It's been a while since I wrote here (funny that it was Ramzan last when I wrote and it's Ramzan once again) and it's been a while since (weird 90's nostalgia* and crappy song playing in my head) I did those "You know you're in..." routine. So without further ado and one more cliche, I present to you:
You Know You're in Karachi When You Are Not Allowed to Take Your "Cold Rings" Inside Shops in Malls - I recently went to some of the malls here in Karachi and saw some really interesting things. For instance, I didn't know that even malls were constructed according to classes. One of the malls I went to had a really crappy ground floor, but things got better, the shops got larger, and the air conditioner got cooler as I climbed the floors. By the time I was on the top floor, it felt like I was all dressed up in designer's clothes, that I was running free in the meadows, and was frozen solid. However, the funniness and hilarity remained same throughout. I bought a Mirinda from OTPT and was about to enter a shop, when the shopkeeper looked at me with a disappointed look, and pointed his finger towards a sign on his door. It said, "No foods or cold rings allowed." I don't even wear a ring but the man would not let me take my Mirinda inside. What a nutter.
On a related note (and also on a lower floor), I found a shop that said it was holding a sale and there was 40% off on all paints. Actually, the sign said, "40% off. Paints only." This was quite deliberately stuck to a shelf full of clothes. My first thought was that it must mean solid colors, as in 40% off on shirts/pants that were only red or blue or green or yellow or pink (if that's the way you swing) and not on stripes or plaids or checks or pictured ones. Needless to say, I was wrong again; it was 40% off on the pants only, didn't matter what color/design they were or what was printed (or not printed) on them. It was in the same mall that I saw King's Corn and their tagline: "Sweety and Tasty;" I was surprised they hadn't added "Corny" to it as well.
You Know You're in Karachi When You Read This on a Pizza Delivery Menu:
- Pizza is not a matter of life or death! It is much more important than that... Considering all the violence happening in Karachi these days, makes you wonder now, doesn't it? Is the pizza mafia to blame?
- Flair tasty & enriched - What does that even mean?
- Unforgotable taste - Even if you wanted to forgot the taste, you wouldn't be able to. Why? Because it is unforgotable.
- Pizza lagacy at best - At worst, it would not lag as bad as the new Maxcom-Taken-Over-and-Given-in-by-PTCL connection does.
And to top it all off (Rs. 100 extra for topings), all of these appeared on the same menu.
You Know You're in Karachi When Shops Open for 9 Hours But Shopkeepers are Only There for 3 - Most of the shops in Karachi, whether they are selling clothes, shoes, books, paint, cement, or any other necessary things, open at around noon. An hour after opening the shop, the shopkeepers go to the mosque to say their afternoon prayers. They can easily pray inside their shop, which would save them a lot of time walking to the mosque, waiting for the jamaat to start, and walking back to the shop, but no, they insist on taking a 45-minute break because it earns them more sawab; so what if the customers have to wait, who cares? The shopkeepers are amassing their tolls to pay their way into heaven. After the prayer break, they take a lunch break, only to take evening and sunset prayers breaks and various chai and miscellaneous breaks till they close shop. To add to all of these, they take additional breaks during load shedding hours, because who can work in the dim lights that their UPS/generators support? Who needs to work so hard, when Pakistan's economy is booming, per capita income is very high, and everyone is enjoying not just the basic amenities of life, but all the leisures as well? Doesn't matter if they work 3 hours a day, have no electricity half the time, and treat their customers with disdain as if the shopkeepers were doing the customers a favor by working at their own shops; just say "Aall iz vell," and all will be.
You Know You're in Karachi When People Tell You Something is Right Just Because They Are (or Everybody Else is) Doing It - One of the things that has started to really irk me is when people tell me what they think is right. People are always insisting upon telling me that what they are doing is perfectly all right even though it seems oddly wrong. For instance, I noticed that a plumber installing a large water tank high up near the ceiling was putting it on an extremely flimsy support that neither looked strong nor stable. Even my 4-year old niece thought that it looked shady and that it would fall soon; and when I questioned his method, he calmly told me not to worry, as he has been doing it for years. I told him just because he has been doing something for years doesn't necessarily make it ok, to which he only smiled and looked at me as if I was mad or something. "Kuch nahee hota, sahab," he told me. "Yeh chalta hai." Nope, doesn't walk. This is exactly why you hear about roofs falling and building collapsing in Karachi all the time. People think that if it holds for an hour, it would hold forever.
