Floods: we will all be affected....

Floods continue to wreak havoc in Pakistan. Travelling down from up in the north, the angry waters have destroyed many things along the way. However, its direct victim has been the village Pakistan. The villagers who keep the economic wheels of Pakistan that is primarily an agrarian country moving. Yet and yet! they remain on the lowest rung of the social ladder, bending under the burden of the privileged Pakistan that literally feeds on the toil of the folk in countryside. To make matters worse, these floods have devastated their already lifeless lives. In this backdrop, we the city-dwellers can no longer remain ensconced in the comfort that waters won’t touch us. Well, the water may well not touch us but the misery will. This is so because when the wheel stops moving in the village, we all come to a grinding halt.
People in the villages of Pakistan are equally important, if not more. For decades the state of Pakistan had forgotten and forsaken them until the nature’s fury chased them out of their anonymity and obscurity. Now, let’s turn this challenge into an opportunity by not only returning them their lives but also making sure that they are not out of mind once they are out of sight.

Stories out of floods...

The floods have thrown up some incredible survivor stories of courage, faith, desperation, fear, misery and miracle.

The following are a few of them:


1: BHOORI- THE SWIMMING COW-SAVED OLD WOMAN

“Allah saeen karam karaisy na Bhoori” (Allah almighty will bless our bhoori) says the 70 year old widow zainab bibi in her native seraiki as she addresses the cow which shakes its head in response.
Flash floods in dera din panah(kot addu) separated zainab bibi from her family of 30 members comprising her children and grandchildren.
That’s how she tells her story:
“ I was sleeping in the courtyard near the cattle pen while my sons and their families were present on the roof-top when a gush of water threw me up. Moments later Bhoori came from nowhere and I clung to her neck. We floated around for many hours and it was around fajr (dawn) that I finally felt ground under my feet. It was bhoori that brought me to a dry spot from where our neighbours brought us here(a relief camp near muzaffargarh)”
Zainab bibi is optimistic about reuniting with her family soon. For now, she only has the company of her cow, Bhoori.

2: FAMILY ATE LEAVES TO SURVIVE

Finally it was left to Mother Nature to save the lives of shamsher sial and his three children. They remained perched on a tree for two days after flash floods hit their village near bhakkar. Once they survived the deluge, their next main challenge was to find food for themselves as no relief goods could reach them.
Shamsher tells his story:
“We spent the whole of last Wednesday and Thursday on a charpoy we had placed on the branches of a tree. Some of my relatives did the same to save their lives. During the two days, we ate leaves to survive. It was only after the water had receded that we were able to climb down and proceed to the embankment.”

3: MAN RISKS LIFE TO SAVE HIS BUFFALOES

Everyone present at the Qadirpur embankment near Sukkur noticed a ‘drowning’ man who was floating at a considerable velocity in the water-hundreds of thousands of cusecs flowing mercilessly- but the man was not alone and nearly a dozen buffaloes were floating with him as if they were weightless.
“Leave the animals and just come out” shouts a rescue official at the embankment. But the ‘drowning’ man flows past, ignoring the advice and continues his desperate attempt to steer his buffaloes out of water. To the astonishment of many, he succeeds and manages to come out of the water along with his herd.
The man is clearly shocked and exhausted to the extent that he fails to realize that his lower garment is missing. Rescuers cover the shivering man with a sheet. He identified himself as Deen Mohammad and after a few minutes he is back on his feet, guiding his cattle.
Deen mohammad recounts:
“They are my family. They feed my children. When the soldiers came to rescue us in boats they refused to allow my cattle on the boat. So I sent my family on the boat and stayed behind. This morning I decided to try my luck and entered the water along with the cattle. It was scary.”

Call for Pakistan!!!

The much awaited monsoon came but it was not alone. The rains were accompanied by floods as the rivers bloated and reservoirs overflowed inundating towns entirely and rendering people dead, injured, lost and homeless. To add insult to injuries, the state agencies seem clueless. In a state with as little resources as Pakistan has, in the aftermath of such natural disasters, the people throughout the length and breadth of Pakistan should spur into action, mobilize their resources and extend helping hand to our fellow citizens in distress rather jeopardy. The job of saving Pakistanis and later rehabilitating them should not be left to the government alone. All of us who can should come forward and help.
It is a call for Pakistan

when living longer becomes a problem.....

