The railway lines in Pakistan and the stories they tell
05 August 2019
A wintery morning. A small, all but abandoned, railway station. A few scrawny plants growing between its building and a double rail track glued on a cheerless slope with sombre, brooding hills closing in from all sides as if to prevent the station from escaping. That was Hirok station in the heart of Balochistan’s Bolan Pass — or at least that is my most abiding memory of it.
On a bench in front of the building lay what looked like a body shrouded in a grey shawl. To the grinding sound of our trolley’s brakes, it raised a bit of the shawl from its head to cast a bleary eye in our direction. Recognising the trolley men, it waved a languid hand and went back under the shawl. We passed on down the slope, once again gathering speed.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, Herald, Pakistan Railways, Railway
posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:38,
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Pakistan through the eyes of a train traveller
31 May 2019
When the first train pulled into Quetta in March 1887, it did not roll the way they do today up the stony bends of the Bolan Pass. Instead, the line struck north from Sibi into the 160-kilometre-long meandering gorge of the Nari River through the sulphur-stained badlands of Gandakeen Aaf (sulphur water in Balochi) past such evocative names as Tanduri that is still famous for its furnace summer heat and into the cool highlands of Harnai and Shahrag. In those days when the Great Game had reached a frenzied pitch, the line that dreamed of reaching Kandahar was called the Kandahar State Railway.
Northwest of Harnai lay Khost and beyond it the dramatic yawning maw of the Chhappar Rift. But the rift is a tale of glorious achievement and woe so far as railway engineers of that time were concerned. Suffice it to say that it was put out of service by a summer rainstorm in July 1942. By then the line through the Bolan Pass was in place and passenger trains entering the Nari Gorge went only as far as Khost while coal trains trundled on another 15 kilometres to the mines of Zardalu.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Pakistan, Travel
posted by Salman Rashid @ 16:13,
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The funny side of… monkey business
02 June 2017
Old Mr Darwin said something about all life evolving to higher forms, which we take to mean that we were monkeys at one time. On the other hand, the Quran has a line about some Jewish miscreants being turned into monkeys. (Aside: With only a few date trees in Arabia, I wonder where the poor newly-evolved simians would have lived in that desert land.)
Here in merry old Lahore, we have our own bunch of folks struggling to return to the primate shape of their forefathers. And it all started about four years ago. An errant Qingqi (oh, who wretch invented this monster?) driver was booked by a traffic warden. Leaving his machine in the middle of the road, the driver quickly clambered up a power pylon that happened to be at hand. There, from ten metres high, he threatened to jump if the warden did not cancel his ticket.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Set in stone
29 May 2017
Over three decades ago, I saw for the first time a stele on the bank of Bhodesar pond outside Nagarparkar town in Sindh’s Thar region. It was a time of drought. The pond was dry and an upright sandstone slab was standing there.
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| Courtesy Memorial Stones Thararkar |
The slab carried a beautiful carving of a horse rider, his raised left hand holding what appeared to be a staff. At his waist was a quiver bristling with arrows. In a panel immediately below the artistic rendering were a few lines of writing that I thought was in Hindi. Nearby was another slab bearing what was clearly the depiction of a woman. Her dress was notable for being quite similar to the ghagra still worn in Thar.
Labels: Herald, Heritage, Sindh, Thar
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Sincerity
12 April 2017
This piece appears in the January 2015 issue of Herald
Going by his name, this Glyme cannot possibly be a Pakistani. I therefore suspect this piece of very useful wisdom so much in use in Pakistani politics, as well as in daily life, was actually thought up by a local sage who put it into practice without taking out a patent on it. Unprotected by law, the formula was filched by smart aleck Glyme whose name then stuck to it. I suspect it was fear of legal action from Pakistan that kept old Glyme from passing on his full name to Bloch.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Security Risk
06 April 2017
I don’t know when they started it – it seems to have always been around – but this paranoia of security against the ‘enemy state’ (dushman mulk) pervades the national psyche deeply. This so-called security entails only a moratorium on photography, all else like blowing up PNS Mehran or Kamra apparently being kosher.
