save the children

As a mother myself, its rather difficult for me to imagine another mother’s plight who might have lost her child. in fact i dont even want to imagine that kind of pain. it will be unbearable for me.
But the attack on APS and their brutal slaughtering of approximately 150 children forced me to think otherwise. i thought of the pain the mothers of all the martyred children will go through the rest of the lives. for the next 24 hours i could think of nothing else. And then i started reading about the other victims of this heinous act: children who were still alive but were seriously injured. i started thinking about the pain of their parents, standing beside their child’s bed in hospital, unsure of their child’s future. that was not any less painful to even think about. imagine the uncertainties, the insecurities these parents must have and might still feel. they dont know if their child will live and if will live, will he be able to walk properly or will he ever be able overcome this horrific incident.
i feel goosebumps every time i even start thinking about the pain.
and then each time i cant stop myself think about parents in tharparker where children are dying in front of their parents, in hospital beds due to malnutrition. is it less painful to lose your child in one blow? or to lose your child bit by bit i front of your very own eyes?
every time, i break down into tears because i dont have an answer.


The country drowns

For the past few months I was living in a utopia: a place where the main headline at the primetime news is that an undercover reporter has cnfrmd that people are gracious enough to give up their seats for elderly people in trains and the newspaper places the news of a salesgirl to have not been attentive enough to a tourist on the front page. While living here news coming from Pakistan sounds nothing less than news coming from hell.

Over the past few years good news has become more of a luxury for Pakistanis but nothing has been worse than watever has happened over the past one year. can it get any worse? I hope not but I think it would.

We have gone spirally downwards from the country beside India to the country that killed its ex prime minister, from the country that the whole Muslim world looked up to as the ‘leader’ to a country that trained people like Faisal Shahzad who cant even be loyal to their own country and from the country of sports champions to the country of sportsmen who can throw away just about any game for a few thousand dollars. I wish we could get back to those simple times wen people didnt even know Pakistan exits

And then we wonder why people dont want to help the victims of a flood that has drowned one-fifth of the country. Do we need any more reasons? Well, I can give you a few more. The ‘perfect’ record of our President is just one of the many for a start.

If you have read my blog previously, I am sure you have noticed that I am one of the few crazy optimists who still believe there is hope for Pakistan. But with each passing moment, my hope is dwindling. I dont know wat to expect any more.

Of shoes and men with balls

Amidst all the heart wrenching news that has been coming from Pakistan for the past two weeks now, I cant believe things have started to sound so funny all of a sudden.

Just a day ago a pair of shoes were hurled at President Zardari in Birmingham and no matter how much Kaira is denying the incident, there must be some truth in it as it has been covered by international media. Not that I believe everything that the international media says but if the news was wrong in fact, I am still unable to comprehend why was the transmission of most news channels banned in Pakistan? And from what I have read, I understand Jang distributors were threatened too and thus the distribution got delayed by several hours. Whether it really happened or not, it did bring smiles to faces of thousands of Pakistanis all over the world who were tingled just by the thought of it. Add to it some of the funniest tweets and there you have it: a comical whirlwind which was more of a relief for the distressed people.

But there was some even better stuff coming up. In the last test between Pakistan and England, Umar Gul emerged as the highest scoring Pakistani batsman. It was actually a bit embarrassing to see how the rest of the team just toppled. The 2nd test was proving to be no different till later during the day, Zulqarnain Haider and Mohammed Amir came on the crease. Magic happened from then onwards. It made me proud to see (while following score on how these new young players were fighting back for perhaps not a victory but for an honorable defeat. And then came Ajmal. His maiden 50 alongwith Haider’s 88 gave Pakistan some hope. We have a match on our hands now, baby!!!

We should now only have 10 bowlers in the team alongwith a wicketkeeper who can bat. That actually seems like the only combination that’s working for a change!

Happy Independence Day?

32 killed in Karachi over MP’s murder. 2.5 million affected by floods. President chilling in the UK. And begging. Mostly chilling though.

Whether I like her not, Fatima Bhutto’s tweet summed up the whole situation in a manner that can only be called complete.

Pakistan is going through a really tough time and the President’s visit could not be more untimely than this. During this one past week, there has been a plane crash killing 152 innocent civilians, the country is drowning in a flood which is most probably the worst in 80 years, an MPA has been murdered brutally in a masjid and the violence that followed has already taken lives of nearly 50 people already. And its not only about people who have died, what about the people who are still alive? There has been a financial fall out of all these events. The flood has hugely affected agricultural lands in both Punjab and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, 2.5 million people have been displaced and immediately need food and shelter, vehicles worth millions of rupees were torched yesterday in Karachi and businessmen have lost billions in the strike today.

