The Rickshaw Tales

I did it. I did it. I did it again. I took a rickshaw home today and I enjoyed it. I held on for dear life. But I enjoyed it.

Sad to say but I'm one of those (lucky???) few people who've hardly ever used public transport here in Pakistan. And it's sad because when in America, I was a complete public transport junkie. Out of necessity and because I felt that I was doing my bit; reducing my carbon footprint, getting traffic off the road, saving money, increasing convenience and a few other reasons that people have for travelling on public transport.

But here in Pakistan, if I don't have a car for some reason or the other, I wouldn't consider using public transport. No, I just wouldn't go wherever I had too. And it's because of the pathetic state of our buses and trains that I wouldn't but that shouldn't be good enough a reason.

So I took the rickshaw back today from Saddar to my house. I jumped in and the driver took off with a put-put (as compared to a vroom vroom or whatever other sound cars make). The driver was in the front and I sat in the back, occupying the twin seats. My legs were almost eye height but I enjoyed the elevated view.



As we zoomed through Saddar (or more like put-putted), I took in Karachi from a semi open air experience. The noise of the rickshaw helped to keep my mind off the pollution. I peered through trying to see where we were heading and I had a good mind to jump out if we were to run into any expected trouble. The shocker was when the driver took a wrong turn and turned the rickshaw around on a one-way street. My heart almost jumped out when I saw cars headed straight at us but deftly and surely, we were guided out.

I then realized that I shouldn't doubt the rickshaw drivers. They had been driving on the streets of Karachi for long and surviving. With that in mind, I leaned back as far as I could go without having my head sticking out of the back and waited for the journey to end.



They say that it's a jungle out there and it's a survival of the fittest every single day. I would say the fittest of us all are not those who lie and cheat so that they can ride around in their four-wheelers but the fittest are those who are in this jungle of ours and make their living, scraping, scrapping, jostling and jousting by. To them, I present a crown of roses.

My Nation and I

So they almost packed me up and shipped me off to the Thar Desert for my birthday. And it came all of a sudden. I resisted at first but then I thought about the awesome adventure I would get on the day of my birth 29 years ago and how I would remember it 29 years later if I spent it in a desert looking for coal. Last year, Levantes in Dupont Circle among friends from Wash DC. This year, Thar Desert in the back of beyond of Sindh among sand, sun, snakes and scorpions.


Fate had other plans and so I spent it at home among family. My birthday came and went. And I live to see another brighter day. The day (or rather, the night) started with a win for Pakistan. We whacked the Kiwis silly. A win-win situation, I thought to myself. I went to work and was greeted with a dinky toy car wrapped up in a box gifted to me by my colleagues. A dinky toy car and a fudge cake and I felt that people at work were trying to tell me that I might have grown older with increased wrinkles and rapid hair loss but mentally, I was regressing.

I just was happy that I was moving in either direction. And I care not what other people think. And I dance a jig and get on my tricycle and take a lap around my workspace.

So I decided to change the name of my blog from the old mundane title of Yawar's Blog
to The Adventures of Yawar Power.

I have come to realize and have been told that living everyday in Karachi and in Pakistan on the whole is an adventure of sorts. And as I chronicle my various spent days and the adventures they bring, I felt that a name change was required.

My nation, she's 62 years strong. I'm 29 years young. I think as our lives grow increasingly interlinked, we can embark on the adventures we are faced with every singly day.

Hey, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?

Being Socially Responsible

I had a whirlwind trip to Daharki. And I never even got a chance to drink some good local chai. Overall, the trip was fun but very very exhausting.

I had flown to Daharki enroute from Sukkur with a bunch of other colleagues for orientation. On our way, we passed many of Pakistan's industries, from other fertilizer plants to rice mills to power plants. But amidst all of this, we passed poverty.

Dirt poor poverty. Poverty which makes your realize that the World Bank standard of a dollar-a-day to classify poverty might be too much. Poverty that might be a sore to the eyes but makes your heart ache. Poverty which just stinks of corruption in the government and has the sweet smell of forbearance exuded by aid agencies and social workers. Poverty which makes you thank your Creator and wish that you could help those who were less fortunate. Help them so that they can help themselves.

I could sit here and write about my visit to the colony and to the plant site of the almost-finished largest single-train urea plant in the world. But I want to talk about a different aspect. An aspect that many a times is ignored by governments and industrialists alike as they venture in search for the bottom line of business aka profit. The aspect is the social responsibility that every business, every employee of that business, every government and every citizen of that government should have.

