27th Dec 2007 - Through my eyes

The following was the sequence of events on my 27^th December. I had office as usual, and was supposed to catch an 8pm flight to Karachi to attend the wedding of one of my closest friends from college, Shireen. I had planned to make it to the “dholki” tonight and also attend the main wedding function on Friday. So this is what my day went like…

09:30 AM – Alarm rings. Press “Snooze”

09:35 AM – Alarm rings again. Press “Snooze”

…. This goes on every 5 minutes… until 10:30 AM …

10:30 AM – Alarm rings. Press “Shut up” button. Get up from bed. Get ready.

10:45 AM – Pack for Karachi.

11:00 AM – Leave for office.

11:20 AM – Reach office. Start work.

01:30 PM – Go to pick up mom from Daewoo station, who was coming from Multan.

01:45 PM – Go back to office. Give car to mom. Continue work.

05:50 PM – Hurriedly get up from a meeting with the CEO. Leave office. Grab a riksha back home. Tell him to step on it.

06:10 PM – Get a call from Zartash, director of our company, informing me that he has just been informed from a friend in Pindi that Benazir has been critically wounded in a suicide bombing, and has been taken to hospital.

06:25 PM – Reach home. Do some final packing in a hurry. Get another call from Zartash: “Benazir is dead”.

[It takes a while to sink in. A few seconds pass in shocked silence]

“Oh God. That is unbelievable!”

“Yes. This is certainly going to lead to a lot of trouble.”

“Yes. I am now double-minded about going to Karachi.”

[some more exchanges follow. How? When? Who?]

“Take care”

"Khuda Hafiz"

06:45 PM – Packing complete. Still in shock. Go back to the same riksha, put in my luggage and we leave for the airport.

06:55 PM – By this time I have exchanged more than 25 messages and have received at least 5 phone calls all related to the tragic death of BB and more importantly, the events to follow.

07:00 PM – Get to talk to Shireen. She is not sure if today’s event is going to take place or not. I am now undecided if I should even go or not.

07:02 PM – My decision is made easier by a phone call from dad, ruling out the option of me going to Karachi, because violence has already started in the form of burning buses and cars and shootings in the city.

07:10 PM – Park riksha outside airport. Call PIA to cancel my ticket. After a lot of “network busy” signals, I finally get through. Unfortunately, all their systems have crashed. The guy at the call center tells me to call back later. The flight is to leave in 50 minutes. I don’t want to waste money on a flight I’m not going to take. I call back again. Still no luck.

07:20 PM – Tell riksha-wala that this is not the end of our adventurous journey. I put my luggage back into the riksha. Call Shireen and let her know I’m not coming. We take off for home.

07:30 PM – reach Cantt. area, keep checking for any sort of unrest. Thankfully, on the route I took, there was none.

08:00 PM – safely reached home.

However, I later talked to people in Karachi, and they told me that they were constantly praying to God to get them home safely. One of my cousins saw a shooting right ahead on their road, as a result of which women were running out of their cars with their children and hurrying to go and lie down in nearby empty plots to avoid crossfire. Bullets firing, children crying, tires burning, women running… I can only imagine the fight-or-flight reaction of the people watching this horrific scene, worried about their own safety and those of their children.

As of now, 10:00 PM, Lahore is mostly silent… not a car in sight. One can only hope that this is the end of the chain of reactions to this terrible event, but knowing our people, it is too high a hope to have.

Benazir Bhutto (1953 - 2007)

History has changed with the tragic events that have taken place today, the 27^th of December, 2007. No matter how clear the dangers were, no one ever thought it would really happen. Benazir Bhutto, the “daughter of the East”, the first-ever prime minister of a Muslim nation, one of the few hopes of Pakistan’s future was killed in a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi in one of her rallies. Not that she was the sin-free savior of our country who would have solved all our problems, but she could have played an important role in ousting Musharraf and bringing something closer to a democracy than what we had under the dictator.

