In Hell

Source: amusingplanet.com

So how does it feel to be in hell?

It doesn’t even matter if you believe in it or not. Living through it is perhaps only a matter of time.

It’s constant pain. Constant agony. Constant regrets. A sense of loss that doesn’t go away. Something you have lost that will never come back. All alone. Vulnerable.

It is when your existence becomes a case study of the Murphy’s Law.

It is when history repeats itself and you watch it happening. Condemned to.

It is when you fail to learn from your mistakes and know you won’t. Curse yourself for it.

It is when your indulgence leads you to the sort of informed and conscious complacency that you can’t help resist.

It’s like looking a maneater in the face and waiting for him to devour you.

It’s like staring into the face of a distant train approaching and waiting for it to hit you.

It is like perpetually falling from a height and just expecting to hit the ground the next moment and starting over again.

It is when you wish you never existed. But isn’t that always true, even when pleasure is wrapped around you.

It is when you simply wish you could go back in time… Time… Time… Isn’t it always about it?

It is when you give up hope.

It is when you look for a rope.

It is when you wish you had no regrets… you thought you had no regrets…

 

It is when you find out that life is one big regret.

 

 Source: Polygram Filmed Entertainment/Universal

The Gridlock Misery

Source: Dawn/AP

I don’t mind paying a good amount of bucks when it is due. Believe me, I don’t.

But not when you are doing so for absolutely stupid reasons… Or even wasting time and energy, for that matter.

September 19, 2014 was by far the most chaotic day I have ever had in recent memory. And I was not alone. Pretty much everyone who was moving between Rawalpindi and Islamabad was that day.

The day was declared to be the “Day of Deliverance” by the protesting opposition party PTI to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister. Needless to say the Prime Minister did not resign and it was just another good old PTI concert with a bigger attendance. And the federal government decided to prevent people from reaching there.

But who cares either way?

The traffic gridlock occurred all of a sudden. It was when I was moving back to my office after attending a client meeting, before which my former supervisor had informed me about the Islamabad Highway being blocked.

I was stuck for an hour on a route that should have taken less than minutes. Then ended up reaching my home after about 5 hours when it would have normally taken me 40 odd minutes. This should have cost less than a $1 and ended up paying near $10, yet walking no less than 4 kilometers.

My misery (as a matter of fact, I had probably never walked that far to my home from the route that I took that day), which I enjoyed a little due to the surreal scenes, was nothing to that of hundreds of families stranded in a mega traffic jam that probably lasted all night. Probably some people had to get to the hospital and others wanted to just reach their apolitical, private destinations for their apolitical, private lives and chores.

In other words, it was chaos. The doomsday scenario. Somewhat close to the kind of surreal apocalyptic scenes you watch in a Roland Emmerich film. But thankfully, nowhere near in destruction. Which probably proves that most people are civil.

Or probably that traffic problems occur all over the world, from New York City to Dhaka. But not really, when you don’t have to have them.

It is another example of government making a mess of people’s lives.

It is yet another example of complete disregard of the rights of the citizens.

Yet another example of exceeding bureaucratic powers over people’s lives.

No, the chaos was certainly not because people are disorganized, unruly, or ungovernable barbarians.

It was because the government was preventing them to function freely, probably with the intention of their greater good, as is always the case.

Are you not sick of the idea of know-it-all, all-controlling government?