Numaan’s Diary

Radio Pakistan Karachi’s historical building is crying for attention. This building is significant in many ways. It is not just another old building in the old town district of Karachi. It is a valuable library containing important historical speeches, performances by the maestros and audio archives covering the history of Pakistan. Concerned citizens are requested to take action, write to the Chairman of Pakistan broadcasting corporation and ask him to take proper measures to preserve this important cultural heritage.

So I decided to finally go to the saloon and get my hair done.  The Saloon, well actually it is still an old fashioned barber shop but they like to be called “Saloon” nowdays. The one I go to is located near Hashmani Eye hospital near Old Numaish area. Just opposed the Imam Bargah Ali Raza, the one that got bombed a few years ago. This saloon is air conditioned, they are the experts but I really don’t care much about expertise or styling what I like about this place is that it is very clean. They use washed and dry towels for each customer. They use Phenyl to wipe the floor, and anti bacterial soaps for the staff to wash their hands. The place looks a lot like hospitals.  

I left home late afternoon thinking that I will be smart to reach there before Eid’s Chand is announced. The barber shops, saloons and beauty parlors get extremely crowded on chand raat. But during the whole Ramadhan such places remain deserted until the Iftar. So being the smart guy I reached there early, and then I realized that I wasn’t the only smart guy in the town. 

The saloon was full of people, there was no room to sit on the velvet seats in the waiting area. Instead of feeling awkward, walking from one corner to other, I decided to sit and found a place between a skinny memon teenager and a beefy pathan guy. The Pathan guy was wearing Shalwar Kameez, was smelling of onions and garlic, and he looked just like Taliban. May be he is a suicide bomber ready to attack the saloon where people get their beards shaved. According to taleban shaving your face is unIslamic. So they bomb the barber shops in Tribal areas of Pakistan. I checked out that Pathan guy once again through the mirror on the wall. I specially paid attention to his upper waist portion, this is where these suicide bombers wear the explosives belt. The Pathan guy had a huge belly, and it was obvious that there are no bombs inside his kameez, just the hideous gorilla sized belly. With his long beard, belly, fatness, and stinkiness, I wandered if he is married or not. If he is married what his woman thinks when he tries to kiss her. But then I don’t know if kissing is allowed in Taleban ideology or not. Women are the most weird of all species in the world. May be she loved him with all his shortcomings. May be she is more ugly and terrifying than the poor pathan guy. 

The staff at this saloon is very professional. They usually don’t waste any time, but there is no barber in the world who wouldn’t want to chat with his clients. I hate such barbers, and the question that I hate most is “What you do for living”? Once when I was in Islamabad and went to a saloon there the barber asked me this question and I told him that I don’t do anything. He wasn’t satisfied so he kept asking and finally I told him that I am a writer. This question is usually an ice breaker for these barbers so that they can initiate a chat about your career, then they discuss whatever is on the television mounted on the wall in all barber shops, then they discuss politics while shaving your chin with a hand on your throat, and finally reaching the agreement that Pakistan is totally fucked up when spraying your face with water. This barber then shared some of his Urdu poetry with me. I told him I have absolutely no interest in poetry at all. So he asked then what you write. I told him I write stories for children, articles for internet magazines. 

Ohh you write Omro-Ayyar and Ameer Hamza kind of stories? He asked me. Well I told you every thing you say to a barber is returned to you in form of another question. He was asking for my home address when he was giving my hair the finishing touch and I end up leaving the shop giving him not only my address but also my telephone number. 

So the staff here is no different from anywhere else, what I like about this place is that they have already asked me all the questions. But they can always bring the current affairs. There was a news report on television about people rushing to the markets to buy new clothes, accessories and gifts for the eid. They were showing women, one of them was telling the reporter about how things are so expansive this Ramadhan. She was 40+ and over weight like 90% other women of her age group. Her face was glowing, she not only spent thousands of Rupees and countless hours while shopping she also got interviewed by Geo Television. Wow, she must be feeling lucky, and may be concious too her make up had long been evaporated. I am sure her friends would let her know how old she looked during her 30 seconds interview. 

Every one, particularly men have an opinion about women. The most common is that they are all stupid. Watching this woman on television the owner of the saloon commented. “Aunti you should have prepared for eid before Ramadhan why you waited till the last days?” Then a client who was bored while waiting for his turn said something, then the pathan guy shared a stupid joke about stupid women. 

