Highly combustible

It rained cats and dogs last night. By morning they morphed into human form and thronged bus-stops. As I rely on all forms of public transport imaginable – rickshaw, bus, rickshaw- to get to work, I was considerably miffed at having to wait for a good 40 minutes for my route bus to arrive with a respectable seat vacant for me to rest my seething self on. Each time I gnashed my teeth in a wait-induced frenzy, I reminded myself to calm down and took a deep breath. And I thought bad, terrible thoughts. I cursed my bro sleeping at home, I was riled his being an absolute lazy bum in not attending to the winter-striken excuse of a car we have parked at a jaunty angle at our gate, I worked up an anger at him and myself for not taking driving classes; him for not letting me enroll in a driving institute to learn how to get the hang of a manual gear car, and myself for listening to him, when both of us are absolute sloths…then as I ran out of people to get mad at, I raged at ma and pa. Fortunately no one was around to get a full treatment of my morning wrath. And I am so forgetful I would forget it by the time I reach home. The return journey is another task to be lived through.

The other day we were discussing if we should get our car, the same excuse of a vehicle that’s gone on hibernation, converted to CNG. And then mean bro said Pakistan would run out of gas by the year 2008/9. I asked him if we should put a hold on our plans. He told me he and others of his ilk, the biradari, could always wile me up and work out a way to convert my anger into a sustainable energy resource for vehicles. That should make our family millionaires and put me to some good use in the bargain. Pity he was too fast for the cold water I threw at him that landed at ma’s feet. I wonder if the anger-energy conversion scheme would work on ma as well. We do flare up fast in our family.

In the meantime there's all this talk of the GoP not passing on benefits of the international petrol price decrease to customers. Such meanos, ungrateful oafs these media-walas are. Of course us serfs, the citizens of Pakistan, the wretched don't want a relief, we want to bend our backs, hack off our limbs, sell off our kidneys, lungs and whatever can be sold, to finance another consignment of luxury vehicles for our representatives in the Parliament. They are doing such a good job at licking the armed seats, making our lives hell as they thunder through our cities in their motorcades, making token media appearances...