Between darkness and dry taps

The alarm rings, shrill, startling, unwelcome. She turns it off with a smack, her face already showing traces of the grimace she’ll wear for most of her challenging day. *Fatima Kazmi is a teacher who has to reach school by 7:40 am. Before that she has to prepare breakfast, help dress the kids, give tea to her husband and eat a bite herself. She hardly fusses over her own appearance or meals because she feels it is a luxury she doesn’t have. She gets up hurriedly as there isn’t much time left for Fajr prayer. It is already 5:30 am and a long day lies ahead of her. In the evening, it’s the tuition kids coming in, another “soul-sapping job”.

Defeating the urge to just close her eyes again for just five more minutes, she crawls out of bed to turn the tap on. A few measly drops trickle out and nothing else. She sighs, already feeling fatigue and anger surge inside her. She goes out to the balcony behind the house, to turn on the valve for internal storage water to start running into taps.

With a sigh, she stands for her prayer, having washed with a miserable stream of water from the tap. Internal supply has hardly any pressure.

After about 10 minutes, she was at the stove, striking a match to light it. It lit,then faded and went out before her eyes. What? No gas, still? She struck another match, and another, and yet another. A faint flame appeared. She slapped a pan on the stove to cook eggs and turned around to make tea in the electric kettle. Well, at least, the gas was there, almost punctual. She could make some scrambled eggs or an omelette. The thought cheered her momentarily. But breakfast had become a race against an invisible hand turning knobs somewhere far away.

As she stood in front of her closet, pulling out a light outfit for the super-hot summer day ahead, she was pleased to hear the building water pump start with a groan as it was switched on by the chowkidar. This machine must have the spirit of a rickety old man, she thought, as the machine began the day as though with a massive crib. Nevertheless, the sound was like music to her ears, because it meant that there would be enough supply for the day. Who knows what calamity might strike tomorrow! There wasn’t one day when they weren’t without one or the other utility and when somehow they did have power, gas and water, the Wi-Fi would test their patience.

Just as she was putting her shoes on, her shoulder bag heavy with a water bottle and her laptop, the power went out. They needed a light in this room because it was windowless and dark, like most of their apartment. She turned the switches off, hollered goodbye to her husband, warning him not to use the bucket water judiciously and pushed the kids out of the house. These power cuts are getting too much, she thought, and what supply are we being billed for? There isn’t enough usage to match the horrendously increasing bills. What’s worse, we won’t have any water when we get back because the water pump just got rudely halted with the power cut. With that last depressing thought, she drove off, now focusing on the early morning school traffic.

For *Hamid Ali, a 76-year-old retiree, the toughest domestic duty begins every day at 4:30pm. This is the time when he has to fill water for the entire house. He lives with his son, a bank manager who works long hours. Ali tries to be as helpful as he can to his son’s family as he realises the commitments and pressure on young people today who have to manage careers, families, relationships and social lives.

Often the water pump starts with a groan that turns into a whine. His nap is interrupted, and he gets up from the chair holding his painful knee and limp-hops to the kitchen to turn the valve on for the kitchen tank to collect water, and then dashes to each of the two bathrooms to turn the valves on for respective storage tanks. He shoves buckets under the taps as he turns them on. Water arrives like an unreliable guest—unannounced, briefly, and with no apology when it leaves. He dashes back to the kitchen lest the overhead tank runs. At 80, it’s quite a daunting task for him daily that he volunteered for. Filling water daily when the supply starts takes more work running between three bathrooms and the kitchen, than walking his grandchildren to and back from nearby school and tuition in the building at the end of their street. His son and daughter-in-law are at work and it makes him happy to be as helpful as he can. His arthritic knee cooperates sometimes, not always, and his dignity negotiates.

Power cuts were a nightmare, when he had to tug the generator on, often asking the next-door domestic staff to help. Now, his son has had a UPS installed so looking after the battery is his job, which is less daunting indeed.

Everyone has their own struggles with dodgy utilities that come and go as they please. Complaints and customer support call-centres are often a waste of time and have zero impact. Instead, these just amp up the phone bills. Why would you want to hold the call for 20 minutes only to get a reply that your complaint number is in three or four digits and that the matter will soon be resolved? How soon? No one accountable and no one at the other end, except voice recordings, irritating public messages, product promos and robotic humans. Are they even humans, Ali wonders.

Interruptions in daily routines

It is midday. A relentless sun outside as *Faheem Khan, a student, glances out of the window. He is on his study leave for upcoming matriculation exams. Studies are interrupted by sudden power breaks. Showers are an issue because of controlled water supply. Sleep is badly compromised. Electricity gone. Again, and again. The fan slows into surrender. The room holds its breath. So does he.

