The launching of the mission to moon by India upset me a lot. Like why can't we do it? And I've always believed that India is way ahead of us particularly in science and technology. All WE are good at is arts. We have the greatest geniuses in music, singing, dancing, acting and writing. Why do we lack the science and the maths geniuses and the scientific minds, I still don't understand.
This article by William Dalrymple, entitled "The 'poor' neighbour", published on 14th August 2007 in Guardian was a teeny weeny little relief. I cannot help but posting all of it:
Amid all the hoopla surrounding the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, almost nothing has been heard from Pakistan, which turns 60 today. Nothing, that is, if you discount the low rumble of suicide bombings, the noise of automatic weapons storming the Red Mosque and the creak of slowly collapsing dictatorships.
In the world's media, never has the contrast between the two countries appeared so stark: one is widely perceived as the next great superpower; the other written off as a failed state, a world centre of Islamic radicalism, the hiding place of Osama bin Laden and the only US ally that Washington appears ready to bomb.
On the ground, of course, the reality is different and first-time visitors to Pakistan are almost always surprised by the country's visible prosperity. There is far less poverty on show in Pakistan than in India, fewer beggars, and much less desperation. In many ways the infrastructure of Pakistan is much more advanced: there are better roads and airports, and more reliable electricity. Middle-class Pakistani houses are often bigger and better appointed than their equivalents in India.
Moreover, the Pakistani economy is undergoing a construction and consumer boom similar to India's, with growth rates of 7%, and what is currently the fastest-rising stock market in Asia. You can see the effects everywhere: in new shopping centres and restaurant complexes, in the hoardings for the latest laptops and iPods, in the cranes and building sites, in the endless stores selling mobile phones: in 2003 the country had fewer than three million cellphone users; today there are almost 50 million.
Mohsin Hamid, author of the Booker long-listed novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, wrote about this change after a recent visit: having lived abroad as a banker in New York and London, he returned home to find the country unrecognisable. He was particularly struck by "the incredible new world of media that had sprung up, a world of music videos, fashion programmes, independent news networks, cross-dressing talkshow hosts, religious debates, and stock-market analysis".
I knew, of course, that the government of Pervez Musharraf had opened the media to private operators. But I had not until then realised how profoundly things had changed. Not just television, but private radio stations and newspapers have also flourished in Pakistan over the past few years. The result is an unprecedented openness. Young people are speaking and dressing differently. Views both critical and supportive of the government are voiced with breathtaking frankness in an atmosphere remarkably lacking in censorship. Public space, the common area for culture and expression that had been so circumscribed in my childhood, has now been vastly expanded. The Vagina Monologues was recently performed on stage to standing ovations.
Little of this is reported in the western press, which prefers its sterotypes simple: India-successful; Pakistan-failure. Nevertheless, despite the economic boom, there are three serious problems that Pakistan will have to sort out if it is to continue to keep up with its giant neighbour - or indeed continue as a coherent state at all.
One is the fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains almost the only social base from which politicians can emerge. In general, the educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947, emasculating the power of its landowners - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan the local feudal zamindar can expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars have private prisons and most have private armies.
In such an environment, politicians tend to come to power more through deals done within Pakistan's small elite than through the will of the people. Behind Pakistan's swings between military governments and democracy lies a surprising continuity of interests: to some extent, the industrial, military, landowning and bureaucratic elites are now all related and look after one another. The current rumours of secret negotiations going on between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the exiled former prime minister, are typical of the way that the civil and military elites have shared power with relatively little recourse to the electorate.
The second major problem that the country faces is linked with the absence of real democracy, and that is the many burgeoning jihadi and Islamist groups. For 25 years, the military and Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have been the paymasters of myriad mujahideen groups. These were intended for selective deployment first in Afghanistan and then Kashmir, where they were intended to fight proxy wars for the army, at low cost and low risk. Twenty-eight years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however, the results have been disastrous, filling the country with thousands of armed but now largely unemployed jihadis, millions of modern weapons, and a proliferation of militant groups.
While the military and intelligence community in Pakistan may have once believed that it could use jihadis for its own ends, the Islamists have followed their own agendas. As the recent upheavals in Islamabad have dramatically shown, they have now brought their struggle on to the streets and into the heart of the country's politics.
The third major issue facing the country is its desperate education crisis. No problem in Pakistan casts such a long shadow over its future as the abject failure of the government to educate more than a fraction of its own people: at the moment, a mere 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. The statistics are dire: 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity.
