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| The end of Ramazan causes me to reflect a little on being in Pakistan during this
month. It hasn't been particularly difficult in some ways but it has been a constant
source of constraint. I rest convinced that it is essential for an anthropologist
studying Pakistan to spend at least one full Ramazan in the country and to try fasting
at least one day. Having said that I am glad it's over. I'm not the only one either.
Everyone seems to respect Ramazan and take the occasion seriously-- but they feel
the strain of getting up very early and not drinking or eating or smoking all day. Although everyone told me that fasting was a good thing and they all had many reasons why it was a good thing, the exhileration in the air when the news announced that Ramazan would be finished the 19th and not the 20th was palpable. I stayed up late into the night with people singing songs and even dancing from time to time. I have concluded that while my neighbours here think fasting is good they don't like it very much. They do it willingly but are very happy when it's over. After a month of waking up at 4:30 in the morning I agree with them. Eid-ul-Fitr itself is like Christmas. I was given a new shalwar kameez, and some extremely nice cloth to have a second shalwar kameez tailor made. I changed some rupees at the bank and got a lot of five rupee notes to give away to small children. I was told that all adults are extremely generous on Eid day and children are more or less indulged and allowed to play all day. Pakistanis themselves tell jokes about how permissive they are with smll children so I had a hard time imagining how they were going to be more indulgent than usual on Eid day. Apart from the pleasure of being able to sleep until 7:00 uninterrupted I spent most of this week trying to map the village and get a rough census of the population breakdown. I stupidly managed to insult a few people over castes. I asked neighbours what caste people were. When I encountered those people I tried to confirm that I had the right caste. Although in Islam all people are equal, there are some castes that are considered low. One family whom I was told was Mulasi insisted that they were Awan. This could either be that the family itself is trying to push its way into a higher caste or that their neighbours were playing a joke on me. At this stage I'm not too worried about things like this as I note down both names and hope that during the course of the next year I can figure out why there is a discrepancy. In the end I'm perfectly happy to have an ambiguity in this sort of thing-- I have no personal attachment to any Punjabi castes and if some people find themselves in two different ones on occasion, so be it. One final sad note for the week. My moustache which I had been growing got badly trimmed by a barber (not in the village I'm glad to say-- a nearby city) and I had the options of being lopsided, going with a Hitler moustache or shaving the whole thing off and starting over. I realize this is trivial but I was starting to get used to it and the men in the village like the idea that I was doing something to look more like them. If you assume from this last statement that ALL village men have moustaches you would not be far off. In another village I was asked why one of my European companions didn't have a moustache (they thought it very odd that a grown man would not grow a moustache). So tomorrow I start again. |
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