The city is depressing. It burns. It blacks out.
The lines blur. You find yourself in your old neighbourhood. You have to ask for directions.
The tea goes cold.
Even your apathy (circa 1990s) doesn’t help anymore.
You leave.
Then you’re reminded of why you live here.
You wake up. The tea has gone cold again. A clock ticks. A screen flashes red.
Its a concrete jungle where dreams are broken.
Pakistani cab and rickshaw drivers are a force to be reckoned with in this country, and this one man has put this force on the map. (Link via @Disturbed_Rick on Twitter)
So I’ve been tweeting about conversations with cab and rickshaw drivers for a while, and have finally managed to compile them all, as disjointed as they are. Karachi may be a concrete jungle where dreams are broken, but if you speak to a cab or a rickshaw driver and their tales will either make you (a) feel like a spoiled brat, (b) wonder if everyone in Karachi is psychotic, (c) wonder if you’ve gone mad.
The Drone Philosophy
There’s a cab driver who I met on I.I.Chundrigar Road who was from Buner. According to him:
He’d never seen a Pakistani Taliban member in Buner, only 1 Afghan Taliban member.
He understood why there was such sentiment against the army, but also understood why people obeyed: an order is an order. (the man had served in the army for years)
The Pakistan Army members in Kargil were rather miffed when they were told to withdraw.
He didn’t believe in suicide bombers – “sirf drone aadmi ko maarte hain.”
On a more personal note, he thought Karachiites were weaklings and he couldn’t afford to have a second wife.
Manners, manners
Cab driver: Aap ka hukam sar aankhon par. Jab tak aap iss gaari mai haan, yeh gaari aap ki hai.
Work woes
Sometimes they look at your tired face and think you may need anti-depressants:
Rickshaw driver: Aap ke saath koi tragedy hui hai kya?
Me: Nahi.
Rickshaw driver: Nahi who aap bohat pareshan lag rahee hain.
At 9 pm, on my way back home from work
Rickshaw driver: Aap iss waqt kaam khatam kartee hain?
Me: Jee, akhbar mai kaam karte hain, yehi hota hai.
Rickshaw driver: Haan, aaj kal kaam karna bohat mushkil hai,
Gabbar Singh lives on
On a day when there had been two bomb blasts in Karachi
Rickshaw driver: “Karachi mai jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya.”
A few minutes later, after he was stopped randomly by a policeman -”yeh Pakistan ki sab se haraami qaum hai”
Uncle Pakistan wants YOU
One rickshaw driver wanted me to join – I kid you not – the Pakistan army.
“Acha to aap private job kartee hain? Uss mai koi future nahee hai. Aap army join karlein.“
At which point i asked him what exactly i would do in the army…
“Nurse! Aaraam se 25,000 miljaate hain.”
At some point in this discussion he stopped the rickshaw on the road. When asked why…
“Khaday hoke aaraam se batata hoon aap ko army ke baare mai.”
Me: Nahee, aap rickshaw chalayein.
When I asked why he hadn’t joined the army if he thought it was so great.
“Maine saat saal pehle retire karliya hai. Ab mera beta bhi army mai hai.”
A long argument later, during which he gave me all the locations for recruiting centers, and I reiterated that I did not want to join the army, I finally got back home.
When getting off, he asked: “to aap ne kya socha?”
Me: kis baare mai?
He didn’t miss a beat – Army join karne ke baare mai!
Thanks to Kalsoom for the post title suggestion
Oh, what fun.
Ali Zafar plays a reporter in this upcoming Indian film who produces a fake OBL tape. My only regret is that ‘TV reporter Iqbal’ and Chand Nawab will not be part of this production.
AND – Maila Times has a true winner with this rickshaw post.
One of these days, I will post up all my ‘Overheard in a Rickshaw’ quotes but this was a gem I heard last week: “Karachi mai jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya!” This was hours after there had been two bomb blasts in Karachi.
With apologies to Stevie Wonder.
