A Rude Awakening

The sun finally managed to disperse the rain-laden clouds that have been loitering on top of Margalla hills for weeks now. The clouds somehow managed to stick around. For an entire week before Eid these velvety patches of condensed air poured their hearts out. It looked bleak on Friday evening when most of the Islooites packed up their bags and left for their respective hometowns, save a few who either didn’t have a hometown or had to stay back to hold the fort. It was for their sake, that the determined army of the clouds decided to retreat. It turned to be a nice sunny Eid in an otherwise empty and deserted capital. But then, for some odd reason, the clouds suddenly descended upon Islamabad with a renewed vigor just as the bloated Islooites were making their way back to their mundane existence. The conspiracy theorists believe that ISI or some other ‘agency’ had something to do with the orchestrated disappearance and re-appearance of the clouds. The spooks, it is believed, must have convinced someone up there to cease hostilities during the holidays. Dispensation of an overdose of holiday placebo to placate our national conscience can only be effective if the weather behaves.

Notwithstanding the choreographed performance of the gods up there, Eid was a gluttonous affair. Hundreds of tons of meat was flushed down the toilet not to mention tens and hundreds of Alka-Seltzer tablets that met similar fate. And there are still few tons of aluminum-wrapped thighs safely tucked in the deep freezers to be devoured during the basant festivities, which is only a week away. Islamabad faces yet another desertion: so much for good governance. But that is another story. The weather gods have been extremely benevolent for the last couple of days. Heavy rains cleared all the bad air enveloping the capital due to the unearthing activities that ended just before Eid. Spring is in the air. Even the people who do not have the luxury of keeping their noses up in the air can enjoy the intoxicating whiff of pine and blossoming flowers. The roads and sidewalks bear a waxy shine, which is irresistibly inviting. Every shrub, overgrowth, undergrowth, tree, sapling, and even the dreaded eucalyptus, in the city is sparkling green and a treat to look at. In short, the landscape in Islamabad these days,is so refreshing and beautiful that a couch potato like myself would find it hard to resist the temptation to be outdoors. But, then, I hate walking, whiff or no whiff.

I belong to the ever-growing number of Homo sapiens who secretly detest the mankind’s gradual evolution. Given a choice, I would much prefer to be in a horizontal position, occasionally on all fours, but never on my feet. This is so inconvenient. Being on your own two feet requires you to work, earn a living, meet people, put a happy face, chase phantoms, and after you done doing all that, you still need to do more. Continued retention of an upright position requires extra efforts. You have to do well, which is not without hazards. In order to do well you need an upright body, which if not put to rigors of physical labor has a tendency to assume a permanent horizontal position. This state of being undoes everything well done. In other words, on top of breaking every one else’s back, straining your own neck, talking your way in or out (depending on the situation), and grabbing anything and everything you can lay your hand on, you still need to exercise your body. This has been the dilemma of mankind ever since it walked the walk.

I have been contemplating to walk for a very long time, but the compulsions of doing well kept me from talking that first step. Then one day as I went about doing things that all upright men do from dawn to dusk, which included a routine examination by a doctor, I found out that my extremities are not getting their share of the oxygen. That left me dumbfounded: What I am doing with all the oxygen? After all it is free. Could it be that my brain and stomach are hogging up all the oxygen supply? Am I suffering from an oral and anal syndrome, an ailment common in so many of my fellow countrymen? No wonder I feel numb!

As I drove back home that day, I realized that my extremities were not the only casualties. My entire body was anesthetized. I was in a dire need for a rude awakening. And like my doctor suggested, I needed a chill pill and long walks if were to see the end of the beginning. In a matter of minutes after reaching home, I was on the track. I have finally taken the first step. The sidewalk I choose to tread along was deserted with woods on one side and a neat row of important looking houses on the other. A metallic road, neatly demarcated in the middle, separated the backwoods and the dwellings. As I picked up pace, the brain activity slowed down and my oxygen-starved toes started showing signs of life. Can you imagine the joy of revitalizing a part of your body you have not felt for an entire season? I was overwhelmed. I decided then and there never to stop walking again; it is by walking alone that I can feel things that I have not felt for a very long time. Maybe never.

And then suddenly something or someone whizzed past me. A serpent was my fist reaction, after all these were Margalla hills and serpents are not an oddity in this town. I looked yonder and my eyes zeroed in on two pigs frolicking in the patch of woods next to a stately looking house. Wow! Pigs in Islamabad! Now, now, don’t get all worked up, pigs or wild boars form a big part of our mammal population. However, they are normally associated with far off places, mostly rural and under-developed. But, in Islamabad, and that too in the backyard of a VVIP, that is truly an amazing discovery!

The near miss with the wild boars halted my advance but momentarily. I moved on but not without looking over my shoulder. The pigs were still at it, unperturbed. I remembered a friend of mine, who is a missionary zealot telling me once: ‘Look Allah did not create us to work. He created us to worship him. Look at the animals; they don’t produce anything; hardly build anything of significance; don’t own a factory or a shop, and yet Allah provides for them’. Looking at the pigs foraging in the woods, I must say that my friend has a point.