Are you a Karachi ka Burger or a Maila?
June 11, 2010 . 3 Comments
in News
by Fahad Siddiqui
Being a regular visitor of a city called Karachi for the past 21 years, it may be surprising to most readers that I still cannot come up with one answer when questioned about the social landscape of this financial hub of Pakistan.
Without getting further into the economic and geographic significance of Karachi, I would rather elaborate on a more interesting theme regarding the social structure of the city’s youth. Common notion on the street is that every well-dressed person, with an average car (not too top-notch) who maybe has his hair gelled, is able to speak English and looks presentable is a “Burger Batcha” or as they put it in Lahore, a ‘Mummy Daddy Batcha”.
Why is that the common notion? Because that is the belief of the ma! jority that resides in this city, some 90% of the residents do not fall under the “Burger” category. Who exactly are burgers? This is an unanswered question largely because it is an unasked question. The remaining 10% classify for the “Burger” category because they are comprised of youths apparently residing in privileged areas called; Defense housing authority, Clifton or KDA or as they say in Karachi, “Pull kay us par”. The burger category also includes overseas Pakistanis who visit Karachi and are well-exposed to the global issues; be it politics, fashion, economy or eatery. 90% of the city defines burgers as people who have no knowledge or a sense of association with Karachi or Pakistan. The burgers, according to them, tend to live in their own little fantasy world where there is lots of partying, BBQs, beaches, fancy cars, girls, exotic houses, forefathers’ businesses to run, first-class travel tickets for vacations across the globe and are barely concerned with the daily issues of Pakistan like; poverty, crime, unemployment, power shorta! ges, economic meltdown, terrorism, water inadequacy, unexpected hike in oil, rice, flour or sugar prices etc. Their belief is that a burger’s life is all set and there never was or will ever be anything to worry about.
The burgers on the other hand have tolerated this stereotypical terminology for over a decade and a half, and have hence come up with retaliation when exposed to this term. Whenever an individual is referred to as a burger his first reflex is to call the referrer a “Maila”. LOL.....This is a term that has evolved over the past 5-8 years, and what it exactly means is also unanswered because it too is largely unasked. According to a few burgers that I met in my recent trip to Karachi during summer time, “Maila” stood for, “Any individual who can’t speak English, is a fashion disaster, belongs to a lower middle class faction of the society, can’t impress girls, does not drive a vehicle, attends public school and eats a lot of PAAN, CHALIA and MANIKCHAN! D”.
I was fortunate enough to have a few 2nd cousins who fell into the rather non-burger category. At first, they resisted breaking it to me, but after a few days of hanging out with them at another cousins wedding they told me straight up that they think I am the typical definition of a “Burger Batcha”. Upon my suspicion and curiosity they elaborated as to why they thought that, “you have spiked up hair, you dress in baggy clothes at times, most of your conversation is in English, you know nothing about Karachi and hence you are a classic burger”. Focal point of their conversation however was my hair-do and my insufficient knowledge about Karachi’s everyday issues. I do agree that my hair-do was and still is unacceptable in Pakistan even in 2009, for the masses at least. It wasn’t just them who commented on my hair-do, the series of coordinated insulting remarks started off as soon as I landed at Karachi airport from Toronto, the first person to ask about my funky spikes was a very polite lady, who was the immigration office! r. She not only resembled physically but was also as polite as Firdous Ashiq Aiwan in speech and inquired why I had a bird’s nest on my head.
The series of comments only progressed with an upward shaping curve, but when my 2nd cousins accused me of having no knowledge of Karachi’s daily issues; they had clearly asked for trouble. Because towards the end of our conversation that day at the wedding they took my phone number, email address and wanted to learn more about Karachi, Pakistan history and borrow some of my books that I had quoted. Let’s just say, I had to begin by going down to the level of enlightening them with the name of the Member of National Assembly from their own residential constituency which was Gulshan-E-Iqbal – Mr. Haider Abbas Rizvi. Just because I had spiked up hair, they stereotyped me into being oblivious about the current issues of Pakistan.