No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No Baitullah Mehsud to scare, he’s been droned away
No end to stereotyping
No songs for Musharraf to sing
In fact here’s just another ordinary day
No one is sane
No peace looms
No weddings can run till the next day’s noon
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
I know you’ll retweet that too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
No summer’s high
No electricity in July
No NRO left on which to write
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for drones to fly in Quetta’s skies
No Younis Khan
No sanity
No giving thanks to all the rants Blackwater brings
But what it is, though old so new
That TTP scares you like no three letters could ever do
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
If you’d like to sing along, here’s the original, saccharine Stevie Wonder song:
Ah, fashion week. Who knew it would result in such a string of articles from the foreign press, all reporting breathlessly on a four-day event happening ‘under the shadow of the Taliban’. I contributed a post to the Changing Up Pakistan blog today on how the event is anything, but under any shadow.
You can read the post here. That ends this exercise in shameless self promotion.
The Great Flood 2.0 aka the second bout of torrential rain in Karachi deluged us all today. Surprisingly – and I knock all tables as I write this – KESC did not leave us contemplating suicide. We still have electricity, a fact I am so very, very thankful for.
And this is how the afternoon went down..
I return home in the afternoon having been filled with a sense of deep foreboding at the dark skies. At home is the sister, who missed the Great Flood’s first edition and has not yet taken my hysterical recollections seriously.
4:30 PM: The rain begins.
4:35 PM: Turn AC off, since its located on the wall that water leaks in from. H seems extremely excited at finally being able to help, and has brought containers and cloths to mop up water with, and is ordering me to wear slippers. She would get the cat to wear slippers too, if she could.
4:36 PM: Attempt to move stabilizer results in me banging my knee against it. Believe may have broken one, nay, several bones, such is the pain. Scream in agony.
4:40 PM: Still screaming. Cannot believe I have been so stupid as to injure myself on an afternoon where no travel to a medical facility is possible.
4:42 PM: H is still mopping away, entranced and now thoroughly enlightened to how exactly our room floods.
4:45 PM: H interrupts mopping to examine knee. We judge it cannot be broken. Screams abate.
4:50 PM: Enter Smoky, resident cat, to survey progress of work. Utterly surprised at how both of us are not working at such a terrible hour (containers having overflown and mops having been wrenched for the umpteenth time). Of course, life must be good for her, sitting on top of the TV.
4:55 PM: H bemoans fact that we have been interrupted from watching Namaste London by the rain.
5:10 PM: Dad enters, utterly soaked. Smoky’s expression shows utter delight at having been avenged by the skies for all the times she has been bathed by evil Dad and evil H.
5:15 PM: Inform Dad about state of knee. He was going to ask me to make tea. Clearly, aforementioned accident has its benefits.
9:20 PM: Rain seems to have stopped. Am reminded of favourite line from the utterly fantastic film Les triplettes de Belleville: ‘Is that it, then? Is it over, do you think? What have you got to say to Grandma?’
9:30 PM: Attempt trip outside to the shop. Lanes and streets flooded with water. Find one dry street patch, feel like kneeling down and kissing it. Would have, if wasn’t scared of contracting diseases.
9:40 PM: Shopkeeper in entirely high spirits. Clearly, he is also as delighted at KESC’s miracles. His attempts at humour are not appreciated, he’s not drenched, is he!?
All in all, not a bad day. Its almost 11 PM and I know there’s rain forecast for the next 48 hours, but at least its over..for now.
What a horrific, horrific night. Like countless other people in Karachi, I too felt a Titanic-like effect – having to deal with a flood of water coursing through my room. I know exactly how those on board that ill-fated ship felt: trying to deal with collecting their belongings, making sure their family was safe, and trying to stop the blasted water. 205 millimeters of rain fell on this city and 25 people are reported dead. There’s so much to be said about the state of the city but I don’t have the heart right now.
