So I had to buy books for my 1st year in College. We went into this Madina Book Shop… talked to the ‘keeper and looked upwards, it was there inside the shop at that very moment where things took a turn for the worse…

It did get worse. Read more after the jump.

Eight Years Earlier…

Summer time: little Waisybabu lies there inside his TV room. All snug and warm inside the razaee.

Did I just say: Raza-aa-aeee?? In the summer??

Mouse over the photo.

True. I did. Because back then Pakistan had no electricity issues. We used to pay a flat fee of Rs. 3000/month. Loadshedding was a non-issue. Bijli was on all the time and so was the Air Conditioner.

In fact, we only turned off the AC because it needed a rest!

What I used to do as a child was to turn on the AC, get my razaaee on, turn on the TV and watch cartoons.

That day however, I was bored with the constant repeats of Dexter’s Laboratory and stumbled upon the amazing National Geographic Channel..

While I certainly don’t recall the name of the for-children documentary that was on, I do remember it’s theme, it’s cute 13-year old Preity Zinta look-alike narrator that frequently popped onto the screen and the message: Go green.

The documentary first threw light on the inevitable issues and then the Preity-girl showed us how to follow little things that we, as children, can do to help save the environment.

Fast forward to today…

with dozens of Reader’s Digest issues and environment-based documentaries under my voluminous belt and you have me: the self-proclaimed green geek of the family. The greenest of the bunch. Heck, I swear if you peeled off my outer skin, you’d probably find plants growing inside.

Now onto what happened at the Madina Bookshop.

The dukaandar had the ACs turned on without any kind of a door present in his shop. What did I say?

I said: the shopkeeper had the Air Conditioners in his shop turned on. That’s all fine and dandy, what shocked me was the realization that there was no door, no window and no wall separating the shop from the outside Cantonment.

When I went ahead and asked the fella why it was so, he replied:

Sir, the problem is that the rowdy children outside frequently shattered our glass windows when we had the windows installed.

?

“Have you ever thought of slapping those children in the head with your over-grown hands?” .. is what I should’ve said.

Instead, I just said, “Oh! Can I take a picture? ”

And I did take a picture.. or two.

I was sweating like a pig even with the AC on.

:(

What the dukandaar should’ve done was to notify the owner of the issue, get some sort of wall/window combination installed and be given the permission to slapulate the boys who even think of breaking the window again.

But of course, the shopkeeper doesn’t have the awareness to do so.

Awareness -> Education -> Electricity-problems solved. Period.

Waisybabu

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Note: This post is – in a certain sense – a response to PakCrunch’s Why I’m not a fan of the Go Green campaign anymore post and to the general #Pakistan and #GoGreen trend that’s sweeping the Pakistani twittersphere (Briefed about in Teeth Maestro’s #Pakistan post).