I strongly believe that “Maila” and “Burger” have emerged as strong termin! ologies over the years as a result of our societal change and its movement towards Neo-liberal capitalism; where the poor become poorer and the rich get richer. My interaction with the defined Mailas made me feel that they were low on self-esteem, felt unprivileged, hence rebelled and consequently they came up with a term “Burger” to disrepute the privileged. As for the burgers, over time they started taking pride in being referred to as burgers since it was a term used for the up-class residents of Karachi.
Today, after years and years of bloodshed that Karachi has seen in the 90’s and the miraculous infrastructural and economical development witnessed by Karachiiets from 2005-2009 along with the electronic media revolution during Musharraf’s regime, youths of Karachi now want to be seen as, or referred to as Burgers. This is widely because of the “VJ & Rock band-Culture” that has evolved as a result of the increased number in entertainment and music channels, and the only people that make a mark as VJs are the ones that! look Western or, in other words are, Burgers. A clear example of that is on the auditions for Waqar Zaka’s show called, “Living on the edge”, where each and every contestant was found to make his finest effort to speak English fluently, even though they couldn’t, and dress up in a “Western” wardrobe only to find out that they made a joke out of themselves. Another significant social change has been the dramatic increase in the number of Rock Bands in Karachi. Approximately every one out of ten youngsters that I met in Karachi were either in a rock band, struggling to be in one, learning to play guitars, thought they were exceptional vocalists, strongly believed they should be on Coke Studio or that they are the next Atif Aslam! It is also essential to look, walk, talk, act and have a stud attitude of a burger today in order to impress girls, and Mailas apparently have a hard time doing it. Hence the entire youth is trying to engage themselves in becoming a part of the medi! a industry by book or by crook; they are either doing auditions for VJs or starting their rock bands, solely to fit in.
I personally believe that there is a socio-cultural gap between various factions of Karachi and the city has witnessed immense social stratification on the basis of finance. There exists an urgent need for the ruling and the largest political party of this city, the MQM, to gather all the youth, both mailas and burgers, under one umbrella. Because, with the momentum of social hatred increasing between the rich and the poor, or burgers and mailas, the near future not only seems dark, but destructive as well. The youth needs to be given; leadership training, career counseling and guidance, enhancement in communication skills (both Urdu & English), emotional support, boost in the motivation etc, all these skills will consequently result in an increased self-esteem and self-confidence of our next generation and will facilitate Pakistan in producing better human beings.
The overall impact of! this for Pakistan would be a higher Human Development Index, which stood at 0.57 in the year 2007. Human development index (HDI) looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated and having a decent standard of living. Between 1980 and 2007 Pakistan’s HDI rose by 1.30% annually from 0.402 to 0.572 which highlights the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our increasingly interconnected world. The HDI for Pakistan is 0.572, which gives the country a rank of 141st out of 182 countries. Not impressive, provided we are the 1st Muslim Nuclear state, with the 7th largest standing army, have the 2nd largest salt mine, 4th largest coal reserves and the 11st largest labor force in the world!
The government will have to address these social challenges of Karachi in order fo! r them to create a more progressive, prosperous, confident, passionate, healthy and an equitable Pakistani youth. I urge Mr. Faisal Subzwari – Sindh Minister for Youth affairs to tackle these realities and brainstorm solutions on how to cover the socio-cultural gap and bring all Pakistanis on the same page. This will not only create a frictionless atmosphere for Karachi, but in-turn it will also produce cultured professionals and corporate leaders coping with the fast-forwarding demands of the world today.
All in all, I can only conclude by stating that eating PAAN or having spiked up hair does not make one a Maila or a Burger. What makes a person rough and tough or sissy is their upbringing, surroundings and the spark in them to be realistic. Judging a person by the clothes they wear, the language they speak, food they eat, the parties they go to, would be unfair. I personally oppose the existence of both these conflicting terminologies. We, as the youth, should ensure that Quaid-E-Azam’s expectation and sacrifice shall not ! go in vain and let the future justify the blood of millions of martyrs who gave up their lives for this nation-state.
We are one Nation, one state, with one future and hence one target. Act now and save Pakistan!
