‘Dreaming’
Durriya Kazi
Head of Visual Studies – Karachi University
Flying over Pakistan its colours are mostly a monotonous ochre. As you land in Karachi there is a faint tinge of faded green from the sparse acacias and prosopis that bravely survive the arid climate. You get off the plane and colour still eludes you. When you get onto the streets of Karachi what overpowers is the traffic, the noise of horns and engines. Then suddenly from the corner of your eye you notice a flash of intense colour, then another and another. These are the buses and trucks that are like no other. The traffic sounds seem distant, the chaos unimportant as you are mesmerized by the decorated stainless steel, the layered florescent sticker images of veiled women, kissing parrots and hearts, lots of hearts, paintings of flying horses, red roses, impossible sunsets. If you know Urdu, you can read the poetry on the buses trucks and rickshaws… verses risqué, philosophical or enigmatic, about love, longing, sadness, regret. Welcome to the world of Pakistani dreams.
Decoration of transport is an ancient tradition in most cultures. In Pakistan, the camels of the old caravans, many of which still exist in the rural areas, henna decoration of draft animals, carved and painted boats, horse carriages, were a common sight. Trucks were first introduced in the 1930s by the American company, General Motors. In the 1960s, Bedfords exclusively were imported by a local company, Ghandhara Industries. The ‘60s were a time of great economic prosperity. The growth of industries created a huge demand for transportation of goods. Owning a fleet of trucks (or even one truck) was a matter of pride for the mostly Pathan owners from the mountains of the north. Soon, like other prized possessions, the truck too had to be decorated. At first it was elaborate signwriting, a style which still dominates the trucks of Peshawar. It didn't take long for the adventurous to engage the services of Haji Hussain, a court artist from the palaces of Kutch Bujh who, unable to find many palaces in the new Pakistan, was decorating horse carriages in Karachi. He added painted elements which grew into the elaborately painted trucks we are familiar with today. All trucks have to come to Karachi, the main port of Pakistan. Soon Haji Hussain had students, or shagirds who spread the practice to other cities, each city adding its own style. The Rawalpindi trucks are known for layered coloured plastic fretwork, the Karachi trucks for radium painted sunsets wildlife and gardens, the Lahore trucks for portraits of movie stars and famous personalities.
What makes Pakistani trucks different from the spray-painted trucks of Texas and France, the naniwa kai trucks of Japan, is not only that in Pakistan this is the norm rather than the exception, but that the body of the truck is actually built for decoration. It is considered a serious art-form and the decorating of trucks and now also buses is an industry with specialists in specific areas. The truck is imported as cab and chassis only. After the metal bodywork is completed and carefully designed to imitate the earlier wooden frame panels, the various decorators take over: The wood carvers carve or inlay the doors, the taj (crown) structure at the top where the truck driver's assistant sleeps during stops, the upholsterer stitches brocade seats covered in protective plastic for the cab, the mirror-work specialist builds the mosaic ceiling of the cab interior, the electrician fits the pulsating coloured lights, the painter's assistants make the borders and small images and the master painter paints the main image and directs the theme. Musical horns are fitted, the sign-writer does his work and then the poet writes the selected verses in calligraphic perfection.
The Bedford Truck, affectionately called the “rocket” because of its slow speed, is the base form on which all truck decoration evolved. It consists of seven panels on either side each with borders and images, a back panel which has a large single image which may be a portrait, an F-16, a mystic, the Buraq or flying horse with a woman's head that Sufi poets evolved to symbolise the mystical journey of the Prophet Muhammad to heaven, a famous building or simply a rose. Various parts of the truck body have repoussé stainless steel elements, an elaborate bumper, and a variety of “cute” objects, frills and stickers for both the interior and the exterior.
Not only trucks but buses (the most famous route being the W11 of Karachi) rickshaws, Vespa scooters and donkey carts are decorated, each with their own aesthetic canon and their own addas or areas for decoration.
