Spring is in the air?

The change in how we use parks

I was asking a friend, who has been going for a walk to a park in Lahore for the last fifteen years, and out of the fifteen for the last ten years in the morning and around the same time, what sort of changes he had noticed in the people who came for a walk and in his surroundings.

He said that for one there were a lot more people who came to the park now, even in the early morning, and irrespective of whether it was the height of summer or the coldest day of winter, leaving aside rainy days of course, than before. Though he was talking of absolute numbers, but even allowing for population growth and increased density in the locality, he felt that the increase in numbers was more than what population growth would have warranted. And, more interestingly, where there used to be mostly older people who would come to the park for a walk, now you could see people of all ages in the park. The older ones still walked but many of the younger people jogged and ran as well.

The advent of the younger generations had made the parks livelier and more colourful. And there was more variety in dress, especially in the summer, as well. There is quite a range of dress forms on display. Among men it varies from sports wear to shalwar kameez, while amongst women the range goes from sports wear to full hijab. And irrespective of the covered area, clothes go from the ordinary to very visibly expensive branded ones. Some younger people wore shorts to the track. Interestingly, when some started to wear running shorts, instead of longer Bermudas, some of the older people complained to the management, and the management did try to dissuade people from wearing shorts to the track. But eventually they themselves realised the ridiculousness of the effort and returned to saner policies. And people also relaxed quite a bit about what other people wore to the point that now even though people might notice interesting choice of clothing some young people made, it was hardly ever commented on loudly, made an issue of or complained against.

My friend also pointed out two more interesting trends. He said that there were a lot more women who came to the track now, in percentage terms, than before, and from across all ages. And where women who used to come before would get a lot of stares and had to live with that, now there was a lot less staring at women. People spent a lot more time ‘doing their own thing’ and worrying less about what others were doing or who they were.

In fact, he also mentioned that some years ago there was hardly any woman, irrespective of age, who would come to the park alone or not accompanied by a man. Now there were quite a lot of women who came alone and walked on the track alone. Though there were plenty who came in small groups as well.

There was also a change in how people had started to interact with each other as well. For many years my friend noticed that most people who came to the park would just take their exercise and then leave, but over the last few years people have started to interact socially as well. A number of older people, possibly past retirement age, had formed groups that not only walked together but joined in gup shup on some mornings. They even have breakfast together on some mornings. My friend did not know of how these groups had come to be formed, and how they organised for breakfasts and so on, but they were getting together regularly, and they were also getting bigger as well, attracting more and more people to the gup shup. Is social space changing in Pakistan? Are we getting ready to be more organised and creating social ‘neighbourhoods’ to fill the gap of nonexistent cultural and political forums? Or am I reading too much into the trends mentioned above?

There were a couple of changes that my friend did not appreciate. He has noticed that even in the morning, around 8-9am there are some younger people, in school/college uniforms, who are roaming or sitting around in the park. These are clearly people who have either not gone to their educational institution or have bunked from school/college to be at the park. Sometimes these are all-boys groups and sometimes they are mixed groups. If these young people are over-eighteen college students, then clearly it is up to them to decide if this is the best use of their time or should they be in classes. But if it is under-eighteen school boys/girls, clearly there is an issue here. My friend wanted park management to deny under-eighteen school children entry into the park. But I feel it is really the parents and school managements who are responsible for looking after this and park management should not concern itself with the problem. At one level, if students are going to bunk classes, what better place to go to than parks? At least they will gain something from exercise and the fresh air.

Do the above suggest that people, across age and gender, are becoming more health conscious? That there is more awareness about the need to exercise, a few times a week at least, and people are taking it more seriously? Do the gender and dress trends, and the ‘doing one’s own thing’ trend indicate signs of acceptance of diversity and more tolerance for others and the need to give others their space? Since the park entry fee is very low and the park gets people from a wide income spectrum, from lower middle class to high income group, do the changes in park population and their attitudes indicate something about wider trends in urban life in Pakistan? And does the tendency to invest in groups again, after the selfish and self-oriented and self-centred 1980s and 1990s, indicate a changing social space in Pakistan?

One does hope there is some of the above in the changes that have been observed in the park exercise-taking population.

The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected]