Everyone has their Eid anecdotes. I have the opportunity to share mine on a media space. As per the ‘Eid calling’ tradition goes, a young boy of around 10 visited my house. This lad is known in the family for his sharp wit and intelligence. We all engaged him in a conversation about his school and studies, in essence made the regular small talk while serving the munchies. As we exchanged words on lessons and subjects, his parents piped up in the discussion and told us about their son’s brilliance demonstrated in the Urdu sentence formation lesson. The boy had constructed a sentence that read out as: “mein aur meray khandan walay mohajir nasal say taluq rakhtay hain.”

It is noteworthy here, that from a grandfather figure to a toddler (belonging to any nasal), citizens are well aware of their ‘respective’ identities. We discuss the Mirza-Malik cold war with quite the fervor, basking in the glory of our own analysis. We have all formed passionate opinions of the ethnic clashes in Karachi. We as a nation are deeply rooted in our political and social culture, but equally so apathetic of our surroundings.

We have forgotten the catastrophic floods of last year and are deeply unaware of the ones that engulf the provinces this year. We cleansed ourselves off our sins by fasting diligently for a month, loaded our trolleys with goodies and stuffed our pockets with crisp notes to be distributed shamelessly as Eidi, but we have turned a blind eye to all those that have lost even the basic means of survival. Those, who have been wiped out of their houses, swept away from food supplies and barred from receiving aid.

By now, you must be thinking that all this talk seems to be mobilised by emotions. I must ignore my feelings at this point in time and stand up to do something! Alas. Who should I turn to?

When the floods hit the land last year and gulped down villages, the authorities took no measure to repair the cracked barrages and build new canals. More so, news was circulated during early June that the floods have already hit the city of Kotri. They (yes, the ones who sit in posh locales with a flood of armed men to secure them), played their dirty games all in the name of ‘identity’ politics, not providing any security to the millions who continued to drown. In their minds, it is nature to blame for the abject poverty. Come rains or long periods of droughts, it’s the poor man’s burden to deal with what disaster nature has in store for them.

As of now, I heave out a long exasperated sigh. Whoever is to take the blame, be it us and our apathy or the authorities and their power politics or nature and its inexplicable ways, the floods are here again. It is yet again a time for us to awaken and to help out. Or maybe just to ask ourselves a single question: ‘Floods ki khabar suni hai aapne?’

Zehra Hussain is a student at LUMS and a former intern at Dawn.com

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.