By Syed Abbas Raza

Greetings from sweltering Karachi.

I am spending the summer in Karachi. It’s my first trip to the city of my birth in almost six years, and I’ve already been here a little over three weeks now.

Here are a few things, picked rather arbitrarily, which I find are very much the same as always, and some that have changed, maybe too much (also see here). These, of course, are my personal impressions, and no more.

Adil Najam

The anticipation for the final of the 2010 FIFA World Cup final is universal. Even in countries like Pakistan which are nowhere on the world football map, the excitement is palpable. Pakistan’s team may not be competing, but Pakistani parrot Mithu is competing with Germany’s octopus Paul and Singapore’s parrot Mani (originally from Malaysia, one is told) for who gets the final winners right. All three have gotten the previous critical games (including the semi-finals) right. For the finals, Paul the German octopus selects Spain as the likely winner, but both the parrots – Mithu from Pakistan and Mani from Singapore – prefer the Netherlands, the team in orange!

But in Pakistan, things become serious only when we mix politics into them. Here, then, is the Pakistani version of Shakira’s Waka Waka; via Hum Sub Umeed Say Hain:

Note the lyrics, and their ‘Pakistaniness’ in the second half of and at the end of the video!

Adil Najam

Everytime I use the word ‘Jahalat’ I seem to invite the wrath of the self-righteous. But do tell me what other word can be used to describe this news story below?

It may seem innocuous when someone half-buries a child in the sand to seek a cure for paralysis from a solar eclipse, but quite another when superstition and misinformation blocks the way for polio vaccination. But what can one say when a life is taken willfully and deliberately?

Back in 2006 we had written about how jahalat murdered 22-year old Shagufta who was axed to death and later burnt by her family, now Mohammad Bashir Kacha, a 70 year old resident of Rahim Yar Khan is dead.

Tell us who the culprit is: Jinn or jahalat?