East Pakistani or Bangladeshi ???

My beloved husband belongs to Bangladesh. But strangely whenever I call him Bangladeshi he always corrected me....no...not Bangladeshi....I am East Pakistani.

He migrated to Pakistan without his parents when he was only 7 yeas old. He told me that the people in Bangladesh was so mad on the people who wished to go back to Pakistan that they brutally killed them.

So his parents tackle the situation in a way that they sent every child one by one to Pakistan to their relatives here and at the end the both my MotherinLaw and Fatherinlaw came to Pakistan

Its a long story that how my beloved husband had survived in such small age without his parents for almost 5 years. While his relatives were not very helpful or friendly with him.

hmmmm.....that's why he is a good cook....lol...

Few days ago I had to renew my passport for my visit abroad and this was the first time I was changing my status from single to married.

We have everything computerized now. Which somehow complicated few things and parallel way simplified too. Every thing went smooth until the last stage when I had a little chit chat with the Manager of NADRA and he asked me about my husband, sitting besides me though.

I told the manager about US...and then he asked....

Is your husband Bangladeshi????

I said...hmmm..no...he is East Pakistani.

the rude manager said......same thing.

And you told me that you get birth in Pakistan, Karachi? Yeah ?

I said...yes.

He said...ok bring me evidence.

I said.....what evidence.....baah?

Manager.....anything...which confirms that you belong to Pakistan since birth. Your birth certificate or your B form or your father's CNIC card.

I...as I did had those papers...readily presented him.

He smiled....and pass my form.

And then when we were about to leave his room...he said..sorry...we are not making passports of Bangladeshi here anymore.

He smiled.....but I couldn't smiled back.

I looked at my beloved husband's face....it was pale.

I felt pity....

Bangladeshi or East Pakistani ....when they were forced to leave their country...how come we expect them to bring some evidence that they belong to Pakistan?

When we has allowed them to enter into Pakistan then why not we are accepting them???

Why not we are giving them our identity...nationality....rights???

If this is the criteria than we all are still INDIAN....cause we migrated from India.

I am so so unhappy since then.....

To Bangladesh:

To lost East Pakistan....hmmm....

Retreating or Reviving !

Last night me and one of my friend was talking about banning of Minarets in Switzerland.

He told me that he didn't get offended by this banning...hmm..let see what Minaret remind us :

A minaret is a tower that adjoins a mosque. The original purpose of a minaret was to allow a muezzin to call people to prayer in that neighborhood.

Some minarets are still functional in that regard although, with the use of public address systems, loud speakers today are frequently attached to the minaret instead. Most mosques have only one minaret, many of which are placed in the direction of the qibla, which shows the direction in which Muslims pray (toward the city of Makkah).

However, some mosques may have more than one minaret. Minarets are also somewhat like church steeples in that people can tell from a distance which building is the mosque.

He confirmed his statement by telling me that the earliest mosques were built without minarets, hadiths relay that the Muslim community of Madina gave the call to prayer from the roof of the house of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which doubled as a place for prayer.

Around 80 years after Muhammad's death the first known minarets appeared.

He thinks that he don't need a MINARET to remind him of his being a Muslim.

1990, the Muslim population was 152,200, or 2.2% of the Switzerland’s resident population. A surprising development for those who know that in the early seventies, there were less than 20,000 Muslims living in Switzerland. Islam is now the second largest religion in Switzerland, after Christianity.

He got a valid point but being a second largest nation of a Switzerland, does this gives a positive sign if you are prohibited to exhibit your culture and tradition?

I know...people would say let it go. We don't need a minaret to be a Muslim we have so much enthusiasm for our religion and we will stick with it. But still when religion is a personal adoption, its human nature to be totally IN that adoption. Otherwise you will feel like fish out of water.

I mean how it would be like in Switzerland when it about adhan time and we cant hear it as it is banned? Isn't this will gives a little void feeling...? Like something is missing ??

But than I also discovered that there are only four total minaret exist in Switzerland even before it was banned publicly, it was not welcomed either.

According to the government, there are 130-160 Muslim cultural centres and prayer rooms in Switzerland, and four mosques with minarets:-
The Mahmud mosque in Zurich, inaugurated in 1963.-
The Petit-Saconnex mosque and Islamic cultural foundation in Geneva, opened in 1978.-
The Albanian Islamic cultural centre mosque in Winterthur, opened in 2004.-
The mosque of the Turkish cultural association in Wangen near Olten, inaugurated in 2009.

