Whenever a VIP comes to Karachi, life becomes a tale of misery for the commuters
THE urban life of Karachi city is turning into a non-stop, 24-hour a day, seven days a week “Reality TV” broadcast; directed, produced and performed by the VVIP mafias and their aides and fervently sponsored by advertisements on the roads, the roadsides, the buildings, the vehicles, as well as the pedestrians!
In addition to a heavy dosage of thrill and suspense (courtesy: the VVIP class of the country), the reality show also offers adult content (courtesy: the advertising media of the country). Who speaks of romance in this age of cabled globalization, our roads proudly flaunt women in seductive poses and nighties; in case of a religious wave hitting the city, these seductive women (the size of high-rises) conveniently remain clothed in nighties, only their faces are made to wear graffitied burqas by the religious “extremists”!
The show has such a confusing prop in the background that it can be easily mistaken for being a shot out of the as “interesting” Jerry Springer Show! Besides the building facades (which live to transform into billboards anytime before a bomb planted by an “alien” explodes) and the sheesh mahals (which proudly reflect all the sponsors surrounding them), the busy roads are accompanied by broken pedestrian bridges, little kids keep rinsing through, further to be crushed underneath vehicles running wild. Defunct traffic signals; bus stands and lighting posts, form the only design elements of the street, and are essentially designed to disregard their actual purpose, so that when commuters follow the signals of the transvestite beggars (on the roadsides) instead, they can be fined for breaking the traffic signal that always appears to be red!
Walls enclosing the scene are graffitied with personal e-mail addresses and chat room nicks of the just-hatched chickens or plastered with posters of the “interesting” cast of the show; the aamils, doctors, hakims, religious and political party leaders and their ever changing manifestos. Business deals of public schools and specialized institutes that don’t get enough space of free advertisement on the walls, decide to print their offerings on their undergarments and hang them above the roads as banners (free of cost too)! Every inch of parking space on roadsides is encroached by thella wallas and whenever a car is parked in a trace of residual space, it is lifted by the traffic police so that they can avoid the official fine and accept a hefty amount of bribe from the victim. Roads on which all these “interesting” events take place are repaired in patch-work-patterns that lead one of VVIPs’s car to his sister’s house!
Recently the show took a twist when it was decided that the VVIP cast of the show would be provided with more security. All the fuel stations along the main thoroughfare of the VVIP motorcade were barricaded, alongside nurseries were forcibly shut down and the adjoining roads were drilled with holes for metal blockade to turn the “open-air-theatre” into an “open-air-fortress” for the VVIP motorcade! In this show, no scene would be complete without the main component of the props, the “tree”!
For every other local-urban problem, our government finds some kind of a solution in an object that is a tree! For example, whenever the need of cleanliness is felt, the government orders to paint the trees multicoloured; any event (religious or political) comes near, trees are nailed with tiny bulbs everywhere; rain pours down making the nallas and gutters to overflow, that further wreck the road networks completely; and the government responds by cutting down the eucalyptus and planting the rapidly shrivelling palm trees! Whenever a good offer comes, these desiccated palm trees would be effortlessly replaced by more billboards that keep falling on pedestrians who don’t fall from broken pedestrian bridges on top!
Coming to the cast of the show, that is the life of Karachi, it won’t be an overstatement to ascertain that it is a lot more interesting than the backdrop scenery itself! We can see the filmi inspiration everywhere; partners in crime from Hollywood; taxi drivers, street side vendors and their sathis from the Bollywood; VVIPs and policemen from the most typical of Lollywood movies!
The most popular characters on the street have to be the flower/balloon kids, and the ever multiplying transvestites! What is the common link between them that gives them an edge over all the other characters on the road? These characters play the prayer-trick on the commuter! While addressing you with the latest Bollywood hero’s name, they will wish for your wife if you are not married, make a pair out of you and the female sitting next to you (even if she is five times your age) and then wish for both of you as a jori wish for your children if you wear a moustache; wish for a Haj, Umrah if you wear a beard; wish for success in your exams if you are clean-shaven and wish for an engagement if you are dressed-up for a party and driving alone! Wonder what makes them so shortsighted as to pray for others the same time as they beg them desperately for favours!
Then there are the repeat-telecast of mundane characters, whose scripts never get updated. Their parents keep dying every day, their kidneys keep failing every month. The sad cast includes newspaper hawkers, comb-setters and bundur kay tamashay wallay, who have to prevent sales of their actual offerings because they know beggary is a much better profession than selling commodities with a much less profit margin. When they are done with, grumbling about almost anything in vain, their next step is to curse you just as feverishly as they would have wished good tuck if you had given them a big note!
