In the company of crows and bad music, a trip to Islamabad via the motorway is one to remember
I AM on the road again, after an absence of almost two years. Islamabad-Lahore Motorway is once again the link between my abode and my place of business. I have been in motion all my life, travelling most of the time and come to think of it, I am not a salesperson or remotely associated with sales ever. Yet I have travelled all my life. I was nicknamed as the safri-bacha (travelling son) of my mother by my younger sister, out of sisterly love long before we went separate ways on account of our marital status... a state of being that has traditionally altered the way siblings interacted with each other whilst they lived under one roof. Things change when people marry; brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and so and so forth make things different for brothers and sisters who have shared their lives for as long as they can remember before their marital status changed for better or for worse!
Anyway, sociology is definitely not the theme of this piece, reality is. It was just another day; a day when I had to be at one end of the motorway on account of my professional commitment and at the other on account of my familial obligations. In order to make the most of the time available I decided to defer my departure from Lahore to Islamabad from evening to early morning with the intention of extending my stay at my abode to appease my better half...so to speak! I have always enjoyed driving at night but the thought of spending another night with your loved ones (children included) is quite an incentive for a dad to adjourn his departure.
The aroma of tea woke me up instead of the cautionary call of the better half to get up as was decided the night before. Blessed are the ones with wives, or like they say in Punjabi charhrayan di aagh na bhalahay (bachelors have not a thing going for them) a wholesome breakfast accompanied by an aromatic tea was enough for me to drive the three hundred and fifty six kilometres on the motorway unabated.
The first stop was at the filling station at Shami Road for CNG. It was at a shop there that I decided to get an audio cassette for the road. Altogether different music is required for the highway, compared to the city that does not need the kind of attention that motorway commands. One needs to be armed with music that keeps one awake on otherwise a monotonous drive with little or no distractions!
Of the Pakistani albums that were available there, I picked up one by Fuzon, which by the way has been credited to be the best thing that ever happened to us after the invention of the loaf of bread. All gassed up and armed with a new and ‘hot’ album, I was on the road again. It was only one and half an hour later that I realized that I had made a mistake.
The hot album that I had supposedly purchased proved to be a big disappointment and as I rolled down the metal led road. I, in fact mourned the economic compulsions that have forced such an illustrious house to sell their ‘silver’ so to speak to stay afloat! Thank God Amanat Ali Khan Sahib is not with us anymore to bear this ignominy.
I am as simple a human being as they come; I did not give up on Fuzon and continued to bear their yelping and barking for a very long time hoping for one song to appear in the album that would ease my cognitive dissonance. But it never happened. I got myself gassed up at Sukheke, and before I knew it I was riding into the sunrise instead of the sunset as our cowboy heroes used to in our childhood days. It was by far the best of the experiences of my life; driving in Pakistan, at a speed I had never driven in this country, knowing that all I can hit is a police detector and nothing else. But by first light it all changed. I was not only not enjoying the drive the way I have been while driving in the dark, but the average speed had also gone down thanks to the crows that had hogged the center and right lanes of the motorway.
I never knew that Pakistan had such a substantial number of crow population. I always thought that the human population was a problem. But not anymore. And for all those spin doctors working in Islamabad, I suggest that you take a trip on the Motorway early in the morning to appreciate that it is not only the human population that inhibits this country’s growth prospects but equally the crow population of this country is the biggest obstacle in a smooth inter-provincial communications. Crows are the biggest impediment that lies between inter-provincial harmonies. Like any other business executive I had calculated my average speed and the distance I had to cover and thus had come with a time that I would arrive at Islamabad. But crows had their own schedule and it definitely did not assist mine. By the time I had myself all gassed up at Sukheke, the sun had already decided to make its daily appearance.
Light is always better than the darkness, but the light that day on the Motorway did not prove to be that enlighten for me, as it should have been otherwise. Half an hour from Sukheke, six in the morning, the entire motorway was crowded, not with the dogs that we all fear or the people that dwell on either side of the road, but with crows that had swarmed the place from nowhere. I had to dodge and duck infinite number of crows between Sukheke and Pindi. Not only were these crows a safety hazard they were definitely a nuisance. Between Sukheke and Rawalpindi these crows forced me to check my speed, kept me on my toes, and more importantly served as a proxy for the motorway police who has a mandate to be off the road at night. Whilst the crows kept me in check, another species of birds, supposedly lali, or their cousins, amused me for their lack of character. Unlike crows who would play chicken with my car, lali found strength in numbers and waited patiently on the divider for a traveller to dislodge tit bits for them. I met a lali family at Bhera where I stopped to get CNG, the almost grown up kids chided their mother for food while the poor female desperately sought food not only for herself but also for the grown up kids who should not be following her! Such is the dilemma of a female!
For two-and-a-half hours between Sukheke and Pindi I dodged and ducked the wily crows and the harmless lalis with a resolve to be back at my home by midnight.
The day in the Federal capital was as mundane as it can be at any other capital of the world. I delayed my departure from the capital for as long as I could afford. It was at eight in the night that I finally got myself fixed and decided to get home. On the return trip, I decided to invest in another audio cassette. After the disappointed of Fuzon, Humaira Arshad was my choice the second time around. It took me no more than ten minutes to get to the Motorway and by the time Humaira was installed in my audio player, the half-naked moon gazing down the Margalla Hills was mocking me already. Seldom had the moon witnessed a mature man dance to the tunes of a commercial artist, and that too while driving at a speed of 120km/h. I can swear that the moon mimicked me before it disappeared behind the Margalla Hills. Mars that has traversed so perilously close to the earth watched me curiously as I drove on in the still of the night unabated!
Humaira Arshad sang in my car without any interruption. The beauty of the audio player is that you can capture any voice, known or unknown, and make it sing the way you want it; slow or fast, skip the songs that you don’t like and repeat the songs that you fancy. In other words the most famous singer in the world becomes ‘his masters’ voice’, (pun intended). Humaira Arshad, her voice, was subservient to my needs on the Motorway where only the Margalla Hills on my back, and Son Sakeskar on my right and left were the only real things I had to deal with.
Monitored by Mars, Moon had by then given up on me, what a show up. It needed constant attention that I was unable to provide given Humaira’s golden voice. Dollar for dollar, or rupee for rupee, Humaira for all her vulgarity and her femininity was a far better choice that Fuzon. It is almost funny to realize that women in our part of the world (India excluded) as India has drastically changed its notion of ‘Syian’ (Beloved) who happens to be a wimp, all muscles, and a feminist, Rethink Roshan type, joined by a bimbo/cum heroine who is more desi than her western dress suggests she is. Travelling at night from Islamabad to Lahore you don’t think of bimbos and syians, the favourites of the womenfolk in this part of the world. Women, Hindu or Muslim, Sikh or Christian, young or old, since their childhood learn to chant, sigh, and yell at the top of their voices, songs that venerate men, yet they grow up to despise men for one thing or the other. Oggler, looker, seer, watcher, and so on and so forth...The women will sing about men all they can but they can never cease to despise men for what men stand for: Lust; Greed; Power; and Propriety.
My jaunt back home could have been useless had it not been for the drivers who drive on the road for the sake of driving. MMA is at liberty to reject my ideas as being imported from the west, but I was taught not to inconvenience my fellow drivers while I drove on the road... a notion that is totally alien to the drivers treading on our roads...driving with a high beam is a sign of nobility...something that only nobles and haves can afford while the have nots like myself trained by the infidel could fret all he wants.
In the company of crows and bad music, a trip to Islamabad via the motorway is one to remember 
