Gulbadan

For those of you who don't know, my job entails changing the world. One person at a time. Sadly that job's coming to an end. Which means, essentially, that I will stop changing the world at exactly midnight July 1, 2008. Instead, I will start preparing to expend another nation's taxpayers' money that I will be receiving by virtue of pure, dumb luck to visit a leading university to pursue a graduate degree that is quite useless so that I return to my country for many years to do a job that will benefit or cause the the well-being of no one, myself included. (Wow, that was a long sentence. Most people struggle with constructing long sentences. I don't. All because of some good, solid preparation back in the day for an SAT II Writing exam, one that wasn't even mine! Oh, that's dark on so many levels.)

For those of you who don't know, my world-changing job pays peanuts. That's okay - most world-changers were used to noble and glorious poverty. Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin. Superman lived on a barn. Etcetera etcetera. Add to my peanuts-paying job the fact that I recently lost some money in poker (that's a sign of the beginning of my ultimate renunciation of faith and slide into the sexy world of sin.), this meant that some serious cost-saving measures needed to be implemented.

And that is exactly what I have been doing. Cost-saving. Which brings me to the real point behind this rant. Public buses. Too broke to travel on rickshaws (this is the first time economic conditions of the country hit a sheltered and protected soul like me - richskaw prices have increased by at least 50% due to stupid oil and gas things going on, which I don't even understand!), I thought I'd try out some public buses.

Now Karachi is very different from Lahore. It is not blessed with a nice and efficient bus service run by a private Korean firm that provides the luxury of airconditioning to people used to standing up in buses. No sirree, Karachi has those good, old-fashioned colorful, ramshackle buses that pseudo-intellectuals like gawk at and guffaw at the pop "art" inherently contained in them. Foreigners do the same, the gawking and guffawing I mean. At the trucks and buses.

Unfortunately, my experience on these works of art has been rather unpleasant. Once you get over being impressed by the sheer volume of color plastered over every square inch of the wretched machine, you realize that they're not all that:

Firstly, they're fucking suffocating. Now you would expect a vehicle with open windows and no AC to be a natural conduit for Karachi's cool sea breeze, but no. The smell of sweat, rust and god-knows-what, coupled with the cramped space within the bus, ensures that there is no regular breeze ruffling your hair (not that my hair are the kind that ruffle, but well).

Secondly, the buses never stop for you. They merely slow down. Which means you need to run and jump to get on and run and jump to get off. Normally that would be quite a fun exercise, but you're forgetting it's me. Me - the chicken-hearted scaredy-cat who doesn't even go to amusement parks because he's afraid of the rides. And heights. And fast cars. And lizards. And cockroaches. And eagles. And dogs. Etcetera etcetera. So getting on the bus, and getting off, is an activity of heart-stopping proportions for me. I also do not, as my gut and general demeanor should imply, posses any acrobatic or athletic skills to assist me in my bus-hopping, or at least make me look graceful while doing that. Instead, I'm a stumbling wreck jumping up and down with my big blue bag on my back.

(Oh, hehe, notice the four B's in the last six words of the last sentence. That's LOLZZZ for you!)

Thirdly, they are extremely uncomfortable. The buses look like they are thirty years old, which is probably because they are. The entire structure seems so ramshackle that it threatens to collapse on every large bump. Which means there is a lot of discomfort that your butt is subjected to during random braking, swerving, successfully avoiding potholes, unsuccessfully avoiding potholes, etcetera etcetera. In general, they are only marginally better comfort-wise than that wretched creation called a rickshaw (another one of those fancy little colorful contraptions that foreigners love to gawk and guffaw at but in reality is a monster of a creature that consumes any sort of comfort or good feeling you might want to have).

Thus, I hate public buses. You should to. The colorful paint and drawings are a facade that hide evil beneath. Kind of like the Nawaz Sharif-Asif Zardari coalition. Anyway, have a good day.