Is he a hands-on chap or what?

City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal paid our locality a visit a few minutes ago - yes it is 1:50 a.m. here in Karachi and no I am not dreaming. Ever since the 44 hour power debacle at the weekend, we have had power outages of 10 - 12 hours daily. Calling KESC gets you no results - all they say (if you are persistent enough to get through to them) is that they have no idea when it will be restored - that they are trying their best.

I have been down with fever and a very nasty cough so I was restless anyway and was sitting in the garden (lovely breeze in Karachi these days - yes there is a silver lining) wondering if I should give up on power restoration and try and sleep anyway, when I heard some activity outside our gate. Peeping over the gate who do I see pull up but the Nazim himself escorted by two police vans. I don’t know if it was a stunt (who cares!!!) but seconds later the power was back on. Yay! He looked around satisfied, jumped back into the car and went on his merry way - hopefully to another such district which needed him. I yelled out Thank you - don’t know if he heard me so I smsed him. My parents always taught me to be polite :-).

Mustafa Kamal used to live in this area before he moved up in the world so maybe he has some consideration for his former neighbours - hey it’s possible. Let us not always look for political motivation. The chap is known to be very hands-on and ever since he has taken over as Nazim, one often spots him checking on roadworks, etc at all odd hours. All I can say is I am glad the power is back and I can finally try and get a few hours’ shut-eye before heading to work tomorrow morning.