No Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Another hours-long sultry night has somehow passed without electricity in a third-floor apartment in the city’s suburbs.The window curtains remained open throughout the stifling night but no breeze blew to lessen the suffocation inside. Attempting to break the silence that overwhelmed the night before, birds started chirping, though the morning heralded no reason to be happy about since the air was yet still and power not restored.As I drew closer to the window in a bleak hope for wind to blow or clouds to shower, I could only see a news-hawker struggling to throw a newspaper roll, bound with a rubber band, into the fenced balcony of an apartment. After a few attempts he did succeed as the roll landed with a thud on the terrace and he moved on.The hawker must be in a hurry to drop dailies at several other residences before the sun rises and stands above in the sky. In the news business, freshness and deadlines matter. And in the quest for that freshness many people like me, who spent a stuffy night without sleep, were waiting for the newspaper knowing well what little relief could it really bring home when things around were not pleasant.Even towards the day’s climax the maddening calmness was to change only into chaos and commotion. Many poor people would die due to heat-stroke while waiting in long queues for their turn to secure a bag of wheat flour on a subsidy. While there was no respite for those better-off either in the absence of electricity as with the hike in fuel prices, generators have become unaffordable to a large segment of society.The morning broadcasts of holy verses on radio would soon convert to news bulletins which would be counting the toll of people dying due to heat-stroke or gunshots in the name of robberies, politics or religion. In this utter despair, is it the lawyers’ movement planned for the day or the postponed budget session that people can bank on? I fear neither.Taps were without water. The UPS had stopped working long ago. And I looked again for the typical fluffy clouds which might break the silence and the rain might decide to show up earlier than expected.—HA

Graffiti speaks

No one can fix an accurate price tag on defacement of walls and bridges in this city though some people profess to see an aesthetic value in the passion for what they call an artwork. Such ‘artwork’ is rarely reported though it covers everything from toilet doodles to political graffiti on street walls, bridges and flyovers.
There are so many of them in this city that one generally ignores such squiggles but a few do catch one’s sight. For instance, the poorly written one ‘Perfume Chowk’, born a couple of years ago in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, has spread to many other parts of the city by now. The psyche that public space is up for grabs perhaps works behind such ‘art’ potential to appear on walls.
If one looks closely, one will notice all kinds of slogans from advertising catchwords to political cries sprayed or painted on the walls of public property. One such picturesque site is a short wall along the city’s main artery near Karsaz that carries a public message by traffic police perhaps. It was almost two weeks ago that some graffiti artists sneaked over the place to draw their lines and successfully managed to give it an artistic touch. Interestingly, no one at the helms of affairs has caught its notice or may be there are some more important tasks ahead.—HA

Moving threats

What will you do if all of a sudden you find a bomb in your car? At least you won’t sit idle to let the bomb go off so easily unless you are a suicide bomber. With this preamble, I may mention that most cars on the city roads are carrying a great risk that involves the lives of all road users.
A decade ago when the compressed natural gas was introduced in the country as a cost-effective fuel for automobiles, we all rushed to get our cars converted to the environmentally-friendly fuel system. Over the years the city witnessed a mushroom growth of CNG vehicles and gas stations.
Experts say regular examination of cylinders is a must to avoid any mishap. But it seems procrastination is our national trait. In this case too, hardly any of us bothers to get the cylinder and gas kit properly examined on a regular basis. Our daring drivers and cagey car owners conveniently ignore their responsibility about such an inspection. Perhaps we, the Karachians, are accustomed to bomb threats or we prefer to learn through hard experience.—HA