KARACHI: Spare a thought for those who live in hutments in Karachi. Think about those who, even on the second day of Eidul Azha, had to walk or ride a motorbike or catch a public transport bus (not the new fancy ones) all the way from their homes to their workplace because they needed to put food on the table. Remember those, at least for a couple of minutes, who were down with Covid, isolating themselves in one corner of their house without electricity in humid conditions. And then talk about what percentage of the city is controlled by cantonment boards, how much responsibility the Sindh government need to shoulder and what the rest of the administrative units must take blame for... This is absurd. It is the most inconsiderate way of trivialising suffering.

What was witnessed and experienced on Monday by Karachiites in the form of 119.5mm rainfall was nothing new. It happens every year. Nor the ‘who’s responsible’ game on social and mainstream media is a new occurrence. The fact that half a dozen people lost their lives (five were electrocuted and one couldn’t bear the force which a wall collapsed) is just another newsflash. Debate as much as you like as to what can be or can’t be done when it’s coming down buckets, the biggest challenge that the authorities face is to become desensitised to people’s pain — if that hasn’t happened already.

Only on Monday, a number of stories unfolded that signify how important it is for those who hold the city’s reins to not to let people down. These are extremely toilsome times in terms of the economic difficulties faced by the country and the climactic situation that exists in Sindh. That said, it’s the people who don’t allow hope to dwindle.

On Monday, while I tried to walk from Teen Talwar underpass across to Dellawala Market to get some nibbles at 8:30am, the torrential rains made me stop in a sheltered corner of the old Agha Super Market facing the bridge. There I saw a security guard, in his late fifties or early sixties, sitting in a chair. There was another (vacant) chair in front of him in which I decided to sit for a while until the rain relented a bit and my clothes dried off. The guard, an extremely amiable man, allowed me to sit alongside him with a smile. As I struck up a conversation with him, the following came to the fore: his name is Abdul Razzaq who originally hails from Dadu, Sindh; lives in Gizri with his wife and four children, three boys and a girl.

When I asked why he had to come to work in spite of the inclement weather because it’d been raining for the last seven or eight hours, he replied he’s the bread winner of the family and couldn’t afford to miss a single day. For that he had come to Clifton from Gizri on foot and had to put on another set of uniform because the one that he wore when he left home was completely soaked.

Twenty minutes or so into the chitchat a rickshaw pulled up near us. The driver, a septuagenarian, requested Abdul Razzaq to look after his vehicle up until a little after midday as he needed to catch a bus to reach Chamra Chowk where he worked as the supervisor at a company. (He drove the auto-rickshaw part-time.) Again, when I said to the old man he could’ve taken the day off (after all, it was Eid day) his response was similar to Abdul Razzaq’s: inflation was high and he couldn’t risk missing work. The guard happily agreed to look after the rickshaw and the septuagenarian trudged his way to the bus station.

The perseverance and dedication to their respective jobs of both gentlemen is exemplary. These are just two stories. There would be many who on that fateful day when the city was totally paralysed tried to fulfil obligation. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learnt here for government functionaries. As an Urdu verse goes:

Shikwa-i-zulmat-i-shab se to kahin behter tha
Apney hissey ki koi shamma jalate jaate

[Instead of grousing about the tyranny of the dark night
You could’ve lit a candle that you were supposed to light]

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2022