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trend MOOD STREET Town Talk profile A
bond of blood
trend They sell for less Second-hand branded electrical appliances, goods galore in city By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed “Can you compare an air-conditioner manufactured in Japan for the Australian market with a Chinese assembled in Pakistani?” This question comes from the vibrant but soft-spoken Sikander Khan during an argument with a customer over the price of an electrical appliance he wants to sell. The answer is obviously “no”, but this does not satisfy the customer who wants a major discount. The customer neither wants to pay the demanded price nor walk out of the shop empty-handed because he knows he won’t find similar products anywhere else easily. But he believes that Rs 20,000 is too high a price for a ¾ ton second-hand Japanese AC. Sikander, on the other hand, argues the AC is of a superior brand and much more durable than the cheap and low-quality Chinese products. Besides, he asserts, this AC chills a 15 by 15 feet room within minutes while its Chinese counterparts work like a room cooler. Those sitting next to it can feel the cold air blowing and others don’t. Before travelling to
Sikander’s shop at Ferozepur Road, close to the LOS Stop and Lahore Camp
Jail, he had a tour of Abid Market, Mozang. There he found brand new one
ton ACs available in the range of Rs25,000 to Rs30,000 a piece. Just when
he was about to finalise the deal, a salesman (apparently disgruntled with
his employer) advised him to visit Sikander if he needed a durable item. Back at Sikander’s shop, the bargaining drags on for a good half an hour. He smiles all the time and occasionally strokes his grey beard and scratches his head covered with a woven skull cap normally worn during prayers. On the sight of a couple of customers heading towards the entrance door, he disrupts the discussion and asks the unheeding customer to go back home, think over the deal with a cool mind and return the next day. This influx of customers continues throughout the day and Sikander greets them with a renewed vigour. The product range he offers is quite unique and extensive. For example, he sells night vision gadgets, combat and hunting daggers, telescopes to be mounted on shooting guns, rifles only seen in Hollywood movies, long-range binoculars, folding aluminum ladders, Japanese and Korean generators, microwaves, televisions and what not. The huge billboard hoisted on the roof of his shop has pictures of sophisticated weapons and reads “Khan TV Center” and “MADE IN USA tools.” About the origin of the products and how they reach Pakistan, Sikander tells TNS that they are simply brought from Afghanistan, by road. Afghanistan, he says, is a poor country with no industrial structure in place and depends on imports. The government allows duty-free import of goods from all over the world which includes cars, electrical appliances, cosmetics, generators etc. These products may be brand new, secondhand or those containing minor and easily removable faults. They are consumed locally in Afghanistan as well as sent to other countries including Pakistan, he says, adding his representatives in Afghanistan inspect and select the items themselves before moving to Pakistan. “I do give a few months’ guarantee for some products though I am not supposed to. I have a lot of loyal customers who go for quality and worry less about the price,” he adds. Sikander tells TNS he had brought in ½ ton Japanese ACs which sold like hot cakes. The same happened with night vision devices which are out of stock but high in demand. He demands the government allow low-duty import of foreign goods like these to benefit masses and force local assemblers to produce quality products. “I have to spend excessively on bringing these products here which also reflects on the price,” he tells TNS while refusing to go into details. There are a few other
outlets as well dealing in similar products but at a much smaller scale.
For example, Salahuddin Company in Landa Bazar is a favourite spot for
brand loyal customers. The owner of the shop, Jawad Iqbal, says that
electronic appliances from all over the world are brought to Pakistan
through Dubai which is an international market. He says Afghani Pathans have a hold over the business and they know very well about shipments to any place in Pakistan. Jawad’s customers are mostly middle class people who need quality at minimum price. He shares that many parents buy dowry for their daughters from them as in-laws are mostly very critical about the quality and sometimes brand conscious. He says it’s a fact people have lost interest in locally-assembled products and now go for the makes of top companies of US, Japan, UK and other European brands. He also introduces the scribe to a customer whose imported one ton AC is working much better than one and half ton locally-made AC installed by his brother in the same house. A police inspector in Badami Bagh tells TNS on condition of anonymity, that authorities do not confiscate electronic appliances brought in passenger and transport vehicles. Previously they did, but it was noticed that the Customs officers would let them go after taking bribes and the police would simply earn a bad name, he adds. But now it is discontinued as the Customs Department got a special notification issued in this regard. Under the previous notification, the police was supposed to immediately call Customs officials and hand over the culprits and smuggled goods to them.
