In a recent Facebook post, celebrated Pakistani artist Bani Abidi describes an ethereal moment of homesickness when she discovers a paan ‘peek’ stain in Germany. She writes wistfully,
When a Karachiite in the Berlin underground notices a brown stain in the corner of the platform, and her heart flutters with excitement “Really? are we colonising public spaces in Berlin too?”. Sadly, upon closer inspection it turns out to be some chocolaty thing and not the paan ki peek (betel nut leaf juice) that it first appeared to be.
Indeed, there are some things that are so intrinsic to our culture that the mere hint of them triggers an intense nostalgia and homesickness. And paan is right up there in that list.
Like a vaccine that prevents disease by actually injecting the germ itself, such “cultural symbols” can also work as a cure to homesickness.
Part of a paan-spitting clampdown from Brent, in the UK
Living in Montreal, whenever I felt homesick I would simply walk over to the Pakistan consulate. The torn Pakistani flag fluttering proudly over the building, the reassuring shabbiness of the furniture in the reception area, the delicate thin layer of dust over everything, the staff out for Namaz, all made for a very congenial home-like environment. If you had to actually go inside one of the “officers’” offices, the big desk in green baize cloth with a glass top, the bell to call the “chapprasi” discreetly hidden on the underside, and a faded portrait of the founder of the nation, were a sure cure for even the most intense bout of home blues.
My brother, living in New York city, had a simpler solution. He would just walk into the PIA office for a few minutes and come out bereft of any desire for returning to his homeland.
Personally, I am not much for feeling the invisible pull of Pakistan. Once in my second year at a university in Canada I was looking rather down and out. A friend asked me if I was feeling homesick. “Oh no, not at all, I am just feeling plain sick”, I replied. Nevertheless, they cannot take out the Pakistani in you and here I am, living in Pakistan, after nearly 35 years abroad.
Coming back to the paan, that unparalleled nostalgia invoker. It was once described to me by an Italian representative of a textile machinery manufacturer as, “You take a green leaf. Then you a put a something white, then you a put something red. Then you put some stones. You wrap the leaf, put it carefully in your mouth and eat it. Then you spit out blood”
In Karachi, paan is synonymous with business; particularly well established businesses that say on their sign boards, “Since 1947” or some such ancient date. The proof of the longevity of the business can be easily established by a look at the stairwell. An uncultured person may be mistaken into concluding that the building was once an abattoir. The reality is that the apparently dried blood is proof positive that the establishment is indeed an old one. The red from the paan peek of the thousands of customers traversing the stairwells is the seal of authenticity.
I promise Bani Abidi, that the next time I am in Berlin, I will personally spew out a blood-red stream of paan juice in an underground station and inform her to visit the “mini Pakistani colony” and alleviate her homesickness
In the West, paan is one of the least well understood of the Subcontinental pleasures and can often invoke extreme reactions from the more ignorant amongst Westerners. A good friend, a Qawali connoisseur, had invited the famous Farid Ayaz Qawwal to Montreal. He recounts the following unfortunate incident. “I was on a road trip from Montreal to Ottawa accompanied by my musician friends. Farid Bhai always carried his stock of paan with him. We stopped at a Tim Horton’s for coffee and I walked in with Farid Bhai, with his whole mouth a bright red. The look on the faces of serving staff was priceless! They really didn’t know what to make of it. They were probably in shock, thinking that either this guy is bleeding at the mouth or he is some kind of Dracula character.”
White clothes and paan are not friends. A relative travelling by bus from Shahbaz commercial to Gizri in the Defence area, tells me that one day as the bus stopped at a traffic signal a highly enraged man, dressed in a crisp white kurta shalwar spotted with huge blobs of red, jumped inside the bus and furiously scanned the faces of the passengers seated near the windows of the bus. Having located his prey, he pounced on him with the ferocity of a wolf and gave him a thorough thrashing. It turned out that the aggrieved party was travelling on a motorcycle alongside the bus when an unfortunately directed stream of peek originated from the bus and landed on his perfected laundered attire.
To return the favor of inspiring this article, I promise Bani Abidi, that the next time I am in Berlin, I will personally spew out a blood-red stream of paan juice in an underground station and inform her to visit the “mini Pakistani colony” and alleviate her homesickness.
