Tunnel Vision (31 page)

I went into my room, slammed the door, and went to sleep. No one else put me first, so I was bloody well going to do it myself.

OSAMA KA DEWANA

BACK OF WATER TANKER

~

N
ext morning
'
s paper did little to improve my sense of isolation, a hangover from the day before. War, famine, disease, neglect, suicide, this ink could be bottled and prescribed as sad pills for the twenty happy people that were left alive on the planet. Thirty to forty per cent of Karachiites alone were already suffering from depression, and those were conservative estimates. I sought for and found the silver lining. If the rest of the population took a daily dose of downer it would actually be better for us all. All of us from tribal to temptress would finally have something in common, we
'
d be bound by a bond that no ethnicity could sever … chronic unhappiness. Or wait, we were already, so what was the problem?

The happy people. That was it. They caused all the problems, with their constant reminders of the good things in life. That morning Adil could have been their poster boy, and I had a hard time resisting the urge to slap his head between my toast and bite into it. His panic-stricken face last night, his complacent grinning mug the next morning, schizophrenic was what he was. He
'
d skipped the manic depression that affected the rest of us, and gone straight to the next level. Typical man, thinking he deserved better than the women.

‘
Stop glaring at me, Ashoo,
'
he said between frantic egg chomping,
‘
you
'
ll go cross-eyed. You
'
ll look better, of course, but ask yourself if it
'
s really worth it.
'

‘
I swear to God …
'

‘
I have heard of this God person … what does He do again?
'

‘
You
'
re so funny, son,
'
Ammi appeared to plunk another paratha in front of him, obviously on the upswing for a change,
‘
not like this one here, always looking like she
'
s swallowed a lemon. Your father,
'
her parting shot flung casually from the kitchen door,
‘
was also funny. So many people admired him for his sense of humour.
'

If you only knew, you bitch, I thought, stung by the way what would have been blasphemy from me became wit from him but still not angry enough to think aloud, just how popular that made him with the ladies. I bolted my sawdust sandwich and fled, leaving the mutual admiration society to conduct its AGM in peace. I had a lot to do that day, and hapless Rehan with the soul of a poet and the pimples of an adolescent was first on my list.

*

Rehan wasn
'
t at his desk, but there was a brown envelope on mine when I got to it. It had to be from him. Who else would enclose a ghazal about the beloved being the shade for a sunstroke victim with a list of suspect medicines being sold on the Pakistani market? I admired his hard work for a second, then realized it was merely a photocopy of a list that had been published in major newspapers or posted at all the pharmacies late last year. It had obviously made no difference. Most people couldn
'
t read or comprehend, and Pakistani consumers had no umbrella of protection, no efficient regulatory body with the public interest at heart. Pity such excuses weren
'
t cover for the highly educated, relatively current members of the medical profession who continued to prescribe and disperse medicines that were banned or simply outdated.

There were medicines on the list that had been out of use for over a decade in the developed world, medical science having grown by leaps and bounds since then, as if catalyzed by an illegal growth hormone from its own cabinet, but they were still being widely prescribed in Pakistan. Interesting, since some of the doctors who prescribed them had been to sponsored conferences that covered the most updated treatment options. I knew this already, this bit about the conference, because we had sponsored two attendees ourselves. Leading lights, both of them. Good friends of our Seth also, since they had inaugurated two of the new labs at the headquarters.

Not for the first time I wondered what I was doing. The concept of self-destructive behaviour was hardly alien to me, but I had never let it intrude into my workspace before. As I got older, my control was slipping. One day soon I would walk in here and rub an omelette in someone
'
s face, a veritable copy of my mother, if not quite as tall or attractive. It didn
'
t matter if my guard was up, madness would creep in slung beneath the belly of the flimsiest justification. Already half my brain was clamouring to drown the objections of the other half, squealing indignantly about how it was all for the greater good. But even I didn
'
t quite believe me, there was only one true altruist left in this cruel, cruel world (two if you counted Nelson Mandela), and his name was Abdus Sattar Edhi. Despite Ammi
'
s efforts to banish me to some nameless other world, and my generation was hardly characterized by concern for the greater good. Apathy, avarice, shameless self-promotion, yes.

You could argue that it was not our fault, we had been bred that way to avoid the pitfalls dictators and megalomaniac democrats threw in the path of the noble-intentioned, but sadly that argument
'
s validity faded once subjects reached adulthood and attained self-awareness.

Was that my conscience kicking in? Was I desperate to atone for a lifetime of sins? I had been committing them ceaselessly since birth, according to my mother. Ah my mother. The kind of mother that never got mentioned in sermons and religious texts. Heaven lay beneath the foot of this mother, because that
'
s all you could see of her before she trampled your face in the mud.

I really had to learn how to turn my brain off. It ticked and ticked but never got anywhere. And it didn
'
t even have the decency to explode. I went back to perusing Rehan
'
s list.

Painkillers, antihistamines, antibiotics, diet pills, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, birth control pills, it was a long, long list. There were vaccines that were acknowledged ineffective by the rest of the world but pushed by local health peddlers anyway. There were blood pressure medicines that had not been prescribed by others in the region for over twelve years. Worse, this didn
'
t even seem to be a fresh photocopy but an old one pulled from a file. It even had punch holes in one side.

