Rogue bus on Zamzama Boulevard

Zamzama Boulevard is home to some very pricy and upmarket botiques, restaurants, doctors' private clinics, and a fabulous park known as Generals Park,with a kilometer long walking & jogging track that is heavily patronized by the rich and famous, and all manner of other very affluent residents of the DHA and Clifton who drive around the neighborhood in their Mercs and Audis, and BMWs, with Prados and other flashy four-wheel drives a dime a dozen. Powerful and rich Saeens and Waderas rub shoulders with all manner of powerful and rich politicians and bureaucrats on Zamzama Boulevard with their entourages of gun toting bodyguards with the latest in weaponry, riding at the back of SUVs with black tinted windows. It's all very mucho macho, and there are times when Zamzama Boulevard resembles a warzone.

One day when transiting through Zamzama Boulevard on my way from Two Swords to Khadda Market, weaving my way through all manner of kings' fortunes on wheels, I came up behind a beat up old monstrosity on wheels spewing thick black deisel smoke, blaring its high-pitched pressure horn and bullying the smaller traffic on the road as it swayed dangerously from side to side in attempts to overtake, it's hell-bent-for-leather high-as-a-kite driver chosing to emulate the shenanigans of rickshaws and their drivers, completely oblivious of the fact that he was tangling with potentially very lethal people who could get him locked up and have the keys thrown away if he was lucky, that is if somebody didnt pop him right out of this world for having the audacity to play the 'Chaudhry' on their exclusive turf.

I kept a safe distance behind him, and observed him with mixed feelings. There was anger, because this sonofagun was a dangerous moving violation, trumpeting like a rogue elephant with his pressure horn, speeding up and braking suddenly, showing scant respect for his high powered surroundings as he ferried the mostly domestic staff of the very people he was terrorizing.

More than just a few years back I would have taken him to task myself, found just the tiniest of space, overtaken him, blocked him, and hauled him out of the bus and given him a tongue lashing of epic proportions before handing him over to the police. I had taken to doing quite a bit of that because Karachi's streets have been lawless for as long as I can remember, and there was a time when I actively bought into the rights and responsibilities of the citizen, being particularly enamoured of the law that permitted the citizen's right to arrest wrongdoers in the absence of law officers. That was before I embraced the art of 360 degrees analysis.

On this occasion my blood didnt boil. It hasn't done that for a long time. I merely followed at a safe distance, marvelling at this specimen of what has euphemistically come to be termed as the less privileged, or less served class, the bottom of the heap just barely above scum. But in the actions of this specimen there was a reckless disregard of his otherwise destitute status, for what else would you call the driver of a beat up old monstrosity on wheels spewing thick deisel smoke? But this destitute had either lost his mind, or been deliberately put in that position of power behind the bus's wheel with orders to abuse that power and taunt the la-di-daas of Defence who made an obscene display of their wealth and pelf, but paid no taxes. So, was the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) behind this caper, attempting to shame the shameless? My 360 degrees analysis was throwing up some interesting options.

As I followed this maniac I was certain that, sooner than later he would collide with some glitterati's set of glittering wheels, and then the 'fun' would begin. Narrow as it is, it wouldn't take much to bring traffic on Zamazama Boulevard to a complete stop, and Mr. 'bottom of the heap just barely above scum' would get the thrashing of his life at the hands of the heavily armed bodyguards that dot the landscape.

But he had the devil's own luck, and went unchallenged right through the length of Zamzama Boulevard, his screeching pressure horn echoing to hideous effect. Nobody seemed to notice. He was like the proverbial hippopotamus in the room; like the stink that the fish trucks cause while transiting past the Agha's Supermarket on Khayaban-e-Roomi, the headquarters of glitterati land where dazzling damzels dont even bother with holding their noses.

Is it some new parfum that Farid's been selling that desensitizes the nostrils completely? That probably explains the multitudes that throng the food street at the Boating Basin and dont seem to sense the stench from the nearby Nehr-e-Khayyam. They all visit Farid before heading on down to the food street? And all those boys and girls who inhabit the hallowed corridors of academia on the banks of the Nehr-e-Khayyam, what of them? Do they not smell the 'scent' of the sewage? Or is it Farid's desensitizing parfum at work once again?