Those were the days
It
is hard to believe that Pakistan was once a gentle country. It is even
harder to believe that some of the most wonderful people lived here. All
that seems like a misty memory which has little relevance as you face
the day’s first rude slaps. A friend passed me an interesting short
article about the Anglo-Indians who lived and worked in what is now
India and Pakistan. The Anglos are long gone swallowed up by the mists
of time, driven out from here to fend for themselves. But in their
extinction lies a bigger tragedy.
The Anglo Indians were fun people. But more than the singular expertise
they brought to the jobs that became traditionally their forte, they
added a swing, vibrancy and a sheer joy of living spirit to our society
that in many ways epitomised the new, fresh spirit that was Pakistan.
That was then. Now it’s a fading sepia tone picture. Those of us who
grew up with them, watched with considerable sadness as family after
family left this country to go and live in alien climes. There was
nothing left for them. They were wise in retrospect. Look at our
bestiality towards our minorities. But while the Anglo Indians were
here, they gave us a unique gift. The joy of living and of being alive.
The Anglos were a British creation – some say a hideous British blunder.
Although the British Empire at one point held absolute power in over 52
countries there was only one undisputed ‘jewel’ in the royal crown.
India. It was part of their policy to protect this jewel from within as
well and so began a policy of encouraging British males to marry Indian
women – Anglo Indians who would intrinsically be at home with British
mannerisms and always do the ‘pucca’ thing yet be more English than
Indian in their thinking, a defensive ring around British interests and
way of life. Many experts believe that had it not been for them, the
British Empire in India would have collapsed. Ethnically engineered,
they were the only micro-minority community ever to be defined in a
country’s constitution and yet the irony was that they were a race
without a country!
The Anglos were no ordinary people. In India and later Pakistan, they
virtually ran the railways, post & telegraph, police, customs,
education, nursing, healthcare, import/export, shipping, tea, coffee &
tobacco plantations, coal mines and gold reserves. Thus Anglos became
great teachers, nurses, priests and doctors and the girls, debonair,
confident, skilful became the best executive secretaries, special
assistants and office managers. There was no one to match them.
But it was their colourful and vibrant approach to everyday life that
was so infectious about them. Like all small communities, they
segregated into enclaves that were all their own. The Anglo-Indians were
truly spirited people, fired with a zest to work and party hard. The
boys were typically razor sharp, cutting deals that would invariably
begin with lines like, ‘I say bugga you know what happened? That bugga
Tony, man he screwed me real good, bugga took my damn cash bugga and
disappeared.’ And the reply, ‘You don’t say bugga,’ and ‘I’m tellin’ ya,
ask Fernandez man – Tony rogered him too man,’ ‘Say swear,’ ‘Swear bugga
this Tony cat, man he’s somethin’ else,’ and on and on went the stories.
There were always stories.
The Anglos were superb musicians and dancers. The floors (toba, toba)
were full on Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons, jam sessions – and
other handy occasions – sometimes they didn’t even need to have a
reason. At the hangouts, Karachi particularly and Lahore catching up all
the time and Sam’s in Murree, the Anglo Indians could set a floor on
fire as they jived, jitterbugged, rocked & rolled, swung, waltzed or
shook sensuously to Latin-flavoured mind blowing melodies. And it was on
the dance floors that you saw girls who could break your heart with just
a look, hair tossing, laughing their pretty heads off as adept and
handsome male escorts took them through the paces.
The Anglos congregated in special areas within the cities where they
made warm, inviting homes. In Lahore, they were behind The Indus Hotel
on The Mall, in the environs of the railway colony and in residential
areas where family names like D’souzas were as common as Mohammad Iqbals
today. In Karachi names like Preedy Street, Elphi were synonymous with
them. Wherever they were - they were not very affluent, but you were
always welcomed with a cold beer, a quick shot if it was nippy and at
Xmas time, the special cakes made to order with each family guarding its
secret recipe passed from generation to generation. There was the Burt
Institute, the Railway Colony to name just two and then there were the
clubs and nightspots. In Karachi there were many and even more there
were the musicians – row upon row who filled these and played jazz, rock
even fusion – or whatever you fancied. The bands grew on trees. The
Strollers, Francisco Boys, The Bugs, The Cossacks, Willie Po and the
Boys, The Incrowd (inspired by that superb hit from Ramsey Lewis and
quite the rage then), The Drifters, The Panthers, The Talisman Set (see
their group picture, faded and blurry and you could mistake them for The
Jackson Five), Bloody What’s the Matter? (Yes there was a group called
just that), The Keynotes, Flintstone, The Fatah Brothers, Captivators
and the Saints of Rawalpindi (now surely replaced by the devils
incarnate).
Nightclubs with foreign acts especially in Karachi were the rage.
Agents, artists, con men, musicians, strippers, belly dancers all
arrived and exited at this hustling port city. Jazz legends like Count
Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Byrd, Benny Carter, Quincy Jones (who
gave Michael Jackson that memorable beat heard in ‘Billie Jean’ and who
was to give MJ some great musical direction) – they all came here and
they loved Karachi and this country called Pakistan, where there was
hardly any crime worth mentioning and nobody knew how to use bombs leave
alone the killer guns. ‘If someone fired a shot in midair in Golimar,’
muses a gentleman from those days, ‘the word would spread through
Karachi like fire.’ But that was a Karachi that was perhaps just a
million not burgeoning at all ends with an estimated 14 million now. And
although someone recalls that ‘the city was planned differently but grew
differently’, Karachi started to disintegrate before our eyes in the
70s.
The 1972 laws enforced by ZAB to please the fundos broke the spirit of
all of us, particularly the Anglo Indians. Bars, discos, clubs all shut
down in fear. Suddenly hosts of musicians and other artists had no
livelihood. ‘Tolerance went up in smoke,’ recalls one sad person. Came
1979 and the evil Zia and the coup de grace forced the Anglos to escape,
migrate anywhere they could go. They left by the droves, never to come
back. The clubs died, the dance floors uprooted, the many services they
offered fell by the wayside. In driving out this small community, we dug
our own graves. We rapidly became soulless, grey, hypocritical and
boring. With them gone, an integral part of decent civilian life was
snuffed out. Guns replaced guitars. The scorched landscape that we
inherited, now mocks us. Laughter has changed to anguish. Pakistan may
be a ‘hard country’, but it is also a barren and desolate land. One
gentleman of the fabled 60s sums it all up in one line: ‘Those days are
gone. They will not come back.’ Quite an epitaph wouldn’t you agree?
Masood Hasan
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email:
masoodhasan66@gmail.com
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