KARACHI: There was nothing to celebrate on December 31. I won’t give a rundown of the day or the week, but according to news reports 2,000 people were killed in Karachi in 2012. Yet, when a friend asked me to be her wingman of sorts at a quiet ‘grown-up’ get together, I said sure. And after it took me under 15 minutes to navigate from II Chundrigar Road to DHA Phase V at 9:30pm, I thought: even with the blockades, how hard can it be to get from there to an apartment near Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, which is about two-three kilometres or so away. On a normal day it takes less than 10 minutes. I roped my mother into dropping me — no one wants that call around midnight wishing you a Happy New Year with a side of “when should we expect you home”. That was my second mistake (the first was agreeing to step out on New Year’s Eve).
To cross over from Saba Avenue to Khayaban-e-Shamsher took us a mere 20 minutes, and this is where I begin to forget exactly how many streets and lanes we went down only to u-turn in the face of a mammoth oil tanker or Suzuki pickup blocking the way. Eventually after several policemen sent us the wrong way, my mother (with the best built-in GPS possible) managed to get us behind Park Towers (another 20 or 30 minutes). My friends promised it was a straight route “past the BBQ Tonight roundabout towards Ziauddin Hospital”, taking us behind Indus Valley. And they were so wrong. They forgot the roundabout called Bilawal Chowrangi, a stone’s throw from the King’s palace — Bilawal House.
It would be monotonous to recount how many times I reversed, u-turned and argued with the cops to let us through. Adept at knowing our ways, we did make it to the venue. Only to realise we were literally being penned in. Like prey. They were circling us in to keep safe the supposed prey — the not-so-presidential private house of the president. The official resources of the entire city were seemingly being used to prevent any traffic from going in its direction. The turn of the year was just more proof that the people of Karachi mean nothing to the powers that be.
It was close to midnight and the only thing free-flowing were the expletives from my mouth. A mutual decision was taken: turn back. Go home. But we were truly penned in. Stranded on the road that leads to Dr Ziauddin Hospital, the policemen on duty told us that we could either spend an hour in the car till the barricades were lifted or we could take another route. We then proceeded to drive our low-hung Citi over a two-foot high island that separates the main road from the service lane, an act which must have surely damaged the axle.
We got home, grimly contemplating the cost of car repairs and the fate of the city as the New Year had crept in an hour ago. It wasn’t the two hours that were completely wasted that angered me. It was the disparity which everyone was treated with. At one point during the night, an oil tanker was slowly closing an exit. Two larger cars raced passed us: they had fancy number plates, tinted windows and rolled their windows to show their armed guards. They were told to race through. Next in line was a rickshaw with young men who looked like they were going home after a long day’s labour. They weren’t allowed through of course. As they turned back, one of them got out and said “Tum Corolla walon ko Allah poochhayga. Hamaray pass Corolla nahin hai tau hum kum hain — tum hay Allah pochhaye ga”. I won’t be surprised and would rejoice if one day that frustration turned into an actual Tahrir Square.
Not the Tahirul Qadri circle of nuts but a grounds-up revolution that shakes us from our comfy cars and DHA enclaves.
Halima Mansoor
Published in The Express Tribune, January 4th, 2013.
