Adil Najam
Today – June 11, 2011 – All Things Pakistan turns five years old!
Today, sitting in Lahore, Pakistan, I write in the realization that it is now time to move on.
This is not a ‘Good Bye’ post – it is, in fact, a ‘Thank You’ post. Nor do I want this to be a ‘looking back’ post – I would much rather that it be a ‘looking forward’ post.
For me personally, it is time to move back to Pakistan. For ATP, the blog, it is time to turn off the lights.
Five years ago we set out with the mild ambition to have a conversation with a few friends on all things Pakistan – from the profound to the trivial. What followed was a more intense, more engaged, more elaborate, and more fulfilling conversation than we could have ever imagined. Well above 10 million visits later, it is now time to move on.
But we promise that we have no intention to tune out. We know that this conversation will continue. This was never our conversation, it was yours. We intend to keep listening in. We hope you will let us do so in all the myriad forms and formats that have now become available for this exploration of our Pakistaniat – our Pakistaniness – to thrive. We have chronicled our own story and evolution in our posts (the ATP Credo, the Tangay Walla post, 1st anniversary post, 2nd anniversary post, 3rd anniversary post, who reads Pakistaniat post, 4th anniversary post) and now is not the time to repeat those arguments or even to look back.
I can say with some pride and great joy that we have had some small part in the construction of an important conversation. It has not always been an easy conversation. Our national predicaments have made it an often sad and occasionally angry conversation. But it remains a vibrant – and vital – conversation. We hope that in these five years ATP has contributed some to this conversation, and has contributed to it positively.
So, today, I write in gratitude. Thank you for your companionship. Thank you for your patience. Thank your for dropping by. Thank you for making this your own. Today, we are happy in the knowledge that the conversations we had wanted to seed are thriving. Technology has provided an array of new formats – from facebook to twitter and beyond. There is a mushrooming of blogs and formats, and we hope that in some small way we have contributed to them. We know we have thrived and found sustenance (and ideas) in this new and bold world of Pakistan’s Blogistan. We thank our blogging colleagues, our many many writers, and our even more many readers for the excitement they have added to our lives.
I realize that the timing of this will lead many of conclude that it has something to do with my own move. While the two are not unrelated, they are actually less related than you might think. It was, in fact, back in November 2010, that Owais Mughal and I had decided that we would do this on this date and in this manner. Owais had already moved to Singapore and my own professional commitments had begun to mount. We did not wish to end with a whimper nor just fade out abruptly. Five years seemed like a good innings to both of us. Let me take this moment to thank Owais for his support and companionship. More than anyone else he has made ATP possible and allowed it to last this long. Without him, it would have faded long ago. And without him it would have been not just a lonelier but also a much less interesting journey. Thank you, Owais, my friend. Thank you for everything! (As an aside, I should add that Owais and I had never met until fairly recently and for years ran this together without even having met – such is the magic in Blogistan).
Do I have regrets – yes, but too few too mention. I wish we had written fewer obituaries. I wish we had not had to talk about national angst and tragedies as much as we had to. I wish we more time to write all the posts that remain unwritten in our personal lists – more pleasant things than those that were floating in the daily headlines. Yes, I do also wish that some of our readers had been a little more kind to us and to each other in their comments – but, I also realize that we live in unkind times and the viciousness of our environs can sometimes seep into our own language and thoughts. More than anything else, I wish the unkindness of our times will become less, allowing us to be a little more considerate to each other than we sometimes seem to be.
Good byes, they say, should never be long. But this is not a good bye. So, until we meet again, dear friends, take care; khiyal rakhna.
Let me also thank you for giving us all a platform to express our views and thoughts whether in form of posts or comments.
Thank you and wish you all the best in whatever you do in future :)
Adil Bhai,
Please check your email and let me know if something like I have suggested is possible.
Secondly, I am with you that people have to move on and do other things and therefore I respect yours and Owais’s decision. But please re-consider shutting down ATP as it brings us all close together. Its a platform that unites many Pakistanis within and outside Pakistan and it should never be closed.
Please give it a thought.
I want to thank readers for so many comments of kindness, love and suggestions for ATP. I am deeply moved.
Also worth mentioning and many thanks are the 130+ writers that contributed to ATP. You can see their posts in the archive section. Some of them are the founders and icons of blogging in Pk and I learnt a lot from them. Our dear readers deserve million thanks for the dialogue that were generated here. Many friends always made sure to email us the current topics, interesting photos and news to write about. Thanks.
Thank you so much, dear all, for the graciousness and kindness of the comments and good wishes in these comments. I am deeply and truly moved. I am sure Owais will agree with me that running the blog was always its own reward. It was not always easy, but it was always rewarding. But reading these comments has made it all the more rewarding. To know that what we did for our own satisfaction and as an expression of our own Pakistaniat also played such a role for others is more reward than we ever wished for. Thank you so much.
Let me also say that ATP was never just me, or even me and Owais – the many many authors who contributed and brought their own unique styles and perspectives to this forum made it what it became. As important, and maybe more important than all of us, were the comments and commenters. Despite the angst that some of them might have sometimes given us with their venomous barbs, ATP was never just about the posts, it was about the conversation that ensued. I know that many came here multiple times each day just to read the comments and the discussion – I know that I did. So, thank you for the conversation.
As I read these comments, I am reminded of Sahir Ludhianvi’s famous poem (although the context of much of the poem is different, these particular lines keep echoing in my mind): “mujh ko itini mohabbat na do dosto / soch lo dosto / iss qadar pyar kaisay sambhalouN ga mein / … / aaj itni mohabbat na duo dosto / kay mairey kal kay khatir na kuch bhi rahey / aaj ka pyar thoRa bacha kay rakho / mairey kal kay leeaye / … / mujh ko itni mohabbat na duo dosto /”
I will – in a separate comment, and soon – lay out some thoughts on the comments that relate to the future of the platform, but for now I just wished to write a short thank you message to say just how moved I am by these sentiments.
P.S. For those who asked, yes, I am moving to the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) soon. It is one of the finest Pakistani institutions and was founded by a most inspiring group of Pakistanis on the deepest principles of Pakistaniat as I know it. I am honored and thankful for the opportunity that LUMS is giving me and will be proud to join the ranks of some of the finest faculty and most dedicated students anywhere.
P.P.S. I realize that the coincidence of timing might make this difficult for some to believe, but the decision to pull the curtains down on June 11, 2011 was actually made in late 2010, well before my personal move was at all real or even impending. The fact that the two things coincided is exactly that, a coincidence – although, I think an appropriate one. More on why we made that decision, etc., in a separate comment – and soon.
I have followed and enjoyed this blog regularly and always enjoyed it and I will be sad to see this wind down. But I must say that reading these comments I realized how much of a phenomenon ATP has become. The type of loyalty and passion it seems to have created in its readers is very unique and amazing. Adil Najam and Owais Mughal and all those who have written here or even commented here should be very proud of this because what everyone has created is quite unique and phenomenal.