To the outsider, the decorative spirit of Pakistani ends here, however, a closer look reveals that this spirit is just part of a larger cultural practice. The shrines of Sufi saints are continuously embellished, both physically and by placing stringed rose coverings or gold embellished cloth over the grave by devotees, the taazia processions during muharram are like small shrines, streets and buildings throb with pulsating lights during religious festivals, weddings are a riot of colourful clothing, gold, henna patterns, flowers and fairy lights, mithai, or sweet, shops are decorated with mirror-work, village women dress in elaborately embroidered clothes and the list goes on.
This language of heightened reality, of dreams beyond reach is nowhere more evident than in the films of Pakistan and India. Real life issues such as the hurdles placed by society between lovers, social injustice and class struggles to name a few, are taken to a dizzying height away from the real world, where it is safe to empathise.
The large hand-painted billboards of movie theatres have their own aesthetic and technique. The best known are those of Lakshmi Chowk in Lahore, a warren of film distributors, poster designers and painters. Usually each movie theatre has its own resident artist, who repaints the canvas over and over with each new film. The better known artists sign their names such as, A. Aziz, S. Khan, Rafiq Chugtai, and they have their own circle of admirers who go to see their latest work on display.
It is interesting that in these times of religious conservatism, the images on film posters and hoardings, in full public view are never censored, are daring, revealing, and may be very vulgar. Similar images in a private art gallery are more likely to meet with disapproval.
Pakistani Cinema has grown or at any rate changed considerably from its early days. The first film was Teri Yaad in 1948, released just one year after Pakistan was created. The early black and white films were of a high technical standard, with strong screenplays and songs of great poetic and musical quality. In fact, many of the songs were written by well-known poets such as the revolutionary Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Josh Malihabadi and so on. The heroine of those days was bold but feminine, the hero polite, but usually more bound by social expectations. Many daring stories were told, including those of class uprising, incest, rape and problems faced by the bride with her in-laws. Noor Jehan, the famous singer was not only acting but producing films in the early 1950s, and Pakistani films had a market even in India. Sabiha Khanum, Santosh, Habib, Ejaz, Noor Jehan were the stars of the ‘50s. The ‘60s were dominated by romantic love stories, with Waheed Murad, “the chocolate hero”, Deeba, Neelo, Saiqa, Shamin Ara, with the screen couples Mohammed Ali and Zeba, Shabnam and Nadeem. The import of Indian films was banned after the 1965 war with India, but in the 1980s video cassette recording and the trade in pirated videos brought Indian cinema back, but this time on the small screen, contributing to the decline in movie theatre audiences. During the Zia-ul-Haq years, the cinema industry took a near fatal hit, and ‘Lollywood' survived only because of the innumerable low quality Punjabi films that continued unabated.
Today, Pakistan cinema has a new generation of actors: the heroines are more svelte, more sexual, the heroes more brawny, with mostly action movies, and less emphasis on drama and storyline. However, interest in Pakistani cinema is fast becoming a cult amongst the new urban generation. Gazdar's book on the history of Pakistani Cinema, as well as that of the film critic, Gorija has created an interest in the history of Pakistani Cinema. The International Karafilm Festival, now in its fifth year, has made a point of displaying cinema posters, bringing Pakistani film to the attention of a new generation. A new wave of socially-engaged, urban and experimental films, facilitated by widely-available, high-quality digital technologies, is once again altering the face of Pakistani cinema. Often set in a dystopic, almost surreal night redolent of the cinematic ontology of late-Franquista Spain, these movies somehow seem to embody the essential hope, despair, irony and iconoclastic lyricism of a post-Cold War generation of film-makers attempting to dream Pakistan into the twenty-first century. It remains to be seen if the new independent film styles and the promise of co-operations between Indian and Pakistani cinema industries in the new ethos of regional peace, filter through into main stream “Lollywood”.
