Gimme Eat??

It is often stated about the primitive human beings that their every day activities revolved around food. Men would hunt all day, women would gather fruits and berries, so at the end of the day they all could fuel up their bodies. I always wonder how they would’ve behaved at somebody’s death. They were uncouth and uncultured, so would they just walk pass the dead body like animals do, or would they stop everything and shed some tears for the lifeless. Presumably, food was so important that even if during the day they encountered some unusual events like death, their craving for food wouldn’t be hindered.

Thousands of years have passed by and we think human beings have become civilized, cultured, socially refined and what not! If somebody passes away nowadays, we commence a funeral doing so many rituals and after-burial services! Rituals that have indeed become norms of the society. Rituals, that have to be carried out properly at any cost or else people (who have supposedly arrived to condole you) will look down upon you.

In our society, one of these obligatory rituals is to feed the guests that have taken their time out to come for condolence. I think the real concept was to bring over some food for the family members so they won’t have to worry about cooking. However, just like thousand other abused customs of our society, this one has also become truly deplorable. People consider the soems and chaaliswans just another dinner party. Its getting so horrible that they even forget why they went to the dead person’s house in the first place.

I witnessed one such act of utter indecency when I was in college. I was in my second year and the college was one of the best private colleges in karachi. Supposedly the "cream" of the city studied there. One of our friend’s dad passed away in the middle of the year. When we got the news, we planned to go to his (say Saif) house which wasn’t far away. So, eight people all together went to S’s house on the third day of the incident. Three of us lived very close to his house, so they had been to his place the day before as well. When we got there it was around 4 pm and a bunch of relatives were just leaving his house after the Quran Khwani and all the prayers. He made us sit in the drawing room and sat with us while we told him how sorry we were about his father. He was, ofcourse, quiet gloomy and wasn’t talking much.

Silence prevailed for a while before one of the three people (say Raheel) screamed: "yaar ..itney sarey log aye hoye they, tere ghar per zaroor kuch acha khana hoga". Saif admitted that there was some mutton biryani that had been ordered for the guests. Raheel said "yaar qasam sey bari bhook lag rahi hey", supported by the "haan yaar" of two other guys. Me, and two others who happened to be the closest of my friends in those years, told him that there is no need and that we were not there to eat but just to see him. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he couldn’t say No to the guys and went into the kitchen to get some biryani. He arrived with a large bowl full of biryani and a few paper plates. Six of the guys, including one of my close friends, just rushed to the food like hungry beggars and heaped up their plates with rice and meat. Ashamed of their behavior, and being somewhat gloomy ourselves, me and my other friend opted not to eat. We just could not eat anything at that time because the atmosphere of that house was so sad. This, didn’t matter much to the other hungry fellows, three of whom had set aside the spoons and were gobbling up the food with their hands. They had forgotten that they had not come to a dinner party and were stuffing their mouths like they’ll never get to eat again.

This wasn’t it. After a few minutes, when Raheel ran out of the meat in his plate, and the bowl of rice was also empty, he threw his hand in the other guys’ plate trying to snatch a piece of mutton. Simultaneously laughing at how he can get what he wants. But the other guy wasn’t willing to let the meat away that easily and grab Raheel’s hand screaming "oye..yeh meri boti hey". My friend and I were shocked by the coldness of these people; we were just tongue-tied. They fought over the food till it was all finished, and throughout they kept cracking jokes. To me, they resembled a pack of starved wolves, feasting on the body of one of their own kinds. They kept eating wildly like it was the sole purpose of their existence. I didn’t know what to do or what to say at that time, I was angry and at the same time I was astonished over this representation of lack of humanity. I hated them.

One other such incident was a first-hand experience of one of my acquintences. Her father died when she was around 14 years old. Try to imagine the sorrow of a 14 year old girl who had just lost her father; and to increase her melancholy, her phuppho (father’s sister) says to her : "yaar thori si biryani mere ghar bhijwadena, mainey tu bilkul bhi nahin khai". It was also on the soem. I mean, you’ve just lost a brother for God sake, and all you care about is that you’ve not eaten the God damn biryani. If she were my aunt I honestly would’ve told her to ’go F*** herself".

Sometimes I think its just me over-reacting. Maybe I am taking on these things more seriously than they ought to be taken. But I cannot stop myself from thinking that even after thousands of years of eating, we are still damn hungry!