Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  Not surprisingly, the American and European position was the same. Banned after several independent studies verified the same conclusion. The pharma giant, American owned, no longer produced the drug, marketed here under another name, and had recalled any existing shelf stock in response to a public outcry. Yet, and I double-checked the dates, that pharma giant had recently renewed our license to produce Betinate. Very recently. As in post-negative studies.

  Never having learnt to leave well enough alone, I went to R&D in the benighted hope that they had somehow not been apprised of this very important development.

  ‘Er …’ my contact person had hemmed and hawed for nearly a minute when I burst into his cubicle and blurted out what I had read, ‘really?’

  ‘Yes, really! Can you believe it?’

  ‘Er … no … are you sure it’s from a credible source?’

  ‘Once I knew what to look for I found similar postings on several governmental and NGO lists, as well as a recent FDA alert.’

  They might drop bombs on other people’s children, but America sure tried to look after its own. It might be having a tough time finding any fans in the greater Muslim world lately, but I thought we could do with absorbing some of its consumer protection ideology. As I thought about it, watching Ahsan the R&D man shift his weight from one foot to the other and refuse to meet my eye, it struck me that R&D at least was constantly updated on American FDA alerts. It wasn’t possible that they didn’t know about it.

  ‘Ahsan,’ I planted myself so close to him that he had no choice but to look at me, ‘you know all this already, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ But he still wouldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘If you don’t, that means you haven’t been doing your job properly. You’re subscribed to a lot of these lists, it isn’t possible that it hasn’t crossed your screen.’

  ‘We’re a big company. We have scores of products. I can’t keep track of all the information about them that crosses my screen.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll go talk to your boss then,’ I headed for the door.

  ‘It won’t do you any good,’ Ahsan said in a sulky voice, as if he were a reluctant pupil in front of a scary headmistress. ‘Don’t make a fuss about a little thing!’

  ‘A little thing? You know people have died because of this?’

  ‘People die all the time. And this drug has never killed anyone.’

  ‘It’s catalyzed conditions that have led to the users’ deaths, so indirectly, yes it has.’

  ‘A mere fraction. Buses in Karachi hit more people every day. In fact more people get run over by trains, in broad daylight.’

  ‘We prescribe it to children.’

  ‘And it helps them.’

  ‘They’re taking a risk without being aware of it.’

  ‘They would take it even if they knew. God’s will, remember,’ Ahsan grinned, ‘or do you marketer’s really think you’re God?’

  ‘I’m not a marketer, Ahsan. I manage a sales team.’

  ‘Then do your job and don’t interfere in mine.’

  That’s when I started getting really irritated.

  ‘It is part of my job to have all the information required to enable my team to meet their targets. And if there is information out there that means they shouldn’t be making any sales at all, they need to know about that too.’ Tone level, voice icy, let’s see if it worked for someone other than Ammi.

  ‘Look, the information you’re so obsessed with is just speculation, okay, probably fuelled by some competitor. No one ever takes these kinds of accusations seriously here anyway. People have more important things to think about than what some cough syrup may or may not do to children.’

  ‘Like what? Kashmir? Palestine? Israel? India? Making sure whichever bill might damage their interests doesn’t get passed? Arguing about whether the moon is visible or not? I’m so sick of this tunnel vision! When are we going to pay attention to the things that really matter?’ I knew my mouth was running away with me again, connecting dots only I seemed to be able to see. No one else seemed to care about the interconnectedness of it all, poverty and war-mongering, corruption and healthcare, illiteracy and misogyny, apathy and unethical business practices. I knew these thoughts swirled through other people’s heads too, they had to, but we were all just so mired in indifference. Ahsan, for instance, an intelligent, educated man, wore his blinkers like an optical foreskin, keeping out all the nasty germs and the dreaded thought virus. Half of us Pakistanis might be circumcised, but we needed a whole different wave of scalpel slashing aimed a little further up the anatomy. Well, I wasn’t going to let myself slide into callousness. God had given me a brain for a reason and it wasn’t to merely fill the space between my ears.

  ‘If you’re done with your lecture, I need to get back to work,’ Ahsan turned his back to me. A slap in the face for do-gooder Ayesha. I went rushing to his boss, stopping only to print out the most damning indictment of the Betinate concoction from my office PC. But those few minutes cost me, because when I was ushered into the R&D head honcho’s office he wasn’t alone. Ahsan was already sitting in one of the two chairs facing his giant desk. He got up to leave as an obsequious secretary ushered me in but Mr Irfan waved him back down.

  ‘What can I do for you Bibi?’ What a subtle reminder of my status! Bibi. A patronizing way to address a woman when it hinted at a respect that was not actually given.

  Ironic considering how endearing it seemed when Saad began to use it later …

  ‘I have some concerns about one of our products.’

  ‘What kind of concerns?’

  I explained. In succinct detail. But it was apparent he wasn’t listening to me. He was looking somewhere to my left, at the wall behind me. I stopped and turned to see what had caught his eye and faced only a blank wall. I turned back to him and he was scribbling on a piece of paper. He looked up when I didn’t resume, his eyes stopping at the printout clenched in my hand.

