MY father always taught me that one should never pray for justice, because justice, especially God’s, may often be swift, and too exacting or severe for human rationality.

Ask for ‘forgiveness’ or ‘rahma’, he would often say, because deep within our hearts, each soul yearns to be forgiven. Recently, outside the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf office during a press conference, in a narrow G-6/4 lane off Embassy Road, Imran Khan’s party members had blocked the road with supporters’ vehicles, media vans, cars, etc.

After waiting what seemed an eternity for someone to remove Mr Khan’s supporters’ cars, so we could reach our home at the end of the same street, we honked our horn.

In a flash a man in a crisp white shalwar-kameez came bumbling out, and yelled at my mother who was in the driving seat.

Disturbing the press conference in this quiet residential area was such a terrible crime and offence to this PTI member that he began to shout at the top of his lungs at my mother. It seemed very clear to him that he was upholding the first tenet of the party, ‘justice’. It could have been an emergency or an ambulance taking a patient to the hospital but it did not seem like this or else the PTI member’s disposition or attitude to the situation would have changed much.

‘Justice’ was being covered on TV live so who cares if you are about to die or trying to get somewhere or you want to get to your own home? Instead of moving the cars, continuing in his crass and uncouth manner of yelling at an elderly woman far above his years, the party member displayed the second tenet of the PTI, ‘humanity.’

All this while, 20 yards away Imran Khan was answering questions being put to him at the conference about nation-building, political ethics, and answerability from the current administration.

Unfortunately, Imran could not see what was taking place right outside his own office in broad daylight or what actions were being done by his own party members.

However, I finally understood the third tenet of the PTI, ‘self-esteem’, since I had none left by the time I got home at the end of the street.

ALAMDAR MURTAZA Islamabad