Truck poetry is a beautiful art form of the Pakistani culture associated with those involved in the transport system including vehicle owners, proud drivers, painters, and designers who obviously take great pains and undergo tedious labour to produce every time a unique piece of art inscribed with striking verses and comments and adorned with the most beautiful pictures that are both a source of pleasure for the viewers and a means of delving into the lives of all those involved in this aesthetic creation. The breathtakingly beautiful image of Rani in the short story Look, but with Love written by Uzma Aslam Khan, is given an animate status over which there is a serious discord between the painter and an admirer. The title itself is taken from a famous inscription in the truck art with which almost every Pakistani is familiar.
In a detailed study conducted by Dr Tariq Rahman we come to see the truck art as a window that opens into our own culture. These inscriptions have a variety of subjects including culturally dominant religious beliefs. Despite having religious connotations, these inscriptions that adorn the sides, tops and backs of trucks and other vehicles are largely motivated by culture and do not conform to the fundamentalist form of Islam that denies intersession by saints and rejects Sufi practices.
However, a slight change in the past few years in the subject of the inscriptions has been observed by truck art researchers as we can find praise of the Taliban inscribed on certain vehicles, but the population is negligible and found only in KP. While travelling on the narrow and dirty roads, the truck art is a source of pleasure for many and this art form has proven to be extremely resilient as it maintains its originality, keeping the romantic vein in them alive despite pressure from extremists that prohibit romantic inscriptions along with paintings of living beings.
This provides us with genuine hope that despite the horrors of war these people face as they are more exposed to the hazards as compared to ordinary people which is evident from the following inscription; Driver ki zindagi maut ka khel hai which means that the life of a driver is a game of death, thus revealing that our culture is much stronger than we had anticipated and that it is upon us as individuals to keep it intact and pass on strong and resistant cultural beliefs to our future generations where war and extremism has no presence at all.
LUBNA UMAR
Islamabad
