Monday, December 11, 2006

ABCD/BBCD Woes

As time approaches to visit the paki motherland i feel increasingly excited. its good to go home after a while. heck, its good to go home all the time.

its been a year and i missed the place so i realy can't wait to get on that plane.

I think the highlight will be the ABCD and BBCD sorts who are heading back from christmas holidays at this time of the year. last year i transited through istanbul, turkey and it was an educational experience to say the least. All my co-passengers were ABCD's and BBCD's (families and the whole jing-bang-lot) and a few students. everyone was subject to pretty intensive pre-boarding security checks and people pretty much put up with it. a few grumbling noises eminating from here and there but over-all they all put up quite well with it. i guess since 9/11 we have gotten used to it by now.....

so the flight takes off and these overseas pakistani's are all on the plane, and enjoying whatever turkish airways has to offer. food was decent compared to most airline food....well it was excellent compared to western airline food.

a few hours later, the motherland approaches and people get off at karachi. all well and good so far except that folks start to get a tad bit impatient. i was just plain happy to come home as i am each time i get back to pakistan....and each time i am also pleasantly culture shocked. all in good spirit though.

so people start to head towards the passport control and everyone is now impatient to the bone, making clicking sounds with their tongues, looking totally 'avazaar' with life and basically shit-fitting. A few of the ABCD/BBCD's have got connections at the airport and they are definitely not standing in line so they all get VIP treatment and just cut the entire friggin line and march up with their kids et al and waltz through to baggage claim. this is followed by another family and yet another..other families get agitated when they see this and start to holler, bitch complain yadda yadda yadda and so on and so forth. anyhow its not a pleasant experience and the motherland is referred to with flowery expletives left right and center for the fucked up state that she is in and hence for the fucked up state of ABCD/BBCD sorts at the airport on this fine night. just great isn't it.

what really bothers me is the future generations of the ABCD/BBCD sorts who are waltzing through passport control. the kiddies. their first impressions about the motherland are all about' badmaashi' and watching their daddies use their customs official contacts to show how much better they are compared to the riff-raff that they can basically do whatever they want. what really pisses me off is that if these ABCD/BBCD sorts can behave themselves in Istanbul, Dubai, NA, UK etc etc . why the hell cant they hang on in pakistan for a while? agreed, pakistan is terribly corrupt and many would argue its a shithole but i still don't see that as an excuse for the way they behave. if the illiterate average pakistani man headed home from the mideast after years of backbreaking work can stand in line there at passport control then what's wrong with these so called professional-educated-british-paki-american's?

i agree, that there are way too many systemic problems in the motherland but witnessing this is quite disturbing and only contributes further to problem. a bit of compassion could actually help here.

4 Comments:

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeh baat hai, hai na.. because people look desi and speak the language (if with an accent), so you assume Pak is still their motherland.. they might not see it that way.. but somewhere between UK/US and desiland. Can't be easy.

Nevertheless.. no need to slag off the land of the pure!!! Pakistan zindabad!

(I'm overusing this sentence.. apologies)

2:08 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i totally agree with you, dont worry abt the ABCD/BBCD talk abt the Pakistani born confused desis(PBCD) come on you probbaly encountered a whole population of them at lums. i recently graduated from lums too, during my gap year i've come to interact with ppl from different classes and institutions and i've realized that luminites exclusively exhibit this apologetic attitude towards being a paki. its like you belong from an elitest/westernised institution and now u must justify the label.
i recently attended the teach-in arranged by LPS at lums regarding the chief justice issue and i was shocked at the very low turnout and absolute lack of interest. honestly a lums instructor called us the plastic generation, hate to say it but he wasnt wrong

4:44 AM

 

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