So while most of you out in the civilized world spent Saturday night having a brilliant time and drinking cosmopolitans and martinis and sleeping blissfully in warm beds, I’ve spent the past hours doing this:
9:40 PM: Realize room is flooding again – water began leaking through during the day but I wasn’t home then so Dad took care of that. Now I’m all alone and can’t call for help.
9:50 PM: Put old towels on floor to mop water. They’re wet in a second. Sacrifice two old t-shirts to the cause. Utterly useless. Beg God, asking Him why he has forsaken me. No answer. He’s probably trying to get through to KESC as well.
9:55 PM: Turn off laptop. Water beginning to reach extension plugs all over the room. Do not want laptop to fall victim.
10: 00 PM: Bring out a huge stack of newspapers to mop up the water. Allow myself to feel sad because am losing out on money could have earned by selling old newspapers to the raddi wala. Floor now entirely covered in drenched newspapers. Tactic has only been somewhat successful.
10:30 PM: Wish someone was building an ark and could get me out of here. Street outside looks like a swimming pool and yet cars still driving through. Madness.
10:40 PM: Shriek in horror. Water has reached suitcases under the bed. Can’t drag one of them out. Have to prop bed up with pieces of wood to get it out. Can hear arms shrieking in protest but can’t care anymore.
10:45 PM: Begin wiping water off into balcony so that it’ll drain out into the street. Tedious process.
11:00 PM: Electricity goes off.
11:15 PM: Light candles and gas lamp in the lounge. Gas lamp keeps flickering because of open balcony door so have to close door to my room. Lounge smells like gas chamber. Terribly concerned for cat who insists on sleeping in there but she seems nonplussed by the smell.
11:30 PM: Wiper and I have spent so much quality time together by this point it puts my other relationships to shame. Feel like Tom Hanks becoming friends with Wilson the volleyball in Castaway.
12:00 AM: Keep humming Foo Fighters’ Learn to Fly. The sky is not planning on saving me. Keep calling KESC numbers. As always, they never answer. Keep wiping.
12:30 AM: Aunt calls. She sounds worse off than I do, having not had electricity since 4 PM meant when the water started seeping in, she couldn’t even see it. We compare war stories: she’s had to deal with a foot of water in the terrace and two flooded rooms. Did I mention she just got the house painted and had tons of repairs done?
1:00 AM: Flop onto bed, which also has a stabilizer, my handbag and laptop. Curl up into fetus position.
1:30 AM: Can’t sleep. Keep walking from kitchen to room, desperately wiping up puddles of water. Room has dried somewhat or may be optical illusion. Also believe rain has stopped but can’t tell.
2:00 AM: Resume fetus position and sleep.
6:00 AM: No electricity. Go back to sleep.
8:30 AM: Cat may have tried to wake me up. Promised her breakfast and fell asleep. Or could have dreamed this. No idea.
8:45 AM: Believe Dad is feeding cat.
11:00 AM: Drag myself out of bed to go get halwa puri from across the street. Have been craving it for weeks. Wonder if halwa puri place is open, but realize such is wonder of Karachi – it should be.
11:30 AM: Wow. Neighborhood looks like abandoned set of Waterworld. Walk through sludge to get onto the pavement. Two men using a motor and pump to drain empty plot of water.
11:32 AM: Benefit of being only girl in line (though look decidedly unfeminine) means other customers and shopkeeper don’t want me to stand and I make off with puris quickly.
11:35 AM: Stop at shop for phone credit. Ask shopkeeper if he knows when the electricity will be back. Says he’s heard either 2 hours or 2 days. Other customer complains about Mobilink being down.
12:00 PM: Maid comes to work. She wiped the floors again and made me a cup of tea. Normally I can’t stand her litany of excuses for showing up late but the cup of tea is the only good thing that’s happened to me so far.
1:00 PM: Cat comes into room to survey damage, looking at the drying floor and messy housemate (me) with disdain from her vantage point on top of the computer rack.
