KARACHI: Two events have shaken even the most diehard ‘feudals’ of Pakistan. First, the spontaneous and unprecedented countrywide uprising of people sickened to the core with the carnage being repeated across the country and eventually resulting in 87 bodies kept unburied on the freezing streets of Quetta until the prime minister was forced to come and lower his majesty to the floor. With all those thousands conducting dharnas across the country, it was completely peaceful. And that was the most significant aspect of the force majeure. Not surprisingly, the sacked Aslam Raisani, who still has not returned from abroad and seems to have topped the president’s record of staying away from his capital, bleats his spirited commitment to democratic power over the dying bodies in his benighted province.
The other event is the sudden falling from some heaven of a latter day ‘saint’, entrusted with the job of leading the nation somewhere, while remaining encased in a bullet proof container. Despite his demagoguery, I am not quite sure even he knows what his entire agenda is. That may be the most significant aspect of what seems to be becoming a force majeure!
Perhaps, reading an impending ‘Bastille day’ situation in the not-too-distant future, all the staunchest ‘upholders of democracy’ scrambled to gather in the Raiwind palace built with the blood, sweat and tears of the poor people of Pakistan. As I write these lines, these 40-odd politicians fill the TV screens across every news channel. They were all united in their concern for democracy — as most have always beneficially known it, irrespective of and through every military or civilian occupation in the past 50-odd years — being threatened. These persons who have jointly hurt Pakistan over the years came together to have a sombre Nawaz Sharif read their collective demands — charter for the continuation of their wondrous lifestyle.
Concerned with how I would reach home since Karachi’s major roads are jammed and under fire and the city yet again under terror siege, I flipped through the channels hoping one of them would tell us the ground situation around this once wonderful city that pays the highest amount in taxes for nothing; the most bhatta for survival; is almost permanently under siege; is the battleground for every political party’s militant wing in their turf wars; has the highest national death toll; and is near-permanently dark in every sense of the word. But it seemed that the fate of Karachi and its citizenry was irrelevant to our media moguls. All that one got to see was a nearly tearful Nawaz, alternating with a near apoplectic Qadri. The bile in my throat continues to rise as I, and thousands of fearful citizens, brave the jammed roads trying to get to wherever we need to, alive and in one, frayed, piece.
Dr Mervyn Hosein
Published in The Express Tribune, January 18th, 2013.
