My house in Lahore is under a bridge. I mean this quite literally. Like a troll from a fairy tale, I am the monster at the end of the road that the neighborhood kids invent stories about; I am the resident ghoul of Bridgebottom, the Boo Radley of Colon Colony. I’m OK with being villfied by the kids, and if I’m honest I don’t mind the bridge part terribly either. If you walk out into my garden and look up at the sky, you will not see it. What you will instead see are the large buttresses that support the sloping underside of a concrete bridge, coils of barbed wire, a looming high-rise and, cruelly, a giant billboard of fastfood burgers, provocatively plump and always in view. (Talk about temptation…) I am quite fond of the view actually; it’s very unusual for me to see such an urban monument from my garden. In my more severe delusions I can almost pretend I am looking at high-end views of the Brooklyn Bridge or similar.
The only downside to the view is that in my lowest times — when I have not had electricity for hours and the sweat is collecting in places that make me feel very fat — the billboard and high-rise cast an eerie and condescending glow on my house from their high illuminated, ever-lit perch. That five printed burgers have an unending electric supply when I do not is one of the ignomies of living in Pakistan.
But at least one is grateful for the monsoon, which is something I have heard a lot recently. I think it’s basically a passive-aggressive way of saying ‘Thank God you don’t live in Karachi’. I am feeling for Karachi this year, I really am. It’s alarming that over 1000 people have died of heat stroke in a single week there. The images that the news channels are describing of putrid, overcrowded morgues stuffed with unclaimed bodies is the stuff of nightmares/horror films.
My foreign friends have rung me up asking if I am ok (bless white people) and I gleefully unburdened them about the horrors of the heat until I realized they were talking about Karachi in particular, and then I felt somewhat chastened and not a little embarrassed (but still hot). The heat wave has brought to the fore the biggest weaknesses of the Karachi government, one of which is a complete lack of governance. I’ve noticed this whenever I’ve travelled to the city. There are about half as many policemen when compared to Lahore/Islamabad, despite the fact that it’s our largest city, only major port and one of the world’s five largest cities period. Karachi has been this way for so long now that everyone just assumes it’s the way things are. The violence, the lack of state support, the absence of civic utilities. It’s not, or at least it shouldn’t be, like that. It shouldn’t be that the ambulances and morgues that are full to bursting belong to a charity organization and not state hospitals (Edhi for president!). It’s shameful that things are kept this way through apathy and not a little conspiracy. The federal government claims it’s the responsibility of the provincial government, who in turn claim it’s the fault of the MQM, who in turn play the victim while waving about a blood-soaked machete and blame the federal government, who then blame India. Observe: the BBC recently reported that the MQM is in part funded and trained by Indian intelligence agencies as a way to destabilise Pakistan, which is not an earth-shattering allegation. (I mean, the party is run by an expat who dresses like a villain from a 70s snuff movie...) By comparison, the moment news of Axact was spread across the NY Times, it took scarecely a week to bring down that fraud.
In short, no one really cares, which is the sad truth. Why did 1000 people die from heatstroke in Karachi? Party because of dehydration (love me some piety laws) but mostly because the government, from local to provincial to federal, let them die, and there are enough scapegoats around to keep passing the buck until people forget they ever tried to care. That is the sad but resilient truth.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com if you have electricity or working Internet
The only downside to the view is that in my lowest times — when I have not had electricity for hours and the sweat is collecting in places that make me feel very fat — the billboard and high-rise cast an eerie and condescending glow on my house from their high illuminated, ever-lit perch. That five printed burgers have an unending electric supply when I do not is one of the ignomies of living in Pakistan.
The MQM is run by an expat who dresses like a villain from a 70s snuff movie
But at least one is grateful for the monsoon, which is something I have heard a lot recently. I think it’s basically a passive-aggressive way of saying ‘Thank God you don’t live in Karachi’. I am feeling for Karachi this year, I really am. It’s alarming that over 1000 people have died of heat stroke in a single week there. The images that the news channels are describing of putrid, overcrowded morgues stuffed with unclaimed bodies is the stuff of nightmares/horror films.
My foreign friends have rung me up asking if I am ok (bless white people) and I gleefully unburdened them about the horrors of the heat until I realized they were talking about Karachi in particular, and then I felt somewhat chastened and not a little embarrassed (but still hot). The heat wave has brought to the fore the biggest weaknesses of the Karachi government, one of which is a complete lack of governance. I’ve noticed this whenever I’ve travelled to the city. There are about half as many policemen when compared to Lahore/Islamabad, despite the fact that it’s our largest city, only major port and one of the world’s five largest cities period. Karachi has been this way for so long now that everyone just assumes it’s the way things are. The violence, the lack of state support, the absence of civic utilities. It’s not, or at least it shouldn’t be, like that. It shouldn’t be that the ambulances and morgues that are full to bursting belong to a charity organization and not state hospitals (Edhi for president!). It’s shameful that things are kept this way through apathy and not a little conspiracy. The federal government claims it’s the responsibility of the provincial government, who in turn claim it’s the fault of the MQM, who in turn play the victim while waving about a blood-soaked machete and blame the federal government, who then blame India. Observe: the BBC recently reported that the MQM is in part funded and trained by Indian intelligence agencies as a way to destabilise Pakistan, which is not an earth-shattering allegation. (I mean, the party is run by an expat who dresses like a villain from a 70s snuff movie...) By comparison, the moment news of Axact was spread across the NY Times, it took scarecely a week to bring down that fraud.In short, no one really cares, which is the sad truth. Why did 1000 people die from heatstroke in Karachi? Party because of dehydration (love me some piety laws) but mostly because the government, from local to provincial to federal, let them die, and there are enough scapegoats around to keep passing the buck until people forget they ever tried to care. That is the sad but resilient truth.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com if you have electricity or working Internet