Daily Times

Thankfully, I suppose, for those of us who live in Lahore, Imran Khan decided not to close the city down on Thursday, December 4, 2014. But it did seem a little unfortunate for an opinion writer like me. I was all set to make this the subject of my column. So, what to write about now; cricket? Well that is a possibility since Pakistan did win the first 20/20 match against New Zealand but I am not enough of a cricket expert to make any intelligent comments about the game as it was played. All I can say is that, as expected, both sides played well but the Pakistanis played better.
To say that the Pakistani team played well as expected is by itself an admission of something unusual. Over the last many years it is perhaps the first time that I now actually expect the national cricket team to do well, not win all its matches but at least put up a decent show. Here I have a confession to make: when I watch cricket, since that is the only time I watch regular television, during commercial breaks and boring periods in the game I do flip the channels a lot. One of my favourite channels to flip to is the one that, for most of the day, runs Punjabi street plays with their ‘bump and grind’ dances and dialogue that is essentially nonstop sexual innuendo. And, while watching Test matches and the One Day matches, much time is available to watch these street plays or at least parts of them.
Considering all that is available on television, the bump and grind dances in these plays are entirely too tame by comparison but the dialogue is great fun and I must admit quite educational. Living for years in the US had made my Punjabi quite rusty but since I have returned to Pakistan, these plays have been the best way to refurbish my Punjabi language skills. Why do I have to depend on these plays you ask; well, nobody around speaks Punjabi anymore. My cook, my driver and even older members of my family, who used to communicate with each other in Punjabi, insist on speaking Urdu these days. The same trend is true in the hospitals I work in or in the businesses and shops that I patronise.
That does not mean that Punjabi is not being spoken. I can hear all sorts of people speaking Punjabi to each other, especially in an ‘informal’ setting, but when involved in business or dealing with officials and ‘superiors’, most will revert to Urdu. The Urdu they speak is often nothing but Punjabi spoken with an imagined Urdu accent. This is not an urban phenomenon alone. When treating patients from rural areas who were often poor and uneducated, I would notice that they tried to communicate in what they thought was Urdu. To make such patients comfortable I would start speaking Punjabi with them and that, indeed, helped a lot. So, it is clear to me that Punjabi is a living and thriving language, and the popularity of the street plays as one of the primary forms of entertainment available to ordinary people supports that idea.
However, it is clear that Urdu is replacing Punjabi as the language for normal communication among the ‘cultured’ and educated Punjabis. The question then is whether this is a good thing or not. I claim no expertise in such matters but I do seem to think that this intermingling of Urdu and Punjabi is good for neither language. For some of our well-educated elites, the Punjabi they speak is often nothing more than Urdu spoken in a Punjabi accent. As far as Urdu is concerned, people from my generation and my parents’ generation actually learned Urdu as a separate language and often learned it well. Even though many communicated in Punjabi, at least those who grew up and were educated before partition or soon after it knew Urdu a lot better than many of the present day native speakers of Urdu. The list of excellent Urdu poets and prose writers, whose native language was Punjabi, is long and impressive.
But that was the Punjab of yesterday. What is happening today is entirely sad. Even though Urdu is being taught in our schools and is often the medium of instruction, few of the latest generations of Punjabis can speak or write well in Urdu. While teaching at a ‘premier’ medical college in Lahore, whenever I asked senior medical students and young doctors, arguably the best educated and the smartest of our young people about any of the Urdu greats, few could muster up a coherent answer. For all practical purposes we are ignoring Punjabi and butchering Urdu at the same time. As far as the English being taught in our elite schools is concerned, the less said the better.
So then, what is the point I wish to make? Primarily that it is time to stop denigrating Punjabi as a language for day-to-day communication and, as far as Urdu is concerned, native Punjabi speakers should be taught Urdu as a second language. Interestingly, spoken Punjabi is doing rather well especially with the renewed interest in Sufi poetry and, yes, televised street plays as well as live ones are playing their part. What is needed is that, just as our well-educated ‘elite’ can speak Urdu and English often equally well, they should perhaps be encouraged to speak Punjabi also. This will then allow the less educated to feel comfortable speaking Punjabi.
And yes, I would like to see a resurgence of Punjabi cinema. Not the sort that was all about violence but rather the sensitive and romantic sort that was so popular during the first twenty or so years of Pakistan’s existence. Till that happens, I suppose, I will have to do with the televised street plays.

The writer has practiced and taught medicine in the US.
He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com