Owais Mughal

Growing up in the city called mini-Pakistan (Karachi), my ears got accustomed to listening to almost every spoken language and dialects of Pakistan. So much so that in some areas of the city one could even hear languages whose origin was as far as in South India e.g. Malabari, Malyalam etc. As I try to recall, the words of one language that is unfortunately missing from my memory’s audio library is Balochi. How many of us can recall the sounds and words of Balochi?

So we have thought of this blog as an experiment on spoken Balochi at ATP where we’ll try to learn few words; you and us together. If you know Balochi, please help us learn and correct any mistakes we may be making here. If you don’t, please join us in learning a few words. If people find this interesting we may try this for other languages too.

The image to the right is a Zahoor Shah Hashmi’s poem about Balochi langauge

Adil Najam

Pictures of overloaded vehicles are nothing special. Not in Pakistan. And our fascinations for rickshaws (here, here, here, here, here, here) is also well known. So, why yet another rickshaw picture?

Owais Mughal

On May 20, 1965 Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK705 from Dhahran was descending on the runway of Cairo airport. This was PIA’s inaugural flight to Cairo. 119 unfortunate people onboard died.

Among the victims was PIA’s trend setter air-stewardess Momi Gul Durrani.

At ATP we have done a number of posts of PIA – both on its high-flying early years (here, here, here) and its more troubled recent years (here, here, here). If ever there was a “Face of PIA,” it was Momi Gul Durrani. No PIA personality, with the exception of Air Marshal Nur Khan (who, in fairness, was already a celebrity before he came to PIA) has ever achieved such public recognition, affection and fame as Momi Durrani did.