The topic sounds crazy but mark me wrong at the end of the post than if they’re not linked one way or the other to my life. WAPDA as you all know has been playing Cat and Mouse with the entire country and Peshawar as i heard my friends experience it is on one of the severe affected areas. 18 hours of no Power and when the power is on, its good to give health to keep a single ceiling fan rolling at a snail speed. Luckily i happen to be on the safe side from the load shedding since i live in the hostel at my campus and the only best and worth appraisal thing our university administration has done so far is by installing a heavy duty back up Generator so that in case the light goes out, the backup switches on on its own within 5 seconds and we have the power available for use again.

How Mangal Bagh is related is an interesting little story that happened few days back to three of we friends. Annoyed by the unlimited and untimely load shedding of the WAPDA authorities a friend of mine decided to have a custom made, Heavy Duty UPS (Un-interruptable Power Supply) built at a place called Baara and for the purpose we had to go there personally, now Baara if some of you know happens to lie under the area that are under Mangal Bagh rule now. My friend was more keen to take me since i once asked him i’d love to go there and see how things are and well on the given day we set up for Baara that is not more than 45 minutes drive from Peshawar, but before we leaving he made sure we all were dressed in Shalwar Kameez because he thought it will be an important factor to keep us atleast safe, we covered the distance pretty quickly but as we moved along i was carefully looking at how people look like in the areas we went through, they were not much different till we crossed the Baara check-post and left me surprised, all of a sudden the clothing and faces of most of the people changed, i could hardly see a man without a beard, a cap for namaz and lifted shalwar upto ankles as we do before namaaz. I never was scared though since for me it was not something very unique but the fact that it was all in one place really was something unique, anyways we went over to the desired place where the electrician asked us to wait till the power comes back and he test’s the UPS,while we waited outside in the good but hot weather talking to each other near the sides of the main Baara road, i just received a message on my cell phone to which i made no delay in reply but before i could do that we were spotted by “One of them” not sure what to call but he was one of the guys of Mangal Bagh, he quickly comes to us, shakes hands and asks the purpose of our visit and we tell him. Armed with a Ak-47 and looking like a typical extremist he than asked me if i had a picture in the phone, i was too stunned but dunno why i said No, though it had a few or maybe lots of pictures and he took my phone and started looking for them, thanks god the guy was not technologically literate so he hands over the phone to the electrician to whome we came and tells him, look for a picture in the name of God and your Faith that it has one or not but the electrician was kind enough to say no quick, while my blood was drying and color was turning pale. He however returned the phone and said, what’s with your hairs? I was wearing Shalwar Kameez with a slight gel over my hair to straighten them up a bit, i stood silent and than he asked the same from my other 2 friends, and stressed one of them what’s with you? who had an Italian like beard,none of us could say a thing but we just said we are guests here and will be careful next time, he was calm by than and said you are guests but Muslims as well, so be careful. The electrician was constantly taking our side but he made him silent and before leaving told us, “next time you come here you must come with a namaz cap over your head, and yeah lift your shalwar upto your ankles, you look so ugly without it” we said yes and quickly lifted the Shalwar upto our ankles. The guy left but the fear we had to go through was just something i can’t type over. We left the place soon because there was no sign of the Power coming back, but it indeed was not a very healthy and good experience there. Atleast i was very sure i might never come back here again. The Electrician told us to come next day if possible and after a slight tech-talk we all left with the adventurous memories of Mangal Bagh attached to our brains.

P.S: My friend forcefully took me there the next day as well , this time with no gel or spikes on, with a proper lifted Shalwar upto ankles and a namaz cap over our head and yeah we faced no problem at all.