Adil Najam

Raza Rumi’s blog (Jahan e Rumi) is always worth a visit. Today, I found there these wonderful English and urdu translations of Saa’di (below). But what really caught my eye was this comment from Raza which I thought was pertinent related to our own discussion on education here at ATP:

[Saa’di’s] Gulistan and Bostan were taught to most children in northern India as a key guide to living and an initiation into the classical thought! This practice was discontinued over time. The creation of nation states in 1947 dictated what was to be ‘taughtâà¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ to the young patriots. Compare this to what children are taught in their early years now!

Here is what Raza is talking about. The original is from Sa’adi’s Gulistan. The English translation is by Ammar Qureshi and the Urdu translation is by a certain ‘A.Q. Librarian’ and was sent to Raza by Isa Daudpota (who happens to be one of the most principled people I know and an inspiration to so many of us; I hope to write a post on Isa soon).

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Adil Najam

Because education is as central to everything else as it is (see earlier ATP post) I want to stick with it a little longer (plus, as a teacher, education is what I do).

Regular contributor Owais Mughal just sent me this picture, published in Dawn today (11 August, 2006). Ostensibly, this is a picture of the position holders in Grade 10 (Matric) from the Lahore Board. But here is what Owais points out (slightly edited):

It looks like the actual ‘position holders’ are the education board officials who are all standing in the middle. Their sides are then flanked by the real position holders [students] as if to fill up the photographic frame only. The decorations on education board officials chests also look bigger than a ‘nishan-e-haider’ medals!

By Bilal Zuberi

What is common to My Space, Facebook, Friendster, Del.icio.us or Six Apart?

These are all one form or the other of a new internet phenomena: Social Networking. These websites have managed to attract millions of people daily, and have made hundreds of millions of dollars for their 20+ years old founders, the geek elite of the Silicon Valley. Social networking, like blogging, is a relatively new phenomenon in the internet space, yet it has blossomed like nobody’s business. But where is the Pakistani presence in this e-community? Well…while I am somewhat familiar with the above-mentioned websites, no other website has been recommended on more occasions by personal friends and acquaintances than Naseeb.com – the Pakistani and Pakistani-American hangout place on the internet.

So what is Naseeb.com?