Why Pakistan felt the most about this banning is because in the inauguration ceremony of Mahmud mosque the high society turned out , including the former Pakistani foreign minister Zaffrullah Khan and mayor of Zurich Emil Landolt.

Which means that we are attached with Switzerland mosques and Muslims since than.

I don't know whether accepting the Switzerland's banning of Minaret is our retreating from culture and tradition or reviving that there were no minaret at the start of Islam so its not something on which ISLAM depends.

Calendar !

Hmmm…I have a calendar which serves me since January 2009 and it did fine. I mean being normal can also be a hard task.

It has separate pages for every month and the first week of the day starts from Sunday which also gives a positive sign that week is starting with an off-day. It has the list of national holidays. All very normal like a normal calendar one can have except for one.

Why and what struck me all the time when I looked at it was its pictures on the top of every page almost taking the 75 % of the whole area(I think you got it that you can’t avoid the picture).

I do like to see people (I mean the people I know at least)…I don’t hate normal people (the people I don’t know or don’t even care to know). But I hate this normal people photo calendar.

This calendar has a photo of some normal man or woman doing some ordinary work and even I sometimes hate to see at the picture or don’t like the way it is picturised I have to stick with the page as if once we are in specific month we have to stick with that hideous photo for whole 30 days.

As for December 2009 my normal calendar has a photo of a lady who is sweeping on the white marble floor.

I wonder what the photographer would had said to her when he was about to take her picture with this gesture or pose…..hmmm….may be something like…YOU WILL BE WATCHED BY THOUSAND OF PEOPLE FOR THE WHOLE ONE YEAR….BE HAPPY !

I know I know…sorry to all those of you out there who have a soft corner for these hard labour work people.

Believe me and please don’t forget to count me in. But it looks very selfish to give someone this kind of exposure just to fill your own pocket.

hmmm…I wonder all the time where this un-privileged…unlucky and under pressure lady would be ???? and that’s the case with other photos too that it gave me a sad and heart breaking thought whenever I looked at it.

Did any of these people have any idea that they would be memorized in a horrible photo calendar? Especially by ME ????

However, I always get this feeling that whenever guests walk into our sitting, they expect to find a lively, colourful and cheerful calendar may be some of them may be expecting to see some small cute baby’s calendar?

Or it could be a green woods/scenery calendar or it also could be a fruit calendar. I saw such calendar in my friend house in which they gave a fruit for every month with so many thoughtful comments to keep you healthy. I mean its normal that people usually hang cheerful or colourful or lively calenders in their houses.

But no…nope…nobelium….I had this hideous calendar and got stuck with it until end of the year.

If only I were a weaker person I would had set that calendar on fire by now but than I kept it on wall and kept my self tortured by the INSANE photography.

And now when I am soon going to replace this calendar with a new one I am kind a happy.

Only 15 more days to go…..hmmmm

By the way...its not funny to be stuck with one calendar whole year when you dont like it.

Barbarism or Freedom ?

Were you out of your mind talking on the mobile phone in the middle of Tariq Road....?

I asked my friend who was telling me about how easily and frankly two male snatched her mobile in the middle of Tariq Road with so many people around them and nobody had even raised a voice.

"It sounded like they are free to do such snatching" . She told me sarcastically.

hmmm.....I rather would say barbarically free to snatch.

Since we are a free country (Alhamdullilah) does this gives us the right to act barbarously towards others ?

What does freedom means : Freedom in is the right or ability to act according to ones will without being held up by the power of others.

And what about Barbarism : An idea, act or expression that in form or use offends against contemporary standards of good taste or acceptability.

It is usual to see people not following the traffic signals in Karachi. They often not follow the Que system in banks. They normally cheat you with the car parking in front of busy shopping plaza.

And what if someday I make a stand and ask them why not follow the rules and they would turn smiling and might say " Cause its a free country".

hmmm.....yes !

We are free to do any thing in this world its our legal right since our birth and at the same time we have freedom of making choices.

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". Why ?

Because of his choices and he chooses not be offended to anyone or to be a snatcher. If he chooses to be the first one he has to follow the rules of his states and mostly his heart's.

Its our heart which makes a CODE OF CONDUCT for our practical (which means when we are old enough to reason) lives. We make set of rules and one by one implement them on our lives and sometimes these rules are the inspiration from our ideals or our contemporary era. These rules do not directly collide with the state rules but they both usually are parallel.

