Seven deadly questions asked in your 20s
It’s your birthday and you are having the time of your life celebrating your 20th. The next day, you meet your uncle and he bursts your bubble by asking you the most annoying questions. Sometime later, you go to a party and the moment someone gets to know you are over 20 years old, a storm of questions starts coming your way. Here are the top seven deadly questions people ask you in your 20s. Have you survived them? 1) When are you getting married? This question is so galling, be it at weddings or casual parties at home. Aunts and mothers of ...
Read Full Post
Video blog: Fatima vs Bilawal Bhutto – a brighter future?
This video addresses the two bright youngsters of the Bhutto family, Fatima Bhutto and Bilawal Bhutto. Filmed in a way that encourages comparison, the imperative question asked is which one of the two could lead Pakistan to a better future. The name Bhutto is, most definitely, one that is familiar to each and every Pakistani. With Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Chairman of the PPP, emerged a family that would continue to play a strong role in Pakistani politics. Even though three of his four children were murdered, Fatima Bhutto and Bilawal Bhutto are continuing to carry the family legacy of an active ...
Read Full Post
I am Pakistan
The first time I got into a public brawl was on my way back from work, on the roadside. A crowd had gathered, to watch a man beat up a little boy because he had taken a wrong turn on his bicycle to avoid being hit by the man’s car. Ten minutes later, I managed to stop the beating by utilizing my strength as a woman in Pakistan. The second time I got into a public disagreement was while at gender conference in Lalamusa, with a government official who recently returned from training in Japan. He was boasting of a 400 ...
Read Full Post
Cambridge result day: Anxiety and paranoia
Today I woke up in a state of pure anxiety and paranoia – much like most people my age at this time of the year. I saw my Facebook was full of scared remarks, some overly confident statuses (that add a bit more to the depression), and a variety of prayers. I have found myself praying a lot more than I usually would; making an extra effort, hoping for anything that would work. It’s the day thousands of students from Pakistan, and around the world mark on their calendars as D-Day. Cambridge O and A Level results are due today: Thursday, ...
Read Full Post
Parenting the digital generation
It is normal now days to see very young children in Pakistan confidently operating technology, possessing cell phones and using social media. A seventh grader can multi tasking; constantly uses SMS to communicate, spending a lot of time online, staying connected with people through the social media and surfing the net and checks out brainpop.com to get homework help while simultaneously listening to his/her iPod. Many young people have blogs by the age of 13-14 years now. So, even if their essays or stories do not receive a good grade in class, or their ideas and thoughts are not entertained ...
Read Full Post
Edhi, we expected better from you
We all suffer from occasional bouts of madness. It is a hazard of being a human, a side effect of possessing a mind. We all have thoughts, wishes that cannot and should not be taken seriously. Mostly, we keep these thoughts to ourselves but sometimes, we blurt them out. If we are lucky, not many witness our moment of insanity. However, if you are someone with a fan following, if you are someone who motivates and inspires, someone who has a standing in society, you are expected to refrain from having public bouts of mental diarrhea. What to say then of Abdul Sattar ...
Read Full Post
Appeasing the Baloch youth
The youth – the future leaders of this country – continue to bear the major brunt of the simmering conflict in Balochistan. Unemployment stands at an all time high. Educational institutions in Balochistan are either mostly closed or only partially functional – either because of threats from Baloch militants or sporadic military sweeps through the areas, or strikes, called to protest for victims of target-killings. Education at large has suffered due to frequent strikes. In 2010, more than 100 working days were lost due to the breakdown of law and order or because of political action, mostly by Baloch nationalist parties. In ...
Read Full Post
Riaz wanted to learn English
It was almost 11 years ago when I stopped my car at the Teen Talwar traffic light to be greeted by the usual herd of beggars, windscreen cleaners and newspaper sellers. One of the newspaper sellers, Riaz, a total of four feet in height, asked me for a lift to the Marriot signal. Irritated by the commotion around me, I chose to ignore him. Rather than moving on, he boldly walked in front of my car, locked eyes with me, stuck his teeth out like President Asif Zardari would, if he stared at the sun, and performed a mini-break dance ...
Read Full Post
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 ...
Read Full Post
Functional cities need mass transit
Much has been said and written about lack of predictable and efficient public transport system in Pakistan’s major cities – to no avail. Former mayor of Karachi, Mustafa Kamal, who built a swirling network of flyovers and signal-free corridors during his four-year tenure, was smarter than that to realise, and voice, that adding more roads was only a short-term solution. True unclogging of our major cities’ blocked arteries would happen when you remove a significant number of vehicles from the road, which is only possible when you provide commuters with a viable public transport option. But the argument for a mass ...
Read Full Post
