Remember your childhood? That wonderful, sepia-coloured time when there was only one TV channel, which used to show one cartoon a day (at 5 pm), and Sesame Street on Fridays after Gillette World Sports Special? We didn't used to have PlayStations and social gaming back then, so we used to make up all sorts of games, for which the most advanced technology required was some paper and a pencil.
One of those games was called kasauti, known in the vernacular as "Twenty Questions". One team would think of something (animal or mineral) and write down the answer on a piece of paper, and the other team then had 20 questions in which to guess what it was. Ever since then, the number 20 has held an almost magical quality about it for me, and for any list, especially of questions, to have occult significant, it surely must also comprise of this magic number.
The first two of these questions occurred to me almost simultaneously a few days ago, followed swiftly on by the thought "Do these important existential conflicts keep others awake at night too, or is it just the KESC?" So I thought to jot these questions down, and lo and behold if I didn't come up with exactly twenty.
So here it is, in all of its glory. The magical list of questions (and other thoughts) that dog you on the mean streets of Karachi.
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1. Why is there always a bus parked on Khayaban e Shahbaz, on the corner of Shahbaz and Hafiz?
2. What exactly is achieved by running a red light when the counter shows that it will turn green in four seconds?
3. What part of “nahin karo beta” don’t you understand?
4. Thank you for flashing your lights at me. If only they were tasers, I could have been vaporised and you could have moved one car length ahead in this queue...
5. Why don’t people realise that driving with a high beam blinds oncoming cars? More likely, they don’t care...
6. Why do you creep forward one whole lane when joining a busy dual carriageway?
7. Ok seriously, if you park your car illegally, blocking off the road for dozens of people, does that affect the acceptance of your namaz? Why couldn’t you just have left home five minutes earlier?
8. Is there a connection between lack of food / water / nicotine and the ability to see the colour red?
9. How much does it cost to fix the brake light wiring of a motorcycle? Is it more than the price of a human life?
10. Why must big cars be driven by even bigger assholes? Seems like there is no other point of commonality as this phenomenon spans all demographic boundaries.
11. Khayaban e Iqbal (yes, I didn’t know of the name change either – the stretch between teen talwar and the underpass) is a red route (tow away zone, no questions asked). So then why do the four (on average) traffic policemen on duty there assist people in parking on the red route instead of towing their ass?
12. Why is the least spot of rain like the precursor to a Noah-esqe deluge in the minds of drivers who use I I Chundrigar Rd?
13. Why do parha likha people merrily drive up the wrong side of the road to avoid a 40 yard detour? If they turned left instead of right, there was a u-turn opportunity literally 20 yards down the road...
14. Will people ever stop staring at me like I am mental when I give way to right at a roundabout?
15. Why must you go up the wrong side of the road in a tailback, thus clogging up traffic on both sides for half an hour?
16. What part of “No Entry” don’t you understand? (particularly for Zamzama, Shamsheer and Mujahid)
17. Will the Jam Sadiq Bridge ever be in a good state of repair? (I dare not check the name on Google Maps for fear that has also been changed)
18. Is that patch of road leading from Burns Road to Urdu Bazaar one way or not?
19. There are few ideas that can be considered dumber than the Tariq Rd / Khalid Bin Walid Rd one way system. Until you visit Khayaban e Shamsheer.
20. Oh, I am so sorry. I never got that memo about your father having purchased the road.
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