Tunnel Vision (29 page)

Okay, maybe I
'
d missed out on the clarity.

Society had created a new kind of Pakistani woman, but failed to evolve around her. What if I scratched Saad
'
s surface and found just good old Primitive Man? Did I want to find out first-hand how there were many hooris but no shahzada gulfams?

Watching the old woman standing petrified at the foot of the bed as if pouring all her will into her mate, I did want to. I wanted to matter to somebody other than my blood relatives. I wanted to matter, to anybody, for reasons that had to do with my self and not with the blood that ran in my veins. I wanted to be first on some other soul
'
s list of priorities, like that old man was to that old woman.

The woman seemed oblivious to the storm around her. Body rigid, eyes fixed on his closed lids, lips moving soundlessly, the fingers of her right hand reached out and stroked his foot, skin touching skin in supplication. Stay. Be. Live. For me. When had I last seen such tenderness? Abba brushing Ammi
'
s hair. When had I last felt it for myself? Saad brushing mine, in the charged privacy of a guest room at Najma
'
s house. When had I last dispensed it, this electrical current of love frying synapses in the beloved
'
s brain, overloading his circuits with need?

The worst thing about anger was the way it killed the softness, wiped out all that was inviting and sinuous till there was nothing but planes and angles. As a kid I was different. Kinder. Now I was a surface upon which emotional bungee jumping would most certainly prove fatal. No wonder Saad had disappeared, he must be finding it hard to cope with the thing I had become.

I started thinking about the Betinate episode, the last time I had proactively tried to change anything. Would I have done the same if I found myself in the same position today?

PHIR MILANGAY PYARAY

BACK OF RICKSHAW

~

B
etinate, and its rather abrupt withdrawal from the market was a watershed for Raja Pharmaceuticals. Like any good foot-soldiers, we in sales were aware that
‘
ours was not to reason why, ours but to do or die
'
, but whenever I was given a new product I had taken to doing web searches to find out all I could about it in addition to the practically unreadable literature that was given to us. A salesman would be good at his job only if he believed, albeit temporarily, in what he was selling. And some of the sales teams had postgraduate degrees. They were doing a crummy job through no fault of their own. If I could provide them with extra information that could help them make a sale, why not? People who had spent that much time struggling to meet the costs of higher education deserved to be treated better than glorified peons delegated the task of ferrying literature from source to buyer. And morale had gone up after I had initiated weekly staff meetings to talk about new products. Some of the old guard had voiced objections to my
‘
airy fairy
'
approach, but they just resented the bite it took out of their leisure time.

Betinate was a widely prescribed cough syrup, manufactured and distributed by my company, under licence from an international pharma giant. It was one of those drugs that move with the times, having been in vogue even when I was a kid, the company constantly updated its advertising and packaging, so each new tier of buyers felt it was contemporary, even recently developed. That wasn
'
t true, of course, little had changed about Betinate in the decades it had been around in Pakistan, except its name. I knew that. I was comfortable with that. What I wasn
'
t comfortable with was a discovery I made while web surfing one day. Browsing through bulletin boards and forums centred around pharmaceutical products in the hopes of discovering some undiscovered positive aspects of Betinate that might help us update its marketing, I came across a recent posting about its status in most European countries. Banned, in light of studies that suggested it facilitated the development of certain inherited conditions. I did a more thorough search.

Not surprisingly, the American and European position was the same. Banned after several independent studies verified the same conclusion. The pharma giant, American owned, no longer produced the drug, marketed here under another name, and had recalled any existing shelf stock in response to a public outcry. Yet, and I double-checked the dates, that pharma giant had recently renewed our license to produce Betinate. Very recently. As in post-negative studies.

Never having learnt to leave well enough alone, I went to R&D in the benighted hope that they had somehow not been apprised of this very important development.

‘
Er …
'
my contact person had hemmed and hawed for nearly a minute when I burst into his cubicle and blurted out what I had read,
‘
really?
'

‘
Yes, really! Can you believe it?
'

‘
Er … no … are you sure it
'
s from a credible source?
'

‘
Once I knew what to look for I found similar postings on several governmental and NGO lists, as well as a recent FDA alert.
'

They might drop bombs on other people
'
s children, but America sure tried to look after its own. It might be having a tough time finding any fans in the greater Muslim world lately, but I thought we could do with absorbing some of its consumer protection ideology. As I thought about it, watching Ahsan the R&D man shift his weight from one foot to the other and refuse to meet my eye, it struck me that R&D at least was constantly updated on American FDA alerts. It wasn
'
t possible that they didn
'
t know about it.

‘
Ahsan,
'
I planted myself so close to him that he had no choice but to look at me,
‘
you know all this already, don
'
t you?
'

‘
Of course not!
'
But he still wouldn
'
t meet my eye.

