Human systems are more effective!

Rawalpindi

There are certain aspects related to Ramazan that have been coming down for ages and become a tradition — whether they serve the same purpose now is another matter. Besides the ones that are to do with food – ‘pakoras’; ‘samosas’; ‘chaat’ and ‘jalebis’ are ‘must have’ items for ‘iftari’ — the men who go from street to street to wake up the populace are very much a part and parcel of these customs.

In days gone by these men — who usually act in twos but the group may be larger — were heard all over town but they are now restricted to crowded places and avoid the ‘posh’ localities. As children we were often woken up by their call to get up and wished they would go away and let us sleep. One man has a ‘dhol’ (drum) which he bangs as loudly as he can, while the other has a harmonium or a flute. When they are not calling out for people to get up they play music, if you can call it that, and may even sing, making enough noise to wake up even the dead! They can be heard from a distance, getting louder by the minute and then their voices fade as they walk away. This system is more effective than an alarm clock because unlike a clock, they cannot be ‘switched off!’

These groups have their territory marked out and rivals cannot encroach on it or there will be trouble! A certain number of streets belong to one group and so on. How this is decided is not known and difficult to find out as members of the group sleep the whole day and get up at ‘iftari’ time, when everyone else is also busy. It’s probably an unwritten agreement that as long as group members are alive they will patrol the streets they have been walking around on a yearly basis. The rest of the year they go about their usual business, which is mostly based on daily labour.

But all said and done, it is an honest way to make a living because at the end of the month they will visit the houses on the streets they patrolled and get rewarded for their efforts. No fixed sum of money is agreed on beforehand as these men usually ‘freelance’ and do whatever they do on their own initiative, so they rely on the generosity of the head of the household for their remuneration. Some people are more generous than others but because it’s the season for giving and the celebration of Eid, the amount is usually satisfactory, depending on the lifestyle of the person being approached.

How long this custom will last is anyone’s guess because it is slowly dying. It may continue in smaller cities where people live in crowded localities but is has already faded away in larger cities with posh localities.