Owais Mughal

jaanwar, aadmi, farishta, khuda
aadmi ki haiN seNkRoN qismeN

This is a story about common people of our society. I have deliberately used the word ‘Common’ in a worldly materialistic sense as the main characters of this story were neither famous, nor very educated. They were not rich either. Still they affected the lives of people around them. Sometimes in a subtle way and sometimes in a stong way.

Salim Autos was a small spare parts shop. It was located on the ground floor of an apartmet building in Block 16 of Federal-B-Area. I am using past tense here because I don’t know if the business is still there or not. I used to bring my motorcycle there in early 1990s for repairs and oil change.

The owner of Salim Autos was called Mr. Salim. I guess, no surprises there. Salim had sub-contracted the government owned side-walk infront of his shop to a mechanic named Munoo. There was an unsaid and untold synergy between the two. Whenever Munoo was doing repairs, he recommended parts from Salim Autos to the motorcycle owner. This way both benefited from eachother.

Owais Mughal

I’ll let the photo do most of the talking. Just a brief introduction. These cars belonged to Fatima Jinnah and are now rotting at Sindh Archive offices in Clifton Karachi. Photo is taken from Trekearth.

Adil Najam

I must confess that I had an unterior motive in putting up the last ATP Poll – on whether readers thought that there would be elections in Pakistan in 2007 or not? I am supposed to give a talk about this topic in Washington DC today, organized by the Association of Pakistani Professionals (AOPP), and I thought that maybe presenting the results of this ATP Poll would be a good way to start.

Of course, since putting up the Poll much has happened – too much, actually. So much, in fact, that I am no longer sure what the results of the Poll means.