SOME of our well wishers, taking advantage of one occasion or another, exhort us to walk. Whether it is to keep a healthy heart, purify pollution, educate the uneducated, help the disabled or instil traffic sense in the general public — we are awakened to the importance of the cause by a call for a “walk”. And we have been called to walk so often that by now we are well trained to walk out of assembly sessions due to trivial issues like female faces on billboards, illegalizing the LFO, or to strip the president of his uniform.
Though a brisk walk is good for health, it all depends on the ground beneath your feet — be it the moon’s surface, tor, glacier, desert, beaches roads or footpaths. Whatever the terrain, all walkers will testify to this axiom, because Newton’s theory of gravity has yet to be disproved. But have you ever tread on Karachi’s footpaths? If you haven’t, you have missed the biggest hopscotch competition of your lifetime. If you have, I am sure you must have succumbed to the gravitational pull of the earth, stumbled and grumbled a million times before reaching your destination, of course, in a dilapidated condition.
Stumbling is not so much a matter of your choice; it is not a rehearsal of your coveted role in a circus either; nor is it caused by arthritis or osteoarthritis. It is just a question of putting your foot down in the right place at the right time. But where? Your search for it is quite revealing: to your left are open graves for burying cables which always seem to remain overground; to your right, your sewerage system has been ripped open to reveal your rubbish; in between are slumbering poles awaiting erection; and ditches to ditch you big time. Under your nose are yawning manholes always ready to welcome you to the underworld the moment you blink or heed not their incessant stench owing to your stuffed nose. The ordeal is rendered ever more arduous as you kick or step upon boulders of all shapes, sizes, weights that lie by your path challenging your dodging talent.
So you stumble simply because of your indecision to chose your “walking site”. Consciously or unconsciously you step on the innards of mother earth, leap over prostrating poles and ditches, try to dodge the heap of meteorites spread like red carpet and in your effort to walk vertical, you sway, disturb your medulla oblongata, disbalance and fall. This fall like the fall of many an empire has multiple facets. Sympathy of onlookers is roused, their honesty is quizzed if your wallet has popped out; the quality of your apparels is proved or disproved; the strength of your physique is tried out; the concern of your family is heightened, if you reach home bandaged like the spider man and the professionalism of your doctor established as you are bound to bed until repaired.
But pockmarked, crater covered, rubble rich footpaths alone are not the only cause of your fall. If you choose to ramble on the adjoining road without the blessing of your insurance company you are a risk-laden liability for the company and may even cause its liquidation if you are imitated by its other clients. Reason: while you are just rocked by ruined footpaths, you are physically knocked down, at times fatally, by highway hazards which are as varied as you can imagine but the common one being “back push” which occur thus: You are walking towards east, skillfully dodging everything you except to collide with you from the front, a four or two wheeler also going east suddenly rams into you from the rear side. Because you are eyeless at the back of your head, the impact is unexpected and violent enough to make you lick the ground, pulverize your teeth, split your nose and lips, smash your eyes and “Kismet” (forehead), make you dizzy; and if you accidentally and God forbid strike something hard enough, you are instantly just a nobody and nowhere but in your grave.
What a fall dear walker. And if you survive, the fall also fires your fury. As the bruised knee, tibia, ankle, elbow, palms, arms, face, forehead begin to ache, your temper swells and the grumbling starts with curses showered on the diggers for performing such tortuous task or the “back pushers” for the excellent kick. Then you ponder and involve the local provincial government momentarily imagining that with them all passion for destruction is a creative joy.
You also involve the white angels (traffic cops) for their cock-eyed connivance of “back pushers” feats. Your wrath for human neglect on the part of all concerned causes even greater confusion: your first thought is to sue them all, but know not which legal code can soothe your sores. On second thoughts you realize that we are a poor country depending more on the World Bank and the IMF than on our own tax collectors for putting our house in order. So, you begin to imagine that satisfaction of your claim may increase the nation’s debt burden or drain (even empty) the government treasury. You think hard and consider yourself qualified for the World Bank, the IMF or the ADB Rehabilitation Programme, but doubt that you may be vetoed on grounds of individuality. You continue to meditate and by the time you have chosen the line of action you are healed, hale and healthy and console your self by agreeing with Christopher Fry:
