Written in 1940 by Rafi Peer, Usman Peerzada brings to life the story of Nawab Sahib Kibla starring Mohammad Qavi Khan, Javaid Rizvi, Mehreen Rafi and himself for 6 days at the Arts Council. Tickets at Rs.1000 are available for purchase from Agha’s Supermarket and Copper Kettle and proceeds from the sales will go towards The Citizen’s Foundation. The show started promptly at 930pm and shockingly, just one cellphone ringtone went off, but then that was before the MC made the announcement to remind the audience of the simple etiquettes, so we can let that one go. Read more

I usually leave my house at around 9:30am to go to my office in the I.I Chundrigarh Rd Area. Having set all my clocks one hour ahead on the night of the 31st of May 2008. I set out as usual for the morning commute today. Surprise surprise i encountered almost nil traffic on the way and got here at exactly 9:45am, please note the usual commute takes 30-40 mins atleast.

Along the way all the major markets appear closed, the electronics one near Marriot Rd, the whole sale ones as well. When i got to my office only one member of my staff stood waiting. The rest trooped in at 10:45am surprised and confused as to why the boss is pissed.

It appears that this confusion is going to remain for a good while as some people are just not willing to comply with the DST application. I spent an hour yesterday convincing my grand mother to set her clocks forward but she has refused to do so as according to her, there is only one time not two times.

So as the whole city is confused, would it not have been better for the government to first take out ads in all major newspapers to explain the application of DST first? Would someone explain to me how all this confusion will result in the salvage of electricity? Oh wait i understand…its 11:18am and there is still no electricity at my office, this is how it shall be saved and the burden on the KESC lessened.

Bravo DST!!

I was seriously disgusted after reading the following news article about a man who committed suicide after being harassed by MCB’s recovery staff.

Due to the alleged immense pressure and threats from the loan recovery staff of a bank, a man committed suicide inside his house within the jurisdiction of the New Karachi police station.

According to his father, Mohammed Munchi:

Mohammed Tufail, 27, was residing in New Karachi, which is where he committed suicide.

He added that his son, Tufail, got married a few years back and had one son. Due to some differences with Tufail, his wife had left him and gone to her parents’ house. A few months back, he had also gone through another setback, suffering a big financial loss in his LPG business.

Later, he applied for a loan from the Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB). Due to a delay in the payment of an installment, the recovery staff of the MCB started visiting his house and threatening him with dire consequences.

On Sunday, when Tufail was present at his house, the recovery personnel once again came calling and began to continuously pressurize his son. Tufail’s sister was home and the recovery team went to the point of grabbing her hand and harassing her. Their neighbors are eye-witnesses to this event. After a heated argument, the MCB recovery staff left.

This harassment of his sister was the last nail to Tufail’s self-esteem’s coffin, because earlier he already had suffered a huge loss in business. He locked himself inside his room and hanged himself from a ceiling fan.

Station House Officer, New Karachi, Pervez Gujjar, commented that they are waiting for the statement of the family and, as soon as they approached the police for the registration of an FIR against the recovery staff of the MCB, they would oblige.

Will the Recovery Staff of MCB tried readily in court? Will Tufail receive any justice? What was his fault?

This is not the first time that I’ve read and heard about the antics done by recovery staff of banks. They don’t only bad-mouth on phone but harass by coming over at office/home address. They are trained to go and pummel down the doors and pursue the “loan offenders”.

However, bank loans are available on silver platter, provided on dropping a few names and documents (which can even be fake). What is the remedy of this? Whatever the condition maybe, why there are not strict terms and policies used by banks so that such people are saved from the system and vice versa. Why give a bankrupt person loan? How many more to follow with our fast-paced and stressful work life?

Updated.

There are times when you get frustrated with the system. Things are not delivered in time, post in slow, traffic sucks and consumer services too. It’s too hot and weather is killing you. You’ve a bad headache and do not want to go to office. If you’ve reached it, you want to take an early off. Problems, frustration, part and parcel of a karachiite’s life.

Clearly, we do get frustrated over a lot of factors happening around us. However, seldom one gets saved from a looming issue. This account is of such an incident.

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ApnaKarachi has been around for a long time, and since its very inception has captured the imaginations of its visitors. When it started out, its star attraction was the Phone Directory. It’s come a long way since as it continues to add new features to the site.

