4
A BRIGHT, cold winter’s day, the sky as cerulean blue and the air as sparklingly clear as you can only find in the mountains.
A couple of old men sit sheltering from the piercing wind in the lee of the stone wall of a two-roomed hut. The flint-coloured rock has been hewn by hand and shaped into roughly oblong-shaped chunks that fit together like a jigsaw. The men could be of any seniority, their faces having passed from the fresh-facedness of youth into leathery age in the way that is common in terrains where survival is tough and conditions harsh. Even so, their hooded eyes remain bright and their frames as upright as the pine trees that surround them.
From gnarled hand to hand, they pass a hookah, its water chortling with every draw. At the pair’s feet crackles a small fire built of the twigs and pine needles that can be found in abundance here, having fallen from high branches to be gathered and used without guilt. Nearby, leaning against the stone, stand two stout walking sticks, their curved handles carefully carved and their feet fitted with pointed metal cleats. The delicate craftsmanship apparent in these staffs is testimony to the fact that in this land, this is one of man’s most handy tools — a weapon of offence or defence against an unexpected wildcat or dog, a walking and climbing aid, a balancing point while crossing a stony brook or kassi, as these are called here.
Altogether, this scene, so striking in its lines, colours and stillness, is one that has been enacted and re-enacted over uncounted generations. Keep the frame of the picture narrow and it could be from anywhere over the past two centuries or more, the location itself anywhere from the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush mountains to the Himalayan range. In pockets of these areas the local communities’ way of life has, even now, not changed all that much (which can be considered a positive or a negative, depending on how you look at it).
It is a scene that has been acted and re-enacted over countless generations.
This is not the case, though, with the particular mountain slope that concerns me. As the old men contemplate whatever their inner thoughts are, the silence is broken by a loud, resounding thumping approaching from the distance. Coming closer, this piece of gracelessness reveals itself to be a large white Toyota Corolla traversing the metalled road that winds its way up the mountainside, glistening like a complacent python some 10 feet from the venerable ones by the fire.
The vehicle is navigating the tight bends much faster than is wise or safe whilst passing through a hamlet that has been bifurcated by ‘modernity’, and the thumping is the echo of the music blaring inside the car. As it sweeps by, a window opens briefly to let out a cloud of cigarette smoke and a pudgy hand that tosses a load of empty crisp, biscuit and candy wrappers on the berm. And then, in a whirlwind of dust, the car is gone, the thumping beats destined for the peak of this particular hillside which is already covered with trash and has been defaced by abysmal efforts at ‘landscaping’ and making the place ‘tourist-friendly’.
The old men stir not at all, their faces impassive and their dignity hardened and intact against the torrent of ‘development’ and ‘modernisation’. This is not the first such boorish vehicle to pass by, and nor will it be the last; it’s Christmas weekend and as expected, tourists have come in their thousands from as far afield as Faisalabad and Lahore to enjoy the pristine mountain delights offered by the New Murree hill station, a little over an hour’s drive from Islamabad along a spanking new expressway.
Modernity, as has often been observed, is a two-edged sword. The local populations here have arguably found increased avenues of earning plying taxis and wagons, selling chips and candy and chicken karahi to oily urban consumers. But it has come at the price of increased crime and substance abuse, the loss of the traditional, self-sustaining and eco-friendly lifestyle, a disconnect between those who came before and the ones who thirst above all else for the cash to buy a motorcycle. Communities here have literally had the carpet pulled out from under their feet, and reorientation will inevitably sever links with the past.
Before it’s all gone, a plea can be made for at least extensive academic and pictorial documentation of these hillsides. In the hardly distant future, these peri-urban areas are destined for tourism and housing schemes, hotels and hovels and paan shops. Murree Mall suffered this fate decades ago, and now there’s nothing left of that grace but memories and photographs in old books. Can those men by the stone wall be afforded dignity at least at the close?
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2018
