I had heard of this phrase many times, especially when reading English newspapers and magazines in Pakistan.
KARACHI: I had heard of this phrase many times, especially when reading English newspapers and magazines in Pakistan. But on the afternoon of February 28, I saw it in full play. While driving my car on Sunset Boulevard at 1 pm, I came upon a traffic jam, right in the middle of the road. While this road often has heavy traffic, this was unusual because many of the cars had simply stopped in the middle of the road.
Eventually, there was some movement, and the cars moved forward. And then I could see the ‘long arm’ of the law — literally! The driver of a car was being hit on the head by two policemen because his vehicle had bumped into a police mobile. The police mobile was following a senior police officer who was in his own Prado jeep, with Sindh Police number plates. The driver was trying his best to tell the policemen that it was an accident and that there was not even a scratch on either of the cars but they were not willing to listen. They slapped him around, one of them hit him with his machine-gun’s butt and they threw him in the police mobile. All this happened as the senior police official waited in his jeep (paid for by my, and your, taxes), oblivious to the spectacle going on which was — apparently —behind his line of vision.
Once the driver of the car was bundled away in the mobile, his grey vehicle was left standing in the middle of the busy road — with no concern for the motorists who would be inconvenienced!
A bystander
Published in The Express Tribune, March 1st, 2011.
