Picture of the Day: Beware Elevator Users!

Posted on May 31, 2007
Filed Under >Owias Mughal, Humor, Photo of the Day, Pinglish, Society
35 Comments
Total Views: 14812

Owais Mughal

A friend has forwarded me this notice which is wordprocessor printed and taped on top of an elevator (’Lift’) door, somewhere in a Pakistani building.

The English translation reads:

“ATTENTION: BEFORE ENTERING THE LIFT CHECK WHETHER LIFT IS PRESENT OR NOT!”

This is hilarious enough, but the Urdu message at the top of this translation has one extra sentence which didn’t get translated to English and that is the punch line. A kind of dark comedy. I’ll translate it for our non-Urdu readership. It says:

“Make sure it doesn’t happen that you reach ground floor without an elevator.”

Wise words, indeed!

Photo Credits: Unknown. If anyone knows who this is by, please let us know so that we can update.

35 comments posted

Comment Pages: « 5 4 [3] 2 1 »

  1. zamanov says:
    May 31st, 2007 11:57 pm

    As Bilal and Shehzad have pointed above this may sound hilarious but it has happened in Karachi. One of my good friends in college died in front of his own mother’s eyes when he walked into open elevator doors in their Bahadurabad apartment building when there was no elevator present.

    In a society where there is no respect for laws or regulations, having safe elevators or some authority regularly check their certificates is just a nuisance no one wants to go through. It falls in the same category as non-existent sprinklers in high rise buildings, ten year-old rotting fire extinguishers placed to satisfy the corrupt Civil Defence inspector, and lack of an effective emergency response system in case some badqismat falls into a hole.
    These are all ‘western’ conspiracys to slow us down on our way to the Promised Land.

  2. mozang bijjli says:
    May 31st, 2007 11:21 pm

    now zia’s comment is what is called wit.

  3. Zia says:
    May 31st, 2007 8:51 pm

    :-D , is it written inside the elevator? ;)

  4. Owais Mughal says:
    May 31st, 2007 8:07 pm

    ChiefSahib, your comment above made me smile. It is very funny

  5. zakoota says:
    May 31st, 2007 6:23 pm

    I dont know whether to laugh or cry on this! Standard for everything has gone so low that it seems no one is accountable for anything, which is true I guess.

  6. Shah says:
    May 31st, 2007 5:35 pm

    No lift inside the lift-well??? Never heard of it - untill I read all those comments!

  7. British Pakistani says:
    May 31st, 2007 4:27 pm

    ‘Lift’

    :) the person who wrote the english, was probably from my end [somewhere in Britain].

  8. Nasir says:
    May 31st, 2007 2:59 pm

    [quote comment="50292"]Hey if roasted peanut packets can contain “may contain peanuts” warning, why can’t our lifts contain a “may contain lift” warning?[/quote]

    chiefsahib, its ‘may *not* contain lift’ warning..

Comment Pages: « 5 4 [3] 2 1 »


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