I'm proud to say that the company I work for does act socially responsible. Not as much as I and other do-gooders, save-the-world-yahoos would like but enough to help the communities around them.

Our orientation included a visit to a school run by the employees of my company. It was a pleasure to see. The school was English-medium and well run. The employees contributed to its welfare and thus there were ample desks, up-to-date textbooks and well-trained teachers. The students recited and repeated in English after their teachers and wore clean, neat uniforms. We watched them for a bit before we walked to a government school adopted by the company.

It was quite a shock to see how different these two schools functioned. The government-adopted school was Urdu-medium but most of the students knew not their mother tongue but only Sindhi, the provinicial language. The students sat on benches close together and shared textbooks. The teachers did their best but without the proper tools and training, their best just wasn't enough. The girl students were so far and few in between that it left a bad taste in the mouth. I huddled together with some students and took pictures. The students were shy sitting next to me but wore big smiles.

Another fertilizer company, one run by retired army officers also had a school and a hospital that looked well-run. Situated along the national highway, you see schoolboys and girls playing in the grounds and ambulances parked outside the hospital. Another example of a business acting socially responsible.

The reason I write this is just to exhibit that it might be the business of business to do business but businesses do so much better in our country when it comes to being socially responsible. That's not to say that our government has been cleared of responsibility where corporations are acting. Our government has so much to do but just does so little. And it only gets worse as time goes on. Worst of all, we let them off the hook easy. And all we do is sit here and complain by writing letters to the editors or hold drawing room discussions.

I just received an email about a youth initative that hopes to bring about a change. Change is only best when we all act socially responsible. Because after all, it's the power of the people and democracy that brings about this change in thinking. We all need to act socially responsible. In every little way and through every small mean possible.

It's our duty to our country.

Rules of Engagement

Last weekend was Halloween. I preferred to stay in on Friday and Saturday nights. Halloween was so overdone, what with skanky costumes and stupid face masks that I witnessed in America and I didn't want to see the same in Karachi.

But Sunday night, I went to an engagement. And I'm glad I did. You see, it was my father's personal assistant who had chosen to get married to a girl and in the process chosen to change his belief system with it. Since his mother was appalled (she has a right to her own opinion), she chose to stay away. So my father proxied as his chaperone and guardian and we went along as support for the engagement party.

It was such an eye-opener. The girl's family weren't your run off-the-mill millionaires but lived in an apartment complex on the far side of town. Money shouldn't be used as a gauge of intellect or decency because I was impressed with how well-groomed and educated they were, from the adults down to the little kids who went to English-medium schools and were doing really well at their academics. With three families sharing an apartment of four of five rooms, they looked like they got along and played splendid hosts to us.

We were treated as honored guests and after a scrumptious meal and local engagement traditions were played out, we left our hosts with a goodbye and pleasant smiles for the memories that they had shared with us.

It took me a while to write this post. I wrote it and then I let it be. You see, I felt I didn't do justice to the institution of marriage nor to the people who I had met. They had impressed me much and reinforced my belief that Pakistan might be a crumbling nation in many ways but there were stupendous human resources out there for us, if only we tapped the right places.

As my CEO says, one day he wants someone from a village surrounding one of our plant sites to be the next CEO of our company. As I say, one day someone from the many villages in our country should grow up and rule us. Only then will we truly care about the poor and be not only a land of pure but a land of pure opportunities.

The Drive Back Home

I left work late last night. I was in office tinkering around with numbers and spreadsheets with another colleague who was flown in especially from Islamabad to tinker numbers with me. By the time we were done tinkering a.k.a cutting, copying and pasteing, the clock had struck the ninth-hour mark.

As I drove back home on a Friday night, I realized that I wanted to do something. It was after all a Friday night and I deserved to do something rather than just go home. Like I did, on the weekdays. But on this Friday, even though I felt I deserved to do something, I just didn't feel like stepping out of my car.

I thought about the almost decade or so that I was away, I would always try and do something on Fridays.

In Appleton, I would hit the gym hard. Fridays, the gyms were mostly empty, similar to almost anywhere in the world. Friday is just one of those nights when people really let themselves go. In all ways. In Wisconsin, nobody wanted to come and tire themselves out with all those heavy weights. Not on one of those nights when they could make jolly like koalas, drink like fish and hop like kangaroos. But for me, it was different. After the gym, I would walk down College Ave and smirk at the drunk people making fools of themselves and stare in envy at the bouncers who would carefully choose the most beautiful girls out of the lines to let them in. For me, life was simple; the gym and work and walk around if it wasn't too cold, people-watching as I went on by.

