Darkness be my Friend

Lately anyone who is a regular newspaper reader would have read news about “such and such area of Karachi without electricity”, “power breakdown continue for hours” etc etc. Today’s newspaper however, took the cake. The entire country - well atleast most of it - without electricity for almost half a day.

Sunday, September 25th witnessed a major power breakdown throughout the country. Due to some technical fault at Terbela and Mangla, power went down which started a chain reaction and made other generators trip due to increase in load, resulting in well what we saw yesterday. What exactly caused the failure at the central grid station isnt known as yet - atleast not to me - but from the news sources its an entierly techinical fault and has no sabotage attempt associated to it. Thanks God for that, last thing a country without power needs is a bomb as the cause of the breakdown.

Not to say that any of this was normal but guess it just didnt work for us. We needed more fuel to the fire and more gossip while we couldnt watch some senseless Indian or Indian inspired Pakistani soap. Hence the country wide rumors about the change in government. Since the President was in America and also went for a heart checkup yesterday everyone thought that it would be a good idea to have a new President.

All of the above is so depressing and absurd. Depressing since we had the entire country without power for a day. Good thing it was a Sunday and the factories and offices were off else things could have been worse. If nothing else we would have lost a day of production. Absurd since the nation on the whole is so bored and farigh. We need some conspiracy theory or the other to keep us going. These theories (and the pointless soaps) are the only source of entertainment for us all.

I will finish this off with a question. Why do we need so much drama?

The Spirit Carries On!

"DAWN, Sept 1: A shroud of mystery enveloped the manner in which the Dera Bugti administration on Friday allowed only a small number of mourners to quickly bury a wooden, padlocked coffin said to contain the body of Nawab Akbar Bugti in the ancestral town of the slain tribal chief once known as the ‘Tiger of Balochistan’. "

Why? Why this mystery? As I have written before I was with the "use of force" approach but no matter how corrupt the man was, everyone deserves a proper burial. However, this burial was far from proper. With all of the controversy going around about his death (killing or otherwise) the govt. should have handed over the body to the family. The way the body has been buried raises serious questions about the way Nawab Bugti died. This will and is creating another uprise in the oppostion and other Baluch nationlist groups. The govt. is as stupid as the rickshaw walla on the road. We (Pakistan) is on a one way train to disaster!