Lahore's heat can be a prison. When the temperature hits highs of 44 degrees, all I want to do is stay inside my air conditioned bubble and never go outside.
As I stepped out to get some air this morning, a gushing cool breeze smacked me right in the face lifting all anxieties about facing yet another scorching day in the city. I immediately rushed my bike out the front gate and set out to explore, screaming at the top of my lungs as I hit the main road and was greeted with another windy assurance that I wasn't going to suffer in the heat.
After half an hour on the go and riding past the beautiful old city, I set out towards unknown roads and stumbled into the rawest part of Lahore that I have seen to date. Donkey and horse carts dominated the road, elbowing against rickshaws and massive transportation trucks to move through a busy industrial market road. Busy laborers pushed their wares into brightly painted cargo trucks against a backdrop of dilapidated crude homes made of brick juxtaposed with stunning yellow mosque standing confidently as a symbol of the local faith. Not a single modern sedan, a symbol of wealth and growing income disparity in Pakistan, was in sight.
Just as Pakistani's regularly glare upon me as a rare foreign specimen in the country, I felt as though I was looking outward through my helmet's visor into an aquarium of a world foreign to me. My mind filled with fascination as I peered outward and soaked in the sights, sounds and smells. Eventually, traffic came to a standstill as opportunistic truckers, rickshaw drivers and animal cart masters edged each other into gridlock.
As I sat in traffic, bearing the heat now rising above 30 degrees, an elderly man in his 70's started setting up his watermelon "shop" only four feet away from me. He took three watermelons from the bag slung over his shoulder and carefully placed them across a plastic bag he had laid out on the ground. As a man dignified enough not to beg even despite his age, he took great pride in making sure that each of his watermelons was positioned just right to be as presentable as possible to his customers.
In the midst of a flurry of human activity, animal feces, constant dust from the nearby industrial activity, and garbage littered all across the landscape, this man's best shot at earning his day's income was to sell watermelons on the ground just inches off the main road. I couldn't help but think what would happen to him if a careless commuter destroyed one of his watermelons - he would lose a third of his day's revenue, pay the full cost of a smashed watermelon and possibly wouldn't be able to feed himself for the day. From his squatted perch on the ground, he proudly started shouting probably something along the lines of "get these watermelons while you can, they're the best ever!" in Urdu.
Traffic started moving as commuters further up ahead negotiated the terms of releasing the gridlock. Their terms were likely along the lines of "I'll keep moving forward until either you back off or I get impatient of sitting here in which case I'll back off". With the man and his three watermelons in my rear view mirror, I reflected on the life ahead of me as an aspiring social entrepreneur. I have been feeling incredible anxiety recently around the money, or lack thereof, that comes at the intersection of "social" and "entrepreneur".
Today I gained a new perspective from the man and his watermelons. No matter how much I feel like my back is against the wall, or how empty my bank account and my stomach may feel, I'll always remember: I'm probably not down to three watermelons.
As I stepped out to get some air this morning, a gushing cool breeze smacked me right in the face lifting all anxieties about facing yet another scorching day in the city. I immediately rushed my bike out the front gate and set out to explore, screaming at the top of my lungs as I hit the main road and was greeted with another windy assurance that I wasn't going to suffer in the heat.
After half an hour on the go and riding past the beautiful old city, I set out towards unknown roads and stumbled into the rawest part of Lahore that I have seen to date. Donkey and horse carts dominated the road, elbowing against rickshaws and massive transportation trucks to move through a busy industrial market road. Busy laborers pushed their wares into brightly painted cargo trucks against a backdrop of dilapidated crude homes made of brick juxtaposed with stunning yellow mosque standing confidently as a symbol of the local faith. Not a single modern sedan, a symbol of wealth and growing income disparity in Pakistan, was in sight.
Just as Pakistani's regularly glare upon me as a rare foreign specimen in the country, I felt as though I was looking outward through my helmet's visor into an aquarium of a world foreign to me. My mind filled with fascination as I peered outward and soaked in the sights, sounds and smells. Eventually, traffic came to a standstill as opportunistic truckers, rickshaw drivers and animal cart masters edged each other into gridlock.
As I sat in traffic, bearing the heat now rising above 30 degrees, an elderly man in his 70's started setting up his watermelon "shop" only four feet away from me. He took three watermelons from the bag slung over his shoulder and carefully placed them across a plastic bag he had laid out on the ground. As a man dignified enough not to beg even despite his age, he took great pride in making sure that each of his watermelons was positioned just right to be as presentable as possible to his customers.
In the midst of a flurry of human activity, animal feces, constant dust from the nearby industrial activity, and garbage littered all across the landscape, this man's best shot at earning his day's income was to sell watermelons on the ground just inches off the main road. I couldn't help but think what would happen to him if a careless commuter destroyed one of his watermelons - he would lose a third of his day's revenue, pay the full cost of a smashed watermelon and possibly wouldn't be able to feed himself for the day. From his squatted perch on the ground, he proudly started shouting probably something along the lines of "get these watermelons while you can, they're the best ever!" in Urdu.
Traffic started moving as commuters further up ahead negotiated the terms of releasing the gridlock. Their terms were likely along the lines of "I'll keep moving forward until either you back off or I get impatient of sitting here in which case I'll back off". With the man and his three watermelons in my rear view mirror, I reflected on the life ahead of me as an aspiring social entrepreneur. I have been feeling incredible anxiety recently around the money, or lack thereof, that comes at the intersection of "social" and "entrepreneur".
Today I gained a new perspective from the man and his watermelons. No matter how much I feel like my back is against the wall, or how empty my bank account and my stomach may feel, I'll always remember: I'm probably not down to three watermelons.
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