In DC, if I had nothing better to do on the weekends, I would walk up 18th St to Dupont Circle and either sit on one of the benches in the circle or go and sit in one of the Starbucks or Cosi's that looked out at the circle. Dupont always had something or the other going on. Marching bands, marching fans or marching ants. I would sit there and be one with myself, and I was content.

But Fridays in Karachi are atypical. Something or the other always makes them different. And yesterday as I drove back home, I realized that I was just happy driving home. I had the radio on, the windows were down, the cool wind was blowing through my hair and I was thinking of nothing. Yes, thinking of nothing. It's harder than you can imagine because the brain always had something in motion. But thinking of nothing is the best remedy to a week-long disease.

I wanted to go on a long drive and just be with myself. And as the radio jockey babbled in one ear and the irate driver honked in the other, I zoned out and realized that such a drive back home was therapeutic, much like a muscle relaxant for someone with a physical twitch and almost equivalent to three glasses of vodkas gulped down neat by one who's had to survive a week from Hell.

And then David Gray's voice piped through my mind and my drive back home was complete:

Friday night, I'm going nowhere

All the lights are changing green to red

Turning over TV stations

Situations running through my head

Cutting A Sorry Figure

I've been bruised and miserable for the past week. I've been recuperating from a bad backache caused by exercising too strenuously. I forced myself to take a break from working out for a few days and went to workout after 5 days last night. And then I slipped in the bathroom and hit myself against the pot once I had come back. The ceramic sure was hard.

My sides now hurt. I lay in bed in the morning and realized that I've been cutting a sorry figure for the past week. I think I'm trying to do too much in my life. And it's caught up with me. Working, exercising, socializing and trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour just can't be squeezed into the hours of a single day.

So socializing will have to take a backseat. I can't do without 8 hours of sleep and pretty much everything is a product or a cause of it. More like cause.

Today was another long day. Coming home, a kid came and knocked at my car window. Usually I converse with him and end up giving him a small monetary token. Today, I shoeed him away. Not rudely but just smiled and nodded my head. And the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders.

I wasn't Superman or the Prime Minister of Pakistan. I couldn't save the world or make Pakistan better. I couldn't be everyone's friend, despite what name and fortune tells me. Or be a hero to some. And a hidden guardian angel to others.

With that thought in mind, I have a feeling that tonight's going to be a good night. Tonight's going to be a good good night because I'm going to let it be.

Have a Soul, But Not a Soldier

I heard the title phrase on the radio the other day. It's a song by The Killers. And I liked the line, "I have a soul but I'm not a soldier". It just goes on to show that things which are half-baked i.e. incomplete should be shunned and things in their entirety should be regarded.

Many a times, we end up saying something which is incomplete and since mind-reading is a skill (or a talent or just magic), misunderstandings are commonplace. Why am I giving you this lesson in life? Because I think we all need to understand this. And most of all, all of us should know that there's always more to a story than the eyes can see and the ears can hear.

Quick lesson of the day. Capiche to that monologue.

The same radio jockey was also talking about the fourth anniversary of the earthquake. I thought back and four years ago, I was sitting in good ol' Washington DC when I got the news that there had been a major earthquake in Pakistan. I called home and I found out that the epicenter of the quake was in Balakot, a place we had visited just a few months before that.

Lives were lost. Buildings crumbled. Schools and hospital lay in ruins. My heart went out to the poor people of the Northern Areas of Pakistan. My people. How I love them.

The Pakistan Army was at the forefront. Highly disciplined, they got there and did a tremendous search-and-rescue operation. Our Apache helicopters and Humvees (all given to us by the US) went over rocks and rubble to save those lying under and to ferry relief goods to the hungry and cold. A job well done.

Now, the Kerry-Lugar bill is up for debate. Senator Kerry has laid out the myths and the facts that are being associated with the bill here in Pakistan. Opposition parties are having a field day with the bill but the real opposition has come from the soldiers. The Army doesn't want to cede control to the civilians. Over anything. Over our nuclear weapons. Over their command structure such as promotions. Over their pays and perquisites.

I think the K-L bill is good for us. We need some soul-searching and some oversight. The money that we get for aid goes into the pockets of our government overlords than into education and health, two things which are a need of the day.

A soldier-general has laid ruin to the Pakistani nation with his misadventures and poor foresight.

The real question in my mind now is: Do soldiers have souls?

PS: I found this picture. It's a documentary titled Zalzala.

An interesting fact that the RJ said on the radio was that a lake was created because of the earthquake.

It's quite a large and deep lake and the people there have aptly called it Lake Zalzal, meaning Lake Earthquake.