January 27, 2005

When the ‘Pick Up’ started and we were back in motion, I realized we had spent hours before a protesting crowd, without actually knowing what the protestors were demanding, writes Syed Haris Hasan

I often think about strange things. A few days ago, I was wondering about the lack of healthy political activities amongst university students. They should have a voice and need to be seen and heard. The day after I let these idle thoughts came in my mind, I got stuck in the worst traffic jam of my life. The reason was students had finally been emancipated.

Jigar and I were already late for office. Jigar, by the way, is my colleague at work. His popularity and networking skills know no bounds: despite his real name being Akbar Hidayatullah, he is affectionately and very fondly called ‘Jigar’ by everyone (except his immediate boss). So Jigar and I were sitting on the back seat of the company Pick Up car (the name amuses all the guys incessantly, and draws comparisons with Austin Power’s ‘Shag Mobile’. We often joke how Rana, the driver, already has a pick up car, and that now all he needs is a good pick up line, and he is set for life)! As we were crossing a green signal, we saw a jammed mass of cars about a few hundred yards ahead. Rana stopped and got out to check what the problem was. Students, he was told, of a nearby university, were staging a mass protest against the commercialism of education in Pakistan.

Under a gigantic billboard displaying the Pakistani cricket team endorsing some kind of underwear, about five hundred students sat wearing white clothes. Perhaps, it was a strategic location, as most people focused their attention on the students after embarrassingly looking away from the revealing billboard! The students were flashing banners with caricatures of government officials shown stabbing a pen (yes, a pen: with eyes and limbs and a strangely ecstatic expression) and bureaucrats strangling rolled up degrees (expressionless, leggy ones)!

Jigar had called the office and excused every one of us from work, for the day. He specializes in saving his friends in tricky situations. We decided to stay and enjoy the protests (some of the female protestors were quite attractive, and apparently had no right to protest)! The cars — hundreds of them — were now silent and providing shade to their occupants. Everyone had seemingly abandoned their day’s chores and compromised with the fact that they would have to stay stuck on the road till the student group dispersed.

Jigar mentioned how he used to be a student leader of his party’s student wing when he was at college. He narrated his glorious speeches and protest rallies with misty eyes, while I tried not to think about my experiences with the ‘wings’ of various political parties. I tried to blot out the memory of my college days when the only leadership experience I had was when I ‘led’ a small group of classmates to the Principal’s office to complain about the political parties haunting the college premises.

Then Rana had something to say about the elections in India. It was the heat getting to Rana’s already cynical head. He claimed that the current friendship measures taken by India towards Pakistan were a farce — that BJP had faked it, too, to win in the elections. I told him to stop thinking negatively, and then asked him what ‘BJP’ stood for. He was thoroughly disgusted and did not speak to me the whole day. After the conversation-drought, everyone was getting restless. Jigar got a cigarette from a neighbouring rickshaw driver and continued to brood, between deep and relished inhalations of the soggy cigarette.

It was a distant cranking of engines which awoke us all. The student protest was over. Whether they got their demands accepted or whether they just got sick of sitting on the road under the blazing summer sun, I am not sure. When the ‘Pick Up’ got started and we were back in motion, I realized we had spent hours before a protesting crowd, without actually knowing what the protestors were demanding! Did they want free education, or cheaper books or a cleaner environment? Or was it just a warning for the officials to check their greed and take education seriously.

After I got back home, my idle mind had two things to think about — was I really shallow? and what the hell does ‘BJP’ mean anyway?

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