Mohammad Ayaz Abdal

I have always come across Karachi in places I can never expect. While walking in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I came across the Karachi Restaurant which was offering Nihari for breakfast. I was checking on Google maps, where I found out atleast 7 streets in the world named after Karachi (listed in Appendix below). For example look at the photo to the right. This book title Assignment Karachi comes up everytime you search for a book on Karachi at amazon.com. But the funniest way that I have ever across Karachi was in professional wrestling.

I was reading a Wrestling blog (yes i am a big fan of wrestling and i know that it is fake) where I noticed a wrestling stable or gang known as the Karachi Vice. I thought for a moment that it must be the name of a new political party and wondered if our politicians have finally seen the light but this feeling was short lived. The Karachi Vice wrestling guys were pretty active in the 70s and 80s. See their photo to the left. And you know what, now the kids of Karachi Vice guys have started their own wrestling group called the New Karachi Vice.

Faris Islam

Looking through the usual new sites on Pakistan over the weekend, I came across the ominous headline proclaiming “A day of thrilling developments likely,” which outlined that Sunday had been full of “feverish political activities which showed no sign of slowing down.” The article went on to talk about the “fireworks… predicted to start in the courtroom” with “part of the tense drama, however… played out at a meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the army chief” and added further fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories that continue to singe our political institutions.

The article is not an isolated example however, and to me is indicative of a larger problem within our burgeoning mediascape. It is important that the article in question appeared not in an upstart tabloid but in Dawn – Pakistan’s most respected and sober newspaper which is respected for its restraint and high-quality reporting. Unfortunately even Dawn appears to also be succumbing to the wave of sensationalism like so many other media outlets in Pakistan, and indeed the world. But my concern is not about what is happening to one newspaper; rather it is what is happening to the media at large at a time when every news is “breaking news” and every story is presented in the most dramatic and sensational way possible, whether justified or not.

Adil Najam

It is difficult, even for Pakistanis, to fully comprehend the scale and size of Pakistan’s great flood. We can all imagine what a home, a locality, maybe even a city, looks like when submerged. But it is difficult for most people – especially those outside Pakistan – to imagine just how great is the ‘great’ in Pakistan’s great flood. Here are some pictures – created from the BBC’s Dimensions website – that might help you comprehend the incomprehensible.