As my dad took that extra turn to get CNG from a petrol pump selling it three rupees lower than the market rate, I wondered how hardened we have become to the injustice we face, how shamelessly adaptive to whatever cruelty time has brought.
Our lives have sadly been immersed in so much problems, confusions and chaos that we have even lost the identity of our original problems. To us, load-shedding out of schedule is a problem, not load-shedding in the first place. We don’t feel troubled as long as the bomb blast is not in our town. American mercenaries attacking is a problem for us but not the corrupt civil and military leadership allowing them to roam freely in our cities and operate from our bases or more precisely using our army to attack our brethren, civilians in the tribal belt in the name of collateral damage.
Moreover, our routine is governed by electric, natural gas and water supply timings. Devaluation of currency plus debts, poverty plus inflation, corruption, foreign dictation, drones, disunity, lack of trust and injustice, unfortunately today, this is the Awam’s Equation. It is an open problem for which several solutions have been and are still repeatedly presented by our ‘intellectuals’. These conjectures have miserably failed to solve the Awam’s Equation.
Perhaps, with the wind of change which blows from North Africa and Middle East, it is time we set our course right and turn to a radical solution which liberates mankind from the slavery of men.
RAMEEZ RAGHEB
Karachi