Pervaiz Munir Alvi

Last time I saw Dildar Pervaiz Bhatti in person was in year 1993.

In the photo above from left to right are: Dildar Pervaiz Bhatti, Shoukat Ali, Munir Hussain, Masood Rana, Asif Jeved, Surayya Khanum, Naheed Akhtar, A. Nayyar, Inayat Hussain Bhatti, Amjad Perwez, Amjad Boby and Akhlaq Ahmad

I had gone to Pakistan to attend wedding of my one niece. As it has been my habit, upon arrival I would call up all of my friends to let them know that I was in town. In those days Dildar and his dear wife lived in a modest house in Wahdat Colony, Lahore. When I called his home, his wife told me that he was not there but I could catch him at the Avari Hotel where he would be playing stage host that evening at a high level social event. Since we had to go to Avari for some preliminaries for my niece’s wedding anyway, we thought that it will be a good place for us to get together.

Adil Najam

I was going to use the term APC – All Parties Conference – in the headline but just realized that Dawn is now using the term MPC – Multi-Party Conference – to describe the meeting of opposition parties which is to begin in London within a few hours.

This is not just a semantic issue, it highlights one of the many challenges faced by this very important meeting which was already postponed once and will now be held under the shadow of the ongoing Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad.

Owais Mughal

This is part III of our photo story series. Here are the links to earlier photo stories: Part I and Part II

(1) Living Dangerously in Rawalpindi

Photo is from Jan 13, 2007 on a Rawalpindi road. A physically challenged person is taking on life’s challenge head-on. The face expression shows enjoyment. In October 2006, we had also shared a very similar photo from Rawalpindi here.