I would rather be the 99%
When my husband and I moved to the US, we knew that it wasn’t for good. Contrary to everybody’s assumptions, we knew that we were going to return to Pakistan, at some point in the meandering, distant future. But we never imagined that it would be now, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and under such sad circumstances. As I sit here in the study of my in-laws’ house in Lahore this sunny April afternoon, looking out on a sumptuous garden decked with purple petunias, crimson lilies, snow-white roses and bright bougainvillea, listening to the chipper of birds and the low chatter of servants in ...
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Child labour in Pakistan: They have dreams like ours
Child labour refers to work done by children that harms them or exploits them either physically or mentally. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) defines a ‘child’ as anyone below the age of 18, and ‘child labour’ as any form of work performed by children below age 18. On the way to university, a few days ago, I observed many children working in the streets of Quetta. Most of them were boys, between the age of 10 to 14. They were carrying an assortment of goods like paper, plastic, wood and pieces of metal in bags in order to sell these. Looking ...
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A day in the life of Nasreen kaamvaali
Get-togethers at our place had increasingly become as monotonous John Grisham’s novels – the same faces, the same stories. That was before a fecund family brought along its 12-year-old maid who doubled as a nanny. Nasreen had a clean face, shampooed hair and possibly her best dress on, but bent by the weight of a chubby baby, she seemed like a blot on the landscape. She couldn’t be part of light-hearted flirtation, political discussions or trade cooking recipes, so she just sat in the corner and smiled. For a pubescent girl stuck with a two-year-old who, when not eating or sleeping, could ...
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I am ashamed
I moved to Hyderabad Deccan about a year ago, but somehow Hyderabad’s suffering doesn’t register with me. Its people still don’t seem to be my people, and their misery doesn’t seem to be my misery, or even misery at all. This is probably because I’m a Karachiite. Being a Karachiite means you’ve lived through bombings, target killings and the city going up in flames over and over again; it means there have been times when your father hasn’t come home for the night because it was safer to stay put wherever he was; it means there is a high probability that you ...
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Selling a kidney to end poverty
The government’s bold claims of eliminating poverty from the country are clearly derailed by the dismal state of the public health institutions. It seems that the government has found an innovative system to kill poverty by killing the poor themselves. Meanwhile, the increasing sky-rocketing inflation has also limited the common man’s access to basic health, as a large majority cannot even afford the transport expenses. In fact, this differential between the haves and have-nots is at an all-time high. It was clearly depicted recently when our president went to Dubai for his medical treatment which costs lakhs of rupees per day. I ...
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Edhi: “I’m not God, just a humanist”
This video shows a discussion with the philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi. The viewer is shown an ordinary day in his life and taken in to his office. One observes the incredibly humble life-style lived by this humanist. Edhi states humanity is the essence of all religions. The Holy Quran, too, he says teaches Muslims to feel for other human beings. However, it is a trait that most people have forgotten. He is critical of Muslims in Pakistan and states that he has yet to come across a single true Muslim in his entire life. Capitalists, according to him, indulge in ...
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In Okara: Why Twitter is not enough
I had joined Twitter sometime ago, and was truly disgusted by the so-called thinkers sitting in the luxuries of their air-conditioned rooms, tweeting about how Pakistan is in dire need of help. Tweets about which city they are in, or which coffee house they are in will not help the situation of the people who need our help. “Why don’t they go out and do something?” I wondered. Thus, I decided to be proactive. It has been a year since I started working as the PPP president for Okara district, Punjab. Growing up in a political family, I witnessed my father ...
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Slavery: constitutionally forbidden, socially accepted
On Friday, 11 bonded labourers were freed from a brick kiln in the outskirts of Islamabad. They had been crowded into squalid pens and were forced to live in inhuman conditions which earned them a princely sum of Rs 300 per week. That’s Rs43 per day. That’s less than many of us spend to get to work. That’s less than the price of a plate of daal chawal. That’s less than a human being needs to survive. Slavery is abhorable, but in Pakistan, it is also an unavoidable fact of life. Or is it? How often do you hear anyone praising slavery? ...
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Karachi’s crime malaise
Karachi, with a population of nearly 20 million, has its fair share of problems like all other major metropolitans. Its weary residents have had to put up with a multitude of problems, including a huge slum population, frequent power cuts and poor infrastructure. However, few cities have as bad a reputation for crime, particularly street crime, as Karachi. Be it mobile snatching, car theft, robberies at ATMs or traffic signals, there will be few Karachiites who do not have some sort of a story to tell of their or their acquaintances’ encounters with street crime. Many will be quick to attribute ...
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Fasting in times of load shedding
Past Shab-e-Barat, brace yourself for the month of fasting. Actually, Shab-e-Barat is a festival in name only. Its real significance is to usher in Ramazan. The halvas you are treated to, point to the imminence of thirty testing days followed by thirty rewarding evenings. The mandatory fast, requiring that one neither eat a morsel nor take a sip of drink for a whole day, is a test in itself. It’s a vivid reminder of the nature of hunger and thirst. It is only at the end of a day of fasting that one fully appreciates food and drink as God’s great ...
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