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October 10, 2003
The Pangs of Waiting
(The following piece was written while waiting for a friend’s letter from Islamabad.)
The tedium of waiting needs no introduction. Every one goes through it, yet every one would like to rebut it, as it is slightly demeaning, reeks of helplessness and shows we are not fully in command ourselves. Of course we are not, but few would admit that.
The pain and seeming endlessness of waiting begins at cradle, goes through many permutations, assumes various disguises but is always as native to us as our breathing. But, no body is proud of it, except Urdu poets. Pick up the compendium -devan- of any Urdu poet from Wali Dakhani and Qutubshah to Naser Kazmi and Ahmad Faraaz, you will find a good number of couplets portraying the pathos of separation from or the throes of waiting for the beloved. Here are some examples.
Jab tera intezar hota hai
Aur dil beqarar hota hai (Mir)
Uss kay efai-e-ahd tak na jeye
Umr nay hum say bewafai ki (Mir)
Yeh na thi hamari qismat kay visal-e-yar hota
Agar aur jetay rahtay yahi entezar hota (Ghalib)
Umr-e-draz mang key la’aye thay char din
Du arzu mein kat gai du intezar mein (Zafar)
Mer ker bhi ayegi yeh sada qabr-e-joosh say
Baidard mein nay tujhko bhulaya naheen hanooz (Josh)
Western culture has taken care of this particular problem of the Urdu poets, of the East in general, through its system of dating. The age of romance and of courtship came to an end in the West once speed was accepted as the essence of almost all facets of life. Speedy liaisons and their speedy breakups became the norm with all their attendant complications. Quick relationships, fostered further over the past decade by the Internet, have benefited mainly the radio and TV talk shows providing grist for their mills. The quick fix of physical urges has, more often than not, spawned numerous heart-aches and psychological ailments.
Apart from its role in gender relations, waiting takes many other forms.There is the angry waiting, the plaintive waiting, and the almost cheerful waiting in which we believe for certain that the phone call or the letter will come presently. (Had it come, this column wouldn’t have seen the light of day).
Do women wait more than men do? Yes, I think so. They suffer nausea and wait for nine long months to give birth to new life and the source of new thrills and expectations.
Men wait too. They wait for the promotion; they wait for the prize; they wait for the income tax refund. They wait with much libido for the opportunity, be it in politics or in business, to strike a blow to vanquish their competitor or rival. Very often, the strike seems to be more impassioned than the very principle about which they are debating.
Prayer itself is a form of waiting but fortified with a glimmer of faith and perhaps of hope. For those who pray or chant with great perseverance, there is the suggestion that their waiting has been converted into purposefulness.
As already mentioned, we do not wait for love only; we wait for money, we wait for the weather to get warmer or colder; we wait for the power shortages to end (they don’t, only the utility bill goes up). We wait for the city plumber to come and fix the busted water main (he doesn’t); we wait for a friend to speak to some city official to pressure the water supply wing (he doesn’t either).
We wait for our hair to grow (some more fall). We wait for our children/grandchildren outside the school (they prefer to play soccer). We wait for this or that medical test, and we wait for the pain in the back to ease (it persists despite the ‘miracle rub’). We wait to visit the green fields of the country side for their fresh air and the warmth of the country folks (they look suspiciously at you). Then, we wait for the train or the bus to ferry us home to the city to our props, our own chair, our own bed and our own habits.
We wait for dreams, then we wait to be hauled out of our dreams and wait for dawn, the routine, placid breakfast, the first ring of the phone, the advancing day, the rush and hectic activity and the prospect of a relaxed evening and soothing sleep.
Back home in Pakistan, waiting has a touch of masochism indoors, takes on a martial turn outdoors. We join the army of waiting people to cross the street, to catch a bus. Every catch-able bar or projection on the bus, we find, has some one already hanging by it. The driver therefore doesn’t stop to take on another bat-man.
If you happen to drive down there in your own car, you have to keep going in circles to find a vacant parking space. You discover that a parking space is a place where a car is already parked. If you want to take a taxi, you have to wait for hours as a taxi is a cab which is almost always occupied by passengers.
Waiting for a taxi is one thing, but waiting for a friend is quite a different experience. There is no dearth of friends who are always late; time is not a factor that matters to them. One wonders what matters!
I used to endure it, but I no longer can for more than a few minutes: corrupted by the norm of punctuality in the US, I suppose. Ten minutes and I feel an implosion, twenty minutes and it is an explosion.
Karachiites enjoy keeping their guests waiting for hours at marriages and valimas. They may be believing in the old adage that those who wait get the reward, haste makes waste. If you point out that the early bird gets the worm, they retort: ‘Who wants to eat the worm?’
The Karachiwalas are so persistent in their tradition of keeping the guests waiting that even the bursts of automatic weapons do not make them rush through a function.
Fishermen are the best at waiting. You see them on the banks of lakes and dams, perched on their haunches on uncomfortable boulders, rod and line motionless in the water, with the contemplativeness of cows chewing the cud.
An inmate of a mental asylum peeps out of his window to find a man in a boat fishing in the adjoining lake. The inmate asks:
How long you been fishing?
Four hours.
How many did you catch?
None.
Man, you sure are on the wrong side of the lake!
The famous wit, Dr. Samuel Johnson, has described a fishing rod as a long pole with a line, hook and bait on side and a fool on the other.
Waiting for a friend’s letter puts one in the fisherman’s boat with Dr. Johnson’s fishing pole in hand. Evidently, one cannot force the hearts and minds of other people to do what we want them to do at the precise moment we want it done. We can only wait despite, as mentioned at the outset, this striking as demeaning and reflective of our helplessness. We have to put up with the pangs of waiting, as there is no alternative to it.
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