The Rain-Prayers Return to the Corridor Cities, Old Faith Under New Meters

KARACHI — The morning after the price notices went out, the plazas filled with something older than any exchange. In three corridor cities this week, the rain-prayers returned — the processions and open-air devotions that the dry years had revived and the wet-enough seasons had let lapse. In one Karachi square a crowd of thousands gathered at dawn, hands open, asking the sky for the water the market had made dear. There is nothing despairing in it, participants insisted; it is not an omen read in a bad bill, but a hope offered against one. "The meter is new. The asking is not," said an elderly man who has joined the prayers since the first drought. "My grandmother asked for rain. I ask for rain. The difference is she did not get a bill afterward." Sociologists note the prayers cut clean across the augmentation divide and the income divide alike — enhanced and unenhanced, jug-buyers and meter-readers, kneeling on the same warm stone. The corridor delivered its water by engineering. The plazas, this week, are asking the sky for a discount.