Living through the Longest Day

I am not talking of the Longest Day, the film and the Normandy Landing of World War II, which incidently was launched in the month of June, 1944 (6th June 1944) - But l am living through the longest day of the year - 21 June, like the rest of the world, but with a great difference.

The scorching sun of the longest day [Photo: Jalalspages / Flickr]

I saw a lot of people doing yoga at the Times Square to live through the longest day - but us in Pakistan are living through the day with no electricity as spell of load shedding has further increased - perhaps to punish the nation for ousting a democratically elected PM.

While the rest of the world lives throught the day with fans and air conditioners running, we living theough the day sweating as there is no light. Desperate people are on the roads, not knowing how to register their protest as they are on the roads day and night to beg the governemnt to provide them with eletricity so that they and their families could get a good night sleep to be able to get up fresh in the morning to go to their schools and offices.

How can a person, who remains awake throughtout the night as fans are off due to load shedding. It is really making people crazy and despaerate. This forces them to get violent, damage private and goverenmnt proptery and get killed when the guns fire. But unfortunately no one seems to be taking notice except rhetoric.

Every few days, the president and the PM (now gone and soon to be replaced by a similar face) 'take a notice' and call an emergecny conference witha 'good news' for the nation that the long spells of load shedding will be curtailed - but nothing happens. Now the spell of load shedding has icreased to 4-5 hours at a stretch and nothing good is in sight.

At the time of writing the psot, it is 35 degrees celcius in my room and one can imagine what is the mercury level outside. My mobile phone indicates 40 degrees plus for Islamabad - and one can conveniently guess how hot it would be down country, specially Lahore, Multan onward.

This longest day will soon pass - but not our woes. I wish it snows tonight.

Posted in: 21 June,Hot Weather,Loadshedding,Longest Day,Mercury,Scorching Sun