This was graphically confirmed by a survey conducted two years ago by the former Pakistan cricket captain turned politician, Imran Khan, in his own constituency of Mianwali. His research showed that 20% of government schools supposed to be functioning in his constituency did not exist at all, a quarter had no teachers and 70% were closed. No school had more than half of the teachers it was meant to have. Of those that were just about functioning, many had children of all grades crammed into a single room, often sitting on the floor in the absence of desks.
This education gap is the most striking way in which Pakistan is lagging behind India: in India, 65% of the population is literate and the number rises every year: only last year, the Indian education system received a substantial boost of state funds.
But in Pakistan, the literacy figure is under half (it is currently 49%) and falling: instead of investing in education, Musharraf's military government is spending money on a cripplingly expensive fleet of American F-16s for its air force. As a result, out of 162 million Pakistanis, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. Among women the problem is worse still: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. As the population rockets, the problem gets worse.
The virtual collapse of government schooling has meant that many of the country's poorest people have no option but to place their children in the madrasa system, where they are guaranteed an ultra-conservative but free education, often subsidised by religious endowments provided by the Wahhabi Saudis.
Altogether there are now an estimated 800,000 to one million students enrolled in Pakistan's madrasas. Though the link between the madrasas and al-Qaida is often exaggerated, it is true that madrasa students have been closely involved in the rise of the Taliban and the growth of sectarian violence; it is also true that the education provided by many madrasas is often wholly inadequate to equip children for modern life in a civil society.
Sixty years after its birth, India faces a number of serious problems - not least the growing gap between rich and poor, the criminalisation of politics, and the flourishing Maoist and Naxalite groups that have recently proliferated in the east of the country. But Pakistan's problems are on a different scale; indeed, the country finds itself at a crossroads. As Jugnu Mohsin, the publisher of the Lahore-based Friday Times, put it recently, "After a period of relative quiet, for the first time in a decade, we are back to the old question: it is not just whether Pakistan, but will Pakistan survive?" On the country's 60th birthday, the answer is by no means clear.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
A softer post
Noman said that the last few posts have been really aggressive; exactly what I was thinking before he pointed out. (He was like: Dude get your hormone levels checked up). Well, my family also accuses me of peevishness during the tension-full test and exam days, which reminds me of the broody hen again.
I keep on mentioning the broody hen because, one, thats the perfect example, two, I have a vast experience with broody hens and three, thats what my brother calls me in the exam days.
Hens are just made for humans; they can't fly and they lay eggs daily and they wont incubate the eggs until they go broody. Keeping hens is fun and a great learning experience. For example, I can tell that a hen is about to lay an egg from its behaviour. I remember, years back when we had kept hens (I wasn't really interested, my brother is an animal buff) they used to lay eggs early in the morning. The hen who wanted to lay egg would get a little lazy, wander away from the rest of the flock and produce a particular long sound, like prraaaaannnnnkkkkk ppaaawwwkkkkk paawwkk. (Oh and one day during the forensic lecture in the forensic lecture theater I was demonstrating this sound to Saad when Madam Rana caught me and asked me to sit on the front bench!) She would then find a secluded place preferably her own cage and I would follow her, naturally. There she would sit for some time and when she would stand up suddenly it would be the moment. She would sometimes close her eyes forcefully indicating that she is in pain but she is patient. And I would fix my eyes on the point of exit indicating that I am excited but I am hungry. And then it would appear. I would clench my teeth and in my mind would say, 'Yes honey, come on, push, you can do it' (I had these doctor instincts since childhood?) and there it is shiny, slimy, fresh and hot from the oven and I would be like, 'Gaawwd...that was stretchy.' I would wait for it to get dry while the hen would jump off and produce another particular sound: pataaiink puk puk puk pataink puk puk puk telling the whole flock and the owners and the neighbours that she had just laid an egg.
Everyone's 'first time' is difficult. First timers get nervous and reluctant and afraid that the process or the result might go wrong but once they are through it, it becomes very natural just like err breathing. When one of our hens was about to lay an egg for the first time she was nervous too. The 'getting ready' stage was prolonged quite a lot. She sat in her cage for so long. Fed up of waiting, I just went away. When I came back all that was there in the cage was the yolk and the egg white. The shell either wasn't produced or got stuck somewhere inside.
