Since the past few days, one story in the news has been intriguing my mind. It is everywhere; on the social media and news channels,dining table discussions and now in the supreme court. It is the case of the murder of a 20 yrs old Shahzeb in Karachi. Tragic as the murder of young Shahzeb is, the overwhelming attention paid to it in a country, and in a city, where daily loss of lives has now come to be dismissively described as a mere number, an arithmetic, is interesting as well as intriguing. How is the murder of Shahzeb different from the scores of others being committed daily in this ill-fated land of ours ? What makes this death worthy of so much attention of the institutions and airtime in the media when many other innocent faceless, nameless Pakistanis continue to die in the dark alleys of anonymity ? These questions are now beginning to be asked. To be sure, every death of an innocent person is tragic.Our heart goes out to the parents of Shahzeb and his loved ones. Hence, without detracting from the woefulness of Shahzeb's murder, it is important to analyse how and why it managed to garner limelight where others fail.
The reason why this story continues to resonate so loud and clear is because of its simplistic narrative. It fits in well with the perception, real or imagined, of ruthless, arrogant and illiterate feudal lords on the one hand and the young, good looking, educated, civilized and urbane middle-class on the other. It was the binary reduction of the story to this simplistic generalization which helped it become a sort of cause celebre. However, it did not become so instantly. Media had to work overtime by creating a parallel between this ugly incident and another one unfolding across the border in which the Indian middle-class rallied around the death of a rape-victim. We have this predilection for measuring our progress against the benchmark of the progress made by our neighbour which we love to hate, something aptly reflected in the following sentiment of a cricket fan "Beat India in semis, whatever then happens in the final is inconsequential." Hence, how could our media and 'civil society' (whatever it means) lag behind their Indian counterparts which, of late, have had many reasons to take to streets (and to special TV programming and social media activism) , most notably in the case of Anna Hazare's 'crusade' against corruption (whatever happened to it).
So, those of you who are wondering why the case of Shahzeb's murder is receiving the attention which even the en masse killing of Shias don't , well, Welcome to the unequal world where every life is not equally important. While we will have to put up with the way things work here, we hope and pray that the culprits in Shahzeb's case are brought to justice. Now that the murder of Shahzeb has received the kind of attention that the killing fields in karachi and Balochistan don't, the case should be taken to its logical conclusion. The parents of Shahzeb need solace, though nothing can make up for the loss of a young son. As for the parents of anonymous sons and daughters who get neither tombstones nor epitaphs let alone candlelight vigils and facebook pages, they might have to wait indefinitely.