In nearly seven decades of the country’s existence, the painter of the ‘Photography Prohibited’ sign has never known poor business. Though the powers-that-be keep the identity of this person a tantalisingly guarded secret, his artwork adorns every bridge, culvert, railway station, airport, dam, power grid and rubbish dump around the land. For his meritorious and assiduous service to the country he must have received the highest awards from the government.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Travel
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Travel Writing
31 March 2017
The other day, a young friend of mine introduced me to a man about my age. Very enthusiastically he told him I was a travel writer. The gent who had never read anything but Urdu newspapers and for whom writing was only what papers had, asked if I travelled from place to place gathering news for a paper?
No, said I, young Mikhail was such an incorrigible practical joker. I was actually in the leather business. And then I recalled the time I fed this line to another person many years ago. Entirely to my detriment, the man was quite in his cups and also knew someone in Germany in the leather business. He gave me his friend’s name and address and for the rest of the evening pestered me to contact him ASAP so that his friend could get first-class leather. The persistence of drunks is legendary.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Travel Writing
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Funny Side Of...
16 January 2017
In December 2013, I was in Karachi where I spent some time at the Herald office after a very long time. This was a favourite haunt many years ago, especially during the decade between 1997 and 2007 when I wrote a regular monthly travel piece for the magazine. At the office I met all the boys and girls and had a generally great time getting to know them.
About a fortnight after I returned home, I got a call from Faiza Shah on the Herald staff. She asked if I would be interested in writing a short humour piece for them. Now, this is the kind of thing where you can say stuff that bothers you but cannot make a regular newspaper piece. And you can say it in a way that the protagonist in the piece cannot even take you to court. Well, in most cases, at least. It helps the writer blow off steam. And so I said ‘Yessssss!’
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The shade that scorches
22 July 2016
An ignorant military dictator and his equally misguided ministers first forced the Forest Department to increase forest cover in the advent of the 1960s. Since the survival rates of local saplings were as low as 15 per cent, the eucalyptus – imported from Australia and not fed upon by any subcontinental animal – was favoured; thus starting the practice of destroying forest cover with wholesale plantations of water-guzzling eucalyptuses.
Trees being felled from Gulberg Main Boulevard to make way for the signal-free corridor project
Towns expanded, chewing up what was once forest and farmland. Large tracts of well-forested land were cleared of trees hundreds of years old, and were replaced by new roads and newly laid out parks. Hills that were once clad with pine trees, but had since been denuded due to erosion control post-Partition, were generously carpeted with eucalyptuses. When the old intercity road, once passing under tunnels of acacia, neem, pipal and shisham, was widened, the old trees were cut and replaced with eucalyptus trees. By the late 1970s, eucalyptus was seen from Sost, on the Chinese border, to Jiwani on the Balochistan seaboard, and from Nagarparkar in Sindh to the hills of Bajaur and Swat. Yet, no one connected the drying up of springs to the introduction of the ever-thirsty tree.
Read more »Labels: Birds, Ecology, Herald, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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What do you believe in?
14 June 2016
I used to believe in all sorts of rubbish. Like the Earth being round and it revolving around the sun. I also believed things that I saw – but that too half because I was never sure if my eyes were not playing tricks on me. And I never believed most of what I heard from ordinary folks.
Illustration by Zehra Nawab
Things changed about ten years ago. I had walked up to the crest of the Makra peak in Kaghan and on the way back hitched a ride in a jeep with a bunch of Lahoris returning to Shogran. The leader – a Butt from Kashmiri Mohalla, who by Lahori aesthetics was handsome: tall, fat and fair-skinned – having ascertained that I had spent a few nights camping on the nearby Lake Saiful Muluk, was full of questions.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Not my Fault
12 March 2015
This piece appears in the March 2015 issue of Herald
There is an old Garfield cartoon where the orange cat tells readers that it has a very responsible position in the home. ‘Every time something goes wrong, I’m held responsible,’ says the balloon above the Saturnine glumness of his face.
Next to Garfield, our politicians are the cutest people on earth. Whereas poor loveable Garfield is always responsible, our politicians never are for anything that goes wrong. First off, the incumbent PM’s patent look beats the one-tooth-missing grin of Alfred E Neuman’s ‘What, me worry?’ expression. Secondly, he has the habit of saying the most inane things on earth with great gravity. In fact, his gravity while uttering absurdity is greater than that of a black hole.
