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| A sub-engineer from the District arrived at the school to begin work
on the girls school this week. I stood by and watched Malik Afzal informally chair
a village committee on where the new building should go. I learned that my earlier
conclusion that there were many deaths in this village may have been exaggerated.
I inadvertently asked what I know now to be a very offensive question. However the
real high points of the week were meeting a new tenant family and running into the
little 6 year old daughter of one of my assistants. When the sub-engineer came I tagged along as an observer. I had no intention of giving my point of view on anything to do with the girls school. As agreed in the k'huli kacherri, the girls school will get a new room, a boundary wall and a toilet. Walking down with Malik Afzal and the sub-engineer was a sort snowball promenade. Malik Afzal kept calling men along the way to join us. I wasn't quite sure why he was amassing such a large gathering but when we arrived at the school I realized he had just formed an ad hoc community council. They began discussing whether the new building should go on the right or the left of the existing building. Malik Afzal gave the 'council' plenty of time to argue and debate among themselves only making small comments from time to time and solliciting quiet people's opinions. At one point he asked me where I thought the new room should go. Not being an engineer and not caring, but wanting to play along, I randomly picked the left side. It turned out the sub-engineer had picked the right side but many of the villagers were opting for the left side. Once I heard the sub-engineer's reasons for the right side I was convinced but I suspect it did me some good to have randomly chosen the side of the majority. After some half hour of discussion Malik Afzal began seriously taking control of the meeting-- summarizing the options for people and getting brief statements from the most prominent men. I must admit I was impressed at his ability to handle a crowd-- 60 years as a zamindar and 20 years as a policeman have given him a real knack for manouvreing people around to agreeing with each other. Although there are problems with the zamindari system and there are some aspects of it which quite disturb me, if all zamindars were as straightforward and talented at their jobs as Malik Afzal I could accept a system like this. In December I started hearing about deaths of people and came to the conclusion that the village was a deadly place to live. It seemed to me to have an inordinately high death rate. This week I discovered that the majority of the deaths that get announced over the mosque loudspeakers are actually from people outside the village. They announce the death of individuals who have some connection to the village. As I am learning, village connections extend very widely. Everyone in the village, as far as I can tell, can name a few very close relatives living in another village or city and can name quite a few more distant relatives living either in Pakistan or abroad. If one of these geographically distant relatives dies it will be announced over the loudspeaker. No doubt when I die my death will be announced (I am assuming this because the Taxila mosques do the same thing-- so even should Bhalot become a city they will continue the practice of announcing deaths). Offending people is a bad thing. I avoid it as much as I can. However it is not completely avoidable. On those occasions when I inadvertantly offend people I find it terribly useful to have offended them because it teaches me something in a way that's hard to forget. The one topic in this village that is particularly sensitive is women. All of my friends know that my research must include data about women so they accept a certain amount of questioning about their female relatives' activities. This week I apprently went too far in my questioning. The man I asked only joked and gave me an unsatisfactory answer-- it was another man standing by who whispered to me that I must never ask that question. I won't repeat the question here (offending someone once is bad enough-- I won't risk doing it twice). As I said, though, it proved to be a valuable learning experience for me. I finished the week with a wonderful day meeting recent arrivals to Bhalot. Two brothers of a tenant farmer have settled on the outskirts of the village. One of them has brought his wife and children-- hopefully the other will be able to bring his wife and children soon. I spent the morning recording Pukhto songs and enjoying the hospitality of 'Gujar Pathans' as they are called by locals. They are Gujari speaking Gujars from NWFP-- hence the addition of Pathan to their 'qaum' or caste. On the walk back from meeting the newest Bhalotis, my assistant and I met his little 6 year old daughter on her way back from school. A charming little girl with a bright smile who was quite bubbly and excited but wanted simply to run off with her little friend. She was very good however and obeyed her father when he called her over. She stayed and spoke to me until he gave her permission to run off. One of the nice things about all the Punjabi villages I have seen so far is how affectionate Punjabi men are with small children. They obviously enjoy joking and playing with small children and there are few occasions when children are not welcome. It is a refreshing change from Europe where children are almost never welcome to adult functions. Seeing my assistant speak to his little girl I could see how proud he was of his little girl who is learning to read and write and how much he cares about her. |
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