MOOD STREET Ours is a case of either giving too much attention to an issue or a plain absence of concern. We’re either obsessed with something or give it an instant damn—a proposition which is adequately supported by our response to a crisis. Dengue fever can be a case in point, and it is not the only instance. In this, the media and the viewers seem to be sharing a thing or two. In case there is a doubt, we’re talking about a balanced approach here. It seems that over-exposure to a problem makes us insensitive to that particular issue over a period of time. “Dengue fever is not a problem, every other person is the victim of it,” says a middle-aged man watching TV and taking solace in the fact that his relative is not alone but one among the many. This is understandable since Lahorites’ attention span has been put to some real test during the last few months, thanks to the ever-alert (or is it overly alert?) media that has kept viewers on their toes with their ‘timely’ breaking news about what the little mosquito has done or can do. And there are some odd
moments (you know what they are) when you have to stop for a moment to get
the ultimate news (about the only cure from the fever), which is most
probably not that important, but boring to be sure. So, not everyone is always hungry to gulp the hair-raising bit of news bulletins ever so common now. If that is correct, what is the fuss about? Ok, call it an act of soul-searching but then we are human beings and you know what is human. Let us look back in horror, anger and dismay at how we have been treated to the unending stream of information about the fever during the last three, four months and how a certain focus of attention has affected our everyday lives one way or the other. We dread rising up early in the morning and prefer to wear full-sleeves in the stuffy indoors in September. We do that because we know that fever is not just a threat; it is not a mere scare either. The damage has been done. The little devil, the oft-repeated dengue mosquito, has proved itself to be quite a hard nut to crack for the spray brigade. For now, there is no end in sight to the crisis, though they say it is all going to be over sooner rather than later. The myth of the papaya leaves and the reality of larva sustaining on puddles of water in the backyard have got mixed up somehow. Understandably, the main discussion doing the rounds these days is: has our response (media and word of mouth included) to the dengue fever been lacking in any way? People say yes, the Punjab government says no. Seizing the moment, the media pounces on the debate and catches it for a sumptuous meal. The rest is history. But issues have been blown out of proportion over the last couple of months. The media recipe for remaining “in” and keeping one’s ratings high is the norm. There has to be an issue to become the talk of the town at one time. Before dengue it was the outbursts of Zulfiqar Mirza that grabbed the attention of the media — both print and electronic — and made big heavy headlines. Mirza’s opening of Pandora’s Box had been closely followed by the continuous killings in Karachi. The latest fad is the saber-rattling between Pakistan and the US over the presumed existence of Haqqani network on the Pakistani side of the Pak-Afghan border, etc. We cling to an issue and do not let it go. Can we talk of a balanced approach here?
Salman Toor painting at Rohtas 2 from Oct 03 Solo exhibition of Basir Mahmood at Grey Noise from Sept 29-Oct 22. Half Circle Scroll and Sound Installation
by Michal Glikson from Oct 02–08 at Alhamra Arts Council Art Bazaar on Oct 02 at 4pm at The Knowledge Factory (TKF) MAG Judges & Coaches Course October, 2011 Lahore, Oct 01- 30
profile She walked into the boardroom with short, yet quick steps, where I was waiting for her. Briefly going over the introductions, she handed me a copy of an article which contained her life story. I kept it in my bag to go over it later, while I set up the recorder to interview her. It was a pleasant change to meet someone so enthusiastic about sharing the intimate details of her life. Known as Sanjivini Mehra for a greater part of her life, Saima Jasim became Saima Jasim in 1989 when she wanted to marry a Muslim man. According to the Pakistani nikahnama there is no provision for a Hindu girl to marry a Muslim man. So she and her husband went to the Badshahi mosque where she completed the necessary rites. The maulvi suggested that she also would have to change her name. Saima asked him to pick one for her and hence the name Saima came along. Her close friends, however, continue calling her Sanjivini. Saima recalls how in the initial days she wouldn’t respond to the new name. Now that she has a highly successful professional career, working as the head of all the programs at a foreign non-profit organisation, she has become much more accustomed to it. She told me that she received thousands of letters from all over the world, congratulating her on picking the right path and a ticket to heaven. Her husband was congratulated even more, for showing the true way to ‘wayward infidel’. However, marriages in South Asia don’t happen between individuals. It is a union of two families; especially as a lot of couples continue to live in a joint family system. Both the individuals hailed from families which were religiously inclined. For Saima’s maternal side, which is still present in India, her conversion was the “end of it,” as Saima puts it in her own words. They were naturally not happy with the marriage, but they still came from India to attend the festival. Jasim’s family was religiously inclined too, and their argument was that even though the girl had converted, her father remained a Hindu, and she also basically remains a Hindu (whatever that means). They were also unhappy with the marriage. All hell broke loose when Jasim committed suicide only 10 months after the marriage. Saima was pregnant then. He incurred a heavy loss in business and the burden proved too much for him. If the sight of one’s husband shooting himself in front of his wife wasn’t enough, his sisters attacked Saima after Jasim was declared dead, blaming her for his death. Luckily for her, one of his uncles was also present nearby and therefore a witness to the suicide. After completing her necessary four and half months at her in-laws, as required by her new faith, Saima requested her uncle (brother of her father) to take her away. Her in-laws didn’t allow her to take any of the things that belonged to her. Soon she also lost her baby to a premature birth. Saima had no place to
