What is it about visiting Pakistan that sends one into such an absolute high of exhilarating excitement? The sights, the sounds, the smells—even the gigantic billboards promising longer hair and a creamier complexion seem to contribute to the intoxication. There are the warm, puffed-up phulkas arriving with every meal, the almost lyrical taste of the daal, and the crisp parathas accompanied by a warm, creamy cup of coffee, sweetened precisely as I like it. Everything seems perfect, redolent of an earlier life, and faintly reminiscent of one’s youth.
The skies are blue, the temperature hovers in the seventies, and the distant strains of the azaan have an almost soporific sweetness. Friends and family compete in their invitations to lunches and dinners, while new boutiques and gleaming malls tempt one with haute couture at prices that would be scarcely believable elsewhere. There is a heady sense of abundance, of being wanted, of belonging. One is swept along by it all. Everything is so familiar, yet somehow so new. Everything so ordinary, yet so electrifying.
And then, ever so gradually, the spell begins to weaken.
Beneath the bonhomie and good cheer, one begins to sense a more uncomfortable reality. The domestic staff, initially all smiles and courtesies, begin to talk of their health problems and the relentlessly escalating cost of living. Conversations acquire a subdued undertone as people mutter, almost beneath their breath, about a state that seems increasingly intrusive and controlling, where the freedom to speak and write openly is becoming an endangered luxury.
Everything seems perfect, redolent of an earlier life, and faintly reminiscent of one’s youth
The initial incandescence of those exhilarating days begins to dim. The traffic becomes less an adventure than an ordeal. Young motorcyclists weave through the most improbable gaps with a devil-may-care indifference to their own safety and everyone else’s. And then there is the inevitable gastrointestinal rebellion, which puts an abrupt end to one’s ambitions of sampling every tempting morsel of street food and drinking freshly squeezed pomegranate juice. The body, it seems, has its own rather undiplomatic opinions about the pleasures of returning home.
Slowly, the veneer of effortless happiness begins to wear thin. The lunches, dinners, valimas, family reunions, and endless rounds of socialising, delightful as they are, begin to lose some of their intoxicating appeal. One finds oneself turning, almost instinctively, towards the things that had seemed less urgent in the first flush of arrival: the work that needs to be done, the schools in Wah that need attention, and the children whose prospects might be improved by a little time, effort, and the sharing of whatever good fortune life has bestowed upon us.
Perhaps this is the inevitable progression of a visit to Pakistan. One arrives intoxicated by its sensory abundance, seduced by its familiarity, and delighted by the warmth of its people. One then encounters the harsher realities that lie just beneath the surface of this convivial world. And finally, one remembers that the real satisfaction of being here may lie in something more enduring than the pleasures of the table or the endless round of social engagements.
After all, the daal will always be delicious, the parathas irresistible, and the invitations to dinner seemingly inexhaustible. But the deeper pleasure, the one that survives the fading of the initial euphoria, comes from being able to contribute something meaningful to the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves, and to share, in however modest a measure, the abundance with which we have been blessed.