Yesterday’s situation in Pakistan’s stock exchanges was no different from each day during the last four months that saw the markets plunge consistently resulting in the main Karachi bourse losing more than 30% of its value.

Protestors burning tires outside the LSE - Daily Times

Angry small investors went on rampage in the Karachi Stock Exchange demanding the closure of market for a few days to curb its slide. Scenes were a bit calmer in Lahore where a crowd protested outside the Lahore Stock Exchange building by burning tires and shouting slogans against the regulators and the big players.

This grim situation follows the failure of the new coalition government in tackling rising food & oil prices, electricity shortages and burgeoning trade & budget deficits triggering mindless inflation and depreciating the Pakistani Rupee to record lows against the US Dollar.

All this is happening when the country is facing a huge security threat on its western borders from the militants and NATO forces as its cities are no better safe from street-crimes, robberies and bomb blasts. Amidst all this lawlessness and chaos, our leaders seem to be least concerned when they are visiting their ‘families’ abroad leaving no person of strength and character in authority behind in the country.

I’ve never beeen pessimistic about my country’s situation but this has to be sorted. People in authority need, I repeat, desperately need to become serious in tackling the country’s problems. People in the north-west are Pakistanis, they need to be heard not bombarded upon; Balochistan deserves its gas-royalties and Sui itself should be supplied with gas; Thar coal should be exploited to create a mega-pool of electricity supply which can provide at least 20,000 MW of electricity by using only 2% of the reserves over the next 20 years.

Forget the judges, forget the president, yes, I mean it! Focus on the core issues, the main problems of the masses and the industrialists alike for poverty can only be elevated if industry flourishes.

Bring peace, bring food, bring prosperity, bring unity - only this is what has elected you guys to the seats of power and the failure in bringing what will pull you down. We have seen the violence at the Stock Exchanges; I’m afraid it’s not that hard to imagine when it comes to the streets soon…

Tay ferr hoyaa yoon that recently i watched famous series from distant past known as “Fifty-Fifty” and one thing i wanna’ talk about is this skit where they made “Bashera in Trouble”, a beautiful mix of Punjabi and English, making it Punglish (OoopSss!!) ;) , yes, they gave the concept of making a Pujnabi Movie in English :|
I know it sounds weird , BUT, it was a good peice of creative work that makes you laugh your heart out…

Good to hear something like…..

“Touch me NAATT, basherya” *brilliantly delivered by Ismail Tara”

“Oyee, JUnj will go Back Oyee” :p

So, do you guys know any interesting mix of Punjabi and English, something unusual?????

Father’s day is always celebrated on third sunday of June. A day to show him how much you love him and how important he is to you.

Although i’m not a big supporter of “Hallmark holidays”. Most of them ‘are’ designed to sell greeting cards, but for mother’s and father’s you cannot get enough time to appreciate them. You don’t have to wait for Mother’s or Father’s day to show them you care but in my view there is nothing wrong in pampering him/her a little more than usual on these occasions.

Many celebrated the recent Mother’s day with a lot of high interest. A few weeks before Mother’s day it seemed like everyone was so looking forward to it. There were attractive billboards with Mother’s day messages. Media and radio stations organized promotions with attractive activities to honor mothers for their sacrifice but when it came to celebrate Father’s day.

It was quite disappointing to see that Father’s day was not given serious attention or significance as Mother’s day. Is it so or is it just Me?

Hello all, I just started with LMB so i thought i’ll start off by saying hi to everybody in here .. introduce myself and then get to work :) Here is something that i wrote on my profile:

“A 27 year old entrepreneur from Lahore, Pakistan, I see Lahore differently than everybody else… working nights has taught me Lahore is a totally different city during the late hours of night .. peaceful, quiet and beautiful. it is a total contrast to how the rest of the world see’s this bustling metropolis and i hope to bring forth some of that beauty and tranquility….. i am also involved with one of the foremost event management companies and that allows me to network and meet new people and experience new stuff going on in Lahore .. will do my best to talk about all of this and more through what i put up …”

This is all very exciting and new to me.. so if i screw up “maafi”

-Bilal Rashid

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.

Hello Lahore! Let me commence with a note of appreciation for Hassan and Co. for welcoming me to the LMB team. It’s great to join the fold :)

Whilst I don’t live in Lahore per se, I do have a very strong bond with my birth place. Since leaving the great city over 8 years ago, I have made every effort to return and explore its past and present. Needless to say, my family and friends provide a constant urge (and reason) for me to return to Lahore. So for my first ever LMB post, I think its apt that I choose one of my overriding memories from my most recent visit in Dec/ Jan 2007-08. Here goes…

Having arrived days following the shocking assasination of Benazir Bhutto, I was struck by the low mood of the nation and indeed how it had negatively impacted the generally boisterous city of Lahore. The whole episode had somehow crept into the very conscience of the people and sucked out their usual optimism.