In a similar situation, I was getting my bathroom fixed, as a few of the tiles had cracked and broken. I went to get some new tiles and the shopkeeper told me that he was out of the kind of tiles I wanted but he had some other tiles in some other style. I told him that those were not the kind of tiles I wanted, to which he replied, "Aray sahab. Yeh tau buhat acha tile hai. Aaj kal buhat chal raha hai. Sub yeh laga rahain hain. Aap bhee yehee laga lein." I find it quite funny that people think that since everyone is doing something, it must be the correct and the only proper thing to do.
Another thing that relates to this, what I would like to term "idiotic obstinacy" of most Pakistanis, is how everyone loves to deny that what they have done is wrong. For instance, please refer to one of my earlier posts about waiters forgetting the order and bringing the wrong items. In it, even though I mentioned the waiter's blunder, I did not tell you that when the waiter brought the wrong order and I pointed it out to him, he calmly said to me, "Sir, aapne yehee order diya tha." This is very common, as no one is willing to accept their mistake. A few days ago, I was invited to play at a party and I was told that the sound system would be provided at the venue. When I went there to test my sound, I heard some weird crackling in one of the speakers. Believe you me, it took me a good portion of the next hour trying to convince the "sound man" that there was in fact something wrong with the speaker and that he should fix it; the man kept denying that there was anything wrong. This is something that I am noticing more and more and I think it has to do with our people's inherent laziness; they do not want to admit their mistakes, as they would then have to fix it, which would mean extra work for them, which would mean not being able to take as many prayers break, lunch breaks, chai breaks, and load shedding breaks as they want.
You Know You're in Karachi When You Jump With Joy, Dance About, Throw a Party, and Distribute Mithai when KESC Announces that Load Shedding would Now be 3 hours instead of 12 - This is only upon the announcement, mind you, before the load shedding actually decreases. When it actually drops, you end up worrying your hair out because the "light hasn't gone for the past 8 hours" and you keep stressing over when the next outage will happen.
You Know You're in Karachi When The Fumigators Don't Wear Masks; They Take Tea - So I called these guys to get my house fumigated and they showed up with backpacks full of insecticide and started spraying my walls and floors. Everything about these guys was very professional; they had proper uniforms, some hi-tech spraying equipment, and an odorless-yet-deadly liquid that they drenched the inside of my house with. However, the only thing lacking were the masks on their faces. I had gone out of the house after they had started spraying but I found that I had forgotten my keys inside, so I ducked in real quick and went and got my keys. Even though I came out within a minute, I came out coughing and wheezing, with my eyes burning and my throat feeling like, well, like I had swallowed/breathed in some insecticide (by the way, it this was when I realized that the spray was odorless-yet-deadly). I later asked the fumigators about how they could endure that toxic environment and why they didn't wear any masks. It hindered their work, they told me. "Aur koyee masla nahee hai, sahab," one of them told me with the usual self-assured-confident-yet-most-likely-misplaced conviction of us Pakistanis as he handed me the bill. "Thora bura lagta hai galay ko, liken itna masla nahee hai." I told them that this was wrong and bad for their health and that they should wear masks while fumigating houses, to which they told me that they have a solution for it that didn't include any masks; all they do is take tea at the closest dhaaba around after each fumigation, and that makes them feel better. I was flabbergasted red; with this logic of taking tea after inhaling poison, no one in Pakistan should ever get any kind of sick.
You Know You're in Karachi When People Pull Numbers Out of their Asses - When someone in Karachi or someone from Karachi tells you that they would be 15 minutes, it does not mean 15 minutes; it can be any arbitrary amount of time depending upon various factors, including the profession of the person, his or her distance from you, the time of the day, and the type of mood the person is in. For instance, it is very common for KESC employees to tell you on the telephone at any given time of the day that there is a fault in your system and that it would be fixed within the hour. Sometimes, the electricity is restored even before you hang up the phone; other times you keep waiting the whole night but "the hour" never passes. The guy who fixes your air conditioner would tell you that he will be at your place by 4pm, but you can never be sure if he meant 4pm today, tomorrow, the day after, etc. All of this becomes even more frustrating when you show up at your car mechanic's shop to pick up your car at 2pm because he called you there at 1:30, only to find that the ustaad has gone to the mosque for the afternoon prayers and would be back after lunch, chai, load shedding, etc; or in other words, in 15 minutes.
And that's it with my post for today. If it sounds callous and bitter, it is because it is just that.
* I love how I just incorporated another "Past Time" reference in there. I am so punny that I laugh it.
