Dear uncles and aunties of DHA, Karachi

Freedom is far too inconvenient for us to have

Citizens of the West have long marvelled at the authoritarian parenting styles of Asian parents, and the custom of infantilising their offspring even long after they’ve achieved legal adulthood. The events that have been transpiring in the bastion of upper-middle class Pakistan have, regrettably, done nothing to dismantle that stereotype.

Authorities in Defense Housing Authority (DHA), Karachi, have long claimed to have been receiving complaints from furious residents about shisha cafes operating in their areas, demanding the nuisance to be contained before it consumes their young ones.

It is a curious phenomenon that so many Pakistani elite and middle-class parents believe that the responsibility of monitoring what their adult offspring browse on the internet, or whom they date, or what they smoke, can simply be delegated to the government. And make no mistake: the government has no qualms taking away rights that you’ve decided you’d rather not have. Mark Twain expertly described this phenomenon as “telling a man he can’t have a steak because (your) baby can’t chew it”.

The authorities have been raiding and sealing shisha cafes for years, to the chagrin of small business owners and their adult patrons. About a week ago, the success of the raiding parties was ostentatiously displayed by lining up some 800 waterpipes on open ground and running them over with a steamroller. Would it have been less energy-intensive to unceremoniously incinerate them, as we do most other illegal objects that are confiscated? Yes. But the move wasn’t as much about intimidating the owners of shisha bars operating surreptitiously in the area as it was about appeasing angry parents whose cherubs had been spoiled by the ubiquity of ‘double apple’.

Here’s what I won’t do. I will make no attempt at making shisha smoking seem any less sinister than it is. The adverse effects it poses have been well-established, and glorifying this habit would be a grave disservice. As a doctor, I should know.

In fact, for the sake of consistency, I’m hoping that the ritualistic flattening of 800 hookahs was only the first phase of the plan crafted by the politically active uncles and aunties of DHA. This Sunday, I’m guessing there’s going to be a grand bonfire organised by the DHA authorities where we’d be burning cartons of cigarettes under the moonlight. After all, the harm to public health caused by shisha statistically does not skim the surface of what cigarettes have caused thus far.

Unfortunately, the crackdown on artisanal smokes and small-businesses serving them has done little but ensure a monopoly of legal, mass-produced poisons. What moves like these truly achieve is eradicating competition for corporations that have grown increasingly adept at selling little sticks of tobacco to your shisha-starved sons and daughters.

The Prohibition of Smoking and Protection of Non-Smokers Health Ordinance 2002 is quoted by the DHA as the guiding light of their operation, as the Supreme Court ordered a nationwide crackdown against shisha cafés last month. Much less touted is the part in section 5 of the ordinance that the “federal government may issue guidelines for permitting designated smoking areas in premises or places where adequate arrangements are made to protect the health of the non-smokers”.

This is the reason why you’re able to smoke a cigarette in a smoking area of a restaurant or an airport. A shisha café, advertised as such, should count as a designated smoking area, especially since it serves the same substance found in cigarettes, only smoked in a different way. However, it is arbitrarily not granted the legal benefit of the same caveat that allows cigarette smoke in certain public spaces. In fact, there’s very little regulation of cigarette smoking in DHA among most places, contrary to the instructions of the ordinance. So what is it about shisha specifically that invites such keen prosecutorial interest?

One theory, floated earlier, says that the interests of cigarette companies are guarded by far better lobbyists than those of shisha shops. Another is the passage of inane rumours from time to time alleging that shisha owners mix dangerous substances – like opium – in the flavoured tobacco served in shisha lounges. I’m not an expert on narcotics use and trade but common sense dictates that drug pushers are not in a habit of giving away their product for free. They’re usually not as charitable as these rumours perceive they are. If they do give away drugs for free, they’re expected to do so only temporarily to get the customer addicted. In such a case, one would expect the shisha lounge to eventually start charging the addicted customer much more than the starting price, and not continue selling the alleged “mixture” at the market value of tobacco alone.

Then there’s an additional hazard of shisha lounges serving underage patrons. This is a legitimate concern which is in no way limited to shisha. General stores are just as likely to sell cigarette packs to teenagers below smoking age, but that hazard is yet to invoke a flat ban on selling cigarettes. The answer, therefore, is to prevent the illegal use of a legal substance.

Ironically, the two aforementioned problems are more likely to occur where shisha cafés are driven underground through a legal crackdown. Establishments operating in clear view of the federal regulatory bodies are more likely to abide by rules like not selling shisha to minors in order to retain their licenses. To those deprived of licenses either way, it makes no difference who they serve shisha to. Or what they serve in the name of ‘shisha’.

The final theory, and the most excruciating one to admit, is that there is some truth to the stereotypes about Pakistani parenting. The debate on shisha is essentially a debate between the young and the old. It is, in some comical sense, about the ‘buzurgs’ (elders) putting the ‘nadaan’ youth in their place, regulating their lives long after they’ve achieved legal adulthood. This is done by ignoring a giant welter of unhealthy activities from smoking cigarettes to eating parathas smothered in desi ghee, and homing in like a missile upon moral or medical peccadilloes popular specifically among young adults.

It is autocratic attitudes like these that have won the country its notoriety as ‘Banistan’, where anything from YouTube to kites — almost exclusively the things that the “spoiled kids of today” might be interested in — get blown clean out of the sphere of legality.

If you take a stand for this frightful trend, you risk implying that you, as an adult citizen, are not to be trusted with an internet connection, a kite-string, a hookah, or a DVD of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. At every step, the government must intervene to relieve you of the burden of making an informed decision about your personal lifestyle. Freedom is far too inconvenient for us to have, and more importantly, much too dangerous for our 19-year-old sons and daughters to wield.