For the last year, as Islamabad, Lahore and especially Peshawar came under unrelenting attack Karachiites nervously wondered why they had been spared the carnage. This illusion has met a bitter end. In December there was the horrific Ashura bombing and today two deadly attacks, one on Sharae Faisal and the other at Jinnah Hospital. We can no longer pretend that Karachi is safer than the rest of the country.

My first thought was to hold National Assembly Speaker Fehminda Mirza and her husband Sindh Home Secretary Zulfikar Mirza responsible for causing a security lapse. I live quite close to the couple and every day, as I make my way home, I get stuck near the fortress they call their home. Still, cathartic though it may be to blame our elected representatives for attaching greater importance to their lives than those they are sworn to protect, there is no way to prevent such bombings. Today, the police presence was understandably concentrated at the route taken by the chelum marchers. And it would have been impossible, not to mention thoughtless, to search people at Jinnah Hospital, where dozens of injured people were being rushed for treatment.

Karachi is often described as a teeming metropolis of ethnic strive, political intrigue and unremitting poverty, more so after a terrorist attack  What is often forgotten is the banality of city life. People go about their daily routines without fuss, doing what they have to go. We may not be safe in Karachi but we cannot let calamity take over the banality. So, while it might have seemed suicidal to continue with the march, I’m glad they did. I just hope they forgive the rest of us for wanting to go home and gulp down a scotch on the rocks.