monument to finance. Thank God we drive on the left. Angrez legacy, I know, but makes for a smooth ride home. It is well past maghrib when I get home. My father is meeting someone in the drawing room. I hear him call out my name. The guest, whom I haven't met before, is an old classmate of my his from Agra. I get introduced, but before I can say anything, the guest takes my hand and embraces me warmly. The physical contact reminds me of the bruise I got from baba ji's stick in Orangi. Instinctitively, I rub my thigh. Then I start to edge out of the room. My father looks at me sternly and says 'Maulana, parhai nahin ho rahi hai aaj kal? I utter a muted 'ji', then go and call Sheheryaar to see what we can do tonight.