Owais Mughal and Adil Najam

The photo to the right shows Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) staff fixing something on the electric pole in Saddar area of Karachi in one of their daily dare devil stunts. This photo appears in the Daily Jang of March 6, 2008.

This photograph, however, is a metaphor for much more than a messed up bureaucracy. It is a reminder of the many many messes we have gotten ourselves into – from perpetual load-shedding, to flooded streets, to collapsing bridges, to much more (here, here, here, here, here, here). It is also a reminder of the most of many crises in Karachi’s civic amenities situation, which left all of Karachi in the dark because of unpaid bills.

Irum Sarfaraz

Among the many things that need to be revamped in the mainstream Pakistani society dowry would probably be one of the major ones. Sure no harm in giving the bride gifts on her wedding for her home and personal use but with the growing number of girls start staying unmarried simply because the parents don’t have the money to meet the ‘demands’ of the groom’s family, then it is a quandary that needs to be looked into. The most irksome angle of the dowry situation is that the tradition for an increasingly elaborate dowry is set by the people who don’t even need dowry’s from the girls in order to ‘run their homes’ or ‘support’ the grooms in any way. When the more educated and bourgeoisie class stoops to an all time low, the uneducated ones can only be expected to follow.

Dowry is a massive social ill on both sides of the Pakistan-India border and who hasn’t heard of the infamous bride burning where the girl who brings insufficient dowry is burnt ‘accidentally’ by her in laws so that a new ‘prey’ may be caught who can bring in a better dowry.

Mast Qalandar

It was one of those cloudless, crisp and beautiful winter days that one sees after a spell of rain in Islamabad.

The pall of dust that usually hangs over the city and the hills during the early winter months had lifted. The rain had washed the dust and everything looked bright, fresh and clean. The hills emerged out of the haze and seemed to fall in sharp focus as if placed under a magnifying glass. One could even count the pine trees on the hilltops.