What happened today is one of the worst developments we could have had at this crucial point of our country’s history. We were already going downhill in every possible way, and fast. But most of the people, however depressed by the declining state of the country, were still going on with their lives, doing their business, slaughtering their goats and enjoying their cricket matches. But now, in the wake of Bhutto’s death, hospitals, cars and trains are being burnt, shootings are plenty in every major city, roads are being blocked by burning cars and tires, business has come to a halt, and citizens are happy to just be in a safe place, whether it is their home, their hostels, or even a friend’s house. The state is at the verge of a civil war.

Fueling the already increasing tensions is the fact that she was killed in Punjab. This will cause further polarization and ethnic tensions will increase, because now it will be labeled as a Punjabi killing, and PPP is, in every way, a Sindhi party. Everything Punjabi, including both the PML parties and even the Army which has always been favorable to Punjabis, will now be the target of violence. Unfortunately, in the violence between these parties and the armed forces, we citizens have a lot to lose, namely the sense of security and the hopes of a better Pakistan.

The Idiot Box

Someone gave this very apt name to the television - "The Idiot Box". Now TV lovers don't need to become suddenly defensive at this point. It does not mean that only idiots watch TV, however true that might be. Instead, it means that TV plays a huge role in making people "brain-dead", i.e. TV makes "idiots" out of perfectly normal, capable, and intelligent human beings.

This is not to say that TV is an evil that should be removed from every household, but just to point out that each of us spend endless hours in front of the "idiot box" rendering ourselves more and more brain-dead, and hence we need to make sure that we use this invention for our good rather than our let it lead us to waste half our lives.

When I suggest this idea to some people, the only thing they have to compare it with, is reading books. Now, not watching TV is not the equivalent of being a book worm. I, myself, have read less books in my life than the number of toes on my right foot. However, spending four years at LUMS (my university) has taught me how much better life can be without television!

However, people staying at home might argue that it is only time-pass. The problem with that is that it is a very addictive form of time-pass, and I myself can also sometimes find it difficult to turn it off once I start watching. One of the most addicting things on TV nowadays is movies, especially Indian movies. You would have watched that movie ten times before, but still find it difficult to change the channel or turn off the TV when you see Kajol trying to grab Shahrukh's hand on a running train!

The solution? Not starting in the first place. One might ask, what better way to spend my free time than watching TV? Doing anything, be it hanging out with friends, reading a newspaper, reading a book, reading blogs, playing sports, or even spending time with your family is much better than watching TV... Don't believe me? Try it for a week.

Thanks to the idiot box, finding "quality time" with your family has also become a myth. I work in Lahore while my parents live in Multan. I am able to make the 5-hour journey about twice a month to come home to my parents. When I am in Lahore, it is the distance that separates us. When I am in Multan, it is the idiot box. The irony of it all is that we are all sitting in one room, even as I type this post, and yet all the eyes are glued to the TV screen, on which re-incarnated Shahrukh Khan is trying to take revenge of the love of his previous life, as is the case in half the Indian movies. Gone is the hope of spending quality time with family. So, while TV has the power of bringing the family together to one room, it also has the ending any and all possibilities of "quality time" with family.

From where we left...

OK so Sneha started her blog about two weeks ago, and with a very fancy name, I must add. It's called Aleatoriedad Redifinido. Go figure! So anyways, being a tech-savvy, net-savvy CS major, my ego didn't let me stay too far behind and I finally took the leap and decided to write my first post. So here it goes...

There is really no point to this post, or to this blog, or to any blog, or even to this life for that matter. Have you ever asked yourself, "What do I want from this life?" or "What change will my life bring to this world?". Umar Saif, one of the best teachers, mentors, and friends I have had (and still do, btw), once told us to ask ourselves a question and come back with an answer in the next class. The question was, "If you could be anyone you want, have anything you want, who would you be?"

I feel a lot of people, especially in our region, need to ask themselves this question, and soon enough to be able to make a difference in their lives. It's not an easy question, at all. But the search for the answer might change your life.