After a very long time I ventured out during the daytime to visit a sick friend. I did not take my car as being stuck up in a traffic jam causes my blood pressure to shoot up. It took only twenty five minutes to get to New Town from Clifton, but coming back almost killed me. The cab driver first drove to a place behind Taj Medical Complex to get his gas cylinder filled. Then instead of going back to Numaish roundabout, he decided to go to Clifton via Lines Area. It was sheer torture for the next two hours. I have never been stuck up for so long in a traffic jam, not even in Kuala Lumpur, which was notorious for its traffic jams in the nineties. But perhaps even more amazing was that all the drivers in the vehicles around us kept their engines running all the time. Besides wasting a lot of fuel, this increased the amount of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.
I couldn’t understand how people who live in such localities are able to survive breathing such heavily polluted air every day. Even more amazing was that the drivers and passengers in the other open vehicles, including the school girls in the van ahead, went on talking to each other without realizing that they were breathing poisonous gases. Those who were lucky to be in airconditioned cars didn’t suffer so much although some of the noxious fumes must have also penetrated their nostrils.
I’m sure there are laws to punish those responsible for creating so much pollution, but then, in this country most laws are meant to be broken. Complaining to the authorities never did any good, I doubt if our nazims and politicians have heard of such things as global warming or air pollution.
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