Hail Farkhand Iqbal, the King of Islamabad
Expect a court battle soon over whose daddy owns this city. Earlier this week, CDA chief Farkhand Iqbal’s son, no doubt proud of his dad’s great list of accomplishments including stealing and unsealing the Bhoja Air black box and making ludicrous comments about other agencies to deflect blame for his own failures, decided to establish his father’s stranglehold on the city for all to see. After a mother and son made the mistake of driving their car into the path of his daddy’s car on his daddy’s road near Kohsar Market, causing an accident that was in no way the younger ...
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Professional beggars: More greedy than needy
Allah keh naam par 10 rupay dey dey beta. (Please give me Rs10 in God’s name, son.) Roti khila dey, tujhey ek naik aur khubsurat biwi miley. (Give me bread to eat and you will find a beautiful, decent wife) How many times have we heard this and cringed from deep within? Such phrases are played like rhythmic rhetoric every time you park your car on a signal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a feudal lord’s son who will throw acid on his wife, neither do I commute in a chauffeur driven, air-conditioned SUV. I’m a common Pakistani who walks the same streets like millions other ...
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Shia killing: If we tolerate this, our children will be next
Last week, I heard the news of the targeted sectarian killing of Jaffer Mohsin. The name didn’t ring a bell at the time, but later that day, when a friend told me that a fellow schoolmate’s father had been shot dead, it jogged my memory. I then realised that doctor Jaffer Mohsin was our friend’s father. That’s when the memories came flooding back. Back when I used to live near my school building, Dr Mohsin’s family lived in the lane next to mine. Like regular Pakistani youths who bond over a common love for cricket, his sons and I played the ...
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(Almost) swindled at the toll-booth
Most of us living in Lahore or Islamabad have travelled via the motorway M2 at least once. Starting at the Islamabad toll-plaza and going all the way to the Thokar Niaz Baig toll Plaza Lahore, the only stops you get to make are at gas stations-turned-restrooms-cum-dine ins. They charge twice as much for a packet of Lays or a bottle of water as the retail price. And even if you choose not to make a stop during this three to four hour spine-snapping journey, do not fool yourself into believing that you saved yourself from these rip offs. Read ...
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Drowning and helpless
There are many ways in which you can feel helpless. You feel helpless when you think about college, you feel helpless when you realise that very few people around you actually remembered that Thursday was International Literacy Day. And it doesn’t help when someone tells you that 35,000 Pakistanis have been killed since 9/11. One of those times, and the most recent, involved a car, submerged in waist deep water, stuck while reversing over a ditch, with the water level inside the locked car rising exponentially, the rain thundering outside and leaking through the crack in the window, and with ...
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13 tips to avoid being robbed in traffic jams
The crime rate in our cities has steadily increased and after the rains, criminals have found yet another way to rob people. Thanks to the ineptitude of the police, thieves have found easy targets in motorists caught in traffic jams while they are stuck on the road due to knee deep water. On September 6 it rained heavily in Karachi and numerous people were robbed while they were stuck in traffic jams, trying to return home from work. The situation swiftly got more dangerous when the street lights went off. Criminals have an in-depth understanding of the locations in cities where motorists will be at ...
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How my driver said yes to contraception
My driver, Qasim, beamed at me in our car’s rear-view mirror. “Kara liya! Hum nay baccha band kara liya! Main nay apni biwi ka bachadaani operation say nikalwa liya” (We did it! We got permanent contraception! I got my wife to get an operation to get her uterus removed). I beamed back – the two of us, partners in glory. Strange conversation with a driver indeed. I settled in to my seat and thought back over the past few years. My mother was the first one to tell me about Qasim’s wife – pregnant with their eighth child, her listlessness and apathy had scared ...
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Brighter futures: Kids, and their dream cars
The Dream Car Art Contest is an international event organised by Toyota for children to explore their imagination and design the car of the future. It is the only competition of its type held in Pakistan where children, as well as parents, can learn and realize that cars nowadays are designed by transportation, industrial and automotive designers, rather than engineers. The children, who took part in the 5th Dream Car Art Contest, might have been young, but they were also aware of problems around them. Most entries by Pakistani children revolved around solving their country’s problems. It made me proud ...
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“Die, killer, die”
In the busy traffic of Lahore on June 2, 2011, a traffic warden stopped a car carrying a patient, for reasons unknown. The family was frustrated by more than the hot weather, smoke and the sound of horns. They wanted to rush to the hospital. The patient was in need of critical medical attention. However, the warden was in no hurry. According to TV reports, he couldn’t come up with a credible reason for stopping the car, yet he demanded cash in exchange for letting the family go. Despite being bribed, the incident carried on so long that the patient in ...
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Kalma Chowk, you will be remembered
A lot of criticism is in the air about the “fall of the Kalma chowk” as if it is the fall of the Pakistan economy. Many people, all of a sudden seem to have loads of memories associated with Kalma chowk – which were probably made while staring at it, waiting to get across the signal. Protests, SMS’ and even Facebook pages have been made and dedicated to the discussion over the loss of this beautiful piece of architecture. The government’s personal interest in building the flyover is a by-product of the discussion. This is a perfect example for why I support ...
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