Having booked my tickets well in advance, I had been looking forward to my Pakistani adventure with ambitions to visit sights and sounds of inner Lahore and meet and greet the ‘real’ Lahoris who crossed my path…gawwalas, drivers, cooks, pan wallas, you name it. On the contrary, I found myself increasingly restricted by constant advice not to drive at night or visit public places. To top it off, the sense-defying ‘loadshedding’ crippled the city and most of my plans to be productive. It was funny how a few days of being in Lahore, my London pragmatism turned initially to frustration and later into helplessness.

Behind the glittery facade of glass offices and neon lights, there was an evident lack of the spirit of Lahore. It was as if the city had decided to disassociate itself from its inhabitants by falling into a deep slumber. Most of my ill-tempered thoughts were directed to the social and educational deprivation of the society. Having an upbringing in a household where a core focus was on high moral values and education, I was a bit disappointed that the so called educated in our society had done nothing but better themselves and line their own and friends pockets. All this at the cost of a crumbling nation whose financial and natural resources cannot sustain the rising needs of the burgeoning population. But some will argue this can be the case with most of the country so how does it relate to Lahore?

Well to answer that question, I think we need to search for the soul of Lahore. If we chart the course of the city and its majority Muslim population through history, it’s little more than a fraction of the centuries when the city stood as a melting pot of culture, religion, education and commerce. Ask any visitor to Lahore about their lasting memories of the city and chances are they would say it was its Mughal architecture, the Royal Gardens or the cross section of religious shrines. In all my life, no one has ever truly praised a post-1947 symbol. So I believe there is a message in all of this. We need to rekindle the soul of the city and transform it back to its rightful place: to be a seat of great learning, architecture, culture and religious and social tolerance. With the right focus, maybe us Lahoris can all act as a beacon of change for the rest of the country to follow.

Maybe the ceiling of the Ferozepur Road Underpass got scratched by heavy vehicles that exceeded the height limit prescribed for the tunnel or maybe it’s an act of transformers. Similarly, in Islamabad brand new vehicles on top of a truck got damaged when the truck driver tried to squeeze his vehicle through an underpass a couple of days ago.

What a shame!  So who would you blame?

After unanimously being elected the new Chief Minister of Punjab, the first order to be issued by Sardar Dost Mohammad Khosa was that of fulfillment of a promise made by the PML (N) President, Mian Shahbaz Sharif i.e. conversion of the grand new Chief Minister Secretariat in Lahore into a Girls University for Information Technology. 

While majority of the population is hailing the decision and characterizing it as first of the falling pillars of elitist rulers, what many don’t realize is that this move of the new government is an even bigger mistake. 

The lavish complex was constructed in the exclusive high-security neighborhood of GOR near the Mall Road and is situated quite next to the old CM Secretariat. 

Staggering amounts were spent on an area of 85,000 square meters in a locality where a one-kanal plot is no less than Rs.2.5 million. The whole project cost around 350 million rupees with additional expenses of 110 million, 120 million, 10 million each spent on interior décor, air-conditioning and plantations respectively. Office floors are tiled with granite while Spanish tiles decorate the lavish bathrooms.  

According to provided statistics in the press, it will take almost Rs.340 million a year to maintain only this property and that too in a country where 33% of the 162 million population lives on less than a dollar a day. All this expenditure has been labeled as a wastage of public money with least regards of the previous government to the poor of this city particularly and Punjabis generally. And rightly so is the claim true, regardless of the fact that this new secretariat was to serve the seat of the Punjab Chief Minister who was lacking a proper office for years and forgetting the fact that billions were spent on construction of a new Prime Minister Secretariat in Islamabad during the earlier rule of the new government itself. 

However, what this new ‘welfare’ government did, totally lacks sense and is a decision of dull proportions. Converting this piece of art into a women’s university is as lame a decision as one that leads to its total destruction. Firstly, it is not the right place for a public educational institution especially for girls referring to the close proximity of high-sensitive government offices and residences of important people in power. Even the disturbance created by blockades to entrances of GOR and regular VIP movement at the old CM Secretariat next door is enough to convince concerned parents in deciding against their children’s admission into such a university, making the whole plan an unfeasible one. 

What, on the other hand, would have been a wiser move was to auction the property at prime rates for a luxury hotel or apartments to raise money for construction of a new University at a more feasible and secure location somewhere else in the city. 

Otherwise, let the millions already spent on this building go into scrap as students have no interest or motivation in preserving or carefully using the granite tiles or Spanish bathrooms just for the sake of saving people’s money from going into trash.

I was born in mid seventies. Which means I grew up in the eighties during General Zia’s era; the Afghan war (part 1), the drugs and kalashnikov culture (the former I never took, the later I was never offered), the danda bardar Punjabi movies, the parda dar PTV, and the extremely conservative, super disciplined, highly strict, boys high schools.

In the nutshell I didn’t quite grow up to begin with… living in the city of Lahore (outside the walls though) during the times when time hardly passed and things hardly happened.