I know due to the abrupt glamorised media our children and young generation has a list of luxury to attain while they don't have money or jobs.

But still we have our ideals and they had a fulfilled life even without these luxuries.

And even we don't have anyone in our mind we still have our heart to guide us towards wrong and right. We have our religion to help us becoming a better person.

After all these media and choices in our hands we are still barbarous in nature and making other peoples live miserable.

hmmm....

Love US (Usman ~ Sunaina)

There were times when I was in love...what kind of LOVE I am talking here ?

The kind of love I am talking here is not the love we have for our parents...sisters...brothers or our family's children...

The kind of love I am recalling right now is the love when we met someone....complete stranger and after spending few days with that one somehow start making things work more easily and more rapidly.

Life become easy and intersting. Time become soft and things work out and make sense.

ME...I think I tried everything in my life....even LOVE too...when I was in love...man....I was in love. I tasted it and find it sweet but bitter when people are not in favor. I dont think loving someone is bad if you do it with dignity and loyalty it can make love flourish and lively.

You can forget everything in love....not even your senses but your instincts and your self respect too but I think love worth it.

But as said, True love can blind you but at the same time if you let it, it can also open your eyes.

So than there were times when I made up my mind and forget all about it and went on. If you have courage to love, you have courage to suffer too.

Good thing about love is that you can easily skip it...stop it....reject it....deny it. So did I.

When I first met the below two children on my first day at my office, I can feel the love between them but that time both of the young couple was thinking about either to or not to make commitments.

hmm....you attrack people by the qualities you display. You keep them by the qualities you possess.

I even remember once Sunaina told me that there is nothing in between them and they naver can think about having an affair with each other. They are just friends....lol....

May be that time she didnt know how miracle works....how Allah granted HIS blessings.

I did pray about them...want them to have good ending of love. Though it makes me perplexed when they used to told me little about the resistance from their family and friends.

And as now they finaly got married hapily and all the offense and resistance washed away...hmmm..refreshed my confidence on love.

I conclude in my personal writtings that love may also have happy endings.

hmmm..I love this picture.

Joan of Arc (1414~1431)

This french national heroine and saint of Roman Catholic Church gained her renown during the Hundred Years' War with England.

Since then, she has been the subject of countless works of art and over 100 plays, the most famous of which are by J. C. Friedrich von Schiller (1801) and George Bernard Shaw (1923).

Joan was an illiterate but pious peasant girl who began having religious visions and hearing the voices of saints at age 13. When she was 17, these voices convinced her that her calling was to restore national unity to France by driving the English away and seeing that the dauphin (the eldest son of a king) Charles (1403-1416) was crowned king at Reims, where all French kings were crowned.

Although in southern France Charles was recognized as ruler, the English and the Burgundians (French citizens in favor of the British) controlled Paris and northern France, where Reims was located.

When Joan appeared in his court with her strange story, Charles, although broke and desperate, tested her. He let a noble sit on his throne, but Joan saw through the deception. After Joan told him what he asked from GOD when he prayed alone, Charles gave her a suit of armor and some troops and sent her to the besieged Orleans.

Once she got there, Joan led a series of skillful assaults that made the British flee in about a week. The English were so fear struck by her presence that an English proclamation was issued against those that deserted their cause "for fear of the mayde".

While she was wounded several times, Joan later claimed to have killed no one.

After recovering several occupied towns on the way to Reims, Joan stood by during the 1429 coronation of King Charles VII.

While trying to recapture Paris, she was taken prisoner by the Burgandians, who delivered her to the English for 16,000 francs.

After an unfair trial in Rouen in which she was pronounced a heretic (a religious disbeliever), Joan was burned alive at the stake before a huge crowd.

Her courageous behaviour there made many of them fear that they'd just seen a saint martyred.

In 1455, her Trial of Rehabilitation proclaimed her sentence void, and a statue of her was erected on the site on which she had died.

She was declared a saint by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, and the day of her death, May 30th, became her feast day.

NOTE :

Why is that we, people dont have space for those who turned differently from the whole comunity?

Why we, people can't just let them go and make a room besides us for them as well?

Why we, people always have to kill them or crush them ?

Is it just because we, people don't like different or someone who can think better than us ?

It seems that their presence somehow blocked all of us, peoples' breath and thats why we have to remove them from our lives.

hmmm......its all the same story since human origin. We make mistakes and kill inocents. After we realize we did it mistakenly we made a statue and settle that in the middle of our cities.

hmmm......