2:55 PM: Electricity comes back. I can’t believe it, but its true. The fan is working. All the fans are working. So is the TV, but the remote isn’t. Can’t switch AC on because the wall its on is wet and I don’t want to be electrocuted. Would be terrible finale.
So its raining in Karachi today. Twitter and Facebook are aflood with ‘I love rain’ messages, some of which deserve to have their authors hit by a volley of umbrellas instead.
Now I hate rain. I wasn’t always like this. My penchant for splashing in puddles and floating paper boats in them was the stuff of family ‘aww’ moments and I always thought a rain-washed Karachi looked gorgeous.
Then came the 2006 monsoon and getting stranded during an evening I still can’t believe I survived. I still fail to find the humour in the Clifton underpass flooding, because guess what: I was 10 feet away.
And then I moved to Amman the year after, where after weeks and months of complaining about the fact that it never rained it began to pour down madly one fine day. Of course, this was in a country prepared for such things and so while underpasses did not flood and I wasn’t left stranded, the amount of walking up and down hills as streams of water gushed past and having to work in grey weather left me terribly depressed. And there were no amounts of pakoras I could fry up that could stop me feeling that way.
That same month, I flew to Rotterdam, where guess what: it rained throughout my one week stay. It was rain overkill. I couldn’t – and still can’t – find the romance in rain. It is sludgy and depressing and perhaps it only looks beautiful sitting inside a coffee shop. When you’re out walking constantly or take a rickshaw it isn’t fun: I got to work soaked and came back soaked, made worse by the fact that people seemed to be slowing down just to take a look at the girl clutching on desperately to her bag and becoming a stronger candidate for pneumonia by the second. It isn’t fun when you have to pray and hope that you’ll make it home alive even though you’re in a vehicle with no wipers.
So screw it. I hate rain. Plus where the fuck was all the Saturday traffic? Did you all take the day off work cos it was raining and you could sit at home and eat pakoras? If work is so dispensable, why do you clog up the streets on Saturdays anyway? WHY?!
I am too tired to blog. Its not that I have blogger’s fatigue even though I’ve been using this space for over six years now. Its because of that bloody electricity breakdown – which The News is calling The Great Blackout – but I fondly like to refer to it as Apocalypse v.2. My head hurts from the heat, my back hurts because of all the tossing and turning and my eyes hurt because I’ve been going around staring wide-eyed at all the working electrical appliances, rejoicing in the simple delight of them working. Never take anything for granted in Pakistan.
But back to the matter at hand. Since I can’t be f**ked with presenting an opinion on any of the grave issues facing the country or the world, I’m going to revert back to being lazy and just write out my list of must-reads for the week.
Ayaz Amir writes about General Ashfaq Kayani’s Top Gun moment:
Flying into the danger zone.
The army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, has grown on the job and is definitely a more confident man than when he took over from Musharraf. The Malakand operation and preparations for an assault on Waziristan have to a large extent rehabilitated the army’s image, badly tarnished by Musharraf’s policies. But it would be a pity if any of this went to Kayani’s head. We need good and able military commanders. But we’ve had enough of military saviours and can do without more in the future. And, perhaps, we can do without army chiefs trying to become F-16 aces. A flight through the clouds of Waziristan — a final victory lap, so to speak — may be in order once Baitullah Mehsud is beaten. Before that it would look a bit like President George Bush’s landing on the flight deck of the USS Constellation with a banner at the back proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” when, as events in Iraq were to prove, the mission had barely started.
Beirut-based blog Qifa Nabki provided the two gems of the week. The first – their sarcastic take on Lebanon’s national dialogue talks and how they probably go down
Raad: Ahh, actually… yes we can. In my capacity as the representative of Hizbullah, I have a proposal to make.
Hariri: Oh?
Raad: Yes. We have drawn up a national defense strategy. If we could just pass these papers around, you will see what it is that we’re talking about. Basically, we’re willing to dismantle the resistance entirely or incorporate it into the Lebanese Army… whatever works for everyone else.
