ABBOTTABAD…THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

As the car starts to climb the broad but winding road and the familiar cool air makes you switch off the AC and roll down the windows, the anticipation of being in your hometown makes your heart beat a tad faster.Abbottabad is a city named after Sir James Abbott, a British officer who became a legend in this region in the 1840s and 50s and was knighted for his efforts to bring it firmly under the control of the Raj. It is located in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwah province (previously known as North-West Frontier Province) of Pakistan and is the third-largest city in the province after Peshawar and Mardan. The city is situated in the Orash Valley, 120 km north of Islamabad and 200 km east of Peshawar at an altitude of 4120 feet (1260 m). The city has been well-known throughout Pakistan for its pleasant weather, high standard educational institutions and military establishments. It remains a major hub of tourism of the Northern Areas in the summer. Recently Abbottabad drew a lot of attention from the world because of the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US navy seals at his hide out in Abbottabad. The peace loving people of Abbottabad have been shocked with the news and the world’s attention; something they are not used to.It is summers and we are making our yearly, obligatory journey to Abbottabad, the place where I spent the first 35 years of my life. Snatches of lost memories, jogged by the familiar terrain, rise from the mists of time. People and places like swirling, smiling, friendly ghosts seem to beckon and call. I feel the kind faces of my parents beaming down on me and I call out to my children, worn down by the long journey and half asleep in the back seat, to wake up. ‘Look, the lights of Abbottabad’…exactly what my mother would say to my brother and me 40 years ago, when we would reach the same place after spending the winter vacation in Lahore at my Grandma’s. Those lights on the hills would glow and twinkle welcoming us back home. The few lights on the Simla Hill still flickered listlessly and I remembered with a feeling of resigned indifference…Load-shedding!

It is indeed a delight to see the recently broadened road, ahead of ‘Khota Kabar’( meaning the donkey’s grave, which now has a more euphemistic name; Muslimabad,). You don’t have to get stuck behind slow moving trucks and inhale their diesel fumes or try to overtake the heavy traffic from the left side in dare devil maneuvers, what you have been doing from Hasanabdal to Havelian. But now the recently broadened road is again proving to be inadequate, especially on summer weekends.

But as you speed up the road, crossing Salhad, the heady, cool breeze gives way to an unpleasant odour which invades your nostrils. Very soon it turns into an over powering stink which makes you roll up the windows. Then you remember, the city’s garbage dump was relocated to the periphery of the city some years ago!

The rapid expansion in population and consequently the city limits has made the dump a part of the city now. Soon an unsightly, ugly structure of cement and mortar greets you on the right side. Ah…the fruit and vegetable wholesale market, which was thoughtfully shifted to a wide, open space few years ago! So it is amid this stink of rotting vegetables, burning garbage and noxious smoke that you enter the Abbottabad of today.

A row of CNG stations, a tribute to the entrepreneurship and connectedness of their owners with the echelons of power is the next landmark. As you honk and curse your way through the heavy traffic at the entrance to the city you can’t help but remember the Abbottabad of your childhood with its tree-lined boulevards and cool, fragrant breezes. Mansehra Road, the part of Silk Road that traverses the city, has now ‘evolved’ into something monstrous like the Muree Road of Pindi with its bumper to bumper traffic and high strung drivers.The tall and proud poplar trees that stood like sentinels at both sides of Mansehra Road and PMA road were cut down about 30 years ago to broaden the road. As one would come down the incline of CMH the road would stretch before you as far as eyes could see, these poplar trees forming a beautiful canopy for miles.

Abbottabad has come a long way indeed and has covered this long distance like a leaping and bounding, rabid hound. Snapping at the ankles of simplicity and being chased by demons of development it has arrived where it never should have gone.Ugly looking shops and plazas with their gaudy exteriors have mushroomed over green fields and sparkling streams. Continuing from Abbottabad city to Mandian and extending up to Abbottabad Public School and Mangal, these seemingly never ending rows of shops and shopping plazas are a testament to materialism and ‘life in the fast lane’. Ironically they have made the ‘lane’ much slower! On my last visit I was utterly dismayed to see that the maple trees at the far end of the cricket ground, which gave Burn Hall its characteristic looks, had been cut down making the whole area look embarrassingly bare!

I remember the time, about 30 years ago when I would sometimes miss the school bus, sometimes for a reason and sometimes just for the heck of it because it was such a pleasure walking the 5 km trek to home. Sometimes walking back through the corn fields from my school to my home in the PMA through what is now Jinnah Colony, I would stop by a road side stream or ‘nullah’ and try to catch the small silvery fish in the sparkling cold water. Ah…now those days are no more. Stinking drains, clogged with plastic bags and house hold refuse have replaced those sparkling streams and box like ugly structures with their garish exteriors have swamped the green fields and maple trees.

The quaint, old garrison once a hill station retreat, whose scenic beauty prompted Major Abbott to write his well known poem is now an amalgamation of upstarts and reapers of windfall profits, who rev and race around in their four wheel drive, flashy vehicles; strident music blaring and tyres screeching, bowing at the altar of new found wealth.After the catastrophic earthquake of October 2005 there was a huge influx of affected people from all over the province. Abbottabad had remained relatively unscathed and so it opened its arms to thousands of people who had borne the brunt of the earthquake. Then the military operation in Swat and adjoining areas in 2009 and after drove many more to seek haven in the calm of Abbottabad. To cater to the ever increasing demand of more people arriving to settle here, new housing colonies sprang up all over and even the pine covered mountains on the peripheries were not spared. Profit seeking entrepreneurs have ‘moved mountains’ to build houses.

The whole landscape has altered, sadly for the worse. The roads cannot contain the traffic that insists on trampling them and which includes heavy traffic en route to the Northern areas and Kashmir. It is an ordeal to cross Mansehra road to the other side and traffic jams are rampant. The mass exodus to Abbottabad has brought many criminal elements with it and crime rate has escalated massively. Thefts and robberies have become rampant, so much so that the police advises people, through wall chalking, not to leave their houses locked on the outside as that would be an invitation to thieves. Indeed my in-laws’ residence in Kaghan Colony was ransacked during the one hour in the middle of the day when all of them had to go out.Passing by the Piffer Centre last summers, I noticed a marble  monument with the Urdu translation of Major Abbott’s poem on Abbottabad etched on it. I stopped the car and took out my camera intending to take its picture, just to read the Urdu version. Within seconds I was surrounded by a couple of armed men in shalwar kameez, trying to grab my camera and telling me not to take any pictures. These were army soldiers in privates who were keeping guard incognito. While I was happy to note their vigilance, I could not understand why a roadside plaque was being given the status of a top secret document! So much of our enthusiasm, as a nation, is often misguided and misplaced.

I know my rantings are just the cries of a man who has lost his paradise and who cannot reconcile with the loss. I know these pointless yearnings of the romantic in me will remain unrealized. I know what has happened to Abbottabad is the price of ‘progress’. I just wish we could go back to simpler times when we were not so ‘developed’!