Last time I was in Bangkok was in 89, a lifetime ago. That too for just a night because some veterans of the Thai experience, who I took to be gurus then but whose views I wouldn’t much consider now, had told me wonderful things about Pattaya.
In the event, I liked Pattaya but not much. And not having explored Bangkok remained a lasting regret. So when out of the blue there came an invitation for Bangkok, I jumped at it, considerations of mortality not being the least of the factors behind my enthusiasm. Bangkok is not exclusively for the young. It would be a pity if it were. But what point in going to a fun place when decrepitude and old age have become your companions?
I am supposed to be here only for a few days but God knows I am in no hurry to get back. Bangkok itself is huge and moving about is not easy because of the traffic. Yet despite the traffic gridlock, this city relaxes you, makes you slow down, persuades you that there are more things to life than the constant and sterile preoccupation with politics which is the staple of our waking and thinking moments in Pakistan.
The remarkable thing about Bangkok traffic, however, is something completely different. Despite the fact that often it hardly seems to move at all, and it can seem like eternity being caught in it, you won’t catch anyone honking. No swearing, no breaking of lanes, no agro —- a combination of anger and aggravation — whatsoever.
Amazing isnt it? Especially for someone from a land where everyone seems to be in a tearing hurry although no one yet has been able to figure out what all the hurry is about. Harkat taiz tar, in Munir Niazi’s immortal words, and safar ahista ahista — frenzied movement but journey slow slow.
A bit of the Thai calmness of spirit would do us a world of good, making us less grim and cheerless and angry. Why do we always seem so worked up? Why is everyone on a holy mission? Preaching, converting, thinking of everything in messianic terms, always trying to get somewhere but not quite arriving anywhere.
There would be no place for religious or ethnocentric parties in Thai political life. With their aggressive brand of politics they just wouldnt fit in.
A day or two before leaving for Bangkok I was visited at home by two members of the Tablighi Jamaat. Their obvious commitment to their cause was impressive. Funny as it may sound, they were in effect asking me to hop on to the wagon, join them in spreading the good word about the faith. I tried telling them that one reason why I was allergic to what they proposed lay in the fact that some of the stalwarts of their Jamaat in Chakwal were amongst the greatest hypocrites I had ever come across in my life.
To their credit, they did not entirely disagree with me, one of them even permitting himself a smile. But they seemed unable to grasp my point that although there was much talk of religion in Pakistan, considering our problems it didnt seem to be doing us much good.
Persistent, and quite impervious to sarcasm, my visitors said they would be seeing me again in March when hopefully I would be more receptive to their request. Am I looking forward to their visit?
There is no shortage of religion in Thailand. At airports and other places seats are reserved for monks. Buddhist temples and monks are all over the place. But religion is not intrusive. It doesnt hold you by the collar. The loudspeaker version of it anyway is happily absent.
Not that Thailand doesn’t have problems. It has gap between rich and poor, corruption, lingering shadows of authoritarianism, a political past more full of military coups than even ours, and no doubt many more. Yet the Thai people are extraordinary serene, not wearing their worries on their sleeves or foreheads, going about the business of life calmly.
An article in The Nation, a Bangkok newspaper, by one William Klausner, explained why: ‘‘A core element of the traditional Thai persona is the cool heart. One is enjoined to preserve a sense of emotional equilibrium. A Thai is expected to tread the Buddhist ideal of the Middle Path, avoiding extremes and overt expressions of anger, displeasure, annoyance, hatred.’’
The Middle Path: something quite alien to our temperament. Consider how even our poets sing of extreme alternatives: the scaffold on one side, the arms of the beloved on the other, nothing in between. Agreed, we are a driven people although the funny thing is our passion, excessive most of the time, seems bent to no discernible goal.
But the Thai way is not all about the Middle Path. It is also about a penchant for sanuk — fun, the enjoyment of living. In Klausner’s words again, a necessary comic relief to the tragedy of life.
In many eastern cultures, Japanese for instance, guilt is attached to deviations from the code of the samurai: disloyalty, betrayal, cowardice, not doing your duty, etc. These fall under the rubric of dishonourable conduct. No guilt is attached to personal preferences in the moral field. Personal morality is just that, your business, not anyone else’s. It certainly is no business of the state.
With us, on the other hand, there is too great a preoccupation with the surface aspects of morality. Which makes for some of the grimness evident in our collective life. Of all the accusations that can be brought against the people of Pakistan, a penchant for fun would not be amongst them.
A huge amount of money has been spent on our two new airports at Karachi and Lahore. Yet is there anything cheerful or sprightly about them? The Allama Iqbal International Airport at Lahore, especially, is a monument to gloominess. Whoever designed it? Lots of marble, huge pillars, yet the overall effect indescribably gloomy.
Why even bother to have duty-free shops? What’s there to buy? In the departure lounge at Lahore there was a person from one of the duty-free shops trying to sell dry fruit and Multani halwa. Just imagine, the concept of duty free stood on its head. Understandably no one was interested. I found it incredibly sad, the poor fellow making a sales pitch that would be made in no duty-free shop in the world.
Who said that tourism was one of the worst isms of the 20th century? We certainly live up to this intellectual snobbery because our whole approach to tourism is to make sure no one thinks of setting foot in our country. And if anyone is foolish enough to do so, he/she is unlikely to repeat the experience.
It wasnt always like this. When countries like Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea had yet to make much of a splash on the world map, Pakistan in many ways was ahead of them, enjoying advantages they didn’t have. Now it seems like such a distant dream, General Zia’s puritan revolution, and our talent for making a mess of the simplest things, having reduced us to this pass.
But enough of masochism, by now well recognized as the national pastime. It’s always a good idea to read up on destinations you are going to, the Internet making this easy. Or rather in some ways making this difficult because there is so much information on Thailand posted on the web that it is a problem making sense of it. I did some research too although I now think I should have done some more.
Think of Bangkok and as likely as not what springs to mind is Patpong. But there’s more to Bangkok than Patpong. My choice, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy, both lively and entertaining places. Once upon a time the rupee was stronger than the baht. No longer, those happy days long past. Which means that Thailand is no longer the cheap place it used to be for Pakistani purses.
But, and this should be kept in mind, there is nothing prurient or ugly about Thai entertainment. Its part of the landscape, a fact of life you take in your stride. Psychologists know it well. Repression and deprivation lead to an obsessive brooding on missing things. Something freely available liberates the mind.
A simple enough lesson you would think but one somehow proving quite beyond us to grasp.