Raju Jameel

From our story on Cricket’s Heartbreak hotel we will now take you to Murree’s Cecil Hotel, which has been instrumental in bringing together many hearts in Pakistan whether it be movies or the real life.

It is said that Cecil Hotel, located at Mount View Road Murree was a summer retreat of a British Army Colonel. It was built in 1858 and is therefore one of the oldest surviving hotels in Pakistan. It was converted as Viceroy’s summer place in 1940 and in 1957 it was converted into a hotel by a Rawalpindi based businessman. Lakhani Group bought it in 1998 through an open auction and are the current owners.

During 1958 through 1978 period, Cecil Hotel was one of the most expensive hotel in Murree- frequented by the country’s elite. By mid-60’s Cecil also became one of the most sought after outdoor location for Pakistani movies – in fact Pakistan’s first ever platinum jubilee movie ‘armaan‘ made Cecil its main outdoor location. The movie armaan also showed Cecil as the house of the main lady in film bibbo where she lived with her two daughters; Tarannum and Rozina and her munshi Agha Sarwar.

See this clip I made at Cecil recently – where I explain the location of armaan song and how it was picturized. This video clip is dated as January 14, 2010.

Owais Mughal

I know I am putting this post right after our ‘I am grateful..’ post but Pakistan has just lost a Test-Cricket series in Australia by 3-0 margin. So while I am grateful, I am a little bit disappointed too. Just a little bit. Actually today’s white wash didn’t disappoint me as much as captain Yousuf’s comments later on. He has said that ‘Our team is young and I am satisfied with their performance’. Yesterday he also gave a statement which basically said that in the past Pakistan had brought star studded teams to Australia and lost; atleast he brought a young team and lost so he is better than previous Pakistani teams. As long as our aim is to lose better than previous teams, we are aiming too low. Seems like the word win was not even in the aim. Can anyone imagine such statement from our previous captains like Imran Khan or Wasim Akram? That was probably the difference between the two teams. Australia is also a very new side but they were playing with a hunger to win.

Tehseen Baweja

Editorials, blogs, newspapers, coffee house discussions, no matter where you turn to, people are screaming about their version of what’s wrong with Pakistan. Yes! It is indeed a country with thousands of problems, it is indeed a mess right now, 99.9% of the things are going bad, but, why don’t I see anybody talking about the 0.1% of goodness that we still see around us.

I am an average person whom you don’t have to listen to, but I would request a few minutes of your time while I express what is still good and commendable around me. If we don’t show gratitude towards whatever is still good, we will lose that pretty soon as well.

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”