go. Her parents were murdered in 1981. Her only sibling, her brother
refused to take her in, as he was married to a Hindu woman, and both of
them disapproved of the marriage to begin with. Her only uncle in Pakistan
(had converted to Islam, a long time ago, along with his father) never
even suggested that she should move in with them. “It was decided on my
behalf, by all my family members that I should go with my aunty
(mother’s elder sister) to Delhi,” says Saima. She was only 25 at that
time. Even though this was not the first time she was moving to India as a resident it was still painful, she recalls. Earlier in 1981, when a fanatic killed her parents inside their house, 5 Queens Road, she was taken by her aunt, when the uncle and the brother refused to accept her responsibility. The killer claimed that he had a dream in which he was suggested that all Hindus should be killed, so he fulfilled the obligation. Saima, who was only 17 at that time, saw her parents being massacred in front of her eyes. “People think that if I am a Hindu and I am moving to a secular, liberal, state (India) that is my happy ending. But in real life it doesn’t work that way. You are dealing with humans and their emotions,” said Saima, as she struggled hard to fight back her tears. Saima felt a strong bond with this land, and especially Lahore, which intensified after the death of her parents. She writes in her account about her family and her life (Living the legacy of Partition: the coin has two sides) that her ancestors moved to Lahore, from Afghanistan, about six generations ago. “My great grandfather, Lala Dhanpat Rai was a Bar at Law from London and had established the first leather Tannery of Punjab in Shahdara, Lahore and was the Co-Founder and the first Chairman of the Punjab National Bank in India. But he was able to buy huge amounts of property in India and became one of the wealthiest people in Lahore.” During partition, her father, Hari Krishan Mehra, refused to leave Lahore. Being an economically and politically powerful man, he was protected by his Muslim friends. He wasn’t a religious person, unlike his Indian wife, who he married in 1961. His religious beliefs were not conventional, in fact he was more of an agnostic, but he retained his identity by never changing the religion, or the name. However, since his wife was a traditional woman, he continued his affiliation with the Krishna Mandar, on Ravi road, by supporting it financially. He also remained socially and economically prominent, as he had a large property in Lahore and links with a lot of high ups in the society. In the Pakistani context he can be referred to as a Hindu agnostic (Hindu because of our inability to identify people beyond their religious identities and agnostic because that is how actually he would have defined his religious inclinations). 10 months before his murder he was attacked by another fanatic, while he was dropping Saima to her school, with a knife. The attacker was caught and he escaped with minor injuries. The motivation was once again his religious identity (he remained to be perceived as a Hindu, even though he was an agnostic). Saima tells me that her father forgave his attacker because he had children to look after. Saima never understood the decision. Even though she was with her Hindu aunt, in a Hindu majority country, with secular and liberal credentials, Saima still found the environment suffocating. She explains how she had to encounter a different kind of discrimination in India, compared to Pakistan. “For them (her aunts) I was a Hindu coming from an impure land,” says Saima. Like their counterparts in Lahore, they would blame the Muslims for all the evils and Saima would always go out of her way to defend the community. She would give examples of her close friends and teachers who were her shieldin Pakistan. She couldn’t wait to come back to Lahore. Soon she was able to finally cross the border again and move back to the city that had become her love affair. She recalls how all her close friends were present to welcome her. However, her struggles were far from here. Here the social discrimination against her for being a Hindu continued. Her favourite subject happened to be history, which she took up in her graduate studies, when she joined The University of Punjab. The teacher and a particular group of students would always pick on her, considering her to be an ambassador of the Hindu community, who were responsible for the grievances and violence of pre-partition British India and partition. Once again Saima was defending a community, being targeted by a group of people. This time it was the Hindu community. The second time that she returned from India after her husband died, Saima decided that she would live on her own and start working. She joined an international non-profit organization and slowly made her away up the professional hierarchy. In the meantime she also completed her post-graduate degree from Denmark in development studies. Now she plans to go for another post-graduate degree in Austria, however at the moment she is having issues getting her clearance from the special branch, a requirement of the visa. Saima Jasim belongs to one of the few Hindus in Lahore who are not shy of their identity, but rather proud of it. This causes a lot of problems for her, like it did for her father. As part of her professional work she covers sensitive topics such as honour-killing, bonded labour, and rape of female child workers. Her work is criticised by right-winged media as being an attempt to malign the Muslim Pakistan, as she ‘basically remains a Hindu’, even after her conversion. She is sometimes even accused of being a RAW agent, she jokes. According to her one of the problems with her getting the clearance of the visa is that since she is a Hindu convert, it is thought that she would malign Pakistan abroad. In the face of brutal adversity Saima Jasim stands tough, as the proud daughter of a proud man. At the end of the interview I was in awe at the strength the woman possesses. As I walked back to my car I wondered why most of the inspiring people that I have met in real life happen to be women.
