It’s that time of year again. If, like me, you don’t watch the bawdy marathon TV transmissions that have commercialised the season, the most visible reminder of the month comes in the form of sehr and iftar eat-out packages. They range from high-tea style meals to mega buffet dinners with enticing cuisine. One such iftar-cum-dinner offer caught my eye last week. It was a hoarding outside a fancy eatery in Gulberg, Lahore. It said “Iftar Dinner Rs 1,650-plus tax.” A list of delicacies on offer followed. A couple of metres on the same road there was another hoarding. I saw nearly a dozen that day. As I was writing this piece today, I received a text message — the timing rather dramatic it would seem — from a fast food chain offering a pair of burgers, fries and a beverage bottle for Rs 695. “Eat hearty Ramadan,” or something to the effect was the distasteful slogan. We now have Chinese and Italian iftar. Also iftar with donuts, imported cinnamon bread, sehri with omelets layered in Parmesan cheese and fresh-ground coffee with Swiss chocolates, for Rs 1,999- plus tax. Does it feel as if something has gone wrong here?
The Ramadan ‘eat-fests’ would seem tolerable in another country, say, in a basking-in-oil-wealth Middle Eastern sheikhdom. Drive through a suburban district in Riyadh or Doha, and you will hardly come across broken sewerage lines, slum children playing about with discarded polythene bags, or people with buckets in their hands at the water pump. The only poverty you see in these states is in the form of the labour force — mostly from South Asia — that performs menial tasks, and in Somalians and those from other war-torn or drought-smitten parts of Africa. These Arab states, including Iran, may be political anachronisms today, but they provide a form of welfare to their people. The destitute here are mostly foreigners. There is no visible dearth. Ours is a different story. It is estimated that at least 40 percent of Pakistanis live below the poverty line. This means that there are nearly 60 million people who subsist on less than a dollar a day. The malnutrition figures are equally dismal. Parts of interior Sindh and Balochistan have been experiencing prolonged periods of drought. You can see poverty in the flesh in the heart of Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar any given day. And amid all this, you can also see the iftar dinner packages, ranging from Rs 695 to 1,999 plus tax.
Somewhere down the line, wasn’t the fast meant to be a lesson in empathy? Wasn’t staying without food and water for the better part of the day supposed to remind you of those — 60 million in our case — who cannot afford a decent meal a day? Wasn’t the season supposed to be a time for a private coming-to-terms with oneself? With the extravagant dinners and the game-show television transmissions, it seems to have morphed into just the opposite. For argument’s sake, if you were to make a rough calculation of the amount of money affluent Pakistanis spend on food during this month, what would that figure be? And how many people could be fed with that amount of money?
But you can’t close all the eateries, can you? The restaurant business generates good revenue. It also attracts foreign investment. Look at the American burger joints and pizza brands, coffee and tea houses that have come to Pakistan’s major cities. It is good for the economy. Only, it doesn’t seem to be trickling down to the slum children playing with polythene bags or the people with the buckets at water pumps. More fancy eateries keep opening up as more Pakistanis live on less than two dollars a day.
I saw the fancy buffet dinner hoardings that day. Also saw something else later in the week. It was one of those lil’ things that don’t completely restore your faith in all the clichés you’ve heard in life, but tell you there are ways of making a difference. And that you can try. That lil’ something was there for all to see at the densely clogged Choburgi chowk, far away from the diners and coffee bars of DHA and Gulberg. Adjacent to the roundabout was parked an old Sohrab bicycle, the kind they probably don’t make anymore. Fastened to the carrier behind the seat was a pot full of naan tikki (baked flat bread and potatoes mashed and stir fried). This is why. Every day at iftar time, an undistinguished middle-aged man comes to Choburgi chowk to distribute the naan tikki. He offers a limited number. There is so much hunger around that he is never left with a bite to spare. It’s his Ramadan contribution. If you ask me, it’s worth more than all those iftar dinners and sehri packages the city has to offers.
The writer is a lecturer in English Literature at Government College University, Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected]