Upper-middle class people know everything.
Just a day before the Eid, a tragedy near Bahawalpur left about 200 people dead, and many injured. Before the news had even appeared on newspapers the next morning, our nation’s erudite upper-middle class had already figured out who to blame: the poor, ‘jahil’ people.
Among all the words in the combined vocabulary of the Minglish-speaking upper class, ‘jahalat’ – “ignorance” – is our favourite. This word, repeated regularly like a mantra, allows ourselves to justify our esteemed presence in our opulent gated communities; comfortably walled off from the ‘jahil’ rabble.
We wouldn’t use the word “ghurbat” (poverty), for we’ve seen enough films to understand that hating people for their poverty is generally frowned upon, and puts them somewhere in Bollywood’s wadera-esque class of super villains. ‘Jahalat’, denoting either the lack of education or intelligence or both, is a more useful substitute. Of course, one may argue that lack of education naturally follows the misfortune of being economically underprivileged; that ‘jahalat’ is a subset of ‘ghurbat’, and not an independent malady. But that argument would surely find no takers among the upper class.
About two hundred people lost their lives the day before Eid, and for thousands, transformed the much-awaited festival into a day of mourning. But among much of the upper class, the predominant sentiment was not that of sorrow, but of anger directed at the ‘jahalat’ of the victims. They got what they deserved for gathering around a leaking tanker to salvage its oil.
On the day of Eid, the sahibs and mem-sahibs of our proud nation donned their expensive new kurtas that they’d recently purchased from Khaadi – the activists’ desperate call for boycotting the chain over abuse of its workers being of no distraction to our aunties’ consumerist ambitions. They gathered over ostentatious dawats in Defense, Bahria, and other havens of sanity among the scorching wastelands of ‘jahalat’ that our country has otherwise become, and congratulated each other for being smarter than the victims of oil tanker explosion.
Did you hear about what happened near Bahawalpur? Tauba! If only these ‘jahil’ people had valued their lives, and stayed away from a ticking time-bomb of an overturned oil tanker. Why did they have to be so careless? Why did they have to be so greedy? Why did they have to steal?
We would never do such a thing in such situation, we all agreed. We would never need to do such a thing, was something not worth discussing. Being seated around a mahogany dinner table that costs more than what an average ‘jahil’ victim of the tanker disaster makes in a year ensures that none of us ever needs to rush to a leaking tanker to collect a few liters of oil in empty bottles of 7up.
We, the upper-middle class people, know everything. It’s quite impressive, actually. We know, for example, that it’s dangerous to go near a leaking oil-tanker. It is exactly because we know such things, that we are sitting in our fine garments up here, and those jahils are rolling in misery down there.
Of course, it’s too inconvenient to think that the ‘jahil’ people indeed knew what they were risking. It’s not in our interest to imagine that the victims understood quite clearly that oil is a highly flammable substance, and that they were risking getting caught in a deadly inferno.
Why would the upper class be bothered to expend its brain power on comprehending the complex socioeconomic situations that compel the financially disadvantaged people to play with fire every day? Why would we be concerned about a shopkeeper’s dilemma who has to decide between paying his store’s rent, and buying fuel to run his store’s generator?
Perhaps their stakes are different than ours? Perhaps what’s unnecessary risk-taking for us, is highly useful for them? Perhaps for us a jug full of free oil isn’t worth risking our lives, but someone else who’s desperate enough, it may actually be worth taking a chance?
The upper class has no time for such useless intricacies. People here are just jahil. They die because they’re jahil. Not us. We know that oil catches fire; three cheers for our boundless wisdom.
The average person in the affected area earns less than Rs. 300 a day; yet the self-appointed expert on his life is often found perched at a café, spending that amount on a single cup of coffee. Isn’t that strange?
Yes, upper-middle class sahibs, you have it all figured out. One might’ve expected at least a few things in our vastly complicated social, political, and economic universe to be beyond our comprehension. One could’ve argued we lack certain kinds of experiences – like the experience of living on Rs. 300 a day – that could completely change our perspectives.
But we already know. We know what the poor are feeling. We know what those pesky beggars are thinking. We know what the sneaky fruit vendors are up to.
Congratulations on knowing everything. It’s a tragedy that people can’t see the world through your eyes, though surely, you’re under no obligation to see the world through theirs.
