A loud bang startled me, and my mind went to the war zone. This is what it sounds like when a bomb is dropped and countless living beings, mostly civilians are turned into a mess of minced meet and charred body parts. The smell of gunpowder which follows makes the air heavy, the images of the war zone,  the stench of the blood, the cries of children in pain, injured, dieing, crying in disbelieve that the colorful world they believed in could be so horrifying are added in by my wild imagination.

  (more…)

KESC, burn it! Break it! Kill them! OH MY GOD! 86 Rs/lit Petrol! Bus Fares to 15 Rupees till 1 stop! How the hell did they snatch a person’s cell phone, burn him alive! Kill them, shoot them, throw stones at them, blow it all up. Government sucks! New Government sucks, Oh the past Govt messed this this and this up! He’s bad, he’s worse, he’s stupid, what’s that, why is that………….

YEA YEA YEA!!!! SHUT UP!

It is valid to say that people of Karachi have lost and are continuously loosing their sanity over the depressing problems in their home town – and for this, it is not them to blame.

Keeping all the problems in mind and giving each, another viewpoint, I would say that apart from the prices of food, fuel and utilities etc, we have yet another problem. The problem we are having are the PEOPLE themselves. Everyone and everything has problems, but finding a solution to a problem requires something of a mind, heart and wisdom. Let this post not be taken against the people of Karachi, but I’m just not satisfied by the way people (we) are handling their (our) problems!

What is a problem? A problem is an outcome of acts in the past creating an unfavorable vision of the future or partially blocking it.

So, the question is NOT “who did wrong in the past”, the question is… WHO sees the FUTURE! Its people who see the future, if the people are not in a normal state of mind, heart and wisdom, they are unable to identify the future. If you are unable to identify the future, how would you be able to walk on a path that actually leads to a better future.

I always give this example, lets say “Mr. X” had an accident and X is lying on the road. X is thinking damn! What just happened, Oh It hurts so bad, it wasn’t my fault… The next second X get squished by a truck that says “Baloach Taiyyara”, and tomorrow headlines reads “noa-jawan halak, truck driver farar”.

If you don’t get up, don’t drag yourself to the corner, or don’t get yourself to the hospital you are actually ignoring the worst that is yet to come. You will have a life time to think about what ‘just’ happened, so its better to stand up and get yourself fixed so that you can have a life to live and deal with the memories later.

This is a typical scenario of our situation, we have just been hit by a car and we are lying on the road, thinking about what “just” happened. We are just crying about and thinking over and over about the things that are going wrong. My friends worry about the drunk truck driver with his Baloch Taiyara coming right at you.

To maintain mental stability is of the utmost importance in the time of crisis!

I’m not sure how many of you would actually consider the people as a problem to the problems of people. Lets hear it from you in comments and based on our comments I will be proposing actual solution of each and every problem.

It has just started to drizzle, and yahoo predicts a good rainy day for tomorrow, so Karachiiets brace your self for the first rain of the season.

While browsing through the internet a few days back I came across a picture of a 36 year old poor women with 9 children, another 25 year old had 5, population is on the rise, so is inflation and the crime rate too.

 Yesterday we experienced three episodes of load shedding, the power was out for a total of six hours for today the episodes were five and the total hours of load shedding was nine. We are out of power, food supplies, water, health care facilities and education.         

Every week hundreds of new cars come out on our streets, running us out of fresh air and adding to the city’s rising pollution, trees are being chopped off and new ones are not coming at the required rate, and the only green our newspaper boasts of is growing on the filthy sewage sludge gathered in a nullah with a warning that flood threats persists if the clogged drains are not cleared before the monsoon spell unleashes upon us. 

And what do I do about it ? Nothing besides punching a few keys, scribbling a few notes and bracing my self for this and the worst that may come.

The Karachi Zoo, once quite popular among the children of this city for its various species of animals is in a horrible state!! Growing up in this city my childhood memories consist of frequent visits to it to feed the ducks at the pond or take rides on the elephant present there.

I recently tried to impart the same joy on my child but was shocked to see the conditions at the zoo. Most of the cages are empty, the animals having died or are in the process of dying, the shetland ponies present earlier which would give rides to children are also gone. Upon my inquiries i found that the male had passed away upon separation from the female and the female was also sick and being treated.

Worst of all even the cages with animals in them are so dirty that it amounts to cruelty to keep animals in this way. If the Zoo has no resources to import animals why cannot local varieties be introduced? Why can’t the services of sweepers and cleaners be acquired to at least spruce up the place a little?

I appeal to our local government to please see that the Zoo is restored back to its original state. The citizens of Karachi have little in the means of family activities options as it is, please do not take this away from them as well!!!