‘
If you don
'
t, that means you haven
'
t been doing your job properly. You
'
re subscribed to a lot of these lists, it isn
'
t possible that it hasn
'
t crossed your screen.
'

‘
We
'
re a big company. We have scores of products. I can
'
t keep track of all the information about them that crosses my screen.
'

‘
Fine. I
'
ll go talk to your boss then,
'
I headed for the door.

‘
It won
'
t do you any good,
'
Ahsan said in a sulky voice, as if he were a reluctant pupil in front of a scary headmistress.
‘
Don
'
t make a fuss about a little thing!
'

‘
A little thing? You know people have died because of this?
'

‘
People die all the time. And this drug has never killed anyone.
'

‘
It
'
s catalyzed conditions that have led to the users
'
deaths, so indirectly, yes it has.
'

‘
A mere fraction. Buses in Karachi hit more people every day. In fact more people get run over by trains, in broad daylight.
'

‘
We prescribe it to children.
'

‘
And it helps them.
'

‘
They
'
re taking a risk without being aware of it.
'

‘
They would take it even if they knew. God
'
s will, remember,
'
Ahsan grinned,
‘
or do you marketer
'
s really think you
'
re God?
'

‘
I
'
m not a marketer, Ahsan. I manage a sales team.
'

‘
Then do your job and don
'
t interfere in mine.
'

That
'
s when I started getting really irritated.

‘
It is part of my job to have all the information required to enable my team to meet their targets. And if there is information out there that means they shouldn
'
t be making any sales at all, they need to know about that too.
'
Tone level, voice icy, let
'
s see if it worked for someone other than Ammi.

‘
Look, the information you
'
re so obsessed with is just speculation, okay, probably fuelled by some competitor. No one ever takes these kinds of accusations seriously here anyway. People have more important things to think about than what some cough syrup may or may not do to children.
'

‘
Like what? Kashmir? Palestine? Israel? India? Making sure whichever bill might damage their interests doesn
'
t get passed? Arguing about whether the moon is visible or not? I
'
m so sick of this tunnel vision! When are we going to pay attention to the things that really matter?
'
I knew my mouth was running away with me again, connecting dots only I seemed to be able to see. No one else seemed to care about the interconnectedness of it all, poverty and war-mongering, corruption and healthcare, illiteracy and misogyny, apathy and unethical business practices. I knew these thoughts swirled through other people
'
s heads too, they had to, but we were all just so mired in indifference. Ahsan, for instance, an intelligent, educated man, wore his blinkers like an optical foreskin, keeping out all the nasty germs and the dreaded thought virus. Half of us Pakistanis might be circumcised, but we needed a whole different wave of scalpel slashing aimed a little further up the anatomy. Well, I wasn
'
t going to let myself slide into callousness. God had given me a brain for a reason and it wasn
'
t to merely fill the space between my ears.

‘
If you
'
re done with your lecture, I need to get back to work,
'
Ahsan turned his back to me. A slap in the face for do-gooder Ayesha. I went rushing to his boss, stopping only to print out the most damning indictment of the Betinate concoction from my office PC. But those few minutes cost me, because when I was ushered into the R&D head honcho
'
s office he wasn
'
t alone. Ahsan was already sitting in one of the two chairs facing his giant desk. He got up to leave as an obsequious secretary ushered me in but Mr Irfan waved him back down.

‘
What can I do for you Bibi?
'
What a subtle reminder of my status! Bibi. A patronizing way to address a woman when it hinted at a respect that was not actually given.

Ironic considering how endearing it seemed when Saad began to use it later …

‘
I have some concerns about one of our products.
'

‘
What kind of concerns?
'

I explained. In succinct detail. But it was apparent he wasn
'
t listening to me. He was looking somewhere to my left, at the wall behind me. I stopped and turned to see what had caught his eye and faced only a blank wall. I turned back to him and he was scribbling on a piece of paper. He looked up when I didn
'
t resume, his eyes stopping at the printout clenched in my hand.

‘
Continue …
'

‘
All right,
'
I said pleasantly,
‘
but you don
'
t seem to be listening.
'

‘
What makes you say that?
'

‘
Well, you
'
re not even looking at me.
'

‘
If I did, you
'
d be offended, if I don
'
t look you
'
re offended. The fact is, I don
'
t need to look at you. I can hear you perfectly well.
'

I caught sight of the dark mark in the centre of his forehead and slapped myself. Of course, the classic Namazi. Would skip important meetings to pray. Insisted on taking a mid-day nap on his sofa during Ramadan. Had an all-male staff and did the talawat at the AGM every year. No wonder he wasn
'
t looking at me. But if he were truly a religious man, he would take my concerns seriously. So I pressed on, my hopes rising at the thought of appealing to someone who respected the wrath of God and wanted to stay in His good books.

‘
Thank you for bringing it to my attention,
'
he said to my hand when I had finished,
‘
I will look into the matter.
'

Was that it? I held out the printouts,
‘
I printed out some of the material that was particularly disturbing in case you want to go over it.
'

‘
That won
'
t be necessary. This department does its own research,
'
I was being dismissed.