Electricity... hurrah! after 4 days (= 96 hours). The last four days have been straight out of a bad horror movie (ok, it could've been worse if everything happened to me but I did get a lot of feedback from other Karachiites).
After the epic rainfall breaking a 30-year record, the people of Karachi are grumpy, bone-weary and resigned. Several roads remain submerged, cars are stranded due to water entering the exhaust pipes, residents are still mopping up the water that flooded their homes and shopkeepers/businessmen are rioting in the streets and burning up KESC (Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation) complaint centers (which is self-defeating but they're too desperate to care).
One of my friends spent Saturday evening hammering holes in the wall of his roof with a screwdriver so the water could escape because the puny drainage pipe got clogged with muck. Another stole bricks from a nearby construction site and propped up her bed while the water levels steadily rose around her. My uncle drove his new car into a ditch because he couldn't see the road and someone nearly electrocuted himself trying to start the generator...
Food rotted away in the fridge, the UPS died and I couldn't check my email for three days straight! (gasp!)... I felt rather primitive, hand-washing my clothes and hanging them out to dry, cooking on the gas stove by candle-light and using my wind-up alarm clock instead of the cell-phone alarm (because the charge had run out). I whiled away the time with some light reading and tried to stay out of everyone's way because people were getting on each others nerves without fans/airconditioning, sweating it out in the hot, humid weather.
So, why did I leave my comfortable lifestyle in Abu Dhabi and come back to Pakistan again?
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Aray because Karachi Karachi hai! Okay maybe that's not reason enough, but phir bhi :P
ReplyDeleteI also left my comfortable lifestyle in Abu Dhabi for five days to visit Karachi, and I'm telling you, at least I loved it! :D Baqi sab parayshan thay, but I enjoyed it :P
I had gone out with friends to Purple Haze Saturday night, and that's in the basement so we didn't know when the rain had picked up... we only realized something was wrong when we noticed we were the only customers there at 10:30.. on a Saturday night... in Karachi...
That's the first time I actually enjoyed getting stuck in the rain and not being able to get back home till 11 in the morning the next day :P
Absar, you're absolutely right! Karachi, Karachi hai :) I started out loving the rain but I realized pretty quickly that too much of a good thing can be really really bad :p I'm guessing Purple Haze didn't flood?
ReplyDeleteBecause of the bun kebabs and the samosas? ;)
ReplyDelete@TFL, of course! and my dearest mom :)
ReplyDeleteive been to purple haze.
ReplyDeleteand now, you knwo