Then in the early nineties I went abroad. A short stint during high school to get accustomed to the rest of the world. Interestingly, as soon as I left Lahore, the city started changing… no wait, it actually started magnifying, electrifying and embracing a major paradigm make-over. And that too at a pretty brisk pace. So it was a fairly different Lahore to which I came back just a few years later. Lahore under full fledged democracy… pseudo nonetheless. At the onset though, it appeared to be a highly corrupt, self centered and unfriendly society trying to make its mark in transparency international reports and through unaccounted for and bizarre series of socio-political and economic events. However a deeper scrutiny revealed a silent transformation towards maturity… and towards modernity. Bit by bit though, and giving way to intense materialism, as a way of side effect.

Flooded with mobile phones (without SMS; they came later… and with incoming call charges), internet and CDs (even DVDs came later), late night hangouts and soft drink sponsored basants, satellite TV (cable came later too) with Indian reality shows that hardly had anything to do with reality, expanding roads, overhead bridges, new buildings, new factories, and what looked like a dusty path towards self attained prosperity. This was Lahore on a bumpy ride… hardly perfect, but better than before… So I imagined.

Then came 2001, and the Afghan War (part 2); this time without drugs and Kalashnikov; and for a while it mattered not much to anyone living here. The city kept flourishing, progressing; new buildings kept popping up, roads kept getting better, neater, cleaner, and larger… and everything kept waking up to life every now and then. But how can there be a war (cold or otherwise) and Pakistan be not involved in it. So it did; and the war actually spilled over to our doorstep… perils of it, this time around, being suicide bombings and terrorism… not sporadic, but very frequent… not fictional, but very real. That coupled with a “crisis of the month” situation did not quite make a decent bed time story. And with time it only got worse. And with more time, it came to the point when everyone I knew had been to at least one place; a building, a road or a mosque, which later-on was subject to a (suicide or otherwise) bomb blast. And everyone I knew, hated the fact that there seemed to be less and less electricity, let alone peace and quiet at either political front, or any other. Pakistan came to be known as the most dangerous place on earth… a title I still disagree with, even though I wouldn’t mind calling it the “most happening” place on earth.

This is pretty much where we stand today.

The reason that I just wrote the above passage was not to repeat what everyone already knows. The reason for writing the above is fairly simple… and personal.

Fairly simple because I grew up in Lahore in the eighties - when time hardly passed and things hardly happened. Now I am here in the late 00s – and the time does pass quickly and things do happen… we seem to have taken a 180 degree turn (or is it 360 degrees?). But isn’t it still the same old dusty path towards what might someday be a stable, self attained, socio-economic prosperity? We still haven’t quite gotten rid of the perils of the old past (the sheer backwardness and the senseless streaks that sometimes overwhelm our society)… So how long would it take us to get rid of the perils of new present and the upcoming future?

And personal because I have just crossed the age of 30. I have to take a decision whether to establish myself for the rest of my life here, or somewhere else. Should I be hopeful as in the nineties, or depressed as in the eighties, or both at the same time? Should I watch with keen interest what unfolds every now and then, or should I just ignore it all?

On 23^rd March, our national day, as I put on the TV, all I see is the flock of gigantic floats, strolling on the roads like mythical creatures, carrying missiles and tanks on their shoulders. What I don’t see is what I want to see. A peaceful, modern, stable and still very happening (without being dangerous) Pakistan. And our cities (whether Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad) that relish culture, creativity and maturity… centers of excellence.

And this is me in an optimistic tone.

Today’s blasts in Lahore are just the latest deadly attacks in Pakistan. At about 9.30am, the whole city was literally shaken by the sound of two explosions. They were so intense that people reported hearing them and feeling the windows shake as far as five kilometres away. At least 25 people are dead and another 150 or so have been injured.

Whether you blame it on the post-9/11 world, Pakistan’s internal political instability or its rulers’ decades-old policy of supporting the agenda of foreign powers at the expense of Pakistanis, things have gone from bad to worse over the past two years. The bombers have spread from tribal areas in the north-west and Baluchistan to target major cities, mainly in the form of suicide attacks on government and army targets.

One of the targets was the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Temple Road, near major businesses and government offices. The first suicide bomber cleared the way for his associate by bringing the entrance gate down, while the second blew up his car inside the complex.

The second blast, unlike earlier incidents, happened in the upmarket residential area of Model Town, in front of the offices of an advertising agency. While the first attack could be attributed to the sensitive nature of the agency, the Model Town attack had no understandable motive - apart from the fact that it took place just round the corner from Bilawal House, home of the late ex-PM Benazir Bhutto and her party’s Lahore headquarters.

Lahore is Pakistan’s cultural capital, and during he bloody months of last year it remained largely peaceful compared to Karachi. But 2008 brought a deadly attack on city policemen guarding the Lahore High Court during a lawyers’ rally in January, followed by an attack on the prestigious Navy War College earlier this month.

Read more at The Guardian Blog