Dancing on graves of quake survivors

About 2 months are gone since the 8th October tragedy that put everyone to task, after the initial shock and despair. Now that the rescue operations are way over and the relief operations are too, near to completion as life is slowly and gradually getting back to normal, with the foreign relief teams, departing to their respective countries, exploiters have taken full control. Just the other day, two individuals were discussing that the currently emerging breed of so-called volunteers, since the quake tragedy, have begun busy in ruining the very roots of our society. Unfortunately their discussion was so very right. Everywhere around various camps, young girls with way wide-necked shirts, wearing very thin fabric, clad in high heels despite the fact that they’re serving victims of quake, with proper make-up and carefully made hairstyles along cell phones, are seem roaming around every other camp, asking the women to go with them at places where they could earn a fair share of cash, thus exploiting their miseries and putting them into vulgar trades.
But these are issues that can be resolved provided the responsible citizens of the nearby locality inform the cops and identify such suspicious elements and this has, in fact happened and many such fraudsters and smooth talkers have been nabbed as well. But there are many vulgar, commercial shows in the name of charity for the quake victims, that are doing nothing but mocking the miseries of the quake victims. Just the other day when we asked Osman Ghani, a Pkistan-based photographer, currently settled in London, that why was he not going to the quake-hit areas and capturing the victims there, he straightforwardly stated that where every other individual with a camera, was taking shots and most of the reporters, busy wherever they could find spice to print in the papers, through life stories of miseries of the quake affectees, there he felt no need to go, just to catch their crying faces on lens but would love to go provided he could do anything for the victims.
Various singers like Abrar, Junaid Jamshed, Jawad Ahmad, Fakhr-e-Alam and Shehzad Roy are busy in relief activities, under the banner of their individualistic welfare organizations, at one end while at the other end, TV stars, Lollywood artists and philanthropists from all corners of the Capital, are out to serve humanity, solemnly and without any hunger for coverage for a change to Pakistan National Council of Arts; PNCA and other government organizations are fully engaged either in sending relief items to quake-ravaged zones, or entertaining the quake survivors residing in the Capital with puppet shows and similar programmes. However, the other night, bare bellies danced as if on the graves of the quake survivors, to the tunes of nudity and vulgarity, apparently collecting charity for the quake survivors. Had it been music only, one might have termed the show as for a noble cause but neither dance was ever part of our culture, nor bare bellies have ever made to our streets, marking normalcy as a social whole. And the irony of it remains that the dancers kept performing with glee on faces in front of a poster bearing the face of a crying child, victim of the disastrous quake, thus mocking the cause at large!
There are many NGOs that are sending volunteers to various camps in Capital and moreover, to the quake-hit areas, claiming more service than those in-charge at the relief areas. The NGOs are still not registered and nor there’s a check on the volunteers engaged in relief activities, nor the funds collected through charity shows, especially like the one mentioned earlier. The need is, for the Interior Ministry, to pay surprise visits on the relief camps and the authorities, to not allow any show of flesh and vulgarity that could stand as a stepping on the sentiments of the earthquake affectees so that the national cause might not be mocked off like that!

—By Uzma Zafar