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Just within two hours…
The rain patters on your windows, with each clasp of thunder the rain pours down more heavily. The rain beats the heat and the cool breeze refreshes every single part of your body. You go for a walk and enjoy this beauty of Nature to its utmost….
In a “proper” city, when it rains, people enjoy it in every possible way and thus this rain becomes a source of joy and happiness for them. But it happens ONLY in a proper city. Therefore we can’t include Karachi in it. Sorry Karachi! But in a city like Karachi when it rains, what happens is this:
You didn’t sleep the whole night. It was raining cats and dogs late night. The first thing that goes off with the first drop of rain is the electricity. You manage to pass the night “somehow” and get up at 8:00 am in the morning and rush to the office. You are half asleep and your greatest desire is to come back home in the evening and have a good nap.
Little do you know about the havoc you are going to face. Around 5:00pm when you are planning to leave for the day, you see thick, black clouds concealing the sky and soon it starts raining heavily. It is the kind of weather Karachiites love the most. You pack up your things and in an hour start heading towards your home sweet home. Whoa! It had only been an hour since the rain started and you can see pools of water everywhere. The main road gives you a very warm welcome by making you stand in a long queue of cars which are stuck in the huge traffic jam. It is a complete chock-a-block situation. The cars passing by welcome you by splashing water on you. You can’t close your window because closing the window means only one thing -- dying of suffocation. You look at your watch and realise that you have been stuck in this situation for more than an hour. So you take out your cell phone just to inform your family that your car is moving at snail’s pace (don’t you think even a snail wriggles at a faster pace?). And to your astonishment, the mobile services aren’t working! As you place your cell on your ear, two young lads very calmly stop their bike near your car, show you a gun and run off with your phone. Blessings upon them.
After all, they added one more thing to your worries. So very sweet of them. So your mobile has been snatched; every road is giving you a warmer welcome by making you wait in a “better” traffic jam than the other road and you don’t even have the slightest idea when will you reach home. You are just a few miles away from your home when your car breaks down. Nobody wants you to reach home. Not even your car. So like the other poor fellows, you step out of your car, leave it where it is and start walking IN the water which beautifully kisses your knees. Great!
You FINALLY reach home. It is a moment of great ecstasy (though you reach home in a position you would never like to be but still you did). Everything is giving you a warmer welcome than the other. Yep, your home is immersed in darkness. There is no water in the taps. And your phone is dead. All your plans of taking a nap vanish in thin air. You throw open the window in a temptation of cold breeze and you sleep, when you are awakened by a pleasant music. Mosquitoes and flies start buzzing in your ear…and every minute passes listening to the pleasant music…
We say there is nothing in Karachi to be proud of. We are wrong. Come on, who is going to provide you with so much fun? We have no lights yet Karachi is known as the City of Lights. We have no water yet we are called a metropolis. Our phone lines can’t even survive a single drop of water yet we are called a major city. Other cities have to provide basic necessities to its citizen to be called a ‘modern city’. But even without these facilities we are known as a city. What more do we need to be proud of? Hey, did I say we have no water. Sorry! We have so much water that even our streets are submerged. Has it ever happened in some other big, busy city? Look how unique and special we are. Aren’t we?
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