Earth Day has been celebrated by millions of people around the world each year since 1970. This Sunday, citizens and organizations around the world, including Pakistan, pledged to protect the precious yet fragile environment in which our habitat is placed.
But what did the government do to demonstrate its responsibility towards the environment?
It chopped down dozens of trees along the main highway running through the heart of Karachi. These trees lined the main Sharah-e-Faisal and had been there for decades. The image of the naked chopped down trees is a stark reminder of the gross environmental negligence that has become a part of the norm in our infrastructure development authorities. The image next to it – of the familiar ‘Tree of Life’ is a reminder, that such disrespect for nature is not only environmentally inappropriate, it is also a traversity of our heritage.
My deep affection for the PTV comedy skit show Fifty-Fifty – and especially for its early years – is well known to our readers. Here is another video comedy clip that could easily be a candidate for the very best of Fifty-Fifty ever.
But after you are done with laughing also focus on the ‘translation’ and the craftsmanship of the translation. It is, in fact, quite striking how much thought and attention to detail has gone into it. These were the show’s ‘perfect years’ not only because the full team of artists – Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara, Bushra Ansari, Zeba Shahnaz – were still there but also the writing duo of Shoaib Mansoor and Anwar Maqsood were at their best.
Sometimes one is left completely speechless. And I was upon seeing this picture in the Daily Times (21 April) of a man beating his wife as their son looks on.
But the real story here is about a society that chooses to loose its speech and prefers to remain silent in the face of a wide scale menace of acute domestic violence and spousal (and familial) abuse of women.
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP.
While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
We hope you will continue to find ATP a useful venue to reflect upon and express your Pakistaniat. - Editors
