Back Then...

By: Rabia Tirmizey

Do any of you remember the candy floss man passing on the street outside your house and filling you with excitement? Were you one of those who would wait anxiously for those five minutes of your favorite Cartoons on PTV just before going to school and once more in the evening?  Do you remember fighting endlessly with siblings for your turn on the sole set of “game and watch” (the only handheld gaming device available then), a packet of Slims and a Frost juice pack making your day, or itching to finish homework and sneaking out to play on the street with neighborhood friends? Were you one of those who would know all tracks of the latest Vital Signs and Junoon albums (on both Side A and Side B) by heart? Were games like Hide and Seek, Kings and Dark Room the primary non-sport games you loved playing with cousins and friends? Did you wait for months for a dinner treat at a fast food restaurant, or a picnic at the Hawks bay?

Remembering the Birth of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah

By: Shazia Yousuf

On the birth day of the greatest leader of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, let us recall his message to us as a nation:

“The creation of Pakistan has placed tremendous responsibility on the citizens of pakistan... 

It gives them opportunity to demonstrate to the world how a nation with containing many elements can live in peace and amity and work for the betterment of all its citizens irrespective of cast or creed...

Our objective should be peace within and peace without...

Let us impress the minorities by our words, deeds and thoughts, that as long as they fulfill their duties and obligations as loyal citizens of pakistan, they have nothing to fear...

We have no ambition beyond the desire to live honourably and let others live honourably..."

Igniting the Love for Urdu Language

By: Shazia Yousuf

“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”‒Oliver Wendell Holmes

Language is not just a method of communication; it is a means of bonding which brings one closer to the culture to which that language belongs.

Youm-e-Ashura

By: Shazia Yousuf

Youm-e-Ashura marks a great calamity when the grandson of Prophet Muhammad and his family faced a tragic end. The loss was irreversible, the sequence of events extremely painful. The sad part was the fact that the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (s.m) met with such a painful fate! You need not be a Shia or a sunni to observe the youm-e-ashura or grieve over this tragedy.

Each year, at this time, we are reminded of the conspiracies and the plots that humans are capable of knitting for power, personal gains and out of jealousies. The tragedy of Karbala, was the greatest tragedy for the Muslims, but this tragedy keeps repeating in different forms till the present time.

Youm-e-Ashura repeats every now and then, when the only earning member of a family dies in a blast, or young sons of a family eat stray bullets in their chest to meet untimely death, or when women of a family are brutally massacred over petty family disputes.

It is time for us to sit and ponder whether to take this as a long weekend and enjoy, or mourn over the loss of our beloved Prophet’s grandson, or to remind ourselves of the tragedies this world keeps seeing.

The question is, will such tragedies ever come to an end?

 What comes to my mind at this moment is the following part of an ayat from the Holy Quran:  

“Khalaq al insaan a fi kabad”

[Man has been created in a state of distress]

Only When A Soul Departs

By: Shazia Yousuf

Day begins, day ends. Time is running fast; so much to do but such little time. There’s hardly time for anything. We are all the time busy in a race against time. It seems as if life would come to a halt if we stop doing all those things that we are busy with. Without even stopping for a while to realize what we are doing, we go on with that daily rut.

There are so many people around us, who we take for granted. We think we’ll talk to them tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. We plan to visit them, but something or the other which is more urgent comes up. We do think about them, but blame the busy schedule for not being able to give them our precious time. Some of our dear ones, we don’t even find time to think about. Let’s face it, we do this.