Wing and a prayer

Published February 26, 2018
The writer is a member of staff.
The writer is a member of staff.

ON a domestic flight last week, I was witness once again to the unedifying experience that airline travel can be. It was mid-week afternoon flight, with many of the passengers being short-term travellers carrying carry-on baggage only.

Once the aircraft finally boarded an hour and a half late, there was the chaos that seems to have become inevitable regarding the lack of space in the overhead luggage racks.

Arguments broke out, stewardesses tried to reason with irate passengers, the aisles were blocked because many people had to go against the flow to return to the door of the aircraft to have their carry-on items checked in. Others were involved in moving bags around like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, trying to create room for their own luggage, or in trying to stuff their own items into the rack anyhow.

Suddenly, the hitherto Tarzan of the streets is transformed.

Once the furore had lessened, most passengers sat down. Right in front of me, a child stood in the aisle talking to her father. Suddenly, a plastic bag flew out of the still-open overhead rack above her, hit her on the shoulder, and then landed on the floor with a thump so loud that it was clear it contained something heavy.

Several people gasped, and as the father wiped the child’s tears, a stewardess picked the package up. It was an opaque plastic bag and passengers could see that whatever was in it was shaped like a shoebox.

Without taking the box — or whatever it was — out, the stewardess walked the length of the now mainly quiet plane asking whom the package belonged to. No one spoke up. She asked again, to no response. Then she started trying to fit the item back safely into the overhead rack.

A gentleman sitting in front of me spoke up: if there was an item in the cabin that no one was prepared to own, surely in these days of unrest it should be offloaded, or at least checked?

The stewardess replied that most likely no one was owning up to it because it was proving difficult to accommodate. One other passenger also spoke up, reiterating the same worry — to no avail.

There were no further protests. Item adjusted, the racks were closed, the doors sealed, and off the plane went, passengers now with a niggling worry in their heads but resigned to their fate.

I tell this story because it holds a mirror up to so much of the resignation, fatalism, and lack of planning for even foreseen (forget the unforeseen ones) consequences that contribute to making Pakistan the mess that it is. Wherever you look, whether it is the citizenry or those in governance or public office, you see things being done on a wing and prayer.

Of many examples here are just a few. On roads across the country, officialdom oversees the virtually unchecked addition of thousands of vehicles every week, with little heed as to how they will all be accommodated and what this will mean for traffic congestion, environmental and noise pollution, even incidents of road rage.

We see the endless expansion of roads, the few public transport schemes being suspect for not only displaying the best bang for the buck, but also being grossly inadequate.

On the part of the citizenry, the best example that I can perhaps give is that of motorcyclists across our urban landscape.

Recklessly driven, with absolutely no heed to either traffic laws or norms, not even to personal safety, they speed up and down at will. One-ways are defied, traffic policemen have noses thumbed at them, and kerbs, dividers and roadblocks prove no impediment.

Quite often, in danger is the life and limb of not just the motorcyclist, but five of his family members as well. All is well so long as this gracelessness yields nothing more unpleasant than a bout with a cop (when, more often than not, the offender will be found pleading abjectly to be let off).

Then inevitably one day, an accident occurs. Suddenly, the hitherto Tarzan of the streets is transformed into a poor, helpless man, unjustly targeted by the vagaries of fate and in need of help from whoever can offer it – even though this outcome was a predictable outcome of his own decisions.

This pattern is evident even in the highest echelons of society, in the corridors of power, in the circus that is under way in the political landscape these days.

There may well be a strategy of some sort that explains current events, a calculation or gamble that may, if Lady Luck smiles, yield results. But if it doesn’t, there is nothing but outright rejection and the playing of the victim card. There is no statesmanship, and never ever a mea culpa. If only there were, perhaps things might start improving.

The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2018

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