– Illustration by Marium Ali and Zehra Nawab

Every year, I go trekking and camping in the Northern Areas of Pakistan with a group of a few hundred college kids. After roughing it for a week and a bottom-destroying 30-hour bus ride back, we always stop at a fast-food joint in Islamabad for a meal. Naturally, after a week outdoors – and that bus ride – the young folks are not looking their best. A bunch of raccoons stuffed into a sack of dirt and given a good shake would be the closest description of the group, looks-wise. And yet, every year without fail, the sight of these bedraggled creatures (its quite difficult to tell the men and women apart after a bus ride on the Karakoram Highway) out in the open, attracts dozens of local young men, who pile into their cars, pump up the music and cruise around the parking lot for hours until our group finally departs. As a student of human behavior, I have always found this alpha male display curious and fascinating.

There are the usual sociocultural explanations: Islamabad, it has been suggested, is only marginally more amusing than being in ones grave. Islamabad residents jump to defend their city and suggest that the culprits are 'the Pindi boyz'. The blame game then shifts to politicians, the army and often to the doctrine of strategic depth. The usual theory about a repressed, religious society and hidden currents of sexual frustration also get taken out for a walk. All these are only partial explanations at best. Having watched the boyz and their stunt driving displays over the years, I have noted that while it may start off as a display of low-IQ manliness (is there another kind?), the reason it goes on for hours is that the boyz are clearly having a lot of FUN. Not sexual frustration, just rip-roaring, laughing hysterically and thumping each other on the head FUN. And that leads me to another line of thought.

You see there are various kinds of and ways of having fun. The younger generation in the middle class is particularly addicted to acquisitive fun, sometimes sternly called consumerism, where you buy something and have fun with it. Video game platforms, smartphones, TV, clothes all fall in this category and there is no doubt that these are all a lot of fun. But, of course, the fun fades away (usually quite rapidly) and then you have to buy the next fun thing and keep China busy.

The younger generation in the middle class is particularly addicted to acquisitive fun, sometimes sternly called consumerism, where you buy something and have fun with it.

There is another class of fun which takes place in, and requires, public spaces. The street where you play cricket under street lights, your favorite walk through a bazaar (or these days, a mall), your school or college campus, the beach, a trek through the mountains are all examples of this. The odd thing about this sort of fun is that it seems to have a much longer half-life — it doesn’t fade as rapidly with use. Mall rats are not always avid shoppers, they just hang out enjoy it there. I have been going to the same park for ages and I still enjoy it; every time I see the neighborhood kids having their all-night, iftar-to-sehri, tape-ball cricket match, I am always tempted. At my university, I regularly see alumni wandering in with no purpose other than to nostalgically enjoy a public space with which they were familiar. There is a generation of Indians and Pakistani (increasingly elderly but still with us) who really long for a walkabout in Anarkali Bazaar or some mohallas in Delhi and pretend they want to visit relatives and friends. They really just want to hang out in a space which they enjoyed and had fun in.

Nor is this primarily a nostalgic exercise for those with extremities dangling in graves. There is the famous question-and-answer sequence that defines teenage life: Q. Where did you go? A. Out. Q. What did you do? Ans. Ummm... Nothing. The life (and pain) of any local market is the groups of young people (primarily men) who stand around doing nothing and having fun. In Lahore, over late-night weekends, the major roads are death traps because the motorcycle wheelie boys are doing their thing (PTI is making major inroads into this constituency, I notice). My annoyance at this freelance stunt riding is tempered by the fact that I used to do the same thing with my group of friends. We used bicycles and stuck to our neighborhood but the aimless fun of wandering the streets is an undeniable similarity. The particular activity (wheelies, cricket, shopping, etc) is changeable and (it seems to me) dispensable. What is fun is just hanging out in public. It is the public space that forms the undertone of the memory. It seems, therefore, that worthwhile investment for local governments – fun-wise – would be to have more hangout spaces and to encourage and enable more people, particularly women and the elderly, to enjoy them. Basically just go out, hang out and if necessary, do nothing.