View From the Third World

The landlord comes and laments his problem. This time it is not the work load in the office, also not the mother who is still in coma and he is no more interested in the increasing noise in his otherwise calm and quiet neighborhood. The air pollution? Today he ignores it. There was thunder and storm, which has cleaned the environment. The problem of watering the grass has been solved by natural. The storm has caused an electricity breakdown and there is also no water. However, the food in the refrigerator will not become stale because it has become cooler and the fine dust –to be found everywhere – is settled for the time being.

The farmers in the countryside still do not have many tragic problems. One eats before sunrise and before going to the mosque, works hard during the day, hardly drinks anything, and finds a shadowy place to rest in the intervals. If its the fasting month, he fasts -- no problems.

Now, what is worrying the landlord although everything is functioning so smoothly? The family! The relatives have lesser time for each other. He would gladly meet them more often, talk and speak with them, but he must spend all his time in the office sweating himself to work and on weekends, he must relax and care for his body and health. He doesn’t want to lose his job to the medical insurance. Not even for his children he has enough time, he laments. He has not seen his cousins in a long time, the last time they saw each other was when the father died, three or four years ago. One is so alone. How lonely still it would be, were it not for his brothers living in the same house and under the same roof with their wives.

Should he take the car and visit them in the creeping traffic? It would be an unreasonable demand! Petrol as well as everything else has become so expensive.

The fifty, hundred or two hundred kilometers, like Sargodha, you know, or Sialkot, how easy it is to go over to them, the landlord thinks, and looks sad. He moves away from that thought. The prescribed medicine must be taken regularly after every three hours. Speedy recovery !