"The Music Of Life"
Wah Village, Pakistan
November 15, 1984
Dear Folks,
The road explodes into dust with each step. Every morning my tent is frosted with brown. Winter's rains have yet to venture down from their Himalayan nests. Each leaf is thirsty, each face needs a bath.
The towns are flash floods of faces, colors, sound, and movement. Mankind has become like an ant colony: always moving and going somewhere. Nothing rests, not even the invisible. Never would I have thought the air able to bear the weight of so many smells and sounds. Surely I am fallen into the orchestra pit of the very universe itself. An orchestra conducted by not one, but a million mad conductors!
These musicians don't play violins or clarinets. Rather, they toot auto horns, buzz scooter engines, ting-ting-ting bicycle bells, clang hammers against glowing iron, crack horse whips, bubble curry over crackling wood fires, and thump bare soles over packed dirt and garbage. They are the music of life overflowing, of too many proclaiming to the very reaches of the universe the energies burning inside them.
And what of the dance floor? Pakistan is a land decorated in the ugliest poverty but also with more color than a thousand springtime mountain meadows. Then, too, there are the singers, wailing the Koran from lotus-shaped mosque towers, chanting from overcrowded schools, and harping of their gold, silk, or rotting fruit from inside seedy closet-sized shops.
Finally, there are the dancers themselves. As numerous as atoms they twist, roll, squirm, bob, and side-step from one spot to another with all the quickness of untiring sprinters. Most are dressed in turbans and mustaches. Many are young. A few peer over veils with eyes as seductively beautiful as those with which earlier civilizations graced their goddesses. Nearly all seem happy to be swirling with life's forces.
How is it possible one tiny planet, let alone one nation, could be such a paradise of life? Everywhere there is a throbbing, a dashing and clashing and mashing of man and beast that won't allow the heart to slow. Even time must race to stay ahead: no sooner anymore am I shaking off the chill of dawn than dusk has again returned, and I am crawling back into canvas and down, to avoid bumping into those who prefer the darkness rather than the flames of twigs or kerosene.
The warm smiles, the limp handshakes, the humble bowing of heads leave no doubt I am among friends--perhaps the gentlest yet. Still, my eyes dart about like caged animals. With so much energy loosed, one must be constantly attentive, or suffer the inevitable collisions with everything from bicycles to hand-pushed carts to arrogant camels. Five minutes in the market district of any town or city brings with it more speeding objects than a "Star Wars" battle scene. Unlike in western societies, where technology and strictly enforced laws have managed to direct each day's rushing masses into some semblance of channels, here man and beast and machine are always challenging the other for the right-of-way.
Half a dozen civilizations have flourished here along the banks of the Indus River. It's tempting, with all the exotic foods and architecture and people, to think that none of those of the earlier societies have left. Yet the millions of graves and the tired soil say otherwise. Historically this land is one of the most ancient cradles of society. Cities thrived here before Babylon's first bricks were laid, and the inhabitants of those cities were supposedly practicing citizenship before the Greeks knew of such principles.
"Love is life." So goes a popular saying in this almost exclusively Muslim nation of over 80 million. If that is so, then here love is greatly manifested. Certainly there is no doubting their love of life. Nearly three out of four people still farm the land. Even in the cities the side streets are more like barnyards than roadways. While in the markets, the caged chickens, pigeons, canaries, and parrots for sale add their squawking to the din.
Though the present culture is Muslim, the vestiges of the prior one of the Hindus are everywhere. Not only is there the love of the soil and of nature in general, the temple-shaped mosques, the spicy rice and curry dishes, the long shirts and baggy, drawstringed, pajama-like trousers, and the sari wrappings, but there is also a love of color that borders on obsession. The most ordinary buses and trucks, with their skirts of wind chimes and their streamers and hand-painted panels of peacocks, jet planes, roses, tigers, and nature scenes make it appear as if everyone is rushing off to a Mardi Gras parade.
Indeed, I'm still waiting to be served my first bowl of rainbow rice!
Steven