I don't know about hens but the sexuality of ducks can be quite complex. Once we had two ducklings who grew up to be mature ducks. My brother was persistent that both are females while I had seen them mating quite often. Once my uncle was going out of the house and the ducks were mating just in front of the gate. He decided not to disturb them. He waited and saw them with great enthusiasm. When they were done, he crossed the gate. So my uncle was a witness of their being a male-female couple too. One morning there was an egg in the ducks' cage. My uncle said, triumphantly, 'See? I told you, one is male and one is female.' Then there were matings and there were eggs almost everyday. One day I locked them in separate cages and in the morning, BEHOLD there were eggs in both the cages. I decided not to ponder. We never kept their eggs.
We would just eat most of the hens' eggs but if we planned to get them incubated we would put the date on the egg shaking it as little as possible and would keep it at a dark place. Then we would buy a special hen who would be likely to go broody. When it would, we would build a nest at a secluded, dark place: put some dried hay in a tub or a basket, make its surface concave, put the eggs on it and gently drop the hen over it and she would be the happiest hen on the earth. She would arrange the eggs the way she likes and then would sit on them. You can put the eggs of any species under her; geese, ducks, other hens, lizards, crocodiles, snakes, dinosaurs, she wont mind, she just wants be a mother. We actually kept the eggs of different hen species that we had; Golden Buff, Black Buff, Silkie etc.
Once a day we would pick her up from the eggs (with gloves on hands because her hormones mess up and she gets very very aggressive and would bite you, probably thinking that you are a thief and have come to take her eggs.) and leave her out to wander a little, stretch her muscles, eat and excrete. She wont excrete on her eggs! After a while we would put her back again. During the time when the hen would be away I would sometimes inspect the eggs. An egg getting heavier meant there was someone inside, to confirm I would illuminate the egg with a torch (Now really, I had these doctor instincts since childhood) During the last days even the sound of the chick would come from the egg.
Twenty one days later the eggs would start hatching, starting from the place where their beak is. Their mother would help them come out by breaking the shell with her own beak. Cute little plump chicks, their heads popping out from under the feathers of their mother as if the hen had many small heads. Now the hen would come out with her chicks, giving them food and protecting them from any possible predator. She would attack any one; a cat, a dog, a human. And they would grow. The hen would be happy, the chicks would be happy and we would be happy.
I keep on mentioning the broody hen because, one, thats the perfect example, two, I have a vast experience with broody hens and three, thats what my brother calls me in the exam days.
Hens are just made for humans; they can't fly and they lay eggs daily and they wont incubate the eggs until they go broody. Keeping hens is fun and a great learning experience. For example, I can tell that a hen is about to lay an egg from its behaviour. I remember, years back when we had kept hens (I wasn't really interested, my brother is an animal buff) they used to lay eggs early in the morning. The hen who wanted to lay egg would get a little lazy, wander away from the rest of the flock and produce a particular long sound, like prraaaaannnnnkkkkk ppaaawwwkkkkk paawwkk. (Oh and one day during the forensic lecture in the forensic lecture theater I was demonstrating this sound to Saad when Madam Rana caught me and asked me to sit on the front bench!) She would then find a secluded place preferably her own cage and I would follow her, naturally. There she would sit for some time and when she would stand up suddenly it would be the moment. She would sometimes close her eyes forcefully indicating that she is in pain but she is patient. And I would fix my eyes on the point of exit indicating that I am excited but I am hungry. And then it would appear. I would clench my teeth and in my mind would say, 'Yes honey, come on, push, you can do it' (I had these doctor instincts since childhood?) and there it is shiny, slimy, fresh and hot from the oven and I would be like, 'Gaawwd...that was stretchy.' I would wait for it to get dry while the hen would jump off and produce another particular sound: pataaiink puk puk puk pataink puk puk puk telling the whole flock and the owners and the neighbours that she had just laid an egg.
Everyone's 'first time' is difficult. First timers get nervous and reluctant and afraid that the process or the result might go wrong but once they are through it, it becomes very natural just like err breathing. When one of our hens was about to lay an egg for the first time she was nervous too. The 'getting ready' stage was prolonged quite a lot. She sat in her cage for so long. Fed up of waiting, I just went away. When I came back all that was there in the cage was the yolk and the egg white. The shell either wasn't produced or got stuck somewhere inside.
