Owais Mughal
These photos are all from the daily Dawn and were posted there in the past two to three weeks. Each photograph is a story in itself and we would love to hear your comments or titles for them.
(1) This photo is from Lahore. A monkey; unable to find one of his own specie; is seen busy collecting lice from his master’s head. This photo reminds me of the sher:
teray zanoo pe meiN sar rakh kar abhi sota hooN
inqalaab aaye to mujh ko bhi jagaana saaqi
(2) A physcally challenged person on a roller-board in Rawalpindi is seen here taking a free tow from a suzuki pickup. A title sher that comes to mind will work fine here if the word ghoRa is replaced by Suzuki and the word nathia is replaced by steering:
kis cheez ki kami hai khwaja teri gali meiN
ghoRa teri gali meiN, nathia teri gali meiN
(3) Rani Kot fort in Sindh. Some contrator hired by the archeology department has criminally used portland cement plaster while restoring a domed room to its original era. We had a similar post earlier here, when modern day mortar reportedly got used to preserve buddha era stupas. A title sher that comes to mind could be:
pooch beTha hooN meiN tujh se teray koochay ka pata
teray halaat ne kaisi ye teri soorat kar di
One more for the above photo could be:
hazaar baar zamaana idhar se guzra hai
nayee nayee si hai kuch os ki rah-guzar phir bhi
(4) The King Maker MNA and the minsiter of railways having dessert from the same plate. In Urdu we call it baahum sheer-o-shakar hona. This photo also reminds me of a couplet by Rafiq Mughal (not my relative) who recited it in a mushaira in Hyderabad some 5 years ago:
hum bhi kash jalali hotay
beNgan hotay thaali hotay
haath kabhi na khali hotay
Chaudhry ya Jamali hotay
I do not know who the ‘minister of railway’ in the picture no. 4 is, but from the looks of it he appears to be a retired army general double dipping from the national plate. Then again army generals do not dye their hair. Do they?
Second photo had appeared in Dawn with a caption of something like the boy shouldn’t move from one place of begging to the next by holding off to a suzuki for a free ride. Dawn called it a dangerous practise. I thought the photo was much more than what Dawn’s photographer captioned, and that is why I chose to put it here.
First two photos are sad. This young man instead of handling a monky could have had an opportunity to get education and earn a better living. The second one is similar to the images from Afghanistan.
I recently read a report - 7900 Pakistanis committed suicide in last 9 months…
By the way, this monkey has dyed hair just like one of the ministers (4th image..)
[quote comment="5499"]“The monkey’s own hair, which are curiously jet black, are better taken care of than the man’s!”[/quote]
Samdani Sahib,
Can’t you see the monkey is wearing a wig just like the man in the fourth picture whose hair are also jet black?
I also find the second picture most poignant in that it expresses multiple layers of neglect.
BTW, I think the third picture is also very sad and shows a different face of national neglect, something that we (and Owais) has written about before.
Except for the young man on his cart, this is a very funny post. You make me laugh and cry at the same time Owais. The world of the Chaudary Brothers and the Mirs of Dehra Jamali is literally miles apart from the world of this young man. I wonder if they could even see him trolleying on the road from their tinted car windows. Seeing ‘Fat Cats’ eating dessert together and a disabled boy begging in the streets on the same page, ‘Travesty of social Justice’ is the phrase that comes to mind. All that talk about Islam and Muslims by our people makes me sick. Let me add two lines of my own:
beNgan hotay thaali hotay
Chaudhry ya Jamali hotay
hum bhi sochtey dessert ka jo
Paytt hamarey na khali hotay
The monkey’s own hair, which are curiously jet black, are better taken care of than the man’s!
for the first picture.kahan chain hai baadshah ko naseeb ,ke jis bayghami say hain sotay ghareeb.