KARACHI: To highlight the menace of line losses, Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) came up with an innovative idea of staging a theme-based comedy play, Dastak, in the Bahria auditorium here on Friday.

The play, written, produced, directed and acted in by SSGC staff, opens with a very worried king returning to his kingdom after taking some sort of a sabbatical to find everything changed. He is wondering where his people are and what has happened to his royal pleasures. His prime minister brings him out of his ignorant bliss by informing him that his people are either on strike or waiting in line for CNG. Discontentment looms heavily in the air. The once royal elephants are giving rides to children in the zoo while most of the kingdom’s ministers have defected to neighbouring lands and the ladies-in-waiting have become dancing girls.

With nobody else to meet and perhaps getting tired of the prime minister’s face, our king calls for his queen. The queen makes her entry and is as surprised as her king to find a barren land in place of their once prosperous kingdom. The policemen, supposed to catch thieves, have themselves become felons. And everyone is looking for personal gains instead of doing anything for anyone out of the goodness of their hearts, leave alone do anything for their land.

It is in these hopeless circumstances where there is shortage of water and electricity that there is a blue flame that burns bright. It can be seen from afar. As it turns out all is yet not lost. There is still one thing of value remaining in the land but this fact is often overlooked. This resource is natural gas, which is present in abundance, so much so that it is usually taken for granted. If not wasted and used wisely, it can once again change the fate of the land.

The evening included the screening of a short video about unaccounted for gas and the launch of SSGC’s corporate video apart from a brief appearance by Pakistan cricketers, who also wear the company colours during the domestic season, including Mohammad Amir and Sohail Khan.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2016