Pakistan Today, Monday, 8 Aug 2011
Depression is not a word that anyone should use lightly. There used to be a time when depression was the new ‘in’ thing for the ‘cool’ chicks on campus. In fact, many a hapless testosterone-fuelled teen has been dragged to the altar based on the whole “I’m depressed…” routine. Let’s face it, emo chicks are cool. Goth babes are even cooler. But neither would come to your family’s Eid dinner, so you can’t marry them. But you can still share a puff or two on a remote hillside somewhere in Margalla.
Our cities are full of depressions too. Most of them occur on the road, although some are more pronounced than others. There are generally three types of road-related depressions, or potholes as they are lovingly known among the English-speaking-and-doing intelligentsia.
The most tame of these is the ‘toya’, which can measure anywhere between 0.25ft to 0.75ft deep and are no more than a few feet across. These aren’t usually a major cause for concern when it comes to motorists of the four-wheel variety because they can, literally, take them in stride. Two-wheelers can easily get around such obstacles with majestic ease. The only sawari that has a beef with toyas has to be the rickshaw, because whenever a tuk tuk drives down a pockmarked road, the driver forgets that he has one wheel in the middle of his ride, and ends up ploughing straight into what can only be described as a hole in the ground.
Another, more dangerous form of pothole is truck tracks. These are formed on roads that see copious amounts of heavy traffic. What happens is that in the heat of the summer sun, the tarmac loses its ability to withstand the weight of 500 NATO tankers travelling to Torkham in a single file. From being a nice, smooth and flat surface, the road breaks out in hives, leaving behind giant tyre tracks which serve as a kind of directional limiter, useful if you’re travelling in a bob sled with no real form of steering equipment. However, in motor vehicles, this hampers the driver’s ability to use the steering mechanism and one is forced to go the trucker’s way for the length of that particular stretch of asphalt. Such patches could be a mere few kilometres, as with the Kashmir Highway in Islamabad; or could run the length of the Super Highway, from Karachi to Sukkur.
The third and most annoying form of hole in the ground is the ‘khadda’. These vary in size considerably. While the most appropriate specimens are found on the moon and are referred to by astronomers as craters, there are a few knockouts back on terrestrial land too. There is one in Karachi that lends its name to a whole market, and another in Roswell. While the two may not share the same origin, it is clear that both holes come from the same genus (which is Latin for ‘giant drill machine’).
Worse still is the fact that drainage, like pyramids and nude sculptures, was an art that died out with the Ancient Romans. Modern Pakistani scholars have tried to dig up and translate the old manuscripts containing detailed schematic diagrams of aqueducts and other municipal structures. Unfortunately, these archaeologists have fallen victim to the deadliest curse of them all and now must constantly face the wrath of their local Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD), which conveniently declares these poor souls’ homes the sites for the next major landfill. This is why more and more archaeologists and historians are abandoning their day jobs and going to work as call centre attendants and sociologists, because the Department of Social Welfare can’t hurt them as badly as the SWMD can.
Monday’s epic rains brought with them a sense of joy and dread. Joy for those who are under the age of 15, because they would be the only ones exempted from shovelling bucket loads of water out of their front porches. Dread for the sorry few who are still without Watan Cards and hence without homes, shelter, food and other basic human needs, such as dignity. If the floods do decide to come this year as well and test the limits of our hospitality, our government is in no mood to resist and will definitely let the waters tread all over our precious farmland. They will not get in the way as torrents roll down the hills and mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wreak havoc in the plains of Punjab and finally flatten the crop fields of Sindh before dissipating and leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of Acute Watery Diarrhoea. And to be honest, we are not ready for either water-borne menace.
But it’s not all gloom and doom and not every flood is cause for alarm. Rawalpindi’s Nullah Leh overflows every time Sheikh Rashid loses an election, but that doesn’t seem to faze the residents of that area one bit. They’re used to being knee deep in diarrhoea, verbal or otherwise.
