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October 31, 2003
Islamabad: Its Beauty & Oddities
As you travel from the Islamabad airport towards the capital of Pakistan, a distance of not more than eight miles, your attention is immediately arrested by two things while you are still some five miles from the city: the verdant crescent of the Margalla Hills and the majestic Faisal Mosque sitting on a high terraced land almost at the foot of the hills and dominating the skyline of the city.
The Margalla Hills - the little Himalayas - constitute a major attraction of Islamabad and positively influence not only the physical climate of the city but also the cultural, social and economic life of the residents. For, the city nestles in the lap of the Margalla. The closer a house is to the Margalla, the higher is its value. Not only that, a house facing the hills has a higher price tag than a house right opposite to it facing in the other direction.
The Faisal Mosque is a major contribution of man to the scenic beauty of the area. Without this mosque, Islamabad would have been like Agra without the Taj Mahal, Pisa without the Leaning Tower, or Anaheim here in California without the Disneyland.
This grand and conspicuous national mosque symbolizes the commanding influence of faith in the life of the people of Pakistan. Small mosques, each with its own architectural beauty, are located in each of the sub-sectors with a relatively bigger mosque in the center of every sector.
The hills, the mosque and a salubrious, wholesome climate are not the only attractions of Islamabad. The construction from scratch of this city began in 1960, but in less than a decade it had already emerged as one of the new national capitals of the 20th century. Not much later it could boast a number of playgrounds, green belts, gardens, fountains, avenues, shopping centers, radio and TV headquarters, numerous newspapers, multi-storied commercial and government buildings, a vast hospital complex, parliament building, Presidential palace, Prime Minister’s Secretariat and his majestic residence, a sports complex, a zoo of sorts, and a vast city park.
Almost all creature comforts and amenities of modern living are available in the city. But, that is exactly what has created the oddities and given it a paradoxical character.
Islamabad strikes one as a patch of the 20th century on a 19th century tapestry: it is an island of ‘haves’ surrounded by a vast sea of ‘have-nots’. Islamabad does not epitomize life elsewhere in the country. As a wit has put it, Pakistan is fifteen miles away from Islamabad.
From the heart of the adjoining Rawalpindi city to the center of Islamabad one travels a mere twelve miles in terms of space but perhaps a century in terms of time. In an elitist society, a city for the elite was inevitable.
Islamabad was originally meant to be a civil servants’ town like Ottawa, Washington or Canberra. But, with the shift from Karachi to Islamabad of the nation’s policy-making apparatus, and given the concentration of power in the political leadership and bureaucracy, and the pendulum of power swinging, from time to time, between the civil and military leaders, both having their headquarters here, the elite of the society made a bee-line to the blossoms of the burgeoning new seat of power.
The feudal lords, the industrial magnates, the commercial houses, the wheeler-dealers, and the nouveau riche all found it beneficial to have places (palaces) of their own in this seat of power. Building a house in Islamabad became their favorite pastime. It provided them and their spouses an opportunity of relieving the tedium of affluence. Some of the houses reflect the indigestion of the wealth (ill-gotten?) of the owners. Given to ostentatious living, they have sunk enormous amounts into turning the faces of their houses as unique, striking and imposing facades.
That is not all. You will find three things as symbols of the owner belonging to the elite particularly the nouveau riche - a dish antenna on the roof or terrace looking askance at the sky, a Pajero luxury jeep (SUV) in the portico, a couple of gun-carrying bodyguards, and a member of the household carrying in his/her hand a cellular phone. Being expensive to maintain by the middle class and even by many of the well-to-do, the phone serves chiefly as a symbol of social and financial status. No one in Islamabad is that busy or indispensable that he should be accessible on phone all the time. The really busy try to escape from their telephone sets that keep crying for their attention.
The social and intellectual life of Islamabad, its sights, sounds and smells, and its tempo, are not the same as in the rest of the country. A writer from Karachi said this on a visit: “Islamabad is a strangely beautiful city. It has evolved its own distinct culture, so different from the rest of the country. At times one wonders the city doesn’t belong to Pakistan. No burning of car tires on the roads, no pelting of stones, no broken lamps, no slogan mongering, no graffiti on the walls.... Soon after sunset, the birds, beasts and ‘babus’ of Islamabad are back in their nests.”
The above observation was made during the time of Nawaz Shrif’s rule. It was soon overtaken unfortunately by developments triggered by his government’s financial mismanagement, particularly the decision to freeze foreign exchange accounts, increase the prices of petrol and utilities, impose general sales tax, and other unpopular measures. Country-wide agitation and strikes, continuous price hikes, unprecedented inflation and erosion of the value of the currency, combined to cause a havoc in the lives of the ‘babus’ who are dependent on fixed salaries.
An income for them became a mere teaser - they could hardly live without or within. Inflation had eroded their purchasing power but the financial ‘wizards’ of Nawaz Sharif kept reassuring him that it was negligible. A little inflation is like a littler pregnancy - it keeps growing till severe birth pangs set in and bring forth a new life, and a new leader.
The regime has changed and many things are said to have conspicuously improved. Islamabad has become cleaner, greener and perhaps more beautiful and attractive. Even the ruling elite, traditionally impervious and insensitive to the pain and pathos of the clerk and the common man and his family, are said to be more responsive.
The political scenario presents to the newspaper reading public a very amusing oddity. College graduate members of the Assembly move like puppets on the political stage. Their strings are firmly in the hands of their leaders living and enjoying life in London, Jeddah or elsewhere. The leaders are abroad, their spokesmen, surrogates and agents are in Islamabad and followers are stranded all over the country. Even in the docile civil servants town, these patsy politicians lead marches chanting: No LFO, No. The Madarsa-graduate Maulanas join in the chorus with their flowing beards and robes, colorful turbans, flowery speeches and cloudy schemes. Islamabad thus presents now a political potpourri of multifarious parties and pursuits bringing some color into the prosaic lives of the ‘babus’ and providing them with material for their cathartic evening chats with friends and families.
They may rank quite low in the graded hierarchy of Islamabad officialdom, but they have undoubtedly enough common sense to know who is conducting the political orchestra and to whose music, and whether the slim rod he wields is a wand or a swagger stick.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
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