Collapsible system
LET’S get the linguistic grouse out of the way first. As if our insistence on interspersing everyday dialogue and tirades with English were not enough, we also corrupt it with strange verbs. Air travellers can easily announce, ‘we have landed’ in Urdu in as few words, but we somehow don’t feel the rubber meeting the tarmac till we scream into phones, ‘hum land kar gaey hein’. Similarly, the obvious could have been stated as the ‘system has collapsed’, but it had to be ‘system collapse kar gaya hai’.
It is interesting that not a single soul takes issue with the prognosis; it’s just that the town crier is seen not only as representing the very system whose funeral he announced but also as an accomplice in that system’s demise. One is reminded of Ameer Minai’s couplet: “Allah re saadgi nahin itni unhein khabar/ Mayyat pe aa ke poochte hein in ko kya hua.” (‘Oh God! What feigned innocence/ Wondering what ails the corpse’). To his credit, though, following in the footsteps of Ghalib, the bearer of the bad news has since dropped any pretence of independent thought and action. He did not announce, like the bard: “Gone are the days of proclaiming, I ain’t no employee.” Instead, he chose bravado over humility “yeh naukri rahey na rahey…” which roughly translates to ‘whether my current employment endures or not…”.
If one looks around, a collapse is not necessarily the disaster it is made out to be. Consider: whoever invented the collapsible paint tube is credited with revolutionising plein-air painting by allowing painters to step outside their studios to paint nature in the open air, since it was much more convenient than carrying bladders of paint into the field. Imagine life without collapsible bikes, furniture, umbrellas, telescopes, car tops, prams, wheelchairs — the list could be infinite.
We agree that things not designed to collapse will cause damage when they do, such as a roof or an entire building. However, in such cases, pointing out the obvious is not enough; one has to identify the architects, engineers, and contractors who designed a substandard roof or built a tilted building on loess soil. If you read loess as losses, no issue; as different as it may be, it all ends in losses. One doesn’t buy an 80-yard plot without soil tests to rule out the loess that will make the edifice go askew before the inevitable collapse.
Pointing out the obvious is not enough.
Since the façade under discussion is old, the architects could be given the benefit of doubt, as they were working against the clock and lacked access to modern tools. However, the engineers must now employ tried-and-tested post-construction methods to stabilise the building; failing that, it will have to be torn down and rebuilt. The evacuation this reconfiguration will require, by the way, has been underway for a while now, as birds could sense the impending calamity and other creatures know the holes they caused.
The building, unfortunately, houses not just the winged creatures and those who scurry, but also homo sapiens, a majority of whom have been numbed and bewildered to the point of obliviousness to the dangers of their rickety abode.
Amid all the brouhaha about how best to ameliorate systemic decay, the most controversial proposal is to create more provinces, since it would ostensibly be easier to improve governance and service delivery in smaller units. While we are all, in one way or another, both beneficiaries of the status quo and potential losers of the proposed reboot across the country, I would let the more immediate stakeholders in Punjab, Balochistan, and KP state their case. Sindh is my sore point. This is where things get really complex. The quandary that numerous Sindhis like myself face is how to make it clear that our opposition to any breakup of the province — and to the more outrageous suggestion to hand over Karachi to the federation — is not seen as an endorsement of the provincial government, the self-styled nationalists, the self-proclaimed ‘intellectuals’, or the ethnic and sectarian puppets; we feel nothing but outrage against them.
Just look at the social media feeds of almost all the fire-breathing charlatans proclaiming undying love for Sindh; they have either sent their children to European and American schools or recently vacationed there, with their shorts-clad, knobby knees in full view and the mandatory cigar in hand. If all is well, why don’t they admit their children to Church Mission School and Sindh Madressah? Why not vacation in Gorakh Hills, the much-promised ‘Switzerland of Dadu’? The gorakh dhanda continues.
The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2026
