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
For the love of books: One woman’s battle
We are not always the monstrous creatures depicted in newspapers. There are people around us who are working for the betterment of society. These are people who keep hope alive when everything around us is falling apart and crumbling into disorder. The idea was simple: to help. While most of us were fixated on how the last game of Manchester United turned out or busy posting videos of a pleading man being mercilessly shot dead by the law itself I felt hope because of a young woman I have never met. She is one person who is bent on changing the lives of ...
Read Full Post
We must have hope, what else is there?
I have come to dread my Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader feeds that feature Pakistan. The news just gets worse and worse. Occurrences in Pakistan give brutality and violence new shapes and forms every day. That human beings are capable of such horrific things is not surprising. After all, we live in the same world that witnessed the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, the ethnic cleansing of Serbians, Croatians, Palestinians and Bangladeshi’s alike (to name a few). The subcontinent itself had a bloody birth punctuated by massacres of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs alike. In the last few days alone, Pakistan ...
Read Full Post
The choice is ours to make
When I go out reporting I come across politicians and bureaucrats sitting in chilled rooms but agitated over the post-OBL scenario. At the same time I also get to meet members of the general public who vent anger at the current state of affairs and seek to interpret the information we provide them through our media outlets 24/7. Needless to say, it’s not just the chopping of trees that has made the city hotter but there are certain policies that our mighty establishment pursued since the 1980s, which have certainly added to this heat and it is now becoming unbearable. With ...
Read Full Post
Pakistan: A state in denial
Rather unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories have proliferated across the globe after the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death and are fast gaining traction, especially in Pakistan where such mindless gossip is bound to press buttons for the wrong people. Some of these rather unoriginal speculations are: Osama is not dead. Osama was taken alive by the US. Osama died years ago and his body had been kept on ice for almost a decade. Osama was killed as a pretext to war on Pakistan Osama was given up by Pakistan. Osama was killed to secure another term for Obama. Osama was killed to trump Trump and so on. Truth ...
Read Full Post
We, the survivors of Osama
It has been almost a decade since 9/11 and now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, politicians will have meetings, intelligence services will brief each other, armies will re-strategise – but what will the rest of us do? We, the survivors of terrorism, the people who mourn loved ones on a daily basis and the people who live alongside drone attacks and bomb blasts – do we rejoice or do we look back over the last ten years and try to remember a world before all of this? My heart feels heavy – because even as I write this I know ...
Read Full Post
Five hottest gadgets for 2011
1. Blackberry Playbook Weighing less than a pound (425g) and being just 0.4 inch thick, this WiFi enabled device has already hit the market on April 19, 2011. The BlackBerry PlayBook is the world’s first professional grade tablet with its industry centric performance which includes multitasking capabilities, support for Adobe Flash 10.1, high definition multimedia, and out-of-the-box enterprise support. The device which is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions has been priced at $499, $599 and $699 respectively. The pricing is similar to its competitor, the Apple iPad 2 which is supposed to make its launch on March 2, 2011. 2. ...
Read Full Post
Help! I’m in love with a divorcee
Dear Miss Informed, I am desperately in love with a guy who is not aware of my feelings for him. He is a divorcee with two kids who don’t live with him. Rumour has it that he is not willing to re-marry, but I don’t know how true this is. For the past year and a half, I have been weighing the pros and cons about what life would be like with him – since marrying him means the children come along too. But I am okay with this. He is the man I want to spend ...
Read Full Post
Tatenda Taibu: Boy turned into a man
Teen debuts, controversies, early retirements and reversals are traits often found in the subcontinent. Talent, brimming on the surface and visible in short bursts, defies age and experience as laurels pour in from all corners, predicting a bright future. No sooner comes a revolt, threats by external influences and the decision to call it a day arrives as easily as a cross-batted squat followed by a scamper for a couple. That has been the story of the 27-year-old former Zimbabwe captain Tatenda Taibu. Plucked from obscurity, still in his teens and having no first-class experience, Taibu’s ascent to not just captaincy, ...
Read Full Post
What does the future hold for Egypt?
While I do not want to detract from the amazing achievement of the Egyptian people, their future is still uncertain. Who will fill the power vacuum? Omar Suleiman is not a favourite Touted as a replacement by Mubarak and tacitly supported by the US, Omar Suleiman clearly isn’t popular. This is hardly a surprise, given that he was head of Egypt’s intelligence agency (you know, the one that allegedly tortures lots of people) and, according to Wikileaks, told Israel (who love him very much) that he’d like “Gaza to go hungry, but not starve”. Not exactly a hero. Who is Mohamed ElBaradei? ...
Read Full Post
