Stunned, Impressed, or Horrified?

Adil Najam

(a) driving a motorcycle in what seems to be a busy Lahore street (something not recommended for the faint of heart);
(b) tied to the back of the motor cycle is a large, and necessarily heavy, deep-freezer;
(c) he is also talking to his mobile phone (one assumes, hopes, that he received the call, and did not also dial it while riding the motorcycle!);
(d) because of (c) above, he is riding the motorcycle with one hand only; and
(e) he seems so engrossed in his call that he seems to be looking sideways and not really concentrating on the driving or looking ahead.

I look at the photograph and, frankly, I am speechless.

Should I be stunned that someone would even try to pull this off, impressed that he can in fact pull it off, or horrified at how he is imperiling his own and other lives by pulling it off? (To be fair, one cannot be sure whether he did, in fact, pull it off. One sincerely hopes he safely got wherever he was going!)

P.S.1. Other notable examples of the amazing exploits of Pakistani bikers can be seen here (Quetta’s Amphibian Motorcycle), here (8-wheel motorcycle ride), here (Of Mad Dogs and Motorcycles), here (Tension-free biking); here (on Pillion-Riding); here (Underage Bikers); and here (The Biker’s Bike).

P.S.2: Photograph originally published in Daily Times (July 15, 2008).