The latest in this series of innovations is the ApnaKarachi Maps which the website itself describes as:

First of its kind true Map of Karachi for the citizens of this great city.

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Its that time of the year again, folks. Either side of Bakra Eid very nearly every committed couple in the city decides to get hitched for good. There are both cultural and practical reasons why the fag end of December and the early parts of January are popular months for getting married in Karachi but what this does mean for the average invitee is not always very pleasant.

Late night eating, all night sing-o-thons and tons and tons of functions (there’s this one wedding I know where there were no less then six separate functions, ranging from the mendhi, dholki, mayoon -one each for the bride and groom separately-, the baarat, the valima and in some cases a chohti or a chutti on the fourth or sixth day after the valima!) can all be quite overwhelming after the first few outings. To help you keep a brace with the festivities, here are some handy tips.
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The first difficult decision faced while investing is the simple question of “Why should I invest? Shouldn’t I save this money now rather than hope I can enjoy it later?”

The simple answer is that there should be a balance. You should not try to spend all your money, and neither should you try to invest all your money. Now, the next question is that it is more enjoyable to spend money rather than saving it, so how can we make it more enjoyable and palatable for the common man to take out some money regularly from his meager salary and invest it?
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As far as comedy routines go, Saad Haroon has it down pat. He has a jovial face, an infectious laugh and a complete set of theatrics and musical numbers which makes his comedy routines very engaging. The one place he lacks, however, is a collection of jokes, with many being recycled over a number of routines, Saad Haroon is a must see, if you haven’t seen him before. After that, its just pretty much the same.

On friday night, he performed at IVSAA and i went expecting an hour of gag-inducing laughter. What i got was almost a yawn during the performance, since… well… i had seen it all before.

But all was not lost that night. The evening was saved thanks to the theatrics of Danish Ali, a fellow comedian who appears with Saad on their TV show, The Real News (TRN). He started off the routine with jokes and gags about weird school names, parking tonight BBQ tomorrow (a pun on BBQ Tonight) and the ever engaging mortien and their sadistic method of killing a cockroach over 90 days (it says on the back of their can, Kills for three months) where he had another fellow, Umair, perform improvisational acting of a cockroach who was on his way to a 90 day death.

Overall, the evening didn’t do too bad, and though i wouldn’t go see Saad Haroon again anytime soon (or unless he adds new stuff to his act), he did pull off two acts, Saads words of wisdom, which was both thought provoking and funny and Aliens landing in Desi Land, which was funny because of theatrics.

Images courtesy of Raja Islam

HAHA, yes I know I posted the same post three times. This was not intentional, as I am sure some of you may have realized. Due to poor internet connections I was not sure if the “Save” button had worked! That said in my rage and impatience I believe I may have pressed it three times. That said, when the connection from the server did show up, I realized it had saved it three times…. Needless to say I do have some net etiquette and so I DID want to remove the extra posts, but by then the electricity / or simply the Internet connection itself was rendered useless….. I could not delete the posts last night. Forgive me but its clear that life goes on with these minor incidences…… I hope it did not inconvience you all too much.

Recently i was traveling to the toll plaza at night, when an incident forced me to think just how casually we take safety in our everyday lives. This incident occurred on the sohrab goth flyover. One track of the flyover is now open to traffic, with a metal pipe chain divider down the middle. Something like can be seen in this photo (courtesy: Ameen).

Driving along the flyover at night, i was almost blinded by the combination of not street lights (or natural lights for that matter) and the high beams of oncoming traffic. In this state, one can hardly see one foot ahead, or even the end of their own car bonnet, much less anything else which may be on the road. The one thing which definitely is not seen, is a part of the metal pipe chain, tilted at a dangerous angle and extended almost two feet from where the pipe is supposed to be divided. This, unfortunately, can only be heard after it has come into contact with your car.

Be careful while driving on that bridge at night people. I learned the hard way, after a massive dent on the pillar supporting the windshield and the loss of a side view mirror. God saved me that night, for had it been one centimeter more to the left, my windshield would’ve been a thing of the past. God knows what horrors might have unfolded as metal and glass shattered and come crashing into the frail connoctation of bones and flesh that is the human body.