3:05 pm on 12th May in Karachi

On Friday, we knew it was a holiday tomorrow, what with the government saying they may clamp emergency and MQM and the Chief Justice’s supporters asserting they would all take out a procession of clashing wills and agendas. I think most of us were all set to see modernity and humanity fail on Saturday because Karachi is notorious for both. But I don’t think anyone was prepared for this level of failure or perhaps no one was prepared for this kind of vivid, visual reporting, live, minute by minute.

At 12 pm at a late breakfast, I lost appetite when they said firing had started on the main artery of the city, Shahra-e-Faisal, my favorite road in the city, claimed 8 lives. At 2:30 pm the count was 14 and at 2:45 pm. the count was 15. It’s 3:01 pm now, but it continues. I’ve never had “war reporting” done, ten minutes from my home. I wonder if it was this bad in 1995 but we didn’t have local television channels working from Dubai, so perhaps that’s why we didn’t see images, like the bus driver staggering, bloodied, in the aisle of his bus with a bullet lodged in his throat.

The mythical youths with the guns, that I never saw, but suspected of gunning my uncle in 1995, I can see now. They’re wielding guns without any mark of identity but wearing caps and out of fashion yellow T-shirts with black stripes. Walking amongst burning vehicles with a confidence that flies in the face of the terror on the little boy’s face who is running for cover under the Baloch Colony Bridge.

Karachi is a city where people like Lieutant Vimes often identify where they are not by the name of the road but by the number and quality of potholes on it. I cannot tell you, how crippling it is to be able to name the landmarks of violence.

The same protest was conducted in other parts of the city-in Lahore and Islamabad with no incidence of violence. The extra element in Karachi has only been the MQM. Be that as it may, the Chief Justice has refused to take the helicopter from the airport to the High Court and has also refused to go back. That is how celebrities are made I suppose aaj kal, just on the brunt of their egos; famous for being famous.