Depression is not a word that anyone should use lightly. There used to be a time when depression was the new ‘in’ thing for the ‘cool’ chicks on campus. In fact, many a hapless testosterone-fuelled teen has been dragged to the altar based on the whole “I’m depressed…” routine. Let’s face it, emo chicks are cool. Goth babes are even cooler. But neither would come to your family’s Eid dinner, so you can’t marry them. But you can still share a puff or two on a remote hillside somewhere in Margalla.
Our cities are full of depressions too. Most of them occur on the road, although some are more pronounced than others. There are generally three types of road-related depressions, or potholes as they are lovingly known among the English-speaking-and-doing intelligentsia.
The most tame of these is the ‘toya’, which can measure anywhere between 0.25ft to 0.75ft deep and are no more than a few feet across. These aren’t usually a major cause for concern when it comes to motorists of the four-wheel variety because they can, literally, take them in stride. Two-wheelers can easily get around such obstacles with majestic ease. The only sawari that has a beef with toyas has to be the rickshaw, because whenever a tuk tuk drives down a pockmarked road, the driver forgets that he has one wheel in the middle of his ride, and ends up ploughing straight into what can only be described as a hole in the ground.
Another, more dangerous form of pothole is truck tracks. These are formed on roads that see copious amounts of heavy traffic. What happens is that in the heat of the summer sun, the tarmac loses its ability to withstand the weight of 500 NATO tankers travelling to Torkham in a single file. From being a nice, smooth and flat surface, the road breaks out in hives, leaving behind giant tyre tracks which serve as a kind of directional limiter, useful if you’re travelling in a bob sled with no real form of steering equipment. However, in motor vehicles, this hampers the driver’s ability to use the steering mechanism and one is forced to go the trucker’s way for the length of that particular stretch of asphalt. Such patches could be a mere few kilometres, as with the Kashmir Highway in Islamabad; or could run the length of the Super Highway, from Karachi to Sukkur.
The third and most annoying form of hole in the ground is the ‘khadda’. These vary in size considerably. While the most appropriate specimens are found on the moon and are referred to by astronomers as craters, there are a few knockouts back on terrestrial land too. There is one in Karachi that lends its name to a whole market, and another in Roswell. While the two may not share the same origin, it is clear that both holes come from the same genus (which is Latin for ‘giant drill machine’).
Worse still is the fact that drainage, like pyramids and nude sculptures, was an art that died out with the Ancient Romans. Modern Pakistani scholars have tried to dig up and translate the old manuscripts containing detailed schematic diagrams of aqueducts and other municipal structures. Unfortunately, these archaeologists have fallen victim to the deadliest curse of them all and now must constantly face the wrath of their local Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD), which conveniently declares these poor souls’ homes the sites for the next major landfill. This is why more and more archaeologists and historians are abandoning their day jobs and going to work as call centre attendants and sociologists, because the Department of Social Welfare can’t hurt them as badly as the SWMD can.
Monday’s epic rains brought with them a sense of joy and dread. Joy for those who are under the age of 15, because they would be the only ones exempted from shovelling bucket loads of water out of their front porches. Dread for the sorry few who are still without Watan Cards and hence without homes, shelter, food and other basic human needs, such as dignity. If the floods do decide to come this year as well and test the limits of our hospitality, our government is in no mood to resist and will definitely let the waters tread all over our precious farmland. They will not get in the way as torrents roll down the hills and mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wreak havoc in the plains of Punjab and finally flatten the crop fields of Sindh before dissipating and leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of Acute Watery Diarrhoea. And to be honest, we are not ready for either water-borne menace.
But it’s not all gloom and doom and not every flood is cause for alarm. Rawalpindi’s Nullah Leh overflows every time Sheikh Rashid loses an election, but that doesn’t seem to faze the residents of that area one bit. They’re used to being knee deep in diarrhoea, verbal or otherwise.
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