Owais Mughal

Eventhough the following poster made me smile, I don’t want to present it as an amusement only photograph. Behind some innocently simplistic lines lies the helplessness (be-chaargi) of a man named Moosa (Moses) Khan, who lost his motorcycle papers in Quetta, Pakistan .The helplessness was so intense that Moosa Khan had to write this poster by hand and write contacts of almost everyone he knew in the city.

Those of us who have ridden Motorcycle in Pakistan may know very well the consequences of being stopped by Traffic Police, even with slight out-of-date (ooNch neech) papers.

While our Urdu readership can enjoy the script of the poster, I will translate it in English after the page break below:

Adnan Ahmad

I finished reading Mohsin Hamids second novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist over the weekend.

His first novel Moth Smoke captured my imagination quite vividly with several fascinating monologues in the novel and a theme that had everything to do with my generation and that age of mine. The author in between these two novels has aged and matured just like his readers including myself.

The new novel involves only one monologue with a man named Changez telling his story to an American, sitting at a restaurant in old Anarkali in Lahore. He keeps both his listener and his reader intensely engaged for about 184 pages, which is the entire length of the novel.

The novels main theme revolves around an increasing distrust between the East and the West and a troubled love story that at times makes one almost feel sick deep within but its intensity never fades throughout the course of the monologue. In the end it is a story about a twenty two year old who acts his age in turbulent times and in a love triangle where his rival has long passed away leaving behind a psychologically damaged soul who may never love again.

Syed Fareed Ali

Yesterday I saw her again. There she was ambling along as always at a stately pace dressed in her customary blue and gold. She stopped at the same place where we used to meet. I stared at her for an instant and our eyes met. But alas, it was only for an instant. I sped away and she turned her attention to the boy who was standing at the same place where once I stood waiting for her. She had formed a new relationship. Life had moved on, both for me and her. It was now jumping from one relationship to the other for both of us.

She was my University Bus. My constant companion for the five odd years that I spent in the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore. Her very sight brought back to me those long lost memories of some years back but which now seem eons ago. I still remember the day when it all started. My first day at the Engineering University. I stood there waiting for the bus. Some veteran travelers were there to keep me company. Yet I was lost in my own thoughts. Thoughts that had to do with what lay ahead. It was with these thoughts and mixed feelings of anticipation and dread that I boarded the bus for the very first time to be welcomed by the beat of popular Indian songs. Thus started an experience that was unique in every sense of the word. An experience which besides education, (Yes we did study in UET) taught a lot about life itself.