MANY of us in Pakistan might feel from time to time that we could have been luckier in terms of the country of citizenship. But a gentleman of my acquaintance feels he has it worse, and that too for a reason that many might have to be forgiven for thinking is possibly the most piddling. He loves — believes in, craves, needs — order. And what is Pakistan but the exact antithesis to order, a place where the rules that make societies neat and tidy come to give up the ghost, the epitome of chaos?

He’s always driven himself. Now in his 70s, he refuses to hire a driver on the basis that he won’t add to the chaos by putting on the streets yet another maniac who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the rules. (It has been pointed out to him that a potential solution is to train the man properly, but he refuses to budge.)

After some 50 years of traversing Pakistan roads, rural and urban, mountains, plains and deserts, he doesn’t miss a single bit of road-related disorder that you or I might fail to see, engrossed as we are in our effort to avoid running over the four-year-old beggar while manoeuvring around the donkey cart coming the wrong way and at the same time swerving around the ballistic rickshaw.

He sees the anarchy everywhere, and is not shy of letting his companions know. Being in a car with him can be, on bad days, something of a trial. Those who have been honoured with the experience tend to emerge with glazed expressions, heads resounding with a running commentary along the lines of, “look at that motorcyclist, he’s got the entire village riding with him and look at the risks he’s taking ... and that van driver. He’s going to cut across three lanes now ... see, I told you. As for that car, does he even know that the white line isn’t for keeping between your wheels and telling you that you’re still pointed forwards?”

What is Pakistan but the exact antithesis to order?

And so on. It’s a non-stop litany, peppered with curses, but one can forgive him because it’s obvious that the traffic is literally driving him crazy. His most stringent criticism is reserved for the untidiness of dress, especially when it becomes a traffic hazard: “Look at that guy, painchas flapping around and slippers falling off. Does he even realise the risk he’s posing to himself and others when any bit of cloth could become entangled at any time in the wheels or cogs of his bike?”

Not surprisingly, women appropriate a special status for this gentleman’s wrath in this regard, even though off the roads he’s as gender-blind as can be, also affording to the fairer sex, for example, absolutely equal rights to changing a flat tire or the engine oil. Not surprisingly, I say, because of the cultural modes of women’s apparel in Pakistan. Burqas, trailing dupattas and untold yards of flapping cloth are really not the most advisable things to wear when riding a motorbike, particularly when it’s side-saddle and a couple of children — maybe three or four — are also along for the ride.

The gentleman’s lament stands vindicated, though. Last week, the newspaper told me that “loose dress with trailing ends is a major contributor to road traffic injuries suffered by women pillion riders” in Karachi. The surveillance-based study, the first of its kind, was carried out in collaboration between the Aga Khan University Hospital, Aman Healthcare Services and the Road Traffic Injury Research and Prevention Centre, along with a couple of other research bodies.

Apparently, “women suffered injuries in 74pc cases out of 986 clothing-related road traffic injuries recorded over three years. The risk analysis data shows that female pillion riders were 31 times more likely to be involved in clothing-related motorcycle injuries than male pillion riders. Further estimation shows that 97pc of clothing-related injuries in pillion riders could be attributed to females”. This, from the report published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion.

One could take this as evidence of yet another way in which our cultural codes are doing us in, joining the pantheon of odd notions of honour, gun-ownership in certain sections of society, and so on. But that would be to be flippant about something deadly serious.

I suppose I cannot recommend that people change the way they dress in order to be safe whilst riding in a country that is notable for its lack of public transport and where motorcycles are used by millions upon millions. However, could we have some entrepreneurial interventions? Perhaps something modelled along the lines of the sidecar that was so popular in the West until largely the 1950s? I know it’ll add to the traffic chaos — the motorcycle with the attachment would require more than an inch of clearance — but it would probably save lives and limbs.

The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2014