This isn’t funny anymore. I can’t keep a smiling face and honestly tell people that everything is okay. I can’t keep looking out the window when I drive through Karimabad, Nazimabad and Lyari at the numerous shops that go without electricity every day. I feel guilty when I turn on the air conditioner of my car.

I hate the voice of the people on television and radio who talk about the budget and the cost of living, when they have no idea what is going on. How can you create a public-friendly budget when you don’t know what the life of the average member of the public is?

I still see the young beggar boy, Babar, who used to sell cloth pieces at the FTC traffic light before the flyover was built and has since moved to the PIDC area, who I still end up giving a few hundred rupees a month because I once heard him say how hungry he was. Each time I bite into a McDonalds, I feel horrible because I, with all that God has blessed me and my family, have never experienced hunger like what I saw in that young man’s eyes.

I drove to the Paradise Super Store yesterday evening and bumped into the sales lady from Solo. For those of you who are unaware, there is a TON of development work being done and as a result, they have dug up the complete service road right infront of Solo and a lot of other commercial shops. How can these shops survive? Please don’t take me wrong. I am thrilled at the pace of the development work that is being done in the city. For the first time in the short, stunted history of this city, has the political party exhibited so much of its own vested interest in line with what is actually good for the rest of us. Why we are bent upon putting businesses through so much pain and misery because of poor planning and lack of knowing how to divert traffic around to places so the the few people who run businesses that continually attract foreigners, can be salvaged.

The truth of the matter is we don’t know who we represent. We, the uncommon segment of society, sit and try and develop policies and strategies that will impact the common man. How can we know what nuances a daily wage laborer experiences? Do we really know what it feels like to sit without electricity for hours or even days? Can we begin to imagine what the common man goes through? And if we understand that… if we really, truly understand that, then why can’t we come up with a solution to the frustration that the common man feels?

At the closing ceremony of the Eisenhower Fellowships that I was recently on, we got the opportunity to ask the Chairman of the Board, General Colin Powell one question each. When he spoke to us about being good leaders and inspiring environment for positive change, I asked him a question regarding the Defense budget of the US - “You know that the education, healthcare, social security that other systems are faltering. Why can’t you just reduce your Defense budget and route all that money towards strengthening these areas? Does the US not have good leaders that can inspire that leadership?” And yet, my country’s budget allocation towards Defense spending experiences the same hopelessness. All that money for such few people. We’re still borrowing - we’re still in debt - we just want to get on television and claim that the things we do, we do for the betterment and for the masses. The masses are frustrated and probably don’t care for sugar-coated words.

The fact that the country is experiencing a heatwave is an adequate description for not just the weather, but also the temperament of the situation right now. If we don’t see a change that is truly for the betterment and progress, things will get a lot worse, very quickly.

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