  ‘Continue …’

  ‘All right,’ I said pleasantly, ‘but you don’t seem to be listening.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Well, you’re not even looking at me.’

  ‘If I did, you’d be offended, if I don’t look you’re offended. The fact is, I don’t need to look at you. I can hear you perfectly well.’

  I caught sight of the dark mark in the centre of his forehead and slapped myself. Of course, the classic Namazi. Would skip important meetings to pray. Insisted on taking a mid-day nap on his sofa during Ramadan. Had an all-male staff and did the talawat at the AGM every year. No wonder he wasn’t looking at me. But if he were truly a religious man, he would take my concerns seriously. So I pressed on, my hopes rising at the thought of appealing to someone who respected the wrath of God and wanted to stay in His good books.

  ‘Thank you for bringing it to my attention,’ he said to my hand when I had finished, ‘I will look into the matter.’

  Was that it? I held out the printouts, ‘I printed out some of the material that was particularly disturbing in case you want to go over it.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. This department does its own research,’ I was being dismissed.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Irfan Sahib.’ I wanted to say ‘Uncle’ but I didn’t.

  ‘No problem Bibi. And Bibi, next time you have any questions regarding a product, why don’t you simply ask one of my team to help you instead of fiddling with this whole Internet madness. There are no rules on the Internet, anyone can write anything, our own people are much more credible.’

  Muttering a sulky ‘Allah Hafiz’, I left. I waited for a week for some progress on the withdrawal of Betinate, even an amendment in its literature detailing contra-indications, but nothing happened. I called Mr Irfan’s office to try and see him but his secretary kept telling me he was ‘unavailable’. I didn’t even merit an ‘in a meeting’ or ‘out of station’. But persistence was second nature to me when riled, and the stone wall I was facing di
d little to put my nose back where it belonged, in the centre of my face rather than someone else’s business. The web searches continued, but I adopted a whole new angle to worrying at the problem like a rabid puppy on a trash heap.

  Little fish in big departments found themselves at the mercy of a charm offensive by previously unavailable me. In an apt illustration of the local gender equation, a little flirtation took me places a walking, talking female brain could never hope to go. Into the belly of the beast, the decaying intestines of the Pakistani pharmaceutical enterprise. Was I prepared to be shocked? Yes. Was I shocked nonetheless? Yes. While I had never been naïve enough to believe big corporations stuck to wholly ethical business practices, especially in a country like ours where bribery, corruption and exploitation was the order of the day, I had retained illusions about my employer being better than most. It was locally owned, and I had thought that only the basest creature would soil its own nest. But I had forgotten all about the Seth.

  The Seth was by no means a persona unique to Pakistan or South Asia. Every country, every region has its self-made millionaires, distinct from the rest of the rich pack in that they lack the education and breeding many of their peers have in common. Pakistan had a whole plethora of Seths, traders who had cut corners, greased palms, eliminated the competition and used their heads as stepping-stones to become captains of commerce and industry. They dominated housing, construction, textiles, food staples, if it was guaranteed business it was guaranteed that they had a part of it. Fiercely patriotic, the only problem was that their country began at the top of their heads and ended at the tip of their toes. Memons, Chiniotis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans, the Seth mentality encompassed every ethnicity and religion and in urbanese had come to mean simply ‘he who follows the money’ (and destroys everything that gets in their way). Some communities produced more of this subset than others. Memons reportedly inducted their offspring into their business when they were hardly out of diapers while Chiniotis were said to like getting their daughters married off very young (always arranged) to protect property and assert control over the growth and direction of their wealth. There was a diversity of stereotypes to choose from. How many were real, how many fuelled by jealousy or rivalry, who knew. But we had imbibed them with our mother’s milk, and they were part of us at the cellular level.

  When I began to realize the extent of the rot infecting my company, I automatically blamed the Seth. The culpability of the little cogs in the machine escaped my attention, despite their ardent attempts to capture it.

  ‘I just really admire men like the Seth, who know what they want,’ I was batting my eyes at Rehan, an underling at the R&D unit, with the hope of eventually wheedling information out of him, ‘and they aren’t afraid to do what it takes to get it’.

  ‘You have to be a lion. The king of the jungle, anything less won’t do, it’s a cutthroat business after all.’ If there was guilt by association, there was also pride by association, and this pigeon-chested specimen had truckloads of it. ‘The team is really important.’

  ‘Of course, because one man can’t make an empire by himself. He has to have capable people behind him.’

  ‘Yes, dedicated people. Smart, street-wise.’

  ‘Willing to make sacrifices.’

  ‘What’s profit without sacrifice?’ This was getting deep, ‘how can you know the sweetness of success if you haven’t tasted the bitterness of deprivation?’

  ‘Was our owner like that? Was he poor?’

  Pigeon-chest looked glum, like I’d brought up a painful memory, ‘Very poor. He used to be a barber’

  ‘A barber? Really? I can’t believe it. Look how polished he is now.’

  The Seth still chewed paan while presiding over board meetings, and had one pinky surgically grafted into an ear.

  ‘Yes, well. That’s a real man for you. To go from nothing to something.That takes courage.’

  ‘And willpower.’

