Although I have taken longer breaks than this one from blogging about Lahore, I feel that so much has been happening that I have not been ahem-ahem opinion-ating on.
Of course, it does not matter who wants to listen to what I have to say. The point is that Lahore and other events around us, seen from the eyes of one person is in all probabilities, bound to be different from yours. This gives you more perspective. This in turn, gives you more to think about which in turn, helps you adjust and improve. Add Blah blah blah ad infintum.

From where I sit, a lot has been happening. And has happened. For a highly personal take on how I have been seeing it, in bullet form for effect :), read on.

Politics:

• Almost as if he never was here, Musharaf is not heard of. Amid pretty much nothing, he has managed to just pull a Mr. India* and simply disappear.
• Zardari started flirting openly. A lot of us started taking notes.
• Lawyers movement get boring enough to silently exit the lime light. But people who are focused and more purposeful, stay the course. My prayers at least, are with them.

Society, People & Culture:

• Marriot goes. With a loud enough bang. Fingers keep pointing, loudmouths keep barking and people keep dying! Almost as if a fashion statement, our media tries to make Sept 20th as our Sept 11th. London has 7/7, American has 9/11, at least we din’t rhyme with our 9/20. Or whatever. A sad situation got even sadder.
• Hamid Mir finally got depressed enough to say what I believe only Hamid Mir can say.
• I find inspiration in the fact that a single person can change himself and his society. I disagree with practically all of their suggestion, but that always remains a debatable issue. Lahore in specific, and Pakistan in general needs people like these to take the action that no one else seem to think about. Faisal Qureshi tries to go for a solution and Sohaib Athar writes powerfully.
• Eid came suddenly. For the first time, enjoyed the ensuing chaos, including my first trip to a ‘choree waala’ in Main Market. A mosque in Lahore celebrated Eid one day later anyways, claiming a stake in the overall confusion that plagues the nation, and the media played the devil by letting everyone know about it (like this?!?!).

Doing business

• Lahore office rent is like Lahore’s weather; totally unpredictable. You have to search to get the right deal. I tried, found the best deal I could have imagined, only to move out of the office 6 months later.
• Doing business from here becomes harder. One of my business colleague finds it hard to convince his ‘American connection’ that his call center can handle the business, purely because it becomes riskier for his ‘goraa’ client to book into a Hotel; the damn places keep blowing up!
• My web design blog gets the lowest monthly average of visitors for the last two years! I again find comfort in blogging about life and make new friends; people who are monetizing the Internet in the most ‘cutting edge’ of ways, on purpose :) . I find creative money makers. DjFlush and his Sizlopedia is and should be an inspiration for us all.
• After researching for a local Pakistani car on the Internet, I get frustrated at the lack of proper car reviews, specific to the Pakistani market. I finally get around to launching a small blog about cars in Pakistan.

I have seen a lot of hope amidst so much of chaos. Bridges are getting built in Lahore as hotels are being burnt and blown in Islamabad. The political looters are honing their skills as media personal begin to have a heart. People are celebrating a ‘rocking’ Eid (with fashion shows, dance competitions and what not — Pathetic!), as friends and family with a heart as seeing every day as an opportunity to do good for the people around them. Improve and help not the world, but one person at a time. That is how the world improves anyways.
God bless and good luck to us all.

After looking at fiasco that happened at Marriott Hotel of Islamabad, I am seriously concerned to know the current state of Emergency Response Services in Lahore. Are we ready? I am trying my best not to sound cynical but it is the reality of modern civic life that there will be natural of man made disasters.

These days, terrorism is a reality. Unfortunately, we will have to live with it for a considerable period of time. But as citizens of Lahore, we have to keep an eye on the civic services that are being made available to us by our govt. After all we pay all those taxes and its our right to demand a better civic life from them.

First Aid Kit

It was a pity to see the Marriott Guard trying to extinguish an explosive chemical fire with a CO2 fire Extinguisher. It was even more disturbing to see firefighters trying to throw water from ground to 4th Floor. What is this? 1920’s…. Millions of taxpayer Rupees have been spent on services like 1122 and CDA’s Disaster Management Cell & all we got was broken pumps and dead batteries. Read more

The Mensa IQ test is being held in Lahore on 13th and 14th of September.

The timings are:

LGS Johar Town

Saturday, 13th Sept at
1:30 - 2:30
2:30 - 3:30
3:30 - 4:30

LGS Defence

Sunday, 14th Sept at
10:30 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:30
12:30 - 1:30
2:30 - 3:30

The ticket price is Rs. 350. Ticket can be bought on spot.

