THAT Karachiites are at this point in time yearning for rain is not just a statement of the obvious, but also only one side of the coin. The other side of the story is that they are dreading any cloudburst that the monsoon may bring.

This fear of rains that a Karachiite has does not have much to do with what KESC chief Frank Scherschmidt has said at a meeting this week. I am glad that a private TV channel in its news bulletin carried a film report in which he was expressing his views without mincing words that he could easily imagine the frustrations of people when it rains. He feared that while the KESC was preparing and repairing for the rains, in reality the problems may surface at unexpected places in town. So as a matter of interpretation he reinforced our fears and his candour aggravates the insecurity that is born of power shortages and voltage fluctuations.

So widespread is the malady, the neglect, the inefficiency in the organisation that is fighting saboteurs and subversion within the institution, which is also being targeted from the outside. As a consumer of KESC for the last half a century, I fail to understand who exactly let it down more and at what point in time.

But I do not want to focus as much on the KESC as on the symbolic value of the fear of rains that Karachiites have. This apprehension of monsoon is perhaps something that people residing in riverbeds have or those who reside alongside rivers that change their course. That is ostensibly, a rural context. In our case, living in an urban milieu should in fact instil in us a faith that our quality of life is perhaps superior, alas!

So terrifying has been the April-June 2006 quarter for this city that I really do not know where to begin the list -- it is so long and varied, and revealing of the psychological battering that individuals and as well as the society has taken. And it has borne the beating with resilience. What else one should say of the fact that for all the appeals to conserve energy neither the shopkeepers nor the shoppers have adhered to reduce the shopping hours. And interestingly there have been no physical checks by the concerned authorities on this score.

Should I begin by referring to scare that office goers have developed about travelling in lifts where they get trapped when the power fails or fluctuates? Thos-----e who have been lucky in this respect should thank Allah always. Ask those who have been caught in lifts, and they will tell of the suffocation and the claustrophobia that they experienced. One person tells me in disgust how he leaves his home in a state of irritation with no electricity there. He reaches office and load-shedding is on and so he walks up to the fifth floor and then sits in the warmth and humidity of his office. No generator? I ask him and he loses his cool and begins swearing!

Indeed this is what we have been doing for the last one quarter. Swearing in silence and cursing our respective fates. Here I would like to refer to the emotional, financial and psychological stress that Karachiites have been living through for the last three months. We have been driven to despair and disillusionment to such an extent that it seems as if a dogged darkness has been following us day by day.

One bitter colleague hit new levels of cynicism and pessimism both when he said with a smile “I don’t fear death as much as I fear this darkness that the KESC brings into our lives… I see no hope.”

This swearing that I am referring to is evident in many shapes and durations in homes and at offices, on streets, in bazaars, in hospitals and in educational institutions. Not only social life or office working has been affected by these power failures, but even normal conversations have either got stunted or people seem to be screaming at each other. Families, for example, have a new agenda on their hands. Suddenly daily routine has undergone a transformation, as repeated ruthless power failures and load-shedding have brought in financial pressures of spending on generators, UPS systems, or rechargeable lights. Nothing seems to be enough to fight the power crisis. It is that awful.

One friend of mine residing in Gulshan-i-Iqbal told me dejectedly on Friday evening that during the week gone by there was electricity for three or four hours only in a spell of three days at his home. No water either. He spent those days at a family member’s residence and missed office one day. He sulked generally and relationships with his family members became tense. Tense? That is a description nearer accuracy? Is it really worse than that? There have been family conflicts and dormant frustrations have come alive.

The young ones have their reasons for being upset when the electricity goes off, and the adults have their own causes for unhappiness. As one person philosophized, “When power fails, it seems that all other failures in life get focused.” Another person added “Mundane jobs as getting photocopies made, had me go berserk one morning.”

The cumulative effect of power failures is so deep that it has brought about a behavioural change in people at this point in time. People have been doing without normal quotas of sleep, normal work schedules have been delayed further, normal conversations have turned sour only because the individuals (in the best of relationships) are either soaked in sweat or weary in their bones as well.

What makes the city afraid, depressed and downcast is the thought that for all the rhetoric and the promises from officialdom the power supply situation has aggravated. Monsoon rain can bring disaster, to say the least. The weather will improve and it has already begun showing signs of that. Will the KESC play spoil sport?

I am disinclined to end this column on a grim note. I would opt to refer to a conversation that I had with Engineer Zafar Siddiqui after Juma prayers. It was amazing that he didn’t mention the power crisis neither his experience nor what had gone wrong in his routine because of breakdowns.

When I asked him about how he had fared at home or in the office, he said, “Electricity comes and it goes. So what should I do? It is a matter of patience, elementary patience.” He had his UPS intact and the electric wiring reinforced. Then he smiled and talked of the pleasures of life referring to the mangoes that he went buying with his friend Syed Ghulam Ahmed, who heard all this, and remained grim, as if in disagreement, about that patience bit.