Big Achievement !

X: It would be a big achievement if someone hailing from a middle-class family could manage to bear the expenses of his own marriage.

Z: By the time he retires, all a person wants is to have enough money so that he could marry off his children and buy a 5 Marla house (after some thought) and perform a Hajj if some money is left.

A SMS Survey

Simply reflects that how much I like to waste my time. The period during which I am supposed to go through the first chapter of “Futures and Forward Markets”, I am tabulating this thing. It was a grueling HTML practice, making and aligning those cells.

Anyway, below is a table showing the results of a sms survey. The participants were required to answer in yes/no keeping me in mind. I thank you all for your brutally honest replies. It wasn’t easy to digest the bitter truth. However, it was interesting to know that somehow I manage to be quite less boring without being a lot funny.

The last column does deviate a bit from the average but who knows better than mothers :)

Fighter	N	N	N	N	N	Y	16%
Shy	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	83%
Selfish	N	N	N	Y	N	N	16%
Crazy	Y	Y	N	N	Y	N	50%
Sincere	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	100%
Liar	N	N	N	N	Y	N	16%
Rude	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N	50%
Caring	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	100%
Friend	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	100%
Talkative	N	N	N	N	N	N	0%
Funny	N	N	N	Y	N	N	16%
Boring	N	N	Y	Y	N	N	33%
Loving	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	100%
Sweet	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	83%

P.S. If you too love wasting time and want to chip in, please feel free to do so.

Change is the routine of life

It was in Dewan Singh Muftoon’s ‘Naqaabl-e-faramosh’. It read that when I die all I want is a few thousand in my bank and a few million at my funeral procession.

Accidents make me contemplative and especially when I’m involved in one. Surprisingly I remember the exact thought which crossed my mind when I fell. Just before my bike toppled I was happy that the last thing I had done was to recite a Surah (One of the sections/chapters of the Quran). Not that I would have gone scot-free for this act on the judgment day but yes, a sinful life would have ended on a nice note.

I know after reading this people would be like, “For God’s sake man! You were hit by a bicycle; don’t make such a fuss about it”. I know it sounds funny but somehow it really made me think what I would have left behind. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in this sms I got a while back,

“Whatever happened, is happening or will happen…It is all for good. What have you lost for which you cry? You didn’t have anything in the first place. Whatever you have was taken from this world and whatever you have lost will be given back to this world. Whatever you own today was someone else’s yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow. Change is the routine of the life."

Ya Khuda - Qudrut-ullah-Shahaab

While reviewing this book, a young journalist, Azhar Sohail wrote in 1985

“It was perhaps 1959. I saw my father bring home a small book. While he read the book, he wept incessantly. When he was finished I grabbed the book from his cupboard, completed it within an hour but didn’t cry.

Four years back I read the book again and there were tears in my eyes. Then like a bolt of flash I understood that this book makes you cry when your conscience has matured”

I have just read the book. It didn’t make me cry but yes, I felt this unexplainable anger. I still don’t know at what I was angry. Was it the shallowness of mankind, moral degradation of self-proclaimed religious scholars, depravity of political leaders or was I angry because even after 60 years we are standing exactly where we started. We are still being led by those scholars and leaders. We haven’t learnt a thing.

The book tells the tale of the atrocities faced by a girl at the hands of her own countrymen when she migrated from India in 1947. How she died again and again before her last death. How her colorful and fancy dreams about the new nation were battered and bruised after coming to Pakistan.

It is a far greater tragedy being betrayed by one’s own people. Reading this book is like getting resounding slaps on your face because the story is true and all the characters are real. All those characters are still very much part of our society. They still roam around; prowling and hunting for more. Their thirst is insatiable. This book only tells about one of the thousands such stories. Qudrut was right in saying,

“While I waited at the Wahga Border for my relatives, I witnessed scenes which even after thousand attempts my pen is unable to write down completely”.

Such was the horror of that calamity and such is the sorry situation of today’s Pakistan.

Kindness of Strangers

This is one of the stories which truly warms the heart, gives a hope...

After spending a weekend away with my adult son, I was so impressed by his generous heart, I sent him the following e-mail.

"Dear Son, I want to thank you for teaching me a very valuable lesson in life by the great example you set. When we were eating at that cafe in Bondi and a person who’d ordered his burger didn’t have enough money to pay for it, without a moment’s hesitation, you leant over and put the extra $2 on the counter...

Read the complete story at

http://www.readersdigest.co.nz/content/stories-of-kindness/2/?commentPageIndex=0&orderCommentsBy=0

Scream Bloody Murder

‘Scream Bloody Murder’, this is the name of the documentary being aired by CNN these days. It covers the horrors of genocide. Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent takes her audience through a very dark chapter of history, smeared by the blood of millions of innocent lives; starting from the unspeakable atrocities of holocaust to the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Iraq, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. The reporting was fierce, the images horrifying.

I was certainly taken aback by her portrayal of the Bosnian genocide. Reporting live from that region in 1990s, the way she questioned the then president of United States, Bill Clinton, about taking necessary steps to avoid the massacre was astounding. I never expected something that impartial from a Western journalist. They usually always carry a tinge of bias along.

Later on it wasn’t surprising to read blatant criticism on her reporting of the Bosnian Genocide in this documentary as well as when she actually reported from Muslim Sarajevo back in 1990s. She has been accused of being a Muslim-sympathizer, being born to an Iranian father and having led her early life in Iran until the Islamic Revolution. Her answer to this criticism is worth mentioning,

"There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."