It made me think, that sexy guys with hanging jeans, the fat pathan, the staff, the owner, and the little boy who was wiping the floor, they are all the same from inside. May be I am the only unique individual in this place. But then after two hours when I finally got my new fresh look and was about to leave my seat I reached the agreement with my barber. We both, just like many others before us, agreed that yes Pakistan is totally fucked up. I realized that we are all the same We are the common men. What I didn’t like is that I am one of the common men. I should get my hair done at that gay hair stylist’s saloon at Peal Continental.

There is no better night in Karachi than the Chand Raat (night before the Eid day). The shopping and festive fever starts picking up the momentum since the first day of the Ramadhan. It reaches the peak during the last ten days and then the climax on the last night.

This is the time when nothing can stop Karachiites from going out and shop till the dawn. It doesn’t matter who occupies the presidential palace or who is getting bombed by Pakistan army. Inflation, food and energy shortages, terrorism, nothing can stop them from spending money and feel happy for themselves. They are truly brave people, as they work hard to live in the now and they know how to enjoy it. Of course they are worried about how they are going to spend an entire month without any money left. But lets just not think about it now, they tell themselves. Lets just concentrate on how we can knockout the salesman at the Kurta Corner.

I didn’t get much chance to survey the shopping areas this Ramadhan. No, I was not too busy fasting and offering prayers. I missed several fasts and I prayed once or twice each day. What I did during this whole month? Why I didn’t call some friends to come and rescue me? I am asking myself.

May be it was work, I have started another blog and made it compulsory for myself to come up with one post each day. Any one who blogs regularly would agree with me that it is difficult to come up with fresh ideas every day. Every thing that you thought worth blogging, has already been blogged. It’s a difficult path, each day I go through doubts. May be I shouldn’t have started this blog at all. It becomes more painful to come up with new ideas when you are in doubt. So I need to assure myself all over again. No this project is good, it has so much potential, look at the link backs they are not bad for a week’s blogging. Then suddenly an idea strikes me and I start constructing my post.

I go through this doubt, re-assurance and light bulbing every day. Its really exhausting sometimes specially when I have to keep up with all the fried goodies at iftar. I am not the kind of person who would leave all the food and rush to the mosque for maghrib prayers. I sit firmly on the dastarkhawn and do justice to each and every thing that is there for me to eat. Even when I am not fasting, I never miss an iftar.

I feel sleepy after iftar so I go out for a walk. I walk from DJ science college to the Pakistan Chowk, then to Civil Hospital, then I turn around and walk back to Aaram Bagh, then to Fresco chowk and back home. I love the buildings on this route. They were built during good times. Walking past them, I think about how these buildings looked when they were new? Who were the people that lived and worked there? How was the life back then? Why don’t people make such beautiful buildings any more? I walk past garbage, and I think there is no hope for this city. Its the filthiest in the whole world and nothing is ever going to change this. Then I see women in burqas, and I think that each day there are more and more women getting attacked by the burqa virus.

When I am back home from walk, I am tired. My body is just as fat as it was an hour ago when I left home for the walk, it is my mind that needs rest.

I sit back on my desk again, staring at my computer screen, downloading movies, listening music, reading blogs, chatting with friends. It’s all necessary. Thank God I don’t use facebook or orkut or other social media sites. I simply can’t. There is really no time for any new activity at all.

But I think I should go out and do some shopping. Or atleast, I should go to the saloon for an haircut. I look like Saddam Hussein freshly out of his cave.

I left my house at around 2:30 pm. On reaching the street where my polling station was located, I noticed that there were no camps of Pakistan Peoples Party or MMA. Only the MQM camps were there and only their volunteers were present and in big numbers. I reched my polling station and surprisingly there were no polling agents of any other party but MQM. A huge number of MQM’s supporters were present inside the polling station. Since my all my relatives had always been devoted MQM supporters. Every one there thought that I am definitely going to vote MQM. They laughed when I showed my Identity card. They even asked me if I would like to cast another vote. I saw a 30 plus guy showing a pink slip of paper to presiding officer and getting a ballot paper without showing any identity card.

