The grass was faster on Independence Night in Islamabad.
Urban Bystander
By eleven on the night of 13 August, Islamabad had opened several new roads without issuing a tender.
They ran through the green belts.
Motorcycles found them first. Along the I-8, H-8 and G-8 corridors, riders left stationary carriageways and crossed the grass wherever geography appeared more cooperative than traffic. Then came the SUVs.
The state had closed roads to facilitate citizens. Citizens responded by opening roads of their own. It was an admirable division of labour. Before the citizens began redesigning the road network, the state had redrawn the city. The Islamabad Expressway and Faisal Avenue were closed along major stretches. Faizabad approaches and roads around H-8 were restricted. Heavy traffic was excluded. Emergency routes were separately prescribed. The official wire described these arrangements as having been made to “facilitate citizens”.
Islamabad has always been generous with facilitation.
Sometimes the citizen is facilitated by being told where to go. On important occasions, he is facilitated by being told where he cannot.
The celebrations were real. Yadgar-e-Fatah, completed in eight months, was inaugurated by the president and prime minister. Five archways. Marble. A Pakistan Air Force flypast releasing flares across the night sky. Families in green and white at midnight. Children carrying flags.
Then the road network encountered the citizens. A motorcycle entered the opposing carriageway because the correct one had stopped. Another followed because the first had established precedent. Motorcycles threaded through spaces previously known only to surveyors. On Agha Shahi Avenue, even a dual carriageway with dedicated exits proved unnecessarily restrictive. A 4×4 climbed the grass because fourwheel drive ought to mean something. For one brief democratic moment, motorcycle and SUVs were equal before the grass. Everyone had solved his own problem.
Together they had stopped the city. Baajas sounded from stationary cars. Music played. Flags came out of windows. Nobody seemed short of patriotism.
The country was everywhere. The fellow citizen was harder to see.
This became particularly interesting on Aiwan-e-Sanat o Tijarat Road, where the slip road towards Shifa International Hospital branches off. The official traffic plan had separately preserved access to Shifa. On paper, the emergency route remained in excellent health. Beside it, wrongside traffic and improvised greenbelt transport had arrived at a different administrative conclusion.
No ambulance is known to have been delayed there that night. One driver, on a journey that normally took about fifteen minutes, spent four hours and fifteen on the road.In the car beside him was a family that had come out to celebrate Independence Day. By then the children were crying from exhaustion. Their father sat behind the wheel. At one point the two cars drew close. The men looked across at each other and smiled. There was little else to do.
They had come out to celebrate independence. Four hours later, freedom of movement had been suspended by popular demand.
Everybody had a claim that night. The state had security. The citizen had celebration. The biker had a gap. The SUVs had fourwheel drive and apparently grazing rights. The baaja had achieved universal franchise.
What nobody had volunteered was the smaller obligation:to leave a lane, a crossing, a little silence, a route to hospital, ten minutes of one’s own inconvenience. The citizens had made their contribution to the arithmetic. The state had been working on a larger scale.
Islamabad had another timetable last week. Yadgar-e-Fatah had taken eight months. Four Rescue 1122 stations announced in 2008 were, eighteen years later, only moving through procurement and mobilisation.
The city appeared to keep two clocks. One for things that must be unveiled. Another for things that must quietly work every day.The monument had eight months. The emergency stations had eighteen years. One commemorates a victory. The others are meant to arrive before somebody loses.
The following evening, the celebrations moved to D-Chowk, accompanied by another traffic plan.By the fifteenth, the grass had returned to being grass and the roads had recovered their directions.
Islamabad had spent two evenings celebrating the country. The fellow citizen had been advised to use the
alternative route.
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