At sunset the guests started arriving in their sleek and shiny automobiles. There were Chevrolets, Buicks, Fords, Cadillacs and a variety of other brands. I had not seen such a collection of automobiles before. The large compound where the cars were parked looked like an automobile dealership.
The guests were all men and most of them were engineers working in the Public Works Department of the provincial government of what was then the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. That department was well-known for corruption and pilfering of government funds by the officials. Coming from a lower-middle-class family of government servants, I had not been exposed to such display of wealth and sophistication.
Along with a few other friends, I was invited by one of our medical school classmates whose elder brother, also an engineer, was getting married. The evening of music and food was arranged for the groom’s co-workers and close family friends.
The venue was the small village of Amankot, about 20 miles from Peshawar. It is located just off the Grand Trunk Road as it passes through the small town of Pabbi on its way east towards Rawalpindi. It took us a better part of a day to travel twenty miles by the slow passenger train to Pabbi and then by horse drawn carriage called tonga to reach Amankot.
Our hosts lived in a large compound that had separate entrances for men’s section called hujra and an entrance in the back of the compound for women.
A large wrought iron gate led to a large clear area at the end of which stood one story brick building along the width of the compound. In one spacious corner of the compound, cooks were busy preparing the evening feast. The aroma of basmati rice and spices permeated the compound.
The hosts had arranged for a music troupe to entertain the guests. It consisted of two singers, two instrument and a dancing girl
The groom to be and his family members, all men, received the guests and led them to the sitting area in a spacious room appointed with fine furniture and furnishings. They were served soft drinks, sweets and finger sandwiches.
In Pashtun culture, the male guests are entertained in a separate section of the house called hujra. It is a totally male domain, where male guests are received and entertained. For this occasion, the hujra was decorated with festive lights and paper bunting. Long strings of colourful lights adorned the wrought iron gate and were strung along the length of the compound wall.
I did not know any of those guests, but our classmate, the groom’s brother, pointed them out as they walked in the spacious sitting room. They were well educated, suave and well dressed. Their conversations were muted and respectful.
The hosts had arranged for a music troupe to entertain the guests. It consisted of two singers, two instrument and a dancing girl. The instruments included rabab (a string instrument), a set of tablas and a clay pitcher.
The well-endowed dancing girl wore tight colourful clothes without a dupatta, kohl in her eyes, a gold ornament in her nose, a gold necklace and shiny pazeb on her ankles. Her dress and her mannerism indicated that she has been around the block a few times and this sort of gathering was not a novelty for her. She was of medium built and had a pleasant face. She was the only female in a room full of men.
On one side of the spacious sitting room, on a table was a large stock of expensive spirits: whiskeys, gin, vodka and sundry mixes and garnishes. A bartender tended the table, and waiters went around the room taking orders for drinks. I think most guests, but not all, ordered their favourite hard drinks.
The music started in earnest. The program began with singing the praises of God and the Prophet (PBUH).
After that, the girl got up and started dancing to the poetry of the 17th-century Pashtun Sufi poet Rahman Baba. They sang other Pashto classics and popular songs from Urdu and Hindi movies. She synchronised her moves with the music where her pazeb added to the sounds of string instruments and tabla.
It was a mesmerising performance to say the least. After a few dances, she would rest, and the ensemble would continue serenading the guests.
In the meantime, the empty glasses kept being filled as fast as they were getting empty. Some guests tried to ogle or dance with the girl, but the head musician politely asked them not to do so, and they refrained.
As the party was in full swing, some guests, one by one, left the room. I stepped outside to see what they were up to. As the cliché goes, not many people can hold their liquor and their water at the same time. It was a bizarre scene. The liquor had washed away the veneer of sophistication and polish and they were stumbling around to find a place to pee or vomit. Slowly others also made a beeline to the courtyard outside. It was a hilarious scene. Dishevelled men who just a few hours earlier looked the crème dela crème of society, were stumbling around the courtyard. Their drivers looked on in bewilderment and amazement at their bosses, who had turned from polite and sophisticated public officials to drunkard nincompoops.
While some guests knew how to pace their drinks, novices did not. They were the ones who were outside in the courtyard. They thought alcoholic drinks could be gulped down like a glass of sherbat or lassi on a hot summer day. They just did not know the difference between sipping and gulping (chuski laina aur deek lagana).
Earlier in the evening, when some guests tried to take liberties with the dancer, I was reminded of a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth about alcohol, that “it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance…”
I don’t think towards the end of the evening the ones who heavily indulged were capable of any performance at all leave aside standing on their two legs.
The party concluded past one in the morning. The guests left in their sleek cars, slumped in the back seats. They would return in a week, along with a thousand others to partake of the wedding feast, the valima.
Keeping with the tradition, alcohol would not be on the menu.