Life inside and outside the Bubble

Four years ago, biting into a Big Mac, global capitalism’s sandwich of choice, and staring out of the window- it hit me. Seven or eight young boys, your typical, easily homogenized ‘street kids’ were staring back at me, through the glass. Their eyes were sad. And then they were shooed away by the security guard.

You get used to such things pretty easily in our part of the world. Particularly if you live in a bubble, on the other side of the glass and security guards do the shooing. I grew up in such a bubble; our security guard slips me hash when no one’s looking.

Karachi is pretty darn humid most of the time. So when you need to get somewhere, you roll up the windows of the car and turn on the air-conditioner. Or get the Driver to do it. You call him by his first name, because your parents own him. He gets to sit on the other side of the glass, with the air-conditioner blowing cool air on his face- he should be happy, you tell yourself. When the car stops at a traffic light, it gets surrounded by beggars.
They tap on the windows. Tap, tap, tap…its incessant until you (or the Driver) scream at them, or open the window (oh, the air…SO humid) and toss them a few rupees. On average, the window is opened once per trip. Such moments of charity give you a little buzz, a brief respite to the humane which you forget soon enough.

Neon signs outside display the false progress bubble-dwellers like to call ‘development’. There is, of course, a direct correlation between how many things you can buy and how developed your society is. There are more people out there buying things, they say. The economy is growing rapidly, 6% growth last year alone. There’s also a burgeoning middle class- IT professionals and MBA’s fuelling the growth train. Everyone’s eager to get on. They pay the British Council to take the exams that serve as the ticket. The angrez, the colonizer, the dreaded nemesis of a forgotten generation- now, the benevolent benefactor. Cruel, cruel irony.

The bubble may be expanding. Perhaps its even permeable now. But before we sacrifice everything on the altar of global capital, lets pause to think about the outside. The children’s eyes staring into the multicolored wonderland of Mcdonald’s, the beggars tapping the rolled-up car windows at traffic stops. There isn’t room for everyone inside, with the air-conditioner on. There never will be. The ‘outside’ is infinitely larger and life there gets worse each day. For now, for me, the bubble is an intolerably sad place to live in.