 I had no sleep the night day before yesterday as KESC kept flipping the electric supply on and off all night long, yesterday KESC was a bit merciful as the total duration of the load shedding did not exceed the six hour mark but today we experienced a three hour long power outage in the morning then an hour long in the evening and a five hour long load shedding from 10:30 pm to 3:30 am bring the total to an exact nine hours of load shedding. The long hours of load shedding has slowed down everyone’s progress, it has an impact on peoples output, small industries are facing hardships and students have turned to the oil lamps to study for their exams. 

Around ten days back when we had moved our clocks an hour ahead we thought, for all the confusion the Day light Saving Time may cause at least there will be a relief in the hours of load shedding but it turned out that the shortage of electricity we are facing today was far beyond anyone’s expectations and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this time around next year we get no more then four hours of electricity for the whole 24 hours in a day. 

We have food crises, people are waiting for several hours under the baking sun in queues for a single sac of flour, rice is beyond a poor man’s reach, so is flour. Inflation is hitting the common man hard while there wages remain almost the same, people don’t have money to feed them selves let alone educate their children. Can a nation prosper in such circumstances? I am afraid not and if our policy makers don’t realize the seriousness of the situation soon and proper steps are not taken to control it and if these downward trends continue in the same fashion I am afraid our coming generations will be carving tools out of stones and will be living in caves. 

According to this news item,

31pc hike in gas prices from July 1

By Zafar Bhutta

ISLAMABAD: Consumers will face a 28 to 31 percent hike in gas prices from July 1, as the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) has allowed the two main gas utilities — the Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGCL) and the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) — to provisionally increase the gas prices.

31 percent price increase means the price of CNG will touch Rs. 50 for the first time.

Here is a chart showing the increase in CNG prices recently

This amounts to a total increase of almost 73% in a span of less than 2.5 years!

Isn’t it about time we switched to bicycles for our commutes?

I was going through my regular G-reading when this news took my attention. Its about a blogger being Jailed for undermining the prestige of the state and weakening national morale. It is not the first time that I have heard such a news. I then did a minor search for such cases over the internet and what I find is astonishing. Russia, Bahrain, Malaysia you name it! all are in the list.

We say what we want to and write what we want to and we feel like it is our right to be able to speak up our minds. We debate on politics, criticize the government, comment on the hopeless laws and anything and everything. Not just that we speak on every aspect of life where we live whether its good or bad, fun or frustration.

What I’m wondering is from a perspective of a third person. Imagine yourself in a place where I was when I read the news. Did you notice that the Location of the accused is the first word of the heading of the news? First thing I came to know was that it’s something in Syria, then it’s a Jailed blogger and the last was the name of the person that appears in the last paragraph. I’m thinking! and thinking hard that the laws in the country, the watch on people is strict enough and good enough that they actually care about someone badmouthing about them. They are even tackling the situation in a decent lawful manner rather than blocking every blog across the country!

Sentenced to jail, is something we can’t even imagine in Karachi or Pakistan, do you think we (citizens and the politicians both) have enough “Prestige and National Moral”? Forget about national moral, does a single man have a moral or are we just typing out our guts in order to “expose” everything and prove we are free? Don’t say that the country and us are two different things, it is one thing. If you (we) don’t exist, Pakistan don’t exist and if Pakistan don’t exist we are no one from no where! Everything is related to one and other. The reason for saying this is that we are writing about ourselves whatever we write. In our “social” circle we may be recognized as us, but on a global scale we are only “Bloggers from Karachi, Pakistan”

My point is simple, the “outsiders” reading the blogs would be having what sort of a perception about us and our nation? For instance, if something happens in Karachi, I get tired of explaining the situation to the people abroad. They seem to be under an impression that we are all ‘dying’ here, how can I tell them that only 10 to 20 percent of the city is affected and the “rest is fine”! That is because they hear what the media tells them. The media tells them right or wrong is not of a concern, the concern is that the media can never report on every street situation of a the entire city where the riots emerge – it can never report a hundred percent.

The same way, we are ‘creating’ history of ourselves writing what we are writing. No matter its good or it is bad, it is what it is and the world is reading it. Now I am personally at the toughest of time to form a judgment about my observations and thoughts.

Should we again be blaming the “government” for not implementing proper laws, take us towards advancements, create a national moral and prestige? or Should we blame the writers for writing it all down for the world to read and laugh at us that these people have no “national moral” or prestige?

I came across this advertisement / piece of information in a local newspaper lying in the pile of junk. This picture is around 1 month old, I don’t exactly remember the date, but its probably published on 22nd of March, 2007. The title of the advertisement attracted my attention, I read it, and was very sad. :’((

Although the deceased is from a well-known family, but I did not expect DHL to promote this information in such a manner. A quarter page add costs around 300K ++ on Sundays. I was just thinking what if they had donated 300,000 rupees to some poor, the information of death could have made up an entire life of a poor person or probably lots and lots of them.

Check the plate number that says HC-0021 . Is that High Court ?

(more…)