As a Karachiite watching in disbelief and horror the appeals that Syed Talat Hussain was making on Aaj television to the entire canvass of power and authority to come immediately to the rescue and help of the Business Recorder-Aaj TV complex on Saturday I have this to say at the very outset:
That never in this society have I seen anything quite like this kind of desperation and threat to life being ignored for so long. Does this reflect on the kind of society we are turning into?
No help coming for over six hours. For over 360 minutes. Imagine the trauma -- of those trapped in the Recorder House -- unsure of what would happen the next minute. What kind of night lay ahead, must have been one of the frightening thoughts...
I did see the Aaj newswoman talk to an official in the Sindh Home Department who said that there would be concrete help coming in 30 minutes. It came about six hours and 30 minutes later. And throughout these hours the Aaj TV - Talat and his dedicated team - kept pleading for help, mirroring the threat there was to their lives; and yet, to the shock and dismay of TV viewers like me the response, was more than stony silence. It was silence, juxtaposed with news of bloodshed in other parts of cosmopolitan Karachi.
Intertwined with the urgent appeals for effective meaningful help from the powers that be, were news stories and terrifying footage of the hell that was being enacted even on the mysteriously barricaded streets of the Sindh capital.
In a way, this column is about those 390 minutes that make one ask many questions. Not just that - but it is an occasion to reflect as well. To contemplate the "courage and the commitment" and the professionalism of the Aaj TV channel which was demonstrated on that day too.
Business Recorder's editorial on 15th May, "Mayhem in Karachi" writes very plainly that "a classic case of indifference to the plight of the people was the attack on the Business Recorder-Aaj TV complex in Guru Mandir area.
For six hours when the building was caught in cross-fire between two rival groups frantic calls were made to almost everybody and anybody who could alleviate the situation but nothing happened, and some two hundred staffers of the two organisations took cover by crawling on floor." Stop here and picture 200 people trapped in a building. And that too in a city where sanity was absent. This is not overdoing Saturday's scenario, but truly anything could have happened. Any disaster, really! Allah be praised that no one was hurt.
But the hurt, the damage, is psychological, and it was also evident from the manner in which Talat Hussain was bitter and angry, as he implored, and paradoxically ducked for cover with his brave team mates (cameramen included). Let me mention here that on another channel a famous anchorperson's spontaneous response to what he was seeing was reflective of the horror that a man on the street must have experienced. May 12 is amongst the blackest days that this society has seen.
As a TV viewer watching the live telecast at home made one wonder about the degree of vulnerability and the extent of helplessness of numerous other individuals and families and people in offices, where there was no live telecast possible of the emergency they were confronted with.
If it takes six and a half hours to respond to a live telecast sending out alarms, it does not take much to imagine the agony of those unheard - those anonymous majorities that experience trauma, and nightmare when a city undergoes what Karachi did, once again, on Saturday. I hope there will come a day when the public are provided with credible details of why it took that long to respond to the desperate appeals that Aaj TV was making from the Business Recorder -Aaj TV complex.
I have been deeply upset about Saturday's incident not just as a Karachiite watching it happen live on TV, but also because I write for this daily. Therefore, my affinity and concern is more than legitimate -- not to mention the human relationships that have come into being because of the regularity with which I come and write here, and occupy a work station.
Therefore when Saturday's six hours were unfolding their terror, names and faces of various individuals crossed my mind. How were they doing? Each one of them. Who was on duty that day? A call to the Editor some time in the evening brought a kind of comfort. Lucky that the cell phones were working. I too could have been inside the Recorder House that day-writing this column or TV Thoughts that appears every Saturday. A matter of chance that I was not there, that day.
Now while there should be reasons why Aaj TV underwent this experience, what I cannot help recalling is that Business Recorder has been attacked by people on some occasions in the past also when there have been troubles in Karachi. Karachi's bond with bloodshed is not new, says the cynic in me. And that is something I have been unable to fathom -- it is understandable when political dailies are targeted, but when it is a impartial respected business daily like this one, it makes one wonder which way the wind is blowing.
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