There will also be a talk by Mr. Faisal Qureshi (founder chairperson of Mensa Pakistan, host of looseends, Breakfast at Dawn and Ankahi) at LGS Defence on Sunday 14th Sept at 1:30pm. The topic for the talk is Youth Responsibility.

Mensa Pakistan is an affiliate of Mensa International, The World Wide Higher IQ Society,

The aim of the organization as described under its constitution is, “Mensa provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members. Its activities include the exchange of ideas by lectures, discussions, journals, special-interest groups, and local, regional, national, and international gatherings; the investigations of members’ opinions and attitudes; and assistance to researchers, inside and outside Mensa, in projects dealing with intelligence or Mensa.”

Strumming some Strings

The duo from Strings put on a fantastic show at the Lahore Gymkhana last Saturday!

We , as in the concert goers, had to be real patient throughout the night. Reason being that the band, in keeping with rock-star tradition came on stage about 2 hours after the slated time. Uncle, the violinist who looked like one, kept us from falling asleep. Yes, that is all that can be said in the positive about that act. Next up were Nexus, a local punjabi-pop band that I have heard frequent local universities and colleges. Lets just say they are better as a cover band and they did a commendable job pumping up the crowd; their original song was a unenthusiastic bhangra song praising rotund eyes (ankhian gol gol …). 

 After what seemed like ages the band members themselves graced the stage, as they say, the rest was history!

Here is a (super-duper short) teaser from the concert itself… Enjoy!

11 Second Teaser

For the last few days I had not been watching too much TV (apart from IPL), given my somewhat busy routine and the facts that:

1) Our local TV has become extremely uninteresting
2) Our local TV tends to over-hype, dramatize, scandalize and criticize every single news event to the last extent known to mankind
3) I prefer internet as a more reliable source of news on Pakistan

But today I sat down for a while to watch a news channel. Three pieces of news one after the other struck me and I will paraphrase them here without commenting on them. It may be business as usual (or life as usual) in our country, but it hasn’t always been like this… or has it?

a) Severe traffic jam in Lahore due to a mass procession in front of Governor’s House. The protestors were carrying 3 corpses of their tribe/community who were killed in a clash. The scenes were very disturbing. Chief Minister Punjab had to come over and negotiate.
b) Similar protest in front of Governor’s house in Quetta on the same day. I have actually forgotten what was this protest about, but probably on some killings as well. As I said, these instances are business as usual now.
c) A tribal clash broke out some days ago on killing of a dog. The rival tribes fought for a few days (killing several people) before the elders were able to sort it out. As a way of punishment, one tribe handed over its 10 young girls to the rival tribe along with 7 lakh rupees.

A few days ago, mob in Karachi burnt a couple of thugs to death on the grounds that police would not be able to get them prosecuted. A few days later mob in Lahore tried to do something similar.

Before that we were trying to figure out why do we have 3000W shortage of electricity leading to 6-8 hours loadshedding per day, not to mention shortage of wheat which is supposed to be the staple food of Pakistan, an agriculture based country.

And before that we were having one new suicide bombing every 6th day in one city or the other.

And before that we were trying to cope with a situation where our GDP growth targets were being revised downwards, while inflation (food, fuel and housing) kept going upwards.

And before that our major problems were 55% illiteracy, utter lack of health facilities outside main cities, serious pollution and frequent violence inside main cities and corruption everywhere around.

Not to mention poverty and lawlessness… the list goes on…

However I don’t blame the present or any of the past governments. The problems that we have are much more deep rooted. One particular regime (whether Mush (1999-2007) or PPP (1988-90, 1993-5) or PML-N (1990-93, 1995-9) cannot be blamed for all this and that. Maybe as a society, we have all failed in doing our bit, or making our contribution towards progress.

After all, when we blame the mob, we forget that in aggregate terms, “we” are the mob. Why don’t we look at things this way… if 55% of Pakistanis are illiterate, mathematically speaking we all are 55% illiterate, no matter what degrees we tend to flaunt among peers and friends… it’s only when we start to realize our duty as citizens (not that of standing in protests and shouting slogans, but that of actually doing something constructive and positive)… only then we will achieve anything.

Ok. This post, the first post, does not have much to do with lahore. Some might argue that this post does not have much to do with anything. I should have posted it in my personal blog, but for some odd reason I can’t find where I left my personal blog. Plus I am quite, in fact very, excited about being able to log-in to LMB that I thought why not post here.

