Given my abject failure to gain any photographic evidence of this fantastic piece of theatre, I shall relate it in the form of scrappily-drawn diagrams.
1. Choose a suitable looking tree.
2. Create a roadblock with a few branches and sticks. Some drivers take notice and stop.
3. TIMBERRR!!! (Or the Urdu/Pashto/Hindko equivalent). Given the proximity to all the waiting cars, now 2 or 3 rows abreast, this takes some confidence in your felling angle.
4. Well done, you’ve successfully avoided hitting any vehicles, and have beautifully blocked the entire road with your tree. Meanwhile, Pakistani drivers not being the epitome of patience, they have continued to fill up any available space. We’re now up to 3 or 4 rows of traffic, leaving only the narrowest possible lane free for any traffic that might want to come the other way.
5. Chainsaw man begins removing the side branches of his tree. Some of the front row of drivers hop out and move the original road block of sticks.
6. Chainsaw man finally gets round to cutting the trunk in a couple of places. His helpers start to manoeuvre a section out of the way. In the meantime, having run out of road to fill up, vehicles are now extending the traffic jam sideways out on to the dirt at the side of the road. As I may have already mentioned, patience is for other people.
7. One particularly impatient driver five or so cars back decides to chance it and races round the very outside, bounces over the remains of the stick-block and charges for the narrow gap where the section of trunk used to be. Unfortunately the gap is a few inches narrower than his car - he just about manages to screech to a halt in time.
8. The gap is widened enough for a car or two to pass: cue manic free-for-all scramble for the gap. At this point the drivers will be forced to take notice of that glaring flaw in Pakistani traffic self-discipline, that our esteemed readers will have spotted ages ago: namely that making the traffic jam fill the entire width of the road on both sides of the obstacle doesn’t really leave much room for any oncoming traffic to pass.
Many small horn-honking and finger-waving negotiations ensue, with general precedence going to whoever managed to stick their vehicle in the gap first. Looking back, the traffic jam extends as far as we can see. The whole thing only took about ten minutes.