A cross-section of people, young and old, rich and poor suffer day to day crisis as they struggle for power, water and gas supply. *Aaliya Talawalla’s story is not much different either.

Water is running. Finally. She wedges one bucket under the tap, nudges another into place with her foot, angles her mobile phone between her head and raised shoulder. The flow is thin, unpredictable—she watches it like a pulse that might stop if ignored. At the same time, in the kitchen, the gas has come alive for its third and final episode for today. Rice cooks in the pot of boiling water. It must cook quickly. Everything must happen quickly. There is loads to do.

She works in a multi-national firm where being a supply and logistics officer, her phone rings endlessly. This time when her phone vibrates as it sits cradled between her head and shoulder, she wipes her hand on her shirt and holds it. A sudden team meeting is on. Her boss is summoning the team online.

“Hello,” she says, voice steady, but her breath is not. Behind her, the tap keeps running. The bucket is close to full. The rice is bubbling away.

“Yes, I’m here,” she adds, eyes on the screen, ears split between voices in the meeting and the language of her home—the rising hiss, and the uneven drip. “Who’s breathing so hard?” says her boss, “and what’s that noise?”

“Sorry, it’s at my end, just give me a second,” Aaliya replies, embarrassed and stressed at the same time. She holds the phone in her hand and mutes it.

A thin sheet of water spreads across the floor anyway. She steps through it, comes back, unmutes, adds a comment to the discussion going on in the well-lit rectangles where nothing seems to be slipping away.

Her name is called. She answers—clear, precise, entirely present.

But her mind is elsewhere, measuring everything in vanishing units: minutes of gas, inches of water, and seconds before the rice boils over. This is not a one day thing, it’s almost every day. She is not disorganised—the system is. She just pays the price for it.

­­­­Life, it turns out, is not measured in years but in windows—twenty minutes of water, forty of gas, two hours of light. Miss your slot, miss your day. Gone are the days, when one could sleep in on the weekend. Your schedule must be planned around water, gas and power supply, but only if you are lucky enough to be getting some supply. Most of Karachi, lives without tap water, and depends on boring wells, water tankers, Qingqi scooters, and Suzukis supplying water from door to door. They use cylinders for gas supply and generators and UPS for power supply. People in Lahore and Islamabad also have intense load shedding schedules.

With the war going on in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz blockage has only added to the woes of Pakistanis in terms of power and fuel crises. As fuel becomes dearer than ever, prices of everything have shot through the sky. Generators have to be run on exorbitantly priced fuel, gas cylinders have to be replenished for which the transportation is pricier now. Likewise Suzukis, tankers and Qingqis charge more because they pay a lot more for fuel.

I often drive back home around 7:30 pm after an errand in the commercial area not far off from my home. Since the streetlights are also off, it is plunged in darkness as its power-cut time. At the risk of falling in a ditch and having neither the roads, nor electricity authorities to hold accountable, I glance around to see little shops glow under portable safety lights as people share oily aloo parathas and cups of tea lit by mobile phones, while mechanics carry on repairing cars, using those same phones as makeshift torches. I admire their resilience, their adaptability, and their robust community spirit. They may curse, complain and crib in news reports and socials but the show must go on.

People go to work, weddings, outings, meet deadlines, kids sit for exams, irrespective of the fact that their homes have no water, and their mothers couldn't cook breakfast sans gas. Their lives don’t stop just because there are no utilities available regularly. And so an entire city learns to cope, to improvise, to endure — while calling it resilience, because there is no other polite word for it. This is not how people choose to live. This is how they are made to live.

These repeat experiences teach a strange expertise. You learn to read water flow the way others read weather. To predict pressure from silence. To cook entire meals in fifteen-minute windows. To bathe in strategies, not water. You learn to plan your life not by calendars, but by supply schedules that are never quite schedules. And slowly, without announcement, inconvenience turns into discipline, and discipline into resignation.

Children growing up here do not ask if water will come. They ask when. They know the language early—load-shedding, tanker, pressure, timing. They measure their days in availability, not abundance. A childhood that should have been careless becomes carefully scheduled around absence of amenities.

A city running on empty

Pakistan’s cities continue to expand in population, housing and infrastructure projects, yet basic utilities remain deeply unreliable. When citizens must organise their lives around utility schedules rather than clocks, it reveals the mismatch between urban growth and infrastructure planning. Why does such a wide gap persist between urban growth and the provision of utilities? What structural failures sustain this imbalance?

