Sin City

There is a ride at the Funland amusement park lying just below the Jehangir Kothari parade that has terrorized at least two generations of Karachiites. A ship on a swing, the ride swings like a pendulum, gathering momentum. The gentle lulling of a baby in a cradle turns into the belly churning rolls of a ship on the high seas in the mother of all storms. Here it was that various friends vomited but the wild swinging ensured the vomit never landed on the people next to them but those several rows back. Here it was that I first heard Madonna’s ‘Like a virgin’, an apt but rather surreal accompaniment to the frenzied rocking.

In the Karachi of the late eighties-mid nineties, going to Funland was one of the few things a family could do. Karachi today now offers many more ways to kill time and spend money. And if you have too much of the former but not enough of the latter, god bless the cablewala.

Karachi now also offers many more ways to kill people. A good thing, because a natural death is so over. But how to die? Being an accident fatality is boring. Accidental electrocutions and manhole drownings are a slur on the aspirations of the upwardly mobile. Dacoits, hold-ups and trigger-happy wedding guests have also been (sorry but I can’t resist) done to death. Sample the following to get a taste of your options for creative annihilation.

Last week security guard Omar Daraz objected to the attire of his employer’s daughter-in-law as she stepped out with her infant, husband and mother-in-law in tow. When asked to mind his own business, he opened fired on the car they had gotten into, critically injuring the young woman. Omar Daraz then turned the gun on himself.

Then there is the coffin on wheels. In the last few months, 20 people have died in ambulances on their way to various hospitals while being stuck in traffic jams caused by VIP movements. This kind of collateral damage would be unacceptable in other countries with pretensions like ours, but so far it has been swallowed hook, line and sinker. There have been many irate letters to the editor in various papers, but no determined, concerted effort on the part of the citizens of Karachi to assert their ownership of the city.

How can this be done? One way would be to launch a civil disobedience movement, with people coming out to block major arteries or ideally access to the city for any official motorcade from the airport itself. People could organize sit-ins outside Jinnah airport. All drivers on the roads could decide together to ignore the puny white uniforms seeking to thwart their passage from point A to point B and simply surge ahead together, asserting that is the people and not the rulers who need to come first.

There are several problems with this suggestion. The first, of course, is that the issue simply isn’t (as yet) incendiary enough to prod the average Karachiite into action. If it were something like the opening of an Israeli consulate, for example, or the return of Altaf Bhai, you could count on the workers of at least two political parties to show up.

The second is that if people lay down on roads to block official motorcades the Ninja Bastards (as I call the black clad special security forces whose sole job seems to be to escort the VIP as obtrusively as possible) will simply drive over them. I had a run-in with a Ninja Bastard a few weeks ago at a posh hotel where the PM was coming to attend a cardiology conference (ironic since most of the people who died in ambulances died of heart failure), and I got the distinct feeling they are very clear on what is important and what is not. VIP good. Average person bad. Redundant. Unworthy of respect.

The third problem is that even if people were to swing into action and court arrest or dismemberment in the drive to rid Karachi of the criminal behavior of errant overlords, they would probably never agree on which plan to follow. Which road to block. What colour armbands to wear.

Local police does not necessarily share the Ninja Bastards superiority complex though. My friend A, who makes it a point to ask the police blocking the road ‘why why’ every time his journey somewhere is impeded, assures me they feel as helpless and frustrated as the rest of the people of this city. Perhaps they should be the ones launching the disobediences movement then? Perhaps people could get together, organize, publicize and act in tandem with the electronic media so the official response to blocking access to the city for VIP’s is non-violent and muted? Nothing like a camera to make a dignitary grow a conscience.

The other day we pulled up to a traffic sergeant after our three year old refused to wear a seat belt while sitting in the front seat. He leaned in and raised an eyebrow.

Aap is bachay ko bata saktay hain kay aagay baithnay walay ko seat belt kyoon pehnna hota hai?

Bilkul. Beta agar aap seat belt nahin pehno gay aur aap ka accident hua to aap kar sar ja kay idhar lagay ga (he patted the dashboard)

Hum tez to nahin ja raha (the kid speaks Benazir Urdu)

Phir bhi, agar marnay wala tez ja raha ho to tezi say lagay ga

Abhi to peechay koi nahin tha

Lekin gari challay gi to ho ga

Mara daddy acha driver hai

Dekho! Acchay bachay daddy ki baat maintain hain!

That the kid understood. He now demands to be buckled in himself. I think one day I will be buckled in as well, but not into a street belt.

I got a crank call on my cell phone yesterday. Anyone remember crank calls? I vant to make friendship with you…your voice is very saxy…my name is Hammad I have a gun…etc etc (ok perhaps everyone won’t remember that last one). Crank calls died once caller ID came to Pakistan. Yet here was this man, oblivious to the passage of time, secure in his anonymity when in fact it no longer existed. I told him ‘main aap ko nahin janti aap mujhay kyoon phone kar rahay hain?’ he replied with, ‘Toh jan lain.’

But my ability to banter has dried up. I try to refresh it periodically. Go out, mingle, get some air. The other day we went to the new park at Clifton Beach. Giant fibreglass dinosaurs. Kid friendly play areas. A prime view of the planned water jet. Mounted park security. I reveled in my toddler’s freedom to run arms outstretched as much as he did. Then I looked around.

No toilets. No drinking fountains. No access, ramp or otherwise, for the handicapped. I thought of my khala, paralyzed and wheelchair bound after a fall in the bathroom two years ago. I thought of how active and athletic she had been all her life up to that point. I thought of something she had blurted when I was talking about my novel to them a few weeks ago. “I want to write a book too! I’m going to call it I see you but you don’t see me.”

I think I hear the city nodding.