Madspeak

In 1958 the people of former East Pakistan now independent Bangladesh - protested against Urdu and wanted Bengali to be the 'national language' - perhaps nowhere in the world has ever heard of rioting and demonstrations over the issue of language and nothing else. That is a lot of water under the bridge now - Bangladesh exists, Bengali is the national language, though the truth is everyone prefers to speak Urdu - it is the language of South Asia. There may be a few places where Urdu is not understood or not spoken at a;;. So many people regardless of rank and status would rather speak in Urdu then in Bengali. They all know that language issue was for political reasons and nothing else. The language of the government prior to British rule was Persian - Urdu was the language of the common people. During the British Raj, English was the language of the government, Urdu remained the language of the common people - Urdu did not discriminate between religions, everyone spoke it. Af...

The new selected prime minister by the military has over 32 ministers in his cabinet. A minister for every single task whether it requires a great deal of expertise and or it is downright menial. Ministers get all the privileges which mean they have mansions, ten chauffeur driven cars, free petrol, free electricity, free water, and free gas. It does not matter that the rest of the people in the country are suffering due inflation and paying inflated electricity and telephone bills. The salaries of these ministers will be millions of rupees. 75% of these ministers are retired silly high ranking military officers, during their working years they were completely incompetent and as cabinet ministers they will be much worse, they would be positively rabid – because throughout their working lives they learnt only one thing how to bark orders. The rest of the ministers comprised of former bureaucrats and failed politicians who could never dream of being a cabinet minister. had there been a ...

Karachi has been the target of a number of terrorists attacks - there are of several type - there are those amongst religious sects the Shias and the Sunnis, there are factions between both Shia and Sunni groups. They primarily attack eachother's mosques or assassinate eachother's leaders. Then of course there is the international 'War on Terror' - the result is some terrorists slip into the city and try to attack the consulates of the countries forming the coalition forces in Afghanistan or those who are in some way affiliated or sympathetic to the cause. The residences and offices are targetted - but these are scattered all over the city. Immediately after an attack has taken place, then all traffic on that road is stopped indefinitely - causing unnecessary traffic jams elsewhere. Things have come to such a state that many major roads cannot be used and alternative ones have to be used - this is time consuming and extremely irritating. Most Karachites are seeing...

As can be expected from a fanatical regime, which is bent on denying everyone here the least amount of freedom - the Internet like all other media is very closely monitored, filtered and websites which people use to visit on a regular basis are now are blocked - a message called 'time out error 110', which is a way of saying 'don't ever visit this website again'. Instead of lowering charges and providing good services, the state owned telephone company PTCL is making it increasingly impossible to surf the Internet. In a population of 150 million people only 6 per cent people use the Internet - whereas in more properous countries up to 40 per cent of the entire population uses the Internet. Internet access is doomed, because the network of telephone lines does not exist, besides the majority of the people do not know how to use computers leave alone surf the Internet. The use of computers and the surfing of the Internet is a previlege not something which everyo...

One would have expected - that when former USA president Bill Clinton was here, his 'address to the nation' would have been in a friendlier manner, But such was not the case. Instead the manner he presented himself, on our state-owned TV was no different from any other of the countless tin-pot dictators who have been running our country. Clinton was unsmiling - he looked very stern and he spoke very harshly, which was downright obnoxious. Of course Clinton was not here to win votes, had that been the case, the manner he made his speech would have been much more pleasant, He was thumping the desk whenever he made a point - no one actually remembers all that he had said; the details are fuzzy now. Few things cannot be forgotten he said Pakistan is a pariah nation and needed to be warned of dire consequences. As if the lowest forms of life on the planet is a Pakistani. Clinton instead of presenting a pleasant demeanour and a diplomatic one, he was extremely ferocious and just as ...

Millions of years ago a star exploded and it propelled its most distant planet off into space, the planet whom I will call Dharti was ejected from the star system and was wel on its way towards the Solar System. It was a solid planet and not a gas giant, the effect of the star's explosion had caused severe damage to Dharti . In any case as Dharti travelled through the vast emptiness of space, it was a giant amongst errant space objects it was as big as Jupiter and entirely solid. The momentum it had picked up from its own star's explosion did not subside. Finally when Dharti entered the solar system, it did not hit any of the planets although it was several hundred thousand away from them it had incredible gravity, which helped it draw something from each of them. From the gas giants Dharti drew an atmosphere which did not belong to it and from the ringed planets all kinds of junk. Before this planet had arrived Mars was covered in a deep ice, the giant planet had come fairly c...

I grew up in a time when there was hardly any TV - leave alone cable TV and of course no Internet what is even worse there not even game consoles. The only way to spend ones time - was to read comic books. But there was some kind hysteria amongst the adults at that time - who were dead against comic books - if any kid was caught reading one - he would be punished or scolded. Exchanging comic books amongst friends and class fellows was done in secret. Everyone waited anxiously for the next edition of some favourite comic book character's comic book to appear. Adults were of the opinion that comic books are going to corrupt and ruin children, divert their attention from their studies and sports. Comic books were fun - it led to reading actual books, improve ones vocabulary. The fantastic stories helped improve ones imagination. Nearly all the adults of today - grew up reading comic books - turned them into profitable business like making extremely successful films about specific co...