Taking Care - Pakistani Protests and Ordinary Pakistanis

The location of the bomb blasts that shook Karachi yesterday, the parking lot of the Marriott Hotel, is roughly a 10 minute drive from my place. My mom, who was at home at the time of the blasts, testified to them being strong enough to have woken her from her sleep and shook the windows and doors of our house. I, myself, was at college, where our classes, or at least my concentration would get distracted numerous times, by the feeling of mobile phones in silent mode vibrating against my chair. These vibrations came as people's friends and families got in touch thick and fast inquiring of their well being.

I received numerous 'take care' messages, and I was compelled to fire off a few myself to some of my friends after I came back home. By dusk, I'd already received a call from relatives abroad, who'd obviously got worried watching the events unfold over the news. And by early evening, as I was online, emailing, surfing, blogging (or rather trying to do each of these three things), several more "take care" messages came my way. Some of these came specifically in view of today's nationwide strike, in protest they're saying of President George Bush's visit to Pakistan. I am sure I'll "take care", but if that means sitting at home and doing nothing, and thereby respond to some of our leaders' calls for a nation wide strike, then I'd probably not.

My college administration has actually called the day off officially (because of what they called "unavoidable circumstances") but I'm still planning on venturing out, somewhere in the evening perhaps, even if it were a small drive round the corner, to Sea View, stare at the calmness of the sea, the ease of the skies above it, and wonder why we can't learn anything from nature, so full of contrasting elements, yet still, so much at peace with each other.

I'll tell you why I'm getting this philosophical. I'm an anti-strike person, you see. I'm all for freedom of speech and thought, but sorry, I just don't like the whole idea of a whole country electing to take their boots off, sit up and doze at home, looking forward to Saturday and Sunday, I just can't envision how this can contribute to any cause even remotely, even by way of creating awareness. Strikes and I really don't get along. We've seen a lot of each other over the years, given I was born and bred exclusively in Karachi.

All this while we've shared what you can call a hate-hate relationship. Strikes annoy me; they actually get on my nerves. I mean, why can't people get on with their own lives without bothering other peoples' lives? Why can't they take their lopsided agendas and half baked arguments and demonstrate and protest and do whatever they want without pissing me off, or in the very least, without getting the whole country to come on a stand still? This isn't that big an ask, is it?

I don't know what makes some of our leaders think people skipping a day off from work, school or what ever they're usually doing, will make any difference to their cause, whatever it may be. If anything, I can only see such strikes achieving yet more socioeconomic losses. The 10th and 12th grade exams, for instance, are barely months away now, and they've reportedly still got large chunks of their course left uncovered, let alone think of revision. With their semester already having started a tad late this year, I'm not sure many of these kids appreciate the numerous unscheduled holidays we've had in recent times (there were at least 3 large scale, shutter down strikes against the Danish cartoons in Karachi alone).

In one of the weeks following the cartoon controversy my college working week, I recall, was actually shorter then the weekend (because the strikes fell on Thursday and Friday we had an extended four day lay off from college as did the rest of Karachi's students). And if you find it odd that I should be complaining against being given too many holidays, please note that students are not the only ones who suffer because of such strikes.

People like my tailor, the food vendors outside my college OPD, the cobbler in my lane, and countless other people in the lower ebbs of the Pakistani society, people at whose level you earn about two and half dollars (or less) a day. In such a situation the survival of entire families depends upon one person getting his or her daily wage, another strike for them means one less day where the money comes in the house, one more day of tension, one more day where they'll probably have to go to sleep underfed.

But, of course, the MMA can't be bothered less about my tailor or my makai wala or even me for that matter, as long as it is something Anti-American or Anti-West, it must be the right thing to do, doesn't really matter if it puts the life and properties of ordinary Pakistanis at risk. Who cares about ordinary Pakistanis anyway?