Therefore in case you find this post useless, senseless, unreasonable, irrelevant, uncouth (hain ji), and un-cal sargam, please keep in mind that a) this post mentions Lahore 7 times and b) I am getting used to nasty comments so please feel free to leave one.

Having said that, here are the few things I wanted to post / announce.

First the new design / structure of LMB: Good news for iPhone users. The new metblogs sites (possibly due to wordpress) get automatically adapted to iphone sets giving you a very easy and user friendly navigation control. In fact its much nicer to access LMB though iphone than through a regular PC. (I dont know how many LMB readers use iPhone… maybe its just a guy named bilal)

Second: I hear that the wheat crisis is over. so no need to switch to cakes anymore. One less thing to worry about.

Third: The global community is quite surprised that Pakistan’s elections went ahead, peacefully, freely and fairly… and everyone accepted the results. Heck with global community, even our local population is quite surprised.
Fourth: Someone at LMB must write a post on basant and must do it fast. And someone from his/her home must write a nasty comment against basant (ban basant) and must do it fast.
Thats all for now. Hopefully i will be back soon with more useful posts in future. Even though being optimistic is weird… i have been told.

The 23rd Lahore International Book Fair at the Fortress stadium main ground was opened yesterday. The five-day mega book fair with the theme Education for All, Books for Peace was inaugurated by Caretaker Chief Minister Punjab Justice (r) Ejaz Nisar. Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Book Fair he laid stress on the necessity of promoting book reading and improving the education system by all means.

The book- fair is becoming more and more popular and expanding each year. That is why publishers from around the world are attracted. Around 175 publishers from around the world, including the US, UK and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, would set up their stalls at the fair. The international publishers will offer attractive discounts and local publishers will give as much as 50 percent discounts on their books. Sounds good enough, no? :)

So, all you book-lovers out there hungry to discover the best selling authors, grab your wish-list and don’t miss this exciting and extraordinary literary event. It’s worth your while.

See you at the festival.

President Musharraf fulfilled his promise by conducting free and fair elections in a relatively peaceful environment.
First time in Pakistan’s history a democratically elected government finished its constitutionally required time of 5 years. First time in Pakistan’s history people were allowed to exercise their ‘righ’t to choose their government without the interruption of the military.

But unfortunately even rights are not safe from attacks as a large number of women in Peshawar were barred from voting at polling stations by the electoral candidates of the provincial constituencies of PF-6, PF-7 and PF-8. A female presiding officer at the Khazana Bala polling station showed reporters an agreement written in Urdu that said, “We, the candidates for PF-8, announce a ban on women’s participation in the February 18 balloting, given that women had been barred from voting in the previous elections as well.” Similarly, panchayats (local village councils) in Mianwali and Sargodha also banned women from voting.

Apart from that, Abdul Sattar Edhi, a social worker, upon reaching the Kharadar polling station in Karachi, came to know that he could not vote because his name was not registered. Shocked and disappointed he said, “I am a true Pakistani, but cannot exercise my right of voting.”

Similarly, deposed chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary and former superior judges Shakirullah Jan and Sardar Raza Khan, who are strictly under-house detention since November 3, weren’t allowed to cast their votes for the general elections aswell.

So what is a right? How do you define it?

That seem’s to be the dominant answer to the question “why wont you vote”. However, it brings up an interesting question. Who is the candidate?

From the previous discussion we’ve had on why wont you vote, it appears the ‘candidate’ is the leader on top of each political party. However, i ask you this. Who *is* the actual candidate? The leader on top might go ahead to be Prime Minister and make decisions for the functioning of this country, but s/he is not determined by you. They do not represent you, they do not even know you exist for the large part, and they are not the ones asking for your vote.

You vote for your local candidate. The one who’ll be representing your constituency, the one who’ll be fighting for or against laws which directly affect the people in their area, so that they can get another term. They will have an agenda, which i agree largely follows the party agenda which is nothing currently but ‘continue the policies set forth by the previous government’ in most cases, but still, there’s is a more localized one. Your local candidate is the one who ’should’ care about you, should care about getting your vote and should care about getting your voice heard in the assembly. They will not do it, unless you make them realize that your vote is not free, and they’ll have to work towards it.

To all the readers, i put forth this one question, which constituency do you belong to? And who are your candidates?

This post in part of a series of posts to understand the current apathy our visitors feel towards elections and democracy.

According to some media reports, local followers of late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party want, Lahore’s most iconic, Liberty Square (a.k.a Bank Alfalah Square) to be renamed after her. Please share with us your thoughts on the matter:

Opinion Polls & Market Research