And our politicians are happy justifying their fake degrees while our President is partying in London in his suite at Hyatt Regency where he has booked 18 rooms on the same floor where half of the rooms will remain unoccupied during his visit. I wish the President had listened to other politicians for a change!

Just 10 days later Pakistan will be celebrating its 63rd independence anniversary, but is there something to celebrate?


No its not Twitter, Facebook or Google Buzz. It might be for the youth but for the majority of Pakistanis, its politics. And arent we always asking the most stupid questions. Here are some of the most commonly discussed unsolved questions and my answers (you dont obviously have to agree to them 😛 ):

Should Pakistan have been created?

It was created more than 6 decades back. Can we talk about improvement instead?

Kashmir hamara hai.

LOL. Is that a joke? We have already lost half of our country. We are finding it difficult to hold on to wat we are left with. What will we do with a part of land which is not ours yet?

Pakistan should be an Islamic State.

It was established as Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1973 constitution.

Free judiciary (a.k.a. CJ mafia’s authority) will make Pakistan the most democratic, crime free country in the world.

Oh yea? Keep dreaming. It has only established a criminal, who attempted to murder the COAS, the most ‘trustworthy’ and ‘respected’ person in the country.

Only Khilafat-e-Rashida can save us.

Like Khilafat-e-Rashida saved the Khalifas themselves? I think we need to remind ourselves that both Hazrat Usman (RA) and Hazrat Ali (RA) were murdered by the so-called Muslims only. We only deserve people like Zardari to rule us.

Who is to blame?

Its been more than 36 hours since the attack on the Sri Lankan team, they are now safely back home Alhamdulillah. Now that the initial shock has subsided, I have been reading/watching news/analysis on this issue and I am finding the reaction quite sad. Why is everyone pointing finger at someone else?

Sri Lanka itself has a long history of dealing with terrorism and they know how difficult it can get to control such situations. In fact, the whole of South Asia has been a target of militants for quite some time now. But, we as Pakistanis need to find out why nothing, nothing at all, seems to be going right in this country.

The basic problem, in my opinion, is our politics and our corrupt politicians. We have the most corrupt person in the country as our President. The Prime Minister is his puppet and the Parliament is full of clowns. The democratic government of Punjab has been dissolved and Governor rule has been imposed. I am not a fan of Sharif brothers…but they were democratically elected by the people for God’s sake! The judges still havent been reinstated. Once again, I am not a fan of Ch. Iftikhar but if the whole nation wants him to be the CJ, then wats the problem? Just reinstate him! With so much happening, it is just so simple to get things done against Pakistanis…by Pakistanis themselves. People are desperate! They hate the government and are willing to do anything that tarnishes the image of the government even further…which might lead to chaos and might, just might, help in changing the government.

Whatever happened yesterday doesnt seem to be something Taleban/Al-Qaeda would do. It definitely looks a lot like the Mumbai attack but the results were different. Over there, 10 terrorists were able to take the whole city hostage for nearly 3 days, here they did attack but were forced to run away. But I dont call it our victory. We lost. They had the latest weapons and had come with a plan….and they escaped on foot.* We need to muster up the courage and get united, for once, and try to de-weaponize our society.

Finally, I would like to request all of you to send in an email to Mr. Duleep Mendis (CEO of SL Cricket Board) at and tell him that the whole Pakistani nation is with him, with his team at this hour and that we are ashamed that they had to go through the worst experience of their lives on our soil.

* Watch the video, its so shocking

Zardari jokes

Just as we have the pathan jokes, sardar ji jokes and blonde jokes, we now also have zardari jokes…and the best thing is that we dont have to make them up, they are all true.

1) Im sure all of you have already received an email forwarding with an attachment of a photcopy of a comment by the President on the comment book at Quaid’s Mazar which says, “May Gaad give us the street to save Pakistan”. Soon after this, the two pages with the President’s comments were actually removed from the comment book and the comment was rewritten on a fresh page correcting the two misspelled words. Just when we thought it had ended, major newspapers published the original comment page with the new fabricated comment and the funniest had to happen after that. It was turned into a huge issue and the columnists who had written about this whole thing were criticised as the “presidential spokesman has taken strong exception to a malicious campaign initiated by some anti-democratic elements to tarnish the image of President Asif Ali Zardari.”

2) Nando’s has used the recent most stunt by our president for their marketing in a way that Im afraid they might actually get into trouble.

3) The very intelligent President also thinks that Kashmiris are terrorists and our 60 year old struggle was just a mistake. Wah ji wah. This must have made the armed forces really happy and they must have decided to support him and give him complete protection in a jail just like they gave protection to Nawaz Sharif less than a decade ago. If you do remember, he promised for a khushkhabri about the Kashmir issue a while back. I suppose, this was the precisely the khushkhabri he was talking about.