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.
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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.