  ‘The sharpest brain.’

  ‘The keenest mind.’

  ‘And education?’

  ‘What about education? You just need to keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity. And please don’t tell anyone I told you the barber story. I don’t even know if it’s true. But why are we talking about the big boss at all? There are more pleasant things to talk about, aren’t there? Do you like poetry?’

  Oh no! I had netted myself a closet poet. Doubtless he turned out a dozen creepy ghazals a day about the inevitability of heartbreak and the indifference of the beloved. Mostly about the indifference of the beloved. Possibly about how he’d like to dissolve her in battery acid.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ I arched my eyebrows so my eyes popped forward like sentient tennis balls, ‘Do you write poetry?’

  ‘I scribble a little here and there.’ I bet he did, ceaselessly and painfully. ‘But I don’t really have much time, you know. I have a lot of work to do.’

  ‘Ah, work. The most painful way to destroy a man’s creativity. It’s so cruel that people don’t get paid to write poetry, only a few anyway, but the real artists have to slave away all day and then use what’s left of their blood, sweat and tears on what’s their true calling.’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ he perked up immediately, ‘at the end of the day I hardly have the energy to turn the key in the lock and my fingers itch to pick up the pen.’

  ‘It must be torture.’

  Sympathetic face, Ayesha. Kill the grin.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re very good at poetry. I mean, at getting thoughts together.’

  ‘My mother says I am,’ he bowed his head modestly, ‘but mothers love everything their children do.’

  Their sons do anyway, I thought, you should meet mine.

  ‘Because they can see their inner grace,’ I said aloud, ‘they’ve seen it since childhood.’

  ‘You know, everyone says you’re a difficult person but I don’t think so,’ he blurted out suddenly, ‘I think you’re just misunderstood.’

  Despite myself, I was touched. A vote of confidence from a closet romantic, it didn’t get more flattering than this. Not for me, anyway. I sometimes got laudatory, patronizing pats from Alpha males who didn’t see me as a threat, how nice it was to see a woman with looks and brains, when God blessed you he really blessed you, etc. A friendly lick from the underdog, who would have expected that to feel good? I backed off, put the awkward flirt away, shamed into abandoning my manipulation, at least for that afternoon.

  It felt good to flirt though, I reflected as I strode away down the corridor, tossing my hair back across one shoulder like the model in the Pantene commercial, conscious of appreciative glances as I passed open doors. It was a shame I couldn’t let myself do it more often. But I didn’t want to exploit my femininity, not too much anyway.

  For all its drawbacks, belonging to the female gender had its advantages. Separate, shorter lines for utility bills, the possibility of chivalrous assistance if your car broke down where a man would have had to push his vehicle himself, not to mention the advantage women extorted in shopping. I had learnt to flirt without ever having been conscious of what it was I was learning, simply from watching my mother and other women bargain with shopkeepers and tradesmen. Eye contact, caressing of fruit, intimate asides suggesting she was worthy of preferential treatment. So much for him, how much for me? We have had a long, happy relationship, you don’t want to spoil it now, do you?

  It was ridiculous when you thought about it, a sad reality condensed to a pitiful farce. We can beat them and rape them and parade them naked for an imagined transgression but let’s all smile indulgently as they tease the fruitwalla. Smile for savings and it was okay, smile because you want to and it might not be. Self employed, I wanted to control the parameters of my own indiscretion.

  But five minutes in my office and a deluge of administrative tasks reminded me that I was nothing but delusional. My cherished notions of strength, of principle, of independence, were nothing but
monsoon rain, life-giving, cleansing, but subject to forces beyond my control. The Seth, the paycheck, society, my family, the world… What was I doing risking it all for some silly cough syrup? Ahsan had been right when he said nobody cared about these things. Nobody did. It was entirely possible that I didn’t either. I might just be pretending to. God knows I was fragmented enough for my right brain to hide things from my left. I began to get angry, and within the hour I was pacing up and down the office space I shared with two others.

  Agitated beyond measure, I called my immediate boss and pleaded for a sick half-day, citing a variety of aches and pains. He assented immediately, assuming, no doubt – as I had thought he would – that it was ‘that time of month’ for me. He had to, to flat out ask me would be crossing a line. Another privilege that men don’t get, I thought, but what a petty, trifling victory of biology over equality. I hated it. I hated him. I hated everything. Especially myself.

  So it was another day of self-inflicted tension, ceaseless self-doubt, and never-ending negativity. I took bus after bus, taking a half-day meant I didn’t get the second half of the pick-and-drop facility (again provided to female employees only).

  I wanted to lose myself, and Karachi helped me. She swallowed me whole and regurgitated me at a series of anonymous, handy roadside stops to lie steaming on the pavement like the excrement of a sick universe. She was my salvation, my city. My sister, my martyr, my seductress, bartering her charms for favours. A traffic light, a roundabout, a tree. Who knew what she had to do for a park, how much she was paying for the facelift? They were fixing her, a lift here, a tuck there, slash a new gash or two, and presto … a face only a Karachiite could love.

  I stumbled home, exhausted, at the end of the day and was welcomed by a visibly flustered Adil.