Artesia

Interestingly the media only focused on how our president ogled at the vice-president nominee and flirted with her. Probably it can simply be dismissed as a ridiculous attempt at impersonating an 'american attitude' where he tried to over compensate his 'ghunda' impression. The only other explanation is to believe into all the rumours being spread on SMS these days (and if you don't know what I mean, get on somone's distribution list!).

Last night, a couple of frantic phone calls and text messages assured that none of our friends and loved ones were at the Marriot when the terrible blast took place. But still it wasn't quite enough. For anyone who has lived in Islamabad, Marriot has been a frequent stopover whether its for dinners, conferences, meeting up at the coffee shop or just some wierd totally expensive exhibition where you'd go anyway. Much didn't happen in Islamabad those days :)

Ever heard of the new revolution on the popular social scene? I'm talking about the mass SMS chain messaging where everyone gets the chance to vent their disgust at general happenings in the world and enjoy anonymity behind the argument that they were just forwarding a chain message. It was deemed an excellent way for movements to gain popularity during the chief justice drama (rather a soap opera with about 200+ episodes). Now there is a new player in town and his name is Faraz!

Imagine 770 kilometers of almost non-stop driving, spanning over 18 hours and covering both ends of the salt range; in a saloon car! This was last weekend. We set off looking for a far flung wet land bordering Sakesar mountain and ended up traveling through mountains and valleys visiting numerous villages and exploring new roads/tracks. It was quite an unexpected adventure indeed.

There was a new practice developed in eight century Persia where a tribe was renowned for providing volunteers who would proceed to kill a famous political or religion opponent. The killers were often drugged with 'hashish' and hence called hassassin (later derived into the modern term assassin). These high profile killings of the ruling/opposing factions were thought of as a newly created weapon at that time and caused great political turmoil. The leader of this militant sect was held solely responsible for all acts and it is still quite unclear who motivated those assassinations. All of this sounds dangerously synonymous to what is ongoing in Pakistan these days.

What a lovely win-win situation we have put ourselves into! It amazes me how the whole fracas is being portrayed as a win for all the parties involved. I just went through the situation with my own imaginary comb trying to see if I could think up of some interesting (maybe not so true) implications of this historic decision by our all-so-powerful institution. Just my own view of how this effects everyone around the CJ saga.

Last eight days in Islamabad sum up the dilemma we face as a nation and as Muslims in today's world. At crossroads between progress or an ultra-conservative approach towards life, we stand divided. A fear has engulfed us that modernization is sweeping away our national and religious identity. It's quite obvious that our heritage is a culture of tolerance, mutual respect and traditionally conservative values. The need of the hour is to establish that we can progress without breaking away from our heritage. It is this fear of losing identity, that is driving many among us towards religious extremism. For those people, causes for change are the enemy. But what they don't realize is that the world will change as it has for centuries, whether they resist it or adapt.

An ordeal which cannot be explained in words, it may not have been as devastating as some of the others the world has seen, but surely left its mark on the Middle East. Apparently its the first of its kind in the last 135 years of recorded history in Oman and that alone was enough to cause widespread panic and chaos. Being typically desi, we didn't take the warnings seriously enough. Actually did everything wrong hhehe, drove out in the cyclone, got stuck in the wrong part of town when the flooding started and didn't even stock up on food items. But then it was our very first cyclone.

I had always been vaguely familiar with a certain lady called 'Razia' who it seemed was always making news. She was my khala's friend in Karachi and was associated with some magazine. Unfortunately those were days when everything in life was apparently perfect and i never used to feel the need to look deeper into anything that appeared in the news or happened in our society. There had been a raid at her apartment one night and she was being harassed by the government for again printing something that was otherwise true.

I never did any follow up on that story.