Owais Mughal

Few days ago ATP had a post on police (see here) where we highlighted the need of improving police infrastructure. Following story is on the same theme. Today I read in bewilderment in Jang newspaper that police in Rawalpindi is forcing businesses to have security guards. As if this was not enough, businesses who fail to do so will be prosecuted. My question to readers is, how is it possible under the law? Isn’t the police supposed to provide security? If people were to fend for themselves by providing their own security guards then what is the use of having official police force?

Adil Najam

The barely 3-month old SherShah by-pass bridge collapsed suddenly today killing at least 5, injuring many, and reports suggest that many many more are still trapped under the collapsed structure which is so huge that it cannot be easily lifted to save them. The bridge had cost nearly Rs. 3.5 billion to build and had just recently been inaugurated. According to The News:

A bridge of Northern Bypass at Paracha Chowk in Shershah area of the metropolis, which was opened by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on 6 August 2007, collapsed here Saturday, killing at least four people, injuring several others while trapping an unknown number of people under the debris. “Four people have died and over a dozen were wounded in the collapse,” southern port city police official Khalid Hameed said, adding that several vehicles were trapped in the debris.

Read Full Post

August 26, 2007 was the 250th urs of Bulleh Shah. ATP had this post on the same occasion last year. This year we are bringing Raza’s wonderful writing on Bulleh Shah below.

Raza Rumi
The need to be understood has always remained integral to human existence. It is through the expression of “humanness” and the commonality of existential experience that we truly relate to each other. The visible revival of the Sufi idiom in Pakistan, expressed through an unlikely medium – pop music – is not an unexpected event. It is a reaction to mainstream orthodoxy and the realisation of an enhanced cultural space in contemporary Pakistan.

Above all, it reinforces the continued relevance of the Sufi message, which is centred on humanistic values and the attainment of divine love through self-knowledge and the love of fellow human beings.

When I returned to Pakistan in 2002 after a sojourn abroad, the first image to hit me at the Karachi airport was a supreme ishq number: Bulleh Shah’s “teray ishq nachaya kar thaya thaya” (Your love makes me dance with abandon), the music and video of which were produced by Shoaib Mansoor.