The news coming out of Pakistan may be grim for much of the time, but it is not without its diverting moments – in fact, some of the happenings are of such a nature that they invoke ridicule and regret at the same time

Take a recent story from the Punjab, which is as tragic as it is silly. Four people died in a road accident that occurred because of poor visibility caused by the fog that is blanketing the area these days. On the face of it, this doesn’t really give much cause for comment since the fog does cause many accidents every year. But the devil lies in the detail.

It seems that on the highway, in the fog, one vehicle rear-ended another. It wasn’t a serious accident; passengers were shaken but not hurt and had the matter ended there, it would not even have made it into the newspaper. But as with many things Pakistani, this was only the beginning. Instead of the drivers of the two vehicles stopping and exchanging the numbers of their insurance companies, as would be the unexpectedly civilised behaviour in such cases, the driver of the offending vehicle took it into his head to flee. Naturally, this incensed the driver of the vehicle that had been hit through no fault of its own, who decided to give chase. Despite the fog, he eventually caught up.

What ensued was the sort of altercation with which we are all too familiar: the two drivers arguing, perhaps getting aggressive, all the passengers milling around, perhaps stepping into the fray or trying the mitti pao technique. And because of the Pakistani curse that prevents many of us from thinking in terms of cause and effect, everyone forgot to get off the road, as a result of which four souls died when another bus loomed up out of the fog and failed to stop in time.

It’s very sad, of course, but one can’t help but grin a little since one can imagine only too well how it happened. We see variants of this sort of behaviour all the time: a tyre being changed in the middle of the road, even where a shoulder is available; an altercation, also in the middle of the road, with the combatants sparing not a thought for either their own safety or other people’s convenience; someone tinkering with the engine of their stalled vehicle without bothering to first push it to the side.

To me, news items such as this speak volumes about the Pakistani psyche and of the problems that are symptomatic of our society. They reflect in real terms the outcome of unstructured thinking and an ad hoc approach.

Take, for example, another recent news item that told of a zebra that kicked a giraffe to death at the Lahore zoo. A very silly and unusual incident, given that giraffes are so much larger than zebras. But once one has stopped grinning over the mental picture it invokes, one can’t help but wonder why the zoo authorities – which are supposed to be trained in the care of animals and at least halfway competent at their work – saw it fit to keep the two species in the same enclosure. On the grounds that they’re both vegetarians and share a habitat when they’re in the wild?

This story is reflective of Pakistan’s symptomatic incompetence and inefficiency. And there is a reason for that: in general terms, most of us in Pakistan do not have the luxury of taking pride in a job well done, for we are too busy trying to either hold on to our jobs (consider the soaring figures of unemployment), or quickly finish the task at hand so that a new one, which will bring in much-needed extra rupees, can be started. We live in an environment of incessant shortages, from potable water and electricity to gas and petrol and wheat, to employment and economic opportunity. Hardly remarkable, then, that each person is so crazed by the need to obtain as soon as possible what he requires, that he has no time to spare for anything from other people’s convenience to even his own safety. Desperation leaves no time for the finer points of civilised behaviour.

In order to really get a feel of what a people or a nation are about, the small news stories they generate are far more important than the headlines. The latter give you the hard facts; the former provide a glimpse into national mindsets. And in Pakistan, that glimpse is into a world of need and hunger, poverty and desperation – and a system in the process of coming apart at the seams.

Postscript: On a lighter note, a story in a major newspaper told us recently that near a certain Defence Housing Authority colony, a formerly pristine water course is being polluted by “affluents.” Hurrah for the subber who didn’t catch the typo; that’s telling it like it is!

hmumtaz@dawn.com