I don't know about hens but the sexuality of ducks can be quite complex. Once we had two ducklings who grew up to be mature ducks. My brother was persistent that both are females while I had seen them mating quite often. Once my uncle was going out of the house and the ducks were mating just in front of the gate. He decided not to disturb them. He waited and saw them with great enthusiasm. When they were done, he crossed the gate. So my uncle was a witness of their being a male-female couple too. One morning there was an egg in the ducks' cage. My uncle said, triumphantly, 'See? I told you, one is male and one is female.' Then there were matings and there were eggs almost everyday. One day I locked them in separate cages and in the morning, BEHOLD there were eggs in both the cages. I decided not to ponder. We never kept their eggs.
We would just eat most of the hens' eggs but if we planned to get them incubated we would put the date on the egg shaking it as little as possible and would keep it at a dark place. Then we would buy a special hen who would be likely to go broody. When it would, we would build a nest at a secluded, dark place: put some dried hay in a tub or a basket, make its surface concave, put the eggs on it and gently drop the hen over it and she would be the happiest hen on the earth. She would arrange the eggs the way she likes and then would sit on them. You can put the eggs of any species under her; geese, ducks, other hens, lizards, crocodiles, snakes, dinosaurs, she wont mind, she just wants be a mother. We actually kept the eggs of different hen species that we had; Golden Buff, Black Buff, Silkie etc.
Once a day we would pick her up from the eggs (with gloves on hands because her hormones mess up and she gets very very aggressive and would bite you, probably thinking that you are a thief and have come to take her eggs.) and leave her out to wander a little, stretch her muscles, eat and excrete. She wont excrete on her eggs! After a while we would put her back again. During the time when the hen would be away I would sometimes inspect the eggs. An egg getting heavier meant there was someone inside, to confirm I would illuminate the egg with a torch (Now really, I had these doctor instincts since childhood) During the last days even the sound of the chick would come from the egg.
Twenty one days later the eggs would start hatching, starting from the place where their beak is. Their mother would help them come out by breaking the shell with her own beak. Cute little plump chicks, their heads popping out from under the feathers of their mother as if the hen had many small heads. Now the hen would come out with her chicks, giving them food and protecting them from any possible predator. She would attack any one; a cat, a dog, a human. And they would grow. The hen would be happy, the chicks would be happy and we would be happy.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
A political wedding
Its 3:15 in the morning and I'm just back from a wedding. I wasn't willing to go but Dad had some special reason to take me.
What made this wedding unforgettable was that some very close relatives weren't suppose to talk to each other, some very close relatives weren't supposed to even look at each other. Some people tried to talk to some people to make others jealous. Some people tried to be prominent and different to make others envious. Some people tried to play the futile role of arbitrator. Some people carried an air of indifference around them and some others were totally ignorant. These people will meet again on another common wedding or a common funeral. That was the height of selfishness. I just sat there, half enjoying, half appalled. It was the most political and the most depressing wedding ever!
And yet we are proud of our family values and we blame the West for ignoring the family ties!
What made this wedding unforgettable was that some very close relatives weren't suppose to talk to each other, some very close relatives weren't supposed to even look at each other. Some people tried to talk to some people to make others jealous. Some people tried to be prominent and different to make others envious. Some people tried to play the futile role of arbitrator. Some people carried an air of indifference around them and some others were totally ignorant. These people will meet again on another common wedding or a common funeral. That was the height of selfishness. I just sat there, half enjoying, half appalled. It was the most political and the most depressing wedding ever!
And yet we are proud of our family values and we blame the West for ignoring the family ties!
Friday, October 24, 2008
Taliban part 2?
According to a news report the Americans with the Pakistani officials are going to provide ammunitions to the anti-Taliban forces in the tribal areas to help eliminate the Taliban.
It is now a well established fact that the Taliban were trained by the CIA with the help of ISI in order to defeat the Soviets and now they are providing arms to the anti-Taliban forces to defeat the Taliban and then they will create another group to defeat the anti-Taliban forces?
It is now a well established fact that the Taliban were trained by the CIA with the help of ISI in order to defeat the Soviets and now they are providing arms to the anti-Taliban forces to defeat the Taliban and then they will create another group to defeat the anti-Taliban forces?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Cat Poop
This kitty here is pooping on a patient's bed in Mayo Hospital. (See? We are hygienic). I couldn't make the video which I greatly regret. Some ward boy might have removed it and washed the bed cloth. More chances are he must not have! They say that they let the cats stay so that the cats may scare away the mice! (See? We are logical). I'm sorry if it makes you vomit or gag or choke. But if you have any of these symptoms just pay a visit to Mayo Hospital and you'l be as good as new. (See? We care)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Broody hen
The date of Sendups have been displayed which means extreme studies for four months. The schedule goes as follows: wakeup, have breakfast, study, have lunch, study, go to wash room (preferably with a book), study, have some snacks, study, watch a little TV (avoidance would be better), study, internet, study and then go to sleep with a book under your head, hoping that some material would be transferred from the book to your head during the night. No hanging out, no entertainment, no fun, no nothing. (But of course I'm not going to miss the World Performing Arts Festival. I mean I wait for it the whole year!)