MQM’s volunteers were not only disturbing the polling process they were even spying on the polling booths. When I went inside to stamp on the ballot paper, a twenty plus guy was watching my ballot paper. I asked him to look away and when he disappeared I stamped my ballot papers. Dropped ballot papers in ballot boxes. I sat there with other MQM volunteers (they were all guys from my neighbourhood, some were relatives, cousins, etc.) no one asked me to leave the polling station and I saw many people coming showing identity cards of their dead relatives and casting votes. Many people came showing pink papers and casting votes, many people were accompanied by councillors, naib nazims, and MQM supporters.

When I was leaving the polling station I saw a forgein election observer accompanied by a Pakistani man and a woman. I thought for a while that may be I should talk to her, but then decided that it will be such a waste of time, she must have known whats going on by now.

Its quite clear now that Dr. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig has lost to Khushbakh Shujaat of MQM. What I don’t understand is that why MQM bothered to stage bogus votes when it was already quite clear that they would win easily?

Update: Dr. Alvi reports rigging in Gulistan-e-Johar Karachi. He noticed the same things that I have mentioned above.

City District Government of Karachi has banned Plastic shopping bags. During last few days the CDGK took strict action against the manufacturers of these Plastic bags, resellers and distributors. CDGK’s action has resulted into an acute shortage of paper bags, rubber bands and other packing materials that are widely used by local grocery stores and shop keepers. The shop keepers are facing difficulty to come up with some quick alternate to plastic bags.

There is no doubt that these plastic bags are dangerous for the environment and managing them with the garbage is real trouble for CDGK. Since there is no proper system of handling and disposing garbage, these plastic bags cause damage to city’s infrastructure such as electric and water supply and sewerage system.

It takes almost 500 to 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose. It is possible to recycle plastic bags but it is an expansive solution for a city like Karachi. These plastic bags are so cheap that once used, there is no incentive for people to reuse them again. Every shop keeper, store and retailer offers a free bag with almost every thing. From Large electrical appliances to ice cream vendors, every one offers shopping bag for no extra cost. When mixed with other garbage these plastic bags create a huge mess of pollution. Even the developed nations are facing difficulty combating the disposal and recycling of plastic shopping bags.

The advantages of banning the plastic bags are unlimited. However, there are still some concerns over such an immediate action. This is a huge industry the ban would affect thousands of people involved in manufacturing, distribution and resell of these bags. Mass usage of Paper bags is itself not an environment friendly idea but these bags are easy to recycle and they get easily decomposed naturally.

The Google Zeitgeist now shows popular queries from Pakistan. In January 2007, the most popular query made by Pakistanis is Pakistan itself. Yes, the country we live in is just as mysterious and unknown to us as it is for any European or African.

We don’t really have any stars and celebrities of our own in Pakistan. The only Pakistani who made it to top 15 search queries, is Atif Aslam defeated by Sania Mirza the Indian tennis star.

Karina Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and bollywood itself is one of the most popular queries made by Pakistanis. No matter how much Pakistanis love Bollywood and Indian Stardust, the search term Urdu is the eighth most popular query.

Karachi is the eleventh most popular search term, warid at 12 and Jang got the 13th position.

Pakistan is entering into a new era of prosperity. The country has internet access in almost all cities. There are computer labs in schools and colleges, every other day you would see some government officer inaugrating a new computer lab in some school or college. Musharraf’s government is proud that they have made so many TV channels available to Pakistanis. All medium to large size companies, institutions and organizations have some www address printed on their business cards, posters and advertisements.

But I feel that we as a nation are absolutely clueless about what information is and how important role it plays in the development of nations. We know that our organizations, businesses or institutes need a www.myorganization.com.pk website. But we have no idea how to use the world wide web. We have fruits in our hands but we don’t know that in order to enjoy their juices we need to bite them. In 2006 Pakistanis can not download your utility bills. Even after yeas of hard work to bring these small but significant changes to lives of Pakistanis, we failed.

Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC), is a Pakistani company with a www.kesc.com.pk domain name. KESC supplies electricity to more than 14 Million residents, businesses and industries in the Megapolis and surrounding areas. This giant corporation’s website has only three links on their main page. Rest of the page is an screenshot of a website and is displayed in Gif image format. I remember KESC had a functional website sometime ago and I have downloaded my electricity bill from their website. I remember they had detailed information available. Now every thing is gone.

