Rioting ... Hangamay
I have been in Karachi since my graduation from GIKI in May 2003.

During this period of one year the city has been very peaceful. The wounds of the horrible violence in the city during the 80s and the 90s had healed. The scars were still there. People had begun to come out of their houses during even in the late hours because a certain feeling of calm had spread all over the side. Under that exterior calm lay the reminders of the violence and the unrest that had characterised the recent past. The people are calm but they are afraid. One knock on the door makes them jump.

I have seen that the people of Karachi have become desensitized. They have lost all feeling of right and wrong. They have lost all feeling of compassion and love for other people. They have lost all visions of a better future for all. They have lost the belief that life can be beautiful with electricity, gas, water, telephones, roads and a general calm spread out all over the city. The people of this city are very very verstile and capable of withstanding a blow, but the are human.

This is a strong underlying current of fear and suspicion in the city.

During the month of May all hell broke loose in the city. There were numerous bomb blasts and assasinations. There was a lot of rioting at the funerals and the places of the blasts. This has caused a lot of violence in the city. It didnt take too many occurences to open the wounds again. The desensitized masses were ready to jump into the all too well known scenarios.

The city has been presenting the look of a city under siege or that at the border of a war. With tyres burning on roads. With crowds of people attacking shops, cars and other property. With police, rangers aaand other security personnel present at every corner in ever increasing numbers. With everyone who is someone calling for peace but none ready to follow their own advice.

I had to go to the commercial centre of Karachi, Saddar and its environs. I saw every shop closed. Every shop closed. This in an area where the number of people on normal working days is so large that you can not move about freely. This is an area where the daily business turnover is to the tune of millions if not of billions of rupees.

All I can hope and pray like everyone else in this city and in this country is that this is only a temporary glitch and not a harbinger of things to come.
- posted by aalahazrat @ 20:00