Geagea: Huh?
Raad: We think that this is what makes the most sense for Lebanon, at this stage.
Hariri: Wait, really?
Raad: No! I’m just messing with you! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…!!!
Hariri: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…!!!
Geagea: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…!!!
(10 minutes later)
Everyone: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…!!!
Raad: You should… have seen… the look on … your face… Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…!!!
Hariri: (wiping tears of laughter away) Oh my God. You had me there man. Oh damn, that was funny!
The second gem - Twitter’s 140 character limit causes a major fail.
One opposition supporter who goes by the Twitter username “MousaviRulez” is alleging that the character limit prevented him from communicating a major discovery that could have provided proof for the opposition’s claims that the election was rigged.
“I came upon a huge warehouse in the outskirts of Tehran, and it was full of unopened ballot boxes from different districts all around the country. There must have been a several million votes in there,” MousaviRulez told QNION correspondent Jacob Tafnis. “As soon as I figured out what I’d found, I immediately sent a message to my Twitter followers with the directions to the warehouse. But I ran out of space.”
MousaviRulez says that when he realized he couldn’t fit the entire set of directions into one tweet, he tried to break it up across many smaller ones.
“But by then, it was too late,” he said. “People were re-tweeting my original tweet, then re-tweeting my staggered tweets. It was a huge mess. And then someone in the government who was following my tweets realized what was going on and they shut down the Twitter servers in the country.”
MousaviRulez says that within ten minutes, several officers arrived at the warehouse, cuffed him, and took him to jail. When he was released the following day, he made his way back to the warehouse only to find that it was empty.
“Ten more characters. That’s all I needed to get my message across,” he said sadly, sipping tea in a Tehran cafe.
“If only I’d used Facebook, things might have been so different.”
Ever thought what you’d do if you suddenly came upon Baitullah Mehsud? KABOBfest discovered a patent has been registered for a device that could give the words ‘switching channels’ a whole new meaning:
Screenwriters take note, this would make an awesome plot for another one of those CIA agent in the Middle East type movies Hollywood loves so much…
Germany’s The Local recently reported that a Saudi inventor filed for a patent with the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) for a killer GPS-like microchip that would allow governments to locate and terminate known extremists and criminals (and possibly political opponents and dissenters?) at the push of a button.
The device is sort of like that nifty house-arrest ankle bracelet that we use here in the states, except for two important things: (1) it is surgically implanted; and (2) it will release a poisonous toxin into the carrier’s body if he/she’s ever deemed a security risk.
SMS for IDPs:
Thousands of posters have been put up in Lahore citing ‘an appeal from the chief minister to send an SMS for a ten-rupee donation’ for the IDPs. Will the provincial government kindly explain how many SMSs are required to cover the cost of one poster and how much will be left over for the IDPs?
Five Rupees finds Zardari rapping to the EU:
Asif Zardari contradicts just about every statement he has made over the past three months without sacrificing his arrogance. For best effect, read this rhyming statement with some P. Diddy beats playing in the background:
‘What I need is trade, not aid. I’m looking for MOUs (memoranda of understanding) and not IOUs and I intend to get them,’
Have a great weekend everyone. Pray there isn’t a thunderstorm in interior Sindh again. Also thank the Pakistani cricket team for single-handedly distracting the country from the apocalypse by their spectacular win against South Africa last night.
After a parcel bomb arrived at the home of MNA Yaqub Bezinjo this morning - injuring four – in what clearly was a targeted attempt, the Karachi CCPO has said that Karachiites should ‘handle all parcels with care’.
Now I fail to understand how we can do this. Are all of us supposed to keep scanners? Turn away deliverymen from unknown courier services? I love getting post and I was miffed when H met an actual postman from Pakistan Post Office - dressed in full uniform – who delivered a package last week.
I can’t stop thinking about the greatest postman of them all – Postman Pat – and his cat. How would he feel if his profession was being scrutinized and he was a figure of suspicion? What would he do?