By the way, if you didn’t know what a black hole is, it’s not a part of the human anatomy – as you so facetiously thought. You can now wipe that smirk off your silly face. It is a celestial body that permits nothing, not even light, to escape its surface. Though there are similarities between black holes and Pakistani politicians, we shall not go into that for the time being.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Jewish-Indian Lobby
10 February 2015
This piece appears in the February 2015 issue of Herald
Though this nexus was formed on the day we achieved independence, it came out into the open in 1956 when the Indian film industry released a flick with the telling title of Yahudi ki Beti – The Jew’s Daughter. I ask you! Yahudi ki Beti. Now, if there wasn’t a nexus between the two malicious countries of Israel and India, why was the film titled the way it was? Why couldn’t it be Eesai ki Beti or Hindu ki Beti? It goes without saying that it would never have been called Musalman ki Beti because of the intense malevolence the Yuhood o Hunood ki Laabi reserves for us Muslims, the one and only chosen people of God.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Drivers
12 December 2014
This piece appears in the December 2014 issue of Herald
This is especially true if you are either a motorcyclist or a paid or underage driver (whose father is either a powerful politico or a bureaucrat). By the way, underage here means any man less than seventy years old because here men never grow up; they just grow old.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Life, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Penglish
09 November 2014
This piece appears in the November 2014 issue of Herald
There’s Penglish which is Pakistani English which is, well, something. And then there is Ppenglish – Pakistani Punjabi English. Now, since I don’t speak Pashto, I cannot even say what that other Ppenglish would be. But knowing some Pakhtuns, all I know is that would really be something.
And with this I see smoke coming out of the ears of all those Pakhtuns who read this. Take it easy, chaps. But for goodness sake don’t take yourselves so seriously. That causes constipation.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Containeristan
14 October 2014
This piece appears in the October 2014 issue of Herald
It all started years ago when paranoia rode high in Karachi (when has it ever ridden low anywhere in Pakistan since its inception?) that a large number of shipping containers had to be moved to posh Clifton to block one track of the double road in front of a Zardar (Gold Owner) home. We were told the stacked containers were to keep at bay houri-seeking young suicide bombers in explosive-laden jalopies. The bound-for-paradise bombers could blow up all they wished, but all they would be able to do was make scrap of some rotting containers while the gold diggers in the mansion remained safe.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Cricket
10 September 2014
This piece appears in the September 2014 issue of Herald
Two of them carry the thhapa, that short club that women used to beat the dirt out of their laundry. But that was before they invented washing machines. And since with this invention the thhapa became redundant, it was put to other use by ne’er to well loafers: they took to flogging balls with it. Cricket was invented and life was never the same again.
Read more »Labels: Cricket, Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Lady Wives
13 August 2014
This piece appears in the August 2014 issue of Herald
Obviously, she was referring to herself and her husband as the joint commanders of the unfortunate corps. This was a true, one hundred percent marriage where the spouses had accomplished what the Bollywood number says: tum mujh mein sama jao, mein tum mein sama jaon. I wondered what would have happened in the event of actual war.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Humour in Uniform, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Bomb Detectors
10 July 2014
This piece appears in the July 2014 issue of Herald
Having assembled my arsenal in the basement of my home, I followed the instructions of my handlers and very carefully packed the bombs in a lead box. Coated on the outside by colourful fibre with the logo ‘American Tourister’, this was the kind of box that could go through x-ray scanners without showing what was inside. It was also supposed to fool all other bomb detection device.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:30,
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Bomb Blasts
09 June 2014
This piece appears in the June 2014 issue of Herald.
Aside: the only hidden hand I can possibly think of is Napoleon’s. Yes, that frog who went by the last name of Bonaparte. Or was it Bone Apart because of the several bones he broke in a childhood skateboarding accident? Why do I think of him every time I hear of the hidden hand? Well, look at some of his images, hat pulled low to hide his shifty eyes, he keeps the bomb hand slyly concealed under the parting of the two lapels of his coat at his breast.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Inventing history
12 May 2014
But who on earth wants to read when, among a multitude of ignoramuses, your story-making, taken for real history, earns you respect and awe? So, you just sit there vacantly staring out of the window and come up with preposterous visions of what might have been. Having been around the country, I have heard tales and tales of which I have a few favourites.
The most recent, gleaned in Ormara on the seaboard, is also the most preposterous simply because naval officers are passing it off as gospel. Since everyone has heard Alexander of Macedonia passed through Makran (and no one has read any history), they have forced that poor man to posthumously march along the beach. Ormara naturally fell on his route.
Read more »Labels: Herald, History, Humour
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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