There is the horror segment of the show, where all kinds of hospital patients are released on main roads to beg for money for operations and treatments, or just for a cab ride to the hospital! These characters on roads are not united in their individual businesses, thus are often seen fighting for the time and venue settings! These businessmen on roads are accompanied by much more deceptive, yet much more professional characters on the road-sides! This side of the set is occupied by taxi-drivers, and rehri wallas; selling everything from meat to tasty burgers, vegetables and fruits to paans and cigarettes!
On the road (excluding the VVIP moment) all kinds of attention-grabbing Tom Cruises and Shahrukh Khans fill the scene! But in any case of the two, no one ever forgets the influence of Islam in our society! All the drivers are fond of taking the ‘right side of the path’, exactly according to the religious principles! So lanes to the left become fast lanes for those who can’t be heard by religious cars and their as pious drivers! Other religious members of the cast are the women in burqas, who cover their eyes also the moment they step onto the busiest roads; this is called the true practice of “blind faith”! Talk of a balance between intellect and sentiment, maintaining the equilibrium are the art-conscious mini-busses inscribed with poetry and graphic art on the exterior and viewing mirrors directed towards the women’s compartment on the interior. So much importance is given to the women’s compartment that the mirrors directed towards the road get completely ignored, resulting in John Woo-turns and lane shifts! Not only does the public transport have the viewing mirror problem and the right to violate any rule because they pay a heavy price (bhutta) for the “pre-crime” but the motorcyclists also don’t worry much about side-view mirrors, turns and lane shifts! Thus, end up considering the roads to be a Hollywood movie and themselves to be stuntmen performing in it! In case of an accident this same wishful stuntman is presumed to be innocent! Motorcyclists are Hollywood-stuntmen-impersonators; in this show we have the most novel stuntmen too! Our taxi drivers are often seen doing the un-sponsored pan-spitting stunt, when the driver speeds up the car just to beat all the “religious” and “slow” cars in the first lane, only to open the door, bend to the road (while still having the foot on the accelerator) and paint the edge, where foot-path meets the road, red! All this time the entire body of the driver remains in the car, only the head dangles out, one hand stays clutched to the steering, while the other holds out the door, some of these drivers tease the cross dresser standing on the pavement on their way back to the car-seat also!
This action and suspense is the routine of our show but the climax reaches with the arrival of the VVIP cast of the show, who only give special appearances every now and then! The moment is easy to comprehend, life slows down, roadsides get queued by the extras of the show (the police) and so do the vehicles (otherwise wildly racing around) stick to the protocol. Fuel stations as well as adjoining roads are blockaded; a few of the functioning traffic signals are turned off, thus the lives of thousands of innocent people is put into jeopardy and an irresistibly long wait unrolls, just to ensure security of a few VVIP. Ambulances chant the announcement of another patient’s ‘death; and no one moves only to prove security to the VVIP! Makes sense, who pays the taxes on even a glass of water, or a pain killer, who consumes the everlasting current of electricity, and what about the never ending supply of water that never mixes with the sewerage line! Who can forget the ultra clean road; our cities are a perfect reflection of life in the heavens above! And to whom does all the credit go for such a healthy; corruption-free life? Indisputably the VVIP! So why shouldn’t the worthless public wait and useless patients die if not for the VVIP? This has to be service to the nation and in the end we all have to die, so why not if for such a noble cause! Salute to the VVIP, salute to such a heroic nation! Long live the VVIP!
In the show, not only does the VVIP moment demonstrates intense shrewdness, but even other zone that has been certified VVIP is as judicious and reasonable as that particular moment! So reasonable that the access of all the inexpensive-cars of the city like, pickups, high-roofs, motorcycles, taxis and rickshaws, is prohibited into these zones! So according to the survey/observation carried out by our higher authorities, all the terrorists and suicide bombers have either of these cars, or plainly ride motorcycles! What if a terrorist organization buys all the cars available in the market, which would include Beamers and Mercedes just like the VVIP’s also? Will the president also be barred access to the roads then? Or maybe he will start travelling in an imported golf-car by then? But if there is no car left for the president, then the solution has to be in a “tree”! Long live the VVIP, long live the “tree”!
Whenever a VIP comes to Karachi, life becomes a tale of misery for the commuters 
