I happened to visit the Sunday Bazaar lately and, after a long time, decided to visit one of the books stalls for some idle browsing through the titles since it was conveniently close to the cold drinks stand. In a long line of saddening observations about our society, I would like to add the fact that we have little, if any, appreciation for the classic. At this particular stall, I found gems like Hardy, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Dickens and the like, dusty and shoved into constricted spaces while on top of them lay the main attractions, three different Dan Brown novels. I left the very depressing sight almost immediately after.

An interesting story told to me by an old teacher who happened to study in Karachi Grammar School in the 70's as a young man was the very explicit class system drilled into the students. He mentioned having three separate "houses" called "A", "B" and "C". The students in "A" , of course, were the top of the heap, classified so by their top notch grades, and so on for the students in "B" and "C". According to him, if one was in "A", they were the absolute A-listers of the school, made to stand right in front at the assemblies and incapable of acknowledging the existence of the ones in "C", while there was tepid mingling with the "B"-housers. The saddest thing is that the teacher who narrated this story spent his early primary years there, which would mean that such inequality was being drilled into the minds of children (classes 1-7).