Furiously Aghast

and torture to citizens.

Once going to drop a friend to Sea View (the mecca of these road terrorists), we remained stuck among them for an hour. Frustrated, I tried to push one of the hundreds of scrawny, dark-skinned, bare member of this breed. He lost balance and fell. Like a domino effect, he brought down about five or six of them with him. They caught up with us in seconds and surrounded our car. Thank God for the eternal Pakistani cry: I began screaming that he was eve-teasing my ‘sister’, shameless goon. In seconds, his own brigade members turned on him like a pack of hungry hyenas and we managed to get away. I still cherish my sweet revenge.

Here, I can’t even think of opening the Pandora’s box of road atrocities committed by trucks, buses and coach drivers. All veins in my head will explode and this piece will not even fit into a Proust-sized volume. Milk and meat delivery vans are also the proud flag bearers of this brigade. My mighty Sherman will simply crush them to pulp. It has zero tolerance to their existence on roads.

But the worst offenders and violators of road rules (if there exists any) are the government/official/protocol/military vehicles. They think they own the roads just because of a green/arrow number plate and/or flying a flag.

Once stuck in a jam at the former Schon Circle, a Pakistan Navy bus driver seemed to be driving with his horn, although from his elevated vehicle he could clearly see that there was no way to move yards ahead. I got out of my car and threatened to slap him if he did not stop honking. He tried to argue, I banged on his window and shut him up.

Similarly, on the narrow Clifton Bridge, a military jeep once was desperately trying to overtake all traffic… only to turn left! In his great hurry, he missed the turn leading left and hit the Civil Lines traffic light. And then from the extreme right, the jeep tried to turn left blocking all traffic. I got out of my car, shamed the official for breaking traffic rules in uniform and in an official car. I demanded him to turn the car back to Clifton or into

Civil Lines and come back all the way. He tried to argue and throw his weight. I asked his name and rank and took out my cellphone so that I could report him to the ISPR. The threat worked.

But the protocol/security motorcades are the worst kind of road terrorists save the President and the Prime Minister. These protocol cars first terrorise motorists with their hooter which sound like the Doomsday call. And then point guns (as if we are criminals) at the cars to move away from the VVIPs’ vehicles. Often taking advantage of their speed and hurry (knowing they cannot stop in the middle and break the protocol), I refuse to move away despite the security personnel’s frantic and ferocious gun-pointing, and get into an expressional argument with them. I mean how dare they terrorise us, thinking they own the roads? Meanwhile the VVIP who causes such terrorism remains hidden behind the dark windows of his luxury vehicle (often controversial Mercedes.) I imagine my Sherman gleefully riding on these protocol motorcades turning them into a sticker version of their glorious, pompous material selves.

But the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back is the arrival of the President or the Prime Minister in town. Road blocks, traffic police humiliating attitude towards motorists and pedestrians, people dying in ambulances, school children locked for hours after getting off all of it boils every Karachiite’s blood every time these two ‘patriotic’ public representatives are in town. Finally, I have understood the phenomenon of suicide bombing. It’s the mounting sense of injustice, humiliation and helplessness by the mighty, callous show of power that turns ordinary, non-political, simple people into suicide bombers. I have felt this white, volcanic rage rising in me while waiting for the President’s or the Prime Minister’s motorcades. Irrespective of kind — social, societal, political, road or cultural — terrorism breeds terrorism. Only if these ‘patriotic’, ‘people-loving’ public representatives could understand that.

On top of it, City Nazim Mustafa Kamal claims that now these VVVIPs use choppers for intra-city commute and spare the people from horrors of their road travel. There is a wonderful old adage in Punjabi: you cannot do anything to two types of people; first the one who hurls abuse from across the river, and second who lies to your face. I just want to blow up my beloved Sherman in their faces.

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