Owais Mughal
Eventhough the following poster made me smile, I don’t want to present it as an amusement only photograph. Behind some innocently simplistic lines lies the helplessness (be-chaargi) of a man named Moosa (Moses) Khan, who lost his motorcycle papers in Quetta, Pakistan .The helplessness was so intense that Moosa Khan had to write this poster by hand and write contacts of almost everyone he knew in the city.
Those of us who have ridden Motorcycle in Pakistan may know very well the consequences of being stopped by Traffic Police, even with slight out-of-date (ooNch neech) papers.
While our Urdu readership can enjoy the script of the poster, I will translate it in English after the page break below:
The approximate English tranlsation of the ad above goes like this.
Public Notice….Looking for Lost Item.
I have lost papers of my motorcycle # xyz while coming to duty (work). If found, please return them to ‘Burma’. (I don’t know what Urdu word ‘barmay’ means. Most probably a Drill Machine Station).
OR send them to Alamdar Bakery at Alamdar Road,
OR send them to ‘Thekaydaar’ (Contractor) Ibrahim at Mama Mushtaq Hotel located near Habib Bank branch at Alamdar Road.
OR send them to Master (Master means teacher in Urdu) Syed M Baqir Shah Agha of Society School
OR send them to Master Hayat Husain of Naseerabad School
OR send them to Haji Dost M of Haji Furniture located near Nijari School
OR send them to M Moosa Khan, Tube Well Operator, Tube Well Number 6, Daman-e-Koh, Quetta Cantt, Cell Number xyz,
This last contact appears in vertical towards left of the poster and looks like this is the name of the person who lost his papers. The last couple of lines of the poster translate as follows:
Please send the papers to any of the above mentioned people OR report them at following cellular numbers in order to provide us a chance of thanking you.
I believe many of us can relate to the desperate situation this guy is going through. We hope by now Moosa (Moses) Khan has found his papers. His sitaution somehow reminds of this verse (sher) about prophet Moses.
Moosa se zaroor aaj koi baat hoi hai
jaane meiN qadam aur the aane mein qadam aur
PHOTO CREDITS: The Photo credits belong to Muhammad Ali Moosa who took this photograph on April 18, 2007 and appears at Treklens.com
Did you notice that he didn’t (even) bother to mention the Police Station (Local or otherwise) as one of the possible addressees?!!
Seems Mr. Moosa Khan – a school-teacher (class 6-7), wrote the Notice on the Black-board of his class, and asked his pupils to copy and paste it on their way back home, from wherever they came from.
Guess how many posters Moosa would have written with his hand?
Dear Gee, I believe Moosa’s address appears in the left corner in vertical text. but it is very hard to notice in the begining. At first, I also wrote the line that Moosa forgot to give his own address. Just before the post went live, i realized his address was present to the left :)
mossa brother u didn’t give ur own address