What's In a Name?

a delightful tour of islamabad.

I will 'drink' to Khayabane Heer - wah, maar sattya. That may stick well too. Though unrelated reminded me of:
ranjay uthh ke akhya 'wah' sajan, te Heer hass ke mehrbaan hoyui"
And I am so glad to hear that there is a road after Perveen Shakir. God bless who had that done. The nation which does not honour their cultural 'sweethearts' will not sustain its culture. Where are Faiz and Faraz and Noor Jahan ...... and Inayat Hussain Bhatti.
Thanks for this nice article (though I think it is more than 'Humour')

Hurricane: Yours is an interesting viewpoint. It does clear some of the webs in my mind, but not all. I still want to know who Ismail Zabeeh was. I mean the man after whom the road has been named.

Delirium: Your explanation for I.J.Principal Road sounds plausible.I never knew that.

drsohail: Where could one find Abrar Hasan's complete poem? It sounds beautiful.

Aziz sahib,

I've lived in Islamabad forever, and the earlier names stuck because those were the names that the roads were known by as Islamabad was growing in population size. The government enforced names cannot catch...well maybe after 10 or 15 years...but that's just a shame...making these roads generic "Iqbal" and "Jinnah". "Margalla Road" has more meaning. So does the weirdly named "Blue Area". Which I think, was designated to be a green area, and appeared as a huge block of blue in blueprints...

So what's in a name? Human hubris.

The human knowledge itself is based on the ability to name things. This is how we separate ourselves from the unified reality into a human created illusion. Human ego makes us feel that we are distinct and unique and separate (and perhaps even superior) to "others". How do we know they are "others?". Well, they have different "names" don't they? While all we really are, is the manifestation of the same essence...from the same creator we all come, and to the same creator we shall all return. Allah hu :)

[I have a knack for going off on tangents, but hey, it's a related tangent]

IJ principal road is also known as Khayaban-e-Sir Syed. It runs along the periphery of sector I and seperates Rawalpindi from the Federal Capital. If sector J was ever planned on the other side ( Rwp )? I don't know........

Enjoyed reading,well written. I live here too,and yes frankly speaking who or what was I.J Principal ??

Dear Aziz sahib...i am glad your creative juices are flowing and you are sharing your creations on chowk. Keep on writing. Names are part of identity and reflect cultural psyche. Sometimes artists and poets are more tuned into cultural psyche than beurocrats. In lahore the area where my mother used to live was called krishan Nagar...but someone changed it to Islam Pura but many people still call it Krishan Nagar. It seeems as if the history of that part of India that became Pakistan and married Islam now has a history of 60 years rather than 6000 years of Mohrnjo Daro and Harappa. It is like the identity of women in the West who change the identity at the time of marriage and take husband's name. The only propblem is that what happens when she gets divorced. I know a woman who was married three times and divorced three times and kept on changing the name. Now her identity is as clear as mud. People living in Pakistan has a serious identity problem...and their names and the names of raods reflect that identity crisis. Nice read.
Urdu poet Abrar Hasan has a beutiful poem on that subject
one line from that poem
ab ham apnay shehr ki galian kin logoan kay naam karain
sincerely sohail

Would have been much better if shortened and certain digressions to political issues removed. Nice light reading after long time.