Clean drinking water

KARACHI: This is with reference to Dr Pervez Tahir’s “Clean drinking water for few” (July 17). I pity Marie Antoinette, an Austrian princess, who later went on to become the Queen of France. Perhaps the timing of her marriage to Louis XVI wasn’t right as the royal couple was beheaded during the frenzy of the French Revolution. History records that when she was informed of the protesting hungry masses demanding bread, she responded, “Let them eat cake”. Our historians attribute the quote to the queen’s sarcasm. Having brushed shoulders with a few petit bourgeois of our times, my view differs. I pity the queen. The poor girl was brought up in an environment which was nowhere near a reflection of the real world so she could not cognitively differentiate between bread and cake. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find such examples today.

Condemning the masses to grinding poverty, throwing merit in the garbage dump, compelling our best and brightest to move abroad, and allowing the super rich to flourish at the cost of the poor has aggravated the situation - those with ready access to Evian and Perrier may want the masses to drink milk and honey.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2010.