”Along with a lack of long-term vision, the government has limited utility resources,” says Dr Muhammad Ahmad, who teaches at the Department of Urban and Infrastructure Engineering at NED University. “Despite shortages in utility resources, authorities continue granting permission for the construction of high-rise buildings, which creates further problems.”

Dr Ahmad said Karachi’s vertical development has taken place without proper planning. Previously, a 200- or 400-square-yard house would accommodate five to six people, but now multi-storey buildings constructed on the same plots house between 25 and 50 people without any corresponding increase in utility services.

He said the same pattern can be seen in planned areas such as Nazimabad, Azizabad, PIB Colony, Garden, and Liaquatabad. On the other hand, there are informal settlements where there was neither planning in the past nor is there any now. Both vertical and horizontal growth are taking place in Karachi’s residential schemes, but residents of high-rise buildings are facing greater difficulties.

Dr Ahmad pointed out that water, electricity, and gas shortages affect the entire city, but apartment residents suffer more severely. In a 47-square-yard apartment, limited space forces residents to keep gas cylinders inside kitchens, which is dangerous. Due to gas load-shedding, citizens are compelled to install pressure machines, increasing the risk of gas cylinder explosions. As a result of poor planning, people’s lives are also being put at risk.

“Karachi’s water supply has not increased for decades, yet the relevant government institutions continue approving high-rise construction,” he adds. “Water theft is another separate issue that remains unresolved.”

He argued that given these problems, the government should adopt a policy favouring horizontal growth over vertical growth and move towards sustainable development. Unlike apartments, houses have enough space to place gas cylinders outside kitchens, such as on rooftops or other safer locations. Rooftops can also be used to install solar panels for electricity generation.

He suggested implementing rainwater harvesting and water reuse projects. Water from air conditioners and water used for ablution in mosques could also be recycled and reused at homes and offices

“All of this would require solid planning and strict measures by the government,” says Dr Ahmad. “If vertical growth is unavoidable, authorities can still move towards sustainable development through legislation. Builders could be required to implement alternative solutions such as biogas systems, solar panels, and water conservation projects to provide these facilities to residents.”

According to Dr Nasreen Aslam Shah, sociologist and former professor at University of Karachi, Karachi is the country’s largest city and its economic lifeline. “It is a bouquet of religions and ethnicities, and people from remote parts of the country migrate to the metropolis in search of livelihoods,” she says. ”The city’s estimated population has now crossed 30 million. But living in Karachi is becoming increasingly difficult. The city’s infrastructure situation is extremely poor. Except for a few selected areas, more than 70 percent of the city’s internal roads and streets are broken and damaged. The public transport system is almost non-existent, while University Road has remained under construction for the past four years without completion.

She said that the combination of extreme heat and lack of electricity has made life miserable for residents, while gas load-shedding has further worsened conditions.

“Karachi now resembles a war-hit city,” says Dr Shah. “Due to the negligence of federal, provincial, and local governments, the country’s largest city has been pushed back into the stone age. People in Pakistan’s biggest city live like those in villages and rural settlements. On one hand, unchecked construction has turned the city into a concrete jungle. What is even more unfortunate is that people have fallen silent after witnessing the government’s indifference. Opposition parties, too, are unwilling to raise their voices on basic civic issues.”

Sadly, because of inflation, economic hardship, and the lack of essential facilities, residents of Karachi have accepted a “stone age” existence and found alternatives for everything. “While people openly criticise the government, they are unwilling to use the power of their vote to change the system,” adds Dr Shah, who believes that Karachi’s residents no longer have an interest in politics.

She warned that these conditions are contributing to high blood pressure, mental health issues, psychological stress, and other illnesses among citizens. Karachi’s social life, she said, is also changing rapidly. In the past, the city was known for vibrant social gatherings, but now everyone is preoccupied with solving their own daily problems.

Dr Shah believes the government must seriously consider the situation, as investment, employment opportunities, and economic growth cannot emerge if the country’s largest city continues to face village-like problems.

“Short-, medium-, and long-term policies can resolve Karachi’s issues,” says Dr Shah, proposing a roundtable conference of all stakeholders so that urban problems could be addressed through collective consultation and planning, adding that if conditions continue unchanged, Karachi could soon begin to resemble Mohenjo-daro.

One wonders what happens to the human mind when ordinary routines become daily negotiations with uncertainty?

