AS a nation we learn not from looking upward, at higher intellects; we learn from those far below us in erudition or breeding. And so we pick up all the wrong things.

As far back as memory goes, lorries and buses in Pakistan were famous for the legends they bore on their tail boards. Most were inane and even meaningless, some were sharp and yet others hilarious. An all-time favourite was the Punjabi version of ignorance is bliss. It said akal nahin tay maujan hi maujan. This bit about tail-board slogans is actually an aside but it fits today’s treatise because as I said in the beginning, we learn most of what we know from intellects lower than ours.

And this is in the context of the slogans that today adorn not only trucks, buses and rickshaws but ordinary private cars as well. Time was when Lahore (where I have lived most of my life) had no more than a few hundred cars. That was until the real-life film called Dubai Chalo began in Pakistan and everybody and my neighbour’s cat were able to buy cars. That was when I noticed for the first time in my life the little black paranda hanging inside the rear window of the new purchased Mark IIs (in the mid-1970s this Toyota model was the rage with everyone back with their petro-dollars).

The paranda, or any other black rag, was the nazar buttu — the warder off of the evil eye. It was essential fitting for the newly purchased darling to be protected from the covetous eyes of envious neighbours who had been unable so far to get to Dubai and were begging one to get them a visa as well. Though heaven knows why anyone could ever believe that being a plumber or a driver in Dubai made me in charge of those upstarts’ visa policy.

A variation on the paranda was a child’s used and nicely battered shoe — it always had to be a used one for who knows whose envy might have been aroused by a brand-new piece. This warder off of the evil eye was festooned under the rear bumper. Sometimes, but very rarely, we saw it hanging by the rear view mirror in front of the driver. But such rare cases I always took to mean that the driver had a fetish for shoes and was smart enough to gainfully employ his kinkiness and to keep evil at bay at the same time.

This is what we who had kept our eyes open growing up in the 1950s and ’60s remembered from the rickshaw drivers. The shoe or the black rag was a great rage for anyone who got a new rickshaw in those far-off and only times when life was truly worth living in Pakistan. By the way, that was not the only thing on rickshaws. There being a revulsion for plain surfaces, their rear ends were plastered with all sorts of slogans and short adverts.

In the early 1970s this sorry land, starting with poor old Karachi, was hit by that greatest of banes, those accursed vans or wagons that later came to be known in that once-great city as yellow devils. From the staid pace of those lovable trams and buses, everyone moved on to the helter-skelter of getting on or off with the vehicle still moving at twenty miles an hour. These demon vehicles had the driver’s or owner’s name on the tail board. By the way, the other thing every driver of today learned from the maniacs who manned these killing machines was driving: today we all drive like the wagon drivers with total disregard for every other road user.

Going back to the name business, this was a move ahead from the legend ‘Sheeda mechanic’ or ‘Makha denter’ on the rickshaws. The first among us to copy this new trend of their names on their vehicles were motorcycle owners. There being limited space on a 70cc, the owner’s name was initially appended at the bottom of the number plate. Over time, the importance of the registration paled in front of the owner’s name: from then on the name was in bolder lettering than the registration number. And since we never learn from a higher intelligence, car owners were quick to latch on to this rickshaw driver syndrome.

Not long after that, all us Sheedas and Makhas, having returned from Dubai, started affixing our cars’ registration plates with our names or our sons’ names. About twenty years ago a car in Lahore had Loony, Koony, Toony, Poony and Swoony on its registration plate. Fortunately we do not give away our wives’ and daughters’ names or this car owner, judging from the number of sons, would very likely have had a billboard for a rear bumper. But even if he did, nobody, not even Lahore’s pathetic traffic police, would have minded.

Billboards being ungainly, however, the option of the rear windscreen dawned quickly. Over the past many years everyone (and my neighbour’s cat) have had their rear windows emblazoned with their names. Just wait for it and you will see hopeful, but unsuccessful, ladies’ men adding their cellphone numbers as well — there is one in Lahore already.

What manner of insignificant person would wish the world to know who he is, what his religious belief and his caste are? Would Justice Cornelius have had his name emblazoned on his car, if he had one? Would Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Dr Abdus Salam? It has to be an insignificant person, an utter nobody, who will advertise himself. It takes a nobody to assert his nobody-ness. No slur on poor Sheeda the mechanic who fixes rickshaws in Lahore’s Lytton Road and wishes his name broadcast, but that is where we have learned to be what we are: nobodies.

The sad thing is that we do not even get the act of being a nobody right. Friend and fellow writer Shahzada Irfan has a photograph of a Suzuki Mehran somewhere on a Karachi street with the legend ‘Anus’ in bold lettering on the rear window! This poor car owner is not self-deprecating; only this is the way his father spelled the Arabic name Annus upon his son’s birth. Not knowing any better dear old Anus goes around advertising what he really is. Good on you, kiddo. Keep it going.

PS. Ever noticed the slogan ‘Mom says no girls’? Such a moron does not only advertise being a mamma’s baby but also gives away that mom does not mind his being gay.

The writer is the author of several travel books.

odysseus@beaconet.net

THE London insurance connection propping up the murderous Burmese military dictatorship can be revealed in a development that will acutely embarrass leading City of London figures.

Three Lloyd’s of London operators will be named as helping to insure the junta’s state-owned airline Myanma Airways earlier this year. They are Kiln, Atrium and Catlin. All were contacted by The Observer and asked to explain their involvement but refused to comment.

Other Lloyd’s syndicates have shared the risk of insuring the junta’s shipping interests. Without shipping and aviation insurance, the Burmese government would not be able to export gems, timber, clothing, oil and gas, which would lead to economic ruin for the generals running the oppressed south-east Asian nation.

The London insurance involvement, to be exposed this week in a report by Burma Campaign UK, will acutely damage the reputation of the City. It is likely to trigger a wave of campaigns aiming to force Lloyd’s of London to recommend that its members pull business from Burma. Campaigners are demanding a face-to-face meeting with Lloyd’s chairman Lord Levene.

‘The insurance industry is helping to fund the Burmese dictatorship. Insurance companies, including members of Lloyd’s, are putting profits before ethics. They don’t care that they’re helping Burma’s brutal regime fund the purchase of guns, bullets and tanks for their campaigns of repression and ethnic cleansing. In an age where companies like to claim they behave ethically, the truth is these companies are helping to finance a regime that rapes, tortures and kills civilians,’ said Johnny Chatterton, Burma Campaign UK’s campaign officer.

Lloyd’s last weekend argued that its members were not breaking the law by insuring Burma’s key infrastructure. While the US has imposed across-the-board sanctions on Burma, the European Union has taken a limited stance. EU sanctions cover gems and timber but not financial services. Despite pressure from the European parliament to extend sanctions, heads of state have failed to unanimously approve the measure.

Lloyd’s said: ‘Unless there are official international sanctions in place, we do not instruct the market where it can and cannot write business.’

Lloyd’s intransigence will put pressure on the UK government to intervene. Gordon Brown has in the past made plain his disapproval of any business trading with Burma. It is unclear whether the Foreign Office has raised the issue with senior Lloyd’s officials.

The Burma Campaign report will expose eight other insurance companies. While Lloyd’s is vital to the regime, much business goes to Singapore and Thailand. By Burmese law, all insurance has to goes through Myanma Insurance, in which the state is the sole shareholder. It is an imprisonable offence to get insurance through any other organisation.

— The Guardian, London