Shada islam’s column in today’s Dawn(31st july) brings to the fore a strange problem that the eurpoean world is faced with. It is known as the problem of ageing. It refers to the phenomenon which is the result of increasing life expectancy of the population at large. Due to advancement in health sciences and improvement in medical treatment, diseases that were once fatal are now being cured thus leading to the increased life span. Besides the standards of living, the standards of dying have also risen incredibly. However, the flip side to this is that number of the old people continues to rise and their ranks swell while the birth-rate in Europe continues to fall. This ever grey-ing population burdens the country’s budget and financial resources with its increased needs of health care, frequent medical attention and the pension fees. Besides, labour shortages slow down the economic growth and national output. Because people are living longer, the state has to take care of them for longer time thus adding increased burden on the exchequer. Shada quotes EU social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor as saying, “The number of retired people in Europe compared to those financing their pensions is forecast to double by 2060- the current situation is simply not sustainable”
While Pakistan continues to grapple with the population explosion and its concomitant problems of providing basic amenities to all the citizens and turning the population from a liability into an asset as majority of the population of Pakistan is young, Europe mulls over how to increase its population and how to deal with its older generation whose number rises steadily.
I wish we could swap our problems.

nazim hikmat----in solitary

These days, i am in love with nazim hikmat
A "romantic revolutionary", indeed.
Have a look at his following lines:

LETTERS FROM A MAN IN SOLITARY

1
I carved your name on my watchband
with my fingernail.
Where I am, you know,
I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife
(they won't give us anything sharp)
or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.
Trees may grow in the yard
but I'm not allowed
to see the sky overhead...
How many others are in this place?
I don't know.
I'm alone far from them,
they are all together far from me.
To talk to anyone besides myself
is forbidden.
So I talk to myself.
But I find my conversation so boring,
my dear wife, that I sing songs.
And what do you know,
that awful, always off-key voice of mine
touches me so
that my heart breaks.
And just like the barefoot orphan
lost in snow
in those old sad stories, my heart
- with moist blue eyes
and a little red runny nose -
wants to snuggle up in your arms..
It doesn't make me blush
that right now
I'm this weak,
böyle hodbin
this selfish,
this human simply.
No doubt my state can be explained
physiologically, psychologically, etc.
Or may be it's
this barred window,
this earthen jug,
these four walls,
which for months have kept me from hearing
another human voice...

It's five o'clock, my dear.
Outside,
with its dryness,
eerie whispers,
mud roof,
and lame, skinny horse
standing motionless in infinity
- I mean, it's enough to drive the man inside
crazy with grief -

Again today, night will fall in no time.
A light will circle the lame, skinny horse.
And the treeless space, in this hopeless landscape
stretched out before me like the body of a hard man,
will suddenly be filled with stars.
We'll reach the inevitable end once more,
which is to say the stage is set
again today for an elaborate nostalgia.
Me,
the man inside,
once more I'll exhibit my customary talent,
and singing an old-fashioned lament
in the reedy voice of my childhood,
once more, by God, it will crush my unhappy heart
to hear you inside my head,
so far
away, as if I were watching you
in a smoky, broken mirror...

2
It's spring outside, my dear wife, spring.
Outside on the plain, suddenly the smell
of fresh earth, bird singing, etc.
It's spring outside, my dear wife, spring,
the plain outside sparkles...
And inside the bed comes alive with bugs,
the water jug no longer freezes,
and in the morning sun floods the concrete...
The sun -
every day till noon now
it comes and goes
from me, flashing off
and on...
And as the day turns to afternoon, shadows climb the walls,
the glass of the barred window catches fire,
and it's night outside,,
a cloudless spring night...
And inside this is spring's darkest hour.
In short, the demon called freedom,
with its glittering scales and fiery eyes,
possesses the man inside
especially in spring...
I know this from experience, my dear wife,
from experience...

3
Sunday today.
Today they took me out in the sun for the first time.
And I just stood there, struck for the first time in my life
by how far away the sky is
how blue
and how wide.
Then I respectfully sat down on the earth.
I leaned back against the wall.
For a moment no trap to fall into,
no struggle, no freedom, no wife.
Only earth, sun, and me...
I am happy...

nizar qabbani's poetic influence

This is what influenced nizar qabbani;

........."When Qabbani was 15, his sister, who was 25 at the time, committed suicide because she refused to marry a man she did not love.During her funeral he decided to fight the social conditions he saw as causing her death. When asked whether he was a revolutionary, the poet answered: “Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy.” He is known as one of the most feminist and progressive intellectuals of his time."

"when a man is in love how can he use old words?"---nizar qabbani

Monsoon is here,,,finally.

Finally the monsoon is here, belatedly but here nevertheless.
Megha, Malhar, sarang, varsha sing whichever raag you know....It is here.
Let’s see how long it is going to last.
Although it reached Karachi a few days back, it is only today that it has rained unabatedly.
Yet another monsoon, yet another cycle completed and a half of 2011 is gone….
But for now, the weather is brilliant and the ambience is beautiful, LET’S SAVOR IT.


Have happy and safe monsoon!!!!