“Chronic shortages of basic necessities, don’t just disrupt daily life, in the long run, they reshape how people think, sleep, work, parent, study, and relate to one another,” explains Professor Iqbal Afridi, an internationally recognised psychiatrist based in Karachi. “In many low-income countries, these crises become a constant psychological backdrop rather than isolated incidents. Such events increase frustration and add to the existing layers of stress. Chronic stress and anxiety increases and the nervous system ends up being in a constant state of alert. This can also lead to a number of health issues including constant irritability, exhaustion, headaches, panic symptoms, and sleep disorders.”

Stress and a learned helplessness

In our daily lives, our minds rely on consistency. Every activity, from getting to work, to taking a shower, relies on the assumption that fundamental utilities like power, water, transportation and communication will all be available without a constant monitoring of what's happening. When this underlying structure is removed from the equation, the brain adjusts. But it does so at a cost.

Dr. Chooni Lal, a qualified psychiatrist in Karachi, with over 16 years in the field of psychiatry, explains that when the underlying structure of the system is unstable and unpredictable, the brain begins to anticipate interruptions. “Mental focus begins to shift from periods of relaxation and deep work towards anticipation,” he says. “Time is now spent thinking about whether to plug devices into chargers when power is available, or whether there will be enough water for the morning; whether the power will fail and if plans made for tomorrow can hold, or if they will fall apart as the infrastructure is failing.”

As this happens, actions like cooking, taking a bath, sleeping, and going to work are not taken out of habit. Instead, they are made based on contingency and prediction, the simple act of taking a shower carries an implicit understanding that you cannot expect anything from the system, not even water. The constant low-level awareness of these facts then begins to define an existence.

“What begins as practical measures against possible problems, quickly becomes a state of perpetual mental preparedness,” points out Dr Lal. “For communities with inconsistent access to water, power and reliable transportation systems, this heightened state becomes normal. In the absence of an acute crisis, this is not something with a start and a finish. Instead, it's an invisible pressure in the back of the mind which doesn't go away. In a state of perpetual stress, the body can never fully relax, even during periods of rest, it is stuck in an ever-ready mode.”

The problem is that people keep moving with their lives – working, raising families, managing households, pursuing dreams – but all of these are done on a nervous system that is permanently on alert. “It is not that anything particularly dramatic happens, on its own, but rather that all actions accumulate stress: irritability, reduced capacity to tolerate frustration, lack of focus, poor sleep quality, and mental clutter,” highlights Dr Lal. “Existing research on chronic stress demonstrates that prolonged unpredictability leads to loss of emotional regulation, difficulty thinking, and reduced capacity for mental restoration when periods of rest are constantly interrupted by power cuts or water outages.

Eventually, these personal habits translate into a broader, shared culture: The everyday acts of planning around a system are no longer about what you want but about the system's unreliability and the measures you take in anticipation of failure. Homes develop stockpiles of water and food, generators are in constant ready mode to be pulled out during outages and daily schedules revolve around when power is available for tasks like cooking and cleaning. These adaptations become so ingrained in daily life they form part of the essential conditions for survival; for those people their way of life begins to change fundamentally in the face of an unstable world.

“One of the biggest long-term problems here is a creeping sense of helplessness-of losing one's ability to make effort produce a predictable result,” says Dr Lal. “When your expectations continually fall short regardless of how many adaptations you make, you are subtly stripped of agency.”

The mental state is what psychologists describe as 'learned helplessness,' where people learn that effort has no impact and that even their most basic endeavours are ultimately futile. It may not look like a collapse or giving up. People still keep going and adapting, but the internal attitude towards the system shifts: There is no hope of returning to some semblance of normalcy.

There is also emotional overstretch; a chronic loss of patience with and a diminished ability to cope with minor annoyances when you already feel exhausted and stressed by the system. “For people living in unstable environments even the most minor setbacks can trigger disproportionate frustration because the nervous system is already working on overload, there's no more energy for tolerance,” explains Dr Lal. “Children who grow up in this situation learn early that security is not derived from reliable systems, but from careful preparation and the understanding that everything must be planned and contingencies prepared for from a proactive, anticipatory standpoint.”

Constant adaptation carries an invisible cost, an accumulated drain that falls on the people, the families and entire generations. In the end,civic failure has a personal and cognitive dimension as well. People can and do adapt well, but the human brain is not meant to operate in a constant state of anticipatory vigilance.

The psychological cost of unreliable utilities is not a private problem alone; it is ultimately a measure of civic failure. Cities are not held together by flyovers, towers, or glossy development plans, but by the reliability of the basics. When water, gas, and electricity become privileges instead of guarantees, endurance transforms into a quiet form of collective exhaustion.