The Website has a picture telling visitors that KESC has 92 customer services centers, but no addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses available. A picture titled “Latest News” tells you about Federal Minister Mr. Liaquat Jatoi’s visit to KESC headquarters on 29 September 2006, nothing more on that is available.

I don’t know how many Bills KESC issues each month, but this URL is printed on the back of each KESC bill. I don’t know how many people make an attempt to look at the KESC website each day or month. But I find it quite suprising that they are so careless about all this.

The website (a poster actually) doesn’t disclose any contact information so I was unable to contact people who are responsible for this job at KESC. It has a link at the bottom telling that the website designed and maintained by e-Creatorz. I filled out the contact form on the e-creatorz website on January 19 and asked them about the situation. They didn’t disclose or clarify anything, simple told me to wait till the website is relaunched hopefully in a few days. Now after a month, www.KESC.com.pk still displays the flyer that you can get created by the graphic designers at Burns Road for RS.100. I don’t blame e-Creatorz for getting more money than they deserved. I blame KESC for being so cruel, barbaric and ignorant.

KESC and all Pakistanis who can not understand the importance of information, the broken websites, useless and contentless macromedia flashy websites, and the 30 minutes per week per student computer labs. These are the signs that Pakistan is not entering into any new era of prosperity. We are actually going back in the reverse gear. Yes we are making progress and working hard but in the wrong and totally opposite direction than the one that leads to knowledge, power and freedom.

I went to cast my vote in the by-poll election of National Assembly’s NA-250 seat. Army’s B team, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal boycotted the election blaming government of pre-poll rigging. Pakistan People’s Party’s Nafees Siddiqui had support from various parties in ARD (Alliance for Restoration of Democracy) but MMA prefered not to support him and boycott the election.

There is no doubt that MQM’s candidate Ikhlaq Hussain is going to win this selection. There were MQM workers every where in and outside polling stations they ran a huge campaign and used government resources for their campaigning. They have great media relations, they spend huge amounts on advertisements. Still, MMA’s compromise with PPP had the potential to change the entire scenario. At least in this constituency where Jamat-e-Islami always had a strong vote bank.

Pictures, please click to enlarge:

My polling station was Government college for Women, Shahra-e-liaquat. I loved the campus, I didn’t know it is so big and beautiful. The boundary wall of the college is so high that it hides not only the girls but also the beauty of the campus.

Men’s polling booth

Election comission had the list of candidates on display at every polling booth. Some dil-jala PPP worker had used a pen on this list to write “Has Already Won” with the name of MQM’s candidate Captain Ikhlaq Hussain.

The same list again

There were MQM workers every where in and outside polling stations. They were providing free shuttle services to voters. I didn’t see any PPP workers around, those who were sitting at the camps lacked the enthusiasm and energy.

This Pakistan People’s Party’s polling camp. The workers were enjoying free Biryani and there were no young people around.

MMA’s election office locked down.

Kajra Re, University of Karachi Department of Food Sciences:
Sir Jahanzeb Farewell Song:
Lunch break Party in Office

Khaike Pan Banaras Wala

Explaining social schizophrenia Dr Ayesha Siddiqa’s excellent analysis of social schizophrenia of the Bahawalpuri society. How the puritanical religion has affected the Bahwalpur. Ayesha Siddiqa is the author of forthcoming book Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy

Election of the president – a legal analysis It has been argued that how can an assembly which has been elected for a period of five years elect a president for 10 years.

Islands for the rich and famous.

In recent years residents of Karachi have been facing a great deal of problems due to the increase in traffic, pollution, crime and lack of other basic amenities. Such a project would allow the crème de la crème to distinguish themselves from the millions of middle-class people in the city who have now, according to one socialite, turned it into a ‘shit-hole’.

Karachi police has obtained a toll free number for street crime unit. The number is 0800-91515 and it would start functioning soon. The plan is to connect with the CPLC and PTA’s existing systems. This would help the victims of street crime to quickly report the crime so that police can take action before the criminals reach safe heavens. It is particularly useful against robberies, motor cycle and car jacking, and mobile snatching.

Chalo Chalo Dubai Chalo

Gnome Hacks, is a repository for all those little tricks that people have worked out that do something useful or cool with their GNOME Desktop.