Owais Mughal

This notice board is from Food Street, Lahore. It reads:

“Entering the ‘Food Street’ wearing shorts is strictly prohibited: Food Street Administration”

Among other things on this notice board, I enjoyed reading the word sakht (strictly). As if the word forbidden didn’t sound serious enough, the administration had to add a prefix strictly forbidden to make sure people undrestand that administration means business here.

Credits: I found the above photo in rooq‘s collection at Flickr.com.

Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi

Allama I. I. Kazi died in 1968 and therefore people of my generation have had little or no direct contact with him. My paternal grandfather Dr. Ali Ahmed Kazi was a nephew of Allama Sahib while my maternal grandfather Khan Bahadur Ghulam Nabi Kazi was a first cousin and brother-in-law of his.

In the wake of defeat in Afghanistan, Sir Charles Napier annexed Sindh in 1843 after the Battle of Miani fought without any provocation and sent Queen Victoria the meaningful and cryptic one-word message ‘Peccavi’ meaning:

I have Sin(ne)d

In their search for efficient, educated and honest persons with good antecedents, the eyes of the British fell on the Ansari family of Paat in Dadu district. Kazi Imam Ali Ansari was appointed City Magistrate and Municipal Commissioner at Hyderabad. Imdad Ali Imam Ali Kazi was the second son of the second wife of Kazi Imam Ali, and was born at Hyderabad on April 9, 1886.

Mast Qalandar (MQ)

This post is about the “posters”, that is, the people who regularly post comments on ATP. In other words, my mental sketches of the persons I come across on the ATP discussion board.

One of the things I do early in the morning, after checking my e-mail and the news updates, is look up ATP for new posts and comments – especially comments.

The comments and the commenters on ATP remind me of the birds that flock around the birdbath outside my house in Islamabad. They are attracted to the water and the feed that I place there every day. I wake up to their chatter. And I can even recognize it by the different sounds. Sparrows chirp and twitter, mynas engage in a loud and quarrelsome chatter; bulbuls whistle short and sweet notes; and sometime crows descend on the feed with their harsh and discordant cries that scare away the smaller birds.