A house lit with electric lamps

Nobody has a magic wand with which to solve problems like load shedding and that the people must be a little patient

I lead my life in the midst of noisy rallies, shouted slogans and endless cries. All kinds of angry people raise their standard, chant slogans and burn tyres on thoroughfares. When this is not enough some unfortunate bus gets caught and set on fire. That accomplished, a rally is considered successful.

I do not wish here, however, to deal with random rallies but with one I believe is the most justified one in our day and age. I don’t even know if it fair to call it a rally. This is how it happens: you are home and there is no electricity and no water. You are sweating and there is no respite. At some point you just get up and step out. Somebody shouts a slogan and is soon joined by many. Then somebody mentions a Wapda office nearby and the crowd heads in that direction. The office gets vandalised. Such is the nature of outrage of the oppressed. How does one judge it?

And it’s not as if the masters of their fate ever try to appease them. Instead, their statements tend to further provoke people.

A friend I was recently talking to about this wanted to know if the shouts and cries were not actually heard in high places. By way of a response I mentioned Sauda’s famous verse that talks of contemptuously dismissing even the doomsday call. So is Sauda a Pakistani VIP, he asked. The poor man, I said, was a poet and of an age long gone. Of course there are similarities of circumstance – political, economic and moral. He wrote about his times but there is no telling really when something a poet said long ago will stick to a figure of authority.

But does not the verse suggest, my friend said, that the noise does finally reach the high and mighty. No, I said, it ends up somewhere on the way. How far on the way, he asked. As far, I said, as the minister for water and power, for example, or the Wapda chairman, or a committee formed to review the matter. So there must be some response, he persisted. Yes, I said, but it is generally of the nature that nobody has a magic wand with which to solve problems like load shedding or that load shedding will definitely be eradicated, by 2018 at the latest, and that the people must be a little patient.

Ask the complaint cell operators how these statements are received. Most of the callers, they say, do not have complaints to register. They are calling only to let off steam. An operator says he has tried explaining that the cell he works for is meant only to deal with the monsoon arrangements and that complaints about Wapda and Wasa need to be phoned in at such and such numbers. But the callers have learnt from experience that they will get no response from Wapda and Wasa complaint cells. So if somebody is listening they want to have their say irrespective of who it might be. This may not get them electricity but it will certainly help the catharsis. I suspect that the authorities, too, are aware of the situation and actually value the cooling off the complaint cells afford.

But this magic wand remark, this friend said, is clearly by way of modesty. Are not the VIP houses all powered and illuminated at all times? But what about the non-minister, the non-ambassador, the non-military, the not-so-rich?

*Translated from Urdu

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2011.