Adil Najam
This picture from Metroblog Lahore made me laugh out loud. One could think of some ATP commentators that we might want to say this to!
Given the type of comments recent posts have been recieving, the refrain written at the back of this rickshaw, or at least it’s first half, seems funnily appropriate. The Punjabi words at the back read: “SaRRya na kar, chanda, dua karya kar.” I don’t think justice can be done to this in translation, so I will not try. Maybe others could help.
Here at ATP, our fascination with the motor rickshaw goes long and deep, most recently in this post here, and in other forms of expressing “transport wisdom”!
But rickshaw wisdom is not something to be mocked at.
Two past posts, in particualr, come to mind. The first (from July 3, 2006) was a conversation with Karachi rickshaw driver Raees on Karachi’s political situation, where he outlines his 5-point manifestor for Karachi. The second (from February 2, 2007) was this slightly more tongue-in-cheek (and at some levels disturbing) ‘Man Manifesto’ on Haqooq-i-MardaaN.
Dear atookmatook! Another word from west of Indus is ‘libashtay’ which means ‘university’. Karachi’s NIPA chowrangi is a big junction of University bound buses and omni buses. Most of the conductors on this route couldn’t say university and all one could hear in a chaos of arriving and departing buses were loud ‘libashtay !!! libashtay !!!’ announcements.
Yes. Atookmatook west of of the indus, and automatatic to the east. :-)
dear ‘atookmatook’ your pseudoname is as funny as the ‘ashaar’ you quoted. The word ‘atookmatook’ made me smile :) Does ‘atookmatook’ mean automatic?
I tried but I couldn’t do justice to the translation of ‘saRRya na kar – Chanda’ :) :) I think it loses all its bauty in translation. but challenge is ON !!
“jiss ne maan baap ko sataaya
uss nay rikshaa hee chalaaya”
“Muhabbat aazma chuka, muqaddar aazma raha hoon
ek bewafa ke haathon rikshaa chala raha hoon”