Yesterday, my dad went to pick us my little sister from school…they were late getting back, because of yet another traffic jam. This time, it was an army truck and a fallen sign. Just before you get to any underpass in Lahore, you have these huge boards over the road, saying that trucks are not allowed, not allowed, NOT allowed...heavy vehicles like trucks would simply not fit in the underpass…it’s written there, in English, in Urdu, and there are several signs with a truck and a red line through them…but no… Very cleverly, this truck driver decided to zoom through the underpass…I don’t know how big the truck was, but it was large enough to rip the biggest board off and send it crashing to the road. So there you were, in the busiest road of the day, with kids coming home from school, college students, teachers…that road was the way home to almost every school-going kid…and there it was if no underpass had been built at all…just one way to go for every type of vehicle… So what happened when the board was ripped up? Behind the truck was Mrs. Qazi with her husband…the whole board fell onto their car. Mrs. Qazi had been my third-grade teacher…one of the few favourite teachers I’ve ever had…she used to give me a lot of prizes for English, I now remember…and she’s never changed…even ten years later when I was in A levels in the same school, we’d still talk to each other on and off. She was the sweetest teacher I’d ever had-knew about the class bullies, told them off constantly, and what not…I suppose I mostly got my encouragement for literature and all that from her. And she’s in a coma now-and her husband’s just passed on now…how can I forget that huge, jolly man who used to carry his 6 year old daughter home on his back every day…he never taught me, but that was such a touching sight…almost every day. I wish I had known…the last time I talked to Mrs. Qazi I remembered her famous colourful sari…she promised me she’ll wear a similar one especially for me one day…well, she never got to that day…but I’m just remembering useless stuff now. It seems so weird now…I’ll have to go to the farewell today, have to dress up and look happy…see everyone dancing…sure, they both weren’t an integral part of my life, but…but it’s such a shock when something like this happens-and when you have known the people…and all because of a jahil army truck driver who can’t even see the signs, let alone read them. The world has definitely got to come to an end soon…it’s gone down and it won’t come up again. I feel so cynical it almost hurts…it would have if I hadn’t already been rendered numb.