From Faizabad to Margalla Road, in search of the last law-abiding driver
Urban Bystander
From the service lanes of Blue Area to the back seats of Careems, the rumour spread: somewhere in Islamabad lives a man who obeys every traffic rule.
He signals before turning. He stops at red lights without checking the Safe City cameras. He keeps to his lane on Srinagar Highway. The wardens, half in awe and half in disbelief, named him Patient Zero, not because he was sick but because, in a city gripped by Wrong-Sideitis, his discipline looked like immunity. SSP Zohran Haider of the ICT Traffic Police wanted to find him. Not to arrest him, but to draw a vial of blood that might yield a cure. His officers in 2024 wrote over 800,000 challans, 100,000 for illegal parking, 56,000 for no helmets, 25,000 for lane violations, yet 128 fatal crashes still marked the year. More than 50,000 vehicles were impounded, but the wrong-siders multiplied, keeping Zohran awake long after the city’s traffic had thinned.
He called the National Institute of Health, where virologists now study road-borne ailments. Flu and dengue are out. Contraflow Syndrome is in, where sufferers believe the wrong side is “just misunderstood.” Overtake Compulsion Disorder drives them to pass anything, cars, buses, bicycles, shadows, to prove moral superiority. Gridlock Amnesia leaves drivers stranded mid-intersection, as if their SUVs had grown roots. Wrong-Sideitis itself, they say, spreads through proximity to ministerial convoys, whispered road gossip at tyre shops, microdroplets from over-revved engines at Zero Point, and, in one case, from listening to FM 92.4 traffic bulletins backwards. The WHO sent a team, but according to one source, it remains stuck at Faizabad Interchange.
NIH’s Case Number 742 file is thick with proposed cures: horns retrofitted to emit apologies, pheromone diffusers to lure drivers back into legal lanes, an empathy transfusion programme using Patient Zero’s blood, and a pilot scheme of mandatory tea with traffic wardens “to let politeness seep in by osmosis.” In the corner of an NIH briefing room, perched like a court scribe, sits Mirza Chughal Khor. From his beak flow three versions of reality, one for the police, one for the scientists, one for a ministry still unsure whether the wrong side is a legal offence or a moral failing. Accuracy, to Mirza, was a vulgar modern affliction.
The streets diagnose the illness faster than the spreadsheets. Government cars on unofficial errands clog lanes at school pickup, stopping two-abreast or diagonally, in the middle of the road. Drivers bark into phones or glare at anyone who suggests moving. A few are chauffeured officials, others are lone women parked mid-lane, hazard lights flashing like diplomatic immunity. Threading through this chaos are ride and delivery drivers, chasing fares and timers with desperation, knowing a slow hour means no pay. They slide into oncoming lanes, cut gaps like needlework, and treat one-way signs as decoration, their urgency colliding with everyone else’s entitlement.
Patient Zero remains elusive. Constable Tufail swears he saw him in G-6/3, indicating before a turn, smiling at a warden, and yielding to a pedestrian who was not even crossing. The mobile phlebotomy unit arrived seconds too late. He had vanished, leaving the scent of freshly printed learner permits and the faint click of a turn signal somewhere far away. Zohran keeps the file open. Babloo, head of Zone III Surveillance, circles low, intercepting FM 92.4 transmissions only pigeons can decode. “If he does not exist,” he mutters, “we will have to invent him. The city needs the hope.” Mirza clicks his beak and adds, “Hope is fine, but make sure it’s immune to Wrong-Sideitis. We can’t afford another carrier.”
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer
