At 25 A, Faisal Town, south of Lahore, Pakistan’s hotbed of politics, doors are shut. The white high walls of the People’s Secretariat, the Pakistan People’s Party’s office in the capital of Punjab, have photos of a smiling Benazir with flames lighting up her face in the dark.

No, these are not the flames of torched cars and government offices, they are wax candles and diyas for the martyred Mohattarma. No guards at the gate to answer, only two kids on a breezy and chilly Saturday evening trying to keep the diyas aflame.

Barely under 10, they might not realise what is swirling through Pakistan, but they are keeping the flames alive. These flames are different from the hundreds of others — keeping Pakistan ablaze — that the government’s statistics rattle: 174 banks, 154 offices, 370 vehicles. All of them burnt in flames of anger.

So much so that these flames have managed to keep Lahore indoors for the third consecutive evening. Qasim Ali in Lahore’s famous food street is sitting idle, he can’t open his shop. “Politics has made us jobless,” he says.

The Mall, no one calls it by the renamed Shahrah-i-Quaid-e-Azam, Lahore’s artery is empty, so is the Anarkali Bazaar with not a soul in sight on Saturday evening when families would crowd to buy goodies.

Taxi driver Sagheer Ali, who ferries tourists on City Radio Cabs, expresses disbelief too: “Never have I seen such a shutdown in this part of the city.” Downed shutters have become all-too-common in this street, with policemen all around, with their check-posts and barricades at every major crossing or intersection.

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