47 Minutes

Sameer spent 47 minutes, 23 seconds at the PSO petrol station on M.A.Jinnah Road today. You might be wondering if Sameer adores the smell of petrol. Not particularly. Or perhaps he enjoys watching the attendants wipe cars’ windshields. Not at all. He wasted so much time at the petrol station because yet again, an infamous political party (you know which one) has called for a 2-days strike, which means that petrol stations are most likely to be closed over the weekend and hence, the awaam is lining up for fuel today.

Sameer is not going to go in details about the heinous target killings happening in Karachi, the efficacy of strikes or how individuals outside Pakistan exert such powerful influence over its largest city that they dictate the fate of the residents; He’s going to leave it for the countless talk-shows airing on the numerous news channels as he types.

What Sameer wants to highlight today, is simply the inconvenience caused to the common man by such antics. In the narrow sense, owing to unnecessarily elongated traffic jams and undue panic, people are hassled on their way home. Moreover, during the strike, public transportation is scarce and expensive, affecting the lower tiers of the population most. In the broad sense, the daily-wage earners lose crucial income when strikes are called. Sameer may not be one of them but he understands the devastation caused to the economy by these strikes. What is unfathomable is that the enforcers of these strikes rise from amongst those most affected, and Sameer wonders what they gain from disrupting the lives of their own countrymen.

Certainly, in school days strikes were nothing short of celebratory occasions but as one continues to spend days locked up at home owing to political squabbles, one comes to realize how frustrating it is to have to endure yet another day of late breakfast of anda paratha, a marathon of How I Met Your Mother and incessant SMSs to friends.