The books are my eggs and I'm a broody hen. I will incubate my eggs and I will leave my nest only to eat and excrete. (In the last few days the hen doesn't even leave the nest to excrete...but I'm a bit cultured actually) I will protest in defense if disturbed or removed by my younger brother. The incubation period will continue through November, December, January and hopefully till the middle of February. (The only difference between ordinary routine tests and the Prof is the short incubation period of tests which continues for a week or less). The result will be in a month more. I pray that all my eggs hatch! (They will Inshallah)
The books are my eggs and I'm a broody hen. I will incubate my eggs and I will leave my nest only to eat and excrete. (In the last few days the hen doesn't even leave the nest to excrete...but I'm a bit cultured actually) I will protest in defense if disturbed or removed by my younger brother. The incubation period will continue through November, December, January and hopefully till the middle of February. (The only difference between ordinary routine tests and the Prof is the short incubation period of tests which continues for a week or less). The result will be in a month more. I pray that all my eggs hatch! (They will Inshallah)
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Poetry Idiopathic
If ever your life is getting necrosed,
Your dreams inflamed, your thoughts thrombosed,
Then let neoplasia of my wished metastize around you.
May all your troubles and worries
get denervated and dystrophied.
And things pleasing you get hyperplastic,
your happiness get hypertrophied.
Anonymous
Your dreams inflamed, your thoughts thrombosed,
Then let neoplasia of my wished metastize around you.
May all your troubles and worries
get denervated and dystrophied.
And things pleasing you get hyperplastic,
your happiness get hypertrophied.
Anonymous
Friday, October 17, 2008
Colgate Smile
I dont like his teeth. I dont like his colgate smile, I dont like his hyena laugh. What reason has he got to smile like that? He has got 16 billion people to look after, a failing economy to tend to, the American forces to combat. He has got the blood on his face of so many people dying daily in his country. He has got people spending their days in nights in candle light, people not getting flour, dying of hunger. He has got a neighbouring country violating the Sindh Water Treaty by building dam on and blocking the water of Chenab. The same country is establishing its intelligence roots in Afghanistan, doing war practices with America in the Arabian sea. What reason has he got to smile? Why does he laugh? Provided the circumstances he should be suffering from insomnia. He should have indigestions, he should be reduced to skin and bone due to worries and tensions and pressure. But no...there he is flourishing and growing blatantly. But then, the people of this country chose him themselves!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Mehfil-e-moseeqi
Now THAT is a 'Mehfil-e-moseeqi'. The singers apart, the best thing about this video is the highly 'musical' audience, capable of understanding every note, every intricacy of the raga. They know the difficult things and they know where to appreciate (thought I've never seen any women audience so deeply indulged and appreciative). Such an audience boosts the performers to do even better.
This particular video is a rare piece. Among the audience I can see Ghulam Ali (singer), Ishfaq Ahmed (writer) and Shaukat Ali (actor) all in their younger forms :p Cant recognize any of the ladies. Amanat Ali Khan on the harmonium, Fatah Ali Khan on the Surmandal, Shaukat Hussain on the tabla. Sarangi and Tanpura players are not visible. Such a rich amalgam of instruments. Raga is Bhairvi (7 flat notes, though I feel slight tinge of teevar rikhab) and the taal is Rupak (7 beats).
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Nobel Prize for chemistry 2008
Man...this sure is fun watching the live web cast of the announcement of winners of Nobel Prize. Today were announced the Nobel Prize winners for chemistry. Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, Roger Y. Tsien were awarded the prize for their discovery and explanation of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). The protein was first discovered and isolated from a jelly fish. GFP has a lot of uses. It is basically applied in cell biology, to visualise its contents, and other biological applications.
Thanks to the load shedding I could only watch the fifteen minutes of the press conference. The announcer actually had a culture of E. coli in which the GFP gene was incorporated. When he waved the culture over a UV source it glowed green. Then they showed how HIVs could be visualised inside the lymphocytes using GFP.
Im excited for the Nobel Prize for literature due to be announced tomorrow :)
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