NO PARKING FROM HERE TILL ETERNITY

NOVEMBER 12, 2015

Karachi is a city where having a car is a crime. You cannot park ANYWHERE. Well you can park in the paid parking but otherwise try parking it at home when you have to go somewhere. No matter where you take your vehicle, someone is offended and felt mugged of space. I am not joking, seriously.

 
I have recently joined a meditation group, which is located in Defence. It is situated in a house. The house is pretty big and with big boundary wall, one gets a lot of space to have parking outside. All the rest of the houses in the street are immense with vacant space outside their boundary walls. They do not use this space. It is not their space. It is government’s space. A passer-by can use it to pass. A driver can use it to park a car. A dog can use it to rest. A cat can utilize it to dig and shit. Whatever else…

 
But no.

 
All these living creatures are not entitled to use it because some of the house owners are so stingy that they don’t want to share even the government’s space with people.

 
They are delusional. They have forgotten that their territory starts from what they have paid for. They believe they will be parking their imaginary cars outside all the time; they will have their guests coming 24/7 thus the parking should be made available for them. Or they would, one day, suddenly wake up with extra millions under their pillow and the first thing they sure will do is to go online and click on some car ads to purchase immediately, all just to claim the space outside their homes.

Coming back to point (I have habit of straying away), neighbors have been complaining to our instructor to forbid the mediators’ parking outside their house. You must be thinking they come every day for full day. No, it is only thrice a week, max, and for 90 minutes only. Nothing is blocked to cause inconvenience. Still the dear neighbors have problem.

 
Our instructor has requested us to park as his boys guide us.

 
What difference does it make if someone is parking on the road outside a house as long as your entrance is not blocked? Is it that in the street, you have no right to park anywhere even though you pay road tax?

 
This is one example. I have been told not to park in front of shops too. Most shop owners do no t allow that considering that their customers will not come to them if there is a car parked outside. Are customers blind? Or they only have their vision in liberty when the view of a shop is uninterrupted? They cannot see otherwise.

 
Just yesterday, I was told by my next door neighbor not to park outside. Duh? What should a person do if his porch can host only three cars and he has 5 cars? If someone else has parked outside his house so he can then only burn his extra cars because apparently parking on the left of his gate, where the neighbor’s boundary wall starts, is not allowed.

 
Don’t take wrong and don’t get offended by my post. If you haven’t experienced this, doesn’t mean it does not happen.