As the crowd led by PTI leader Arif Alvi heads from Kalapul to Nursery, a nearby falooda vendor hurries to pack the items on his pushcart. Thrusting the leftover crushed ice inside the cooler, he yells: “Let’s go, let’s go,” to someone over his shoulder.
“I’m on my way to Nursery like everyone else,” says Imran Abdul Mannan, a local falooda vendor stationed at the footpath of Kala Pul. With his pushcart laden with bottles of Rooh Afza, plastic glasses, straws and rainbow-coloured vermicelli, Mannan said that he had his pushcart up and running since morning. “I have been selling falooda since nine in the morning. It’s been a good day,” he adds with a toothy smile.
But there’s more to Mannan than what meets the eye. Even though his daily routine revolves around selling mouth-watering falooda on the streets of Karachi, he follows Imran Khan everywhere. “I went to Faisalabad too and before that I stayed in the Islamabad sit-ins for two weeks,” he tells The Express Tribune.
Mannan had been a silent yet active fan of the PTI for the last three years. According to Mannan, it is only Khan who can do something of value for Pakistan. “I pack my cooler with the stuff from this cart and board the train to wherever the PTI crowd is headed,” he says. “Can’t miss this for anything.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 13th, 2014.
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It appears that PTI has taken over the hold of Karachi from MQM. Not very long ago, MQM had not allowed Imran Khan to even come out of airport on 12th May 2007. But on 12th December 2014, Imran Khan came to Karachi as a conqueror after taking over MQM's bastion.