A
bond of blood Dengue patients in Lahore have had a high mortality rate and usually it is the fallen platelet count in the blood that costs life. The dengue virus hampers and sometimes destroys the body’s capacity to produce new platelets. The normal body’s platelet count is 150,000-250,000 per ?l of blood. A dengue patients platelet count may have a steep fall and become lower than 100,000 per ?l (mm3). This is alarming because it can impede clotting, cause hemorrhages and result in internal and external bleeding. Once the bleeding starts, it is often irrecoverable. “Government hospitals have a vast network of donors, emergency contacts of donors, stock of the most common blood groups and even co-ordination with other hospitals,” says Dr Syed Sohbin, the Additional Medical Superintendent (ADMS)of Jinnah Hospital. He adds that each hospital has a blood bank and a Blood Bank Officer. Usually, it is the family members who donate but the hospital can also provide donors. There has been a dearth of blood donations in the city, which was utterly unprepared for an epidemic of this scale. However, the efforts of Lahore’s civil society have been commendable in this regard. “We do not deal with blood donations and transmission but right now we are, due to the emergency conditions. We are doing the CBC test for blood count for Rs50. However, we cannot arrange donors and the patient has to do that himself. Usually it is a family member or relative,” says Anwar Iqbal, manager of Fatimid Foundation. He adds that the staff duty timings are 9 to 7, but these days they have to stay back late - sometimes till 2 in the morning - and they almost never refuse a patient in need. A blood donation is not very easy to obtain because many people fear disease transfusion and any weakness that might follow. But much of this fear is baseless because blood transfusion has become rather advanced. Hospitals, even government ones are very particular and strict about hygiene, blood screening for Hepatitis, HIV, Syphilis and malaria and they work hard towards safe syringe disposal too. The syringe enters the dustbin only when its needle is broken and this ensures that it cannot be reused. The donor is ideally
aged between 20 to 40 years. This is because by the age of 20, the donor
has fully grown bones, where blood is generated and past the age of 40,
the donor is slightly aged and might have developed health complications
already. Males are encouraged as compared to females because the latter
lose blood every month and are often short of haemoglobin and iron. One almost incorrigible problem is finding O-negative blood, a rare group that can donate to everyone but receives blood exclusively from within the O-negative group. Although a very small percentage of population is O-negative and there is a balance of donors and recipients, the dengue outbreak has caused a supply mismatch and significant shortage. “We do not have Cell Separators, which are very swift, effective but a little expensive. Its chief benefit is that it can sieve platelets alone out of the blood, making the blood group of the donor and recipient is irrelevant” says Anwar Iqbal of Fatimid Foundation. He adds that Fatimid has a Cryofugue, which is slower and not as efficient. But it is cheaper. However the biggest disadvantage is that it cannot sieve the platelets alone and the blood groups of donors and recipients have to be compatible. Dr. Syed Sohbin of Jinnah Hospital states that government hospitals maintain “special lists” for this rare blood group but usually someone in the family, parents or siblings is also of the same group and can help. The cell separators are present in some private and government hospitals. The demand is however much greater than the supply, and some cell separators in the government hospitals require repair. Those in the private sector require Rs 13-15 thousand per transfusion and are unaffordable for the vast majority of Pakistanis. Many social workers and activists utilised social networking sites to find donors, not just for their loved ones but also for a much larger network of people in need. Emails, SMSes, Facebook, Twitter and other media were used to appeal for blood donations. Most appeals have a phone number attached. On Facebook, not just personal profiles but other groups having a large following like “Go Green” and “Justice For Imanae Malik”, have been leveraged for this noble cause. Shahid Khan, who works for ACCA, started using the online venues for his relatives in need but soon expanded his network because of the encouraging response. Now he is facilitating the treatment of his colleague’s pregnant sister and another friend’s O-negative mother who have developed complications. “Since I use references when online, people respond to me within 3 to 4 hours” The screening and testing takes a few more hours so he is often able to help patients within 10 to 15 hours of his posting online. He praises a website called bloodforlife.com.pk - a network of blood donors that rarely disappoints one in their hour of need. Hopefully, this new trend in community service will continue and such co-operation will extend to other spheres of medical aid - and life in general.
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