Adil Najam

With Christmas just a few days away, churches around the world, including in Pakistan, are decked for the festive season. We wish all our Christian friends a Happy Christmas.

We were originally going to design a little ATP Christmas Card and put it up here (like Pakistani newspapers do). Instead, we thought, it better to make this into a little tour of Pakistani churches and turn it into an ATP Photo-Quiz (it has been a while since the last one). This also gives us an opportunity to write about Christian Churches in Pakistan, having written in the past about a Hindu Mandir and Sikh Gurdwara.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of churches spread all over Pakistan, where ever Christian communities have lived in the past or now live. Here we present you with pictures of 15 of them organized into three clusters of 3, 6 and 6). How many of these Pakistani churches can you identify by name and location? And what additional information or stories do you have about them.

Adil Najam

Earlier we had done a post on Javed Miandad’s memorable sixer off the very last ball of the match against India at Sharjah in 1986, which clinched the game for Pakistan. We had also included a video of that last over in the post.

During the discussion, a number of comments recalled how Javed Miandad was literally showered with money and gifts as a result of this feat, how Tauseef Ahmad (who was his last partner on the crease) got little or nothing and a policeman’s baton to boot, and also how an equally famous comic song on the incident was sung by Bushra Ansari.

Well, we did manage to find the song for you. Enjoy!

Adil Najam

Our friend Darwaish posted this picture at Metroblog Lahore claiming that it is the very last statue of a human figure standing at its original location in Lahore (outside the ‘old campus’ of Punjab Univeristy).

I have no reason at all to doubt his claim and am fairly sure that he is, in fact, right. But I wanted to check with our readers if this is indeed so. Do you know of other statues; in Lahore or elsewhere?

(I recall that discussion on an earlier post about a Gandhi statue outside the Sindh High Court that now stands in the Indian High Commission; and someone on Lahore Metroblog hinted that now there are many new statues all over the major cities – mostly of Ronald MacDonald and Col. Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken!).