So R&D was aware of all the crucial details, all the dishonesty. But could it even be considered dishonesty?

I took my case to Master Seth, as Saad was known in the early days. He looked over my papers, heard me out. Then he asked me simply what my interest was in the matter.

‘
My interest is that it
'
s wrong!
'
I had replied.

‘
Okay.
'
He
'
d ushered me out, saying he
'
d get back to me. Two days later the literature was revised, my biggest concerns addressed. It did pay to know people.

I couldn
'
t stop thinking though, about the real roots of my interest in the matter.

Some of us still relied on superstitions to cure our ills, the immediate reaction to a medical crisis being a visit to a faith healer or a prayer by someone blessed. The supremacy of science over faith was accepted only by the most westernized, most everyone else liked to hedge his bets. If they could chew paper, munch leaves, endure beatings and fast ritualistically in the hopes of cleansing turnovers, was it really so bad that we were selling medicine that was standard twelve years ago? How much of this was really an issue? How much of it was me determined to find an issue, find some vent for my amoebic rage? How much of it was redemption for my mother, revenge on the people I wanted to believe had been responsible for the drastic change in her behaviour over the last few years?

DECENT BALLOONS

NAME OF PARTY SUPPLIES SHOP IN KARACHI

~

M
y mother changed after Adil was born. In a gruesome twist on the changeling myth, it was as if a pregnant woman had gone to the hospital to give birth and another woman had come back in her place. There were no blatant signs, no neon limbs, just a series of miniscule details, invisible to someone who wasn
'
t looking for them. I was. I was looking because I knew the bump in her tummy heralded a new world for all of us, and I had been watching to see how my adored mother would react to it. Would she change colour? Grow fat? Talk to me while dicing vegetables? Braid my hair in the morning? Hate me? I was too old when Adil came along, all of seven, to get much of the
‘
hold this doll, it loves you like your new sister/brother will
'
treatment people were trying now, or perhaps my parents just assumed I would adapt. And I did. So they assumed right, but my paranoia about Ammi becoming a mother again did turn out to be justified. It started with fatigue.

Ammi had always been her own housekeeper. Cooking, cleaning herself when the maasi didn
'
t show, looking after me and Abba, housekeeping was tiring work. She was tall and big-boned, true, but she had never been a particularly strong woman, not the type up to shrugging off a cold when everyone else in proximity had it. The second pregnancy was difficult for her because she appeared determined not to notice it. Some women lie in even now for the first three months, claiming it is bad luck or dangerous to put the baby at risk for that time, but Ammi
'
s daily assaults on dust and vegetables doubled. Instead of putting her feet up and reading a masala mag like Abba suggested, she would be on her hands and knees examining the underside of chairs and tables.

‘
I don
'
t understand why an educated woman like you won
'
t listen to sense and just sit still,
'
Abba had exploded one Sunday after coming out of their room and tripping over Ammi
'
s leg as she worked on an imaginary stain on the back of one sofa.

‘
It has nothing to do with sense,
'
she grunted,
‘
it
'
s all just silly superstition, old wives
'
tales.
'

‘
There is value to a lot of these old wives
'
tales, people don
'
t say things without a reason.
'

‘
Oh, I
'
m sure someone had reason to say it in the first place, probably felt too lazy to do the cooking so made up something so she could relax for the next few weeks.
'

‘
What about after that? Pregnancy doesn
'
t just last a few weeks.
'

‘
By the time it shows people don
'
t let you do most things anyway. It
'
s just eat, eat, eat,
'
she scrubbed away, frowning with concentration, a drop of sweat beading on the tip of her nose. Then a grimace of pain crossed her face and she put the brush down and straightened her back, reaching behind her with one hand to rub the sore spot.

‘
See,
'
Abba pointed triumphantly,
‘
even your body is telling you to stop, if you
'
re going to ignore the old women
'
s babbling and doctor
'
s advice, at least listen to your body! It has no reason to lie to you.
'

‘
So bodies don
'
t lie?
'
Ammi turned a blank gaze towards him.

‘
No they don
'
t.
'

‘
And if a body says it loves you, it means it?
'

‘
Of course,
'
Abba crooned, he looked like he would get up and go to her, they seemed to have forgotten I was even in the room, curled up in one corner of a sofa with a book in my hand.

‘
And if your body tells another that it loves her, it must also mean it?
'
Ammi
'
s gaze was still blank, but something was stirring in the air.

Abba put down the paper and went outside. A minute later we heard banging and knew he was playing with his adult toys.

‘
Fool,
'
Ammi muttered to herself. I slid further down the sofa, hoping I wasn
'
t next.
‘
If he
'
s so concerned about my back, why can
'
t he simply come over and scrub this stain for me.
'

Why didn
'
t he? Her question made sense. Ammi
'
s frenetic activity slowed once her pregnancy began to show, but it never dropped below the normal level she had established over her years in that house. She still did everything she always had, just more slowly. And her tiredness began to show in other ways. A carelessly tied sari, slightly burnt food, after years of domestic perfection, her husband should have heard her version of cries for help. But he didn
'
t till Adil was born, and even then it had to be spelt out for him in ten foot letters.