KARACHI CHRONICLE: Murder of merriment

If the grandson of the late Nawab Akbar Bugti had not lost his life in an armed clash at a dance party last weekend, the incident would have been virtually ignored by the news media and would have figured only in a paragraph of the crime reporter's daily roundup of murders and killings that have become routine in Karachi.
This is not the first time that a party of the affluent young has been marred by an armed clash ending in the deaths of and injuries to party goers. The rich are as gun happy as the thieves and thugs in the city. It is normal for them to carry a gun if they are going out to a picnic at the beach or a farm in the outskirts of the city. Many also have a weapon in the pocket of their party dress at weddings, especially the dholki which among the affluent is also a booze party, and even fund raisers.
They own the latest, most sophisticated hand-guns. Of course, they also have armed bodyguards whose weapons are showy such as Kalashnikovs and AK-74 rifles. In either case the weapon is a status symbol in the same way that a tin of 555 cigarettes used to be in the times of their forefathers. The other status symbol is the latest mobile phone multi-function gadget. The third status symbol cannot be brought inside as it is a vehicle. Their forefathers also thought of the car as a status symbol but they liked the two seaters Racers and cars with cats eyes and wings and vroom. Rather childish compared to the current status symbols, the great menacing beasts or four-wheelers. In short, menace is the status symbol.
Why do today's rich young men need to project a menacing image of themselves? Their forefathers, who had seen action in the world wars, and the Independence Movement and were found of blood sport such as hunting for big game did not walk about with a gun or bodyguards. Their descendents have no experience of real danger and it has turned them gutless. Conscious of their cowardice, they pretend to be macho heroes.
It is a dangerous pretence because they are hypersensitive of their image and pull out a gun at the slightest most trivial provocation. In the case of DHA party the gun fight was said to have begun when some of Taaley Bugti's friends allagedly wanted to gatecrash the party and were not being allowed in. In another incident, during wedding festivity which included a booze party a well-dressed drunken lout was walking out with a full bottle under his arm. When he was stopped he pulled out a gun. He did not think the hosts had any right to prevent him from walking away with a full bottle of alcohol. Another tragedy was the pointless killing of a young man in a quarrel as to who was to dance with one very pretty and popular girl at a party. The wife of the man who shot his friend still suffers and has become slightly insane. In yet another incident a similar trivial disagreement led to a armed clash in which many young men were injured. One of them lost his leg when the wound, hidden for some days, became gangrenous. These are only some real incidents I am aware of but they should suffice to illustrate the attitude of the affluent young.
Among them bravery is not a value. Anybody who stands up to defend the week is dubbed foolhardy. In Karachi the affluent have forgotten they have a duty to protect the weak and the poor in their society. They are self-centered and brought up to think only of their own safety. They are pampered and bred in cottonwool, they are not even allowed to participate in sports which are dangerous, such as mountaineering. There mothers would die if the darling boys suffered any fatal injury.
The gutlessness of the well-to-do in Karachi was told to me by a girl working in the bank near the American Consulate (former). When a bomb blast shook the very foundations of the buildings near the Consulate and made the glass windows of the bank rattle, the young men began to cry like children. They felt helpless, they did not think it was a shame to weep openly and make a public display of their fear.
A point to note is that armed clashes of the affluent always happen at parties. And in almost all incidents the players are drunk. Another notable point is that the females do not carry guns, but a few can be as drunk as their male companions. These facts have provided a lot of material to those who condemn what they call westernised society or the society of "high gentry". I agree with the "high" part of the description, but not in the sense of status. High as in slang for drunk or drugged. Drinks and drugs go together.
Drinks and drugs have been around since the beginning and they are not just the rich who indulge. However, in the bygone days one only heard of drunken brawls among the affluent. It is only in the past few decades that guns have replaced fisticuffs. Drinks and drugs are not in themselves status symbols. Some might want to distinguish among the classes by saying that in the middle or lower class the women are not brazen. True, but that does not mean in these classes females do not indulge in drinks and drugs.
So why pick on the affluent alone as being the bad eggs in our society? One must not lose sight of the fact that evil also exists in other stratas of society. In the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies the idea of fun, pastime and merriment was to go to the cinema, for a walk on the Kothari parade, or the beach, or head for the cafes and ice cream parlours. At night there were clubs and dance shows and stage drama. Young men often went to Bohri Bazaar to ogle the girls. (They were not eve teasers, just liked to ogle).
Things changed drastically in Zia's regime and his so-called Islamisation, and the introduction of Kalashnikov culture in Karachi. The outdoors were not safe, clubs were closed, all merriment suppressed. The good and bad kinds of merriment went indoors and there they have stayed, breeding more wrong-doing than good clean fun.