A houseplant I named Hope
I woke one morning and decided to name one of my houseplants Amal, the Arabic word meaning ‘hope’. This plant (a variety of yucca if I am not mistaken) had been nameless since the day I bought it from a moving sale more than six years ago. But today, I realised how much she deserved this designation. For most of the last six years, Amal has seemed to be on her last legs. Her leaves would consistently wilt at the tips to a dry crisp or sometimes turn entirely yellow, even if I wasn’t over-watering it. Unable to re-generate, one leaf would die ...
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A fantastic dive into the deep blue sea
A few weeks ago, my cousin asked me to accompany him on a scuba diving trip to Mubarak village, a place just outside Karachi. I was excited by the prospect and agreed in an instant, so he picked me up before sunrise. When we reached the village, we took a boat ride to Charna Island for the dive. We were accompanied by a team of professionals who briefed us before the dive. I was surprised to learn that one can enjoy the experience of scuba diving without knowing how to swim. After a few other important instructions regarding underwater communication signals, ...
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Video blog: What I saw in Badin
Two hundred people have fallen prey to the devastation that hit Badin and other areas in Sindh by more than 1,000 millimeters of rain in the last month. This is the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Sindh. Compare this to the 70 odd millimeters of rain that has fallen in Karachi over the past few days and one begins to realize the magnitude of the catastrophe Sindh is facing. I was in Badin earlier this week with a group of volunteers called SA Relief. I witnessed, first hand, what exactly was going on. From our entrance into the Golarchi area ...
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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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Lessons for Ramazan
Ramazan is a month that is big on beginnings and ends. We anticipate the birth of a new moon and then we watch the glowing crescent orb slowly dissolve as the nights pass. After our final sip of water in the morning, begins a period of anticipation, waiting for the sun to kiss the horizon, thereby signaling the end of our fast. In this holy month of worship, patience, and curbing of all desires, I’m sure we’ve all spent a sizeable chunk of time hungrily reflecting. Here’s what I’ve come up with. Naturally, some reflections seemed revolutionary, while in the ...
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I read so you don’t have to: Outrageous!
This week offered proof, once again, that our politicians wouldn’t be quite so problematic if they just never spoke. We already knew that the outrageousness of Rehman Malik’s words is matched only by the outrageousness of his ties; that Zulfiqar Mirza vomits out inflammatory speeches as if it’s a medical condition for which there’s no cure; and, that the world would be a happier place if Pervez Musharraf never spoke again. Still, you’re most likely sitting at home and refusing to go out because of the heat, so you might as well relive their cringe-worthy comments of the last week. That ...
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Life on the balcony
The number of apartments is growing with increasing population. More buildings usually means less green spaces and a greyer city. Nonetheless, living in an apartment must not keep you away from having a healthy green space. Even small spaces such as a balcony can become a rewarding and refreshing garden of your own. All you need is some planning. What do you want from your garden? Ask yourself, which type of garden you would like to walk into each day? This mostly depends on the space, sun, wind exposure and the irrigation system. But first thing is first. Weight management: Firstly, find ...
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In search of clean water
I saw a man by the name of Ali Arsalan prove the principle “all answers are basically simple” at a fair recently held in Karachi. He claimed, and I was convinced, that the task of supplying pure drinking water to millions of people of the country could be achieved by just promoting a method of water purification that uses ultraviolet rays and the sun’s heat. The method is called solar water disinfection (SODIS) and is recommended by the World Health Organization. The man came up with the idea as a solution for the supply of potable water to the flood-stricken people ...
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Earth Day: Five small steps to a billion acts of green
Today is the 41st anniversary of the Earth Day. This year’s theme is “A billion acts of green” and the goal is to generate a billion acts of environmental service and advocacy before the global Earth Summit 2012 in Rio. We can all contribute to a greener earth by doing at least one act of conservation in order to make those “billion acts of green” possible. 1. Recycle Start by recycling at home. We could encourage our kids to re-use old cans, tins and cardboard boxes to make useful things at home, like jewelry boxes and bookmarks. We can also reuse jam jars ...
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I love you, but you can’t have my password
I recently read a blog post about sharing personal e-mail accounts with your partners or spouse. The blog said about 33 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men share their online information with their partners. It also said that among unmarried couples, 10 per cent of the time, this led to a discovery of their partner’s infidelity. The figure was lower for married couples – about three per cent. The identity theft expert who gave these stats, Robert Siciliano, went on to warn that this figure was among those who had admitted to account sharing and discovering the infidelity ...
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