La Excepcion (The Exception) Just out of curiosity. The poem is in Spanish and English. Do write in French as well?

The Chowk Jam! I am an occasional visitor of Chowk. In the beginning I enjoyed a few articles, but the quality of articles have deteriorated considerably. Then, I stumbled upon the replies. The first time I read the replies I felt odd about the tone and the mannerisms of the participants. Since, I am not particularly fond of such forums and find then somewhat tedious, I attributed this weirdness to my distaste of the forum. On insistence of a friend I read a few more replies. Although, most of the replies were very interesting and informative I still did not enjoy reading them and continued to have the same feeling. I tried to analyze the reasons for this strange feeling, now bordering on dislike. I wrote a long email message to my friend on whose insistence I got involved in Chowk. In this message I tried to explain the reasons for my dislike of Chowk like forums in general and promised my friend that I will communicate my feelings about Chowk replies to other contributors. After reading a few more replies sessions I came to the following conclusions, which I want to share with you:

1. Most of the replies are posted by the same group of people, which tends to become boring after a while.

2. This core group of people has a great interest in finding personal information about the other people in the group. This is very distracting to the other readers/contributors.

3. Most replies are written in a pretentious manner. The terms like yar and bhaijan seem forcibly injected. Even those people who write in somewhat simplistic form, seem to be putting on a persona.

4. Some contributors have a tendency to preach and be pedagogic. I was particularly incensed by an instance when someone referred to a couplet from Ghalib and then went on to explain the meaning of various words.

5. The people of the core group seem to have an incredible need to impress others with their knowledge of other topics, languages, cultures, etc. Most of the times such ostentatious show does not contribute anything to the ongoing discussion.

6. It may be that the average Chowk contributor is much younger than me and I am too old fashioned to fully appreciate the communication behavior facilitated by modern technology. I still prefer meeting my friends once or twice a week for a good gup shup with sharab and kabab.

The Never-Ending Story Ferozk (#36):



Who gains by allowing the problem to slide? Whose self-interests propagates the debate; who can influence legislation and who can pay for it? Just ask yourself, who gains the most by keeping drugs illegal in the market place?

Just follow the money....!

I have been thinking about this ever since I read these comment. I came up with the following list of people, cartels, groups, etc. that benefit from drug trafficking:

1. Groups that control the cultivation and production of narcotics in South America, Burma, Afghanistan, Combodia, etc.

2. Armed groups that provide protection to the grower/planters and to certain degree transporters, such as, Shining Path of Peru, M16 of Columbia, Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot faction), Talibans, etc.

3. Corrupt armed forces in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia, Bolivia, Burma, etc.

4. In some cases CIA to support some of its covert operations such as Iran-Contra.

5. Some customs and police officials in the US and Europe. Most custom and police in the third world countries involved in drug trafficking.

6. Some international banks involved in money laundering.

7. Some politicians in countries like Columbia (Ernesto Samper), Mexico(Raul Salinas de Gortari), Combodia (Pol Pot), etc.

Then I tried to connect the dots to come up a coherent scenario under which these groups and organization would collude to keep drugs from becoming legal in the US or a single country in Europe. To be very honest, I couldn t come up with one.

There are multitude of conspiracy theories about who is responsible the drug trade; for instance Lyndon La Rouche blames Queen Elizabeth of England for most of the economic and social problems including drug trafficking. However, most of these theories are based on incongruent arguments and flawed logic. Just follow the money though a catchy phrase but does not tell us much. I would very much appreciate if you could enlighten us.

Passage Well done ZawarJi.

``I think I`ll make a go of it`` captures the hopes of all immigrants who arrive in this beautiful land of opportunity. And assessing from your brief resume, you did `make a go of it.`

Keep up the good work.

An MD’s Version of Faiz This is the stuff of Pakistani “filmi” magazines like Shama. I can’t believe it.

The City of Gargoyles Interesting article. I didn’t know that such rivalry existed between Lahoris and Karachiwalas. Being a Peshawari, I think I will be considered much lower on the totem pole of Pakistani cultural hierarchy. However, this wouldn’t stop me from giving my opinion. Keeping all the prejudices aside, I find Lahore to be a fun city. The food is good, the architecture is great, Lahoris know how to party, it is the city of Iqbal and Faiz (at least they made it their home), it is full of history and Lahoris even use very creative curse words. So what else do you want?

Well, as for ogling women is concerned, all of Pakistanis are without a match. Why blame Lahoris only. We love to stare at women with those penetrating looks and a desire to see through the women’s clothing – kurti mulmul di.

In my view, hospitality is one of the great characteristics of our culture. It sets us apart from the West in a very distinct way. We want our guests to feel special. Our insistence to pay for our guests is our way of making them feel special. Let’s not do away with this wonderful tradition.

Just Another Woman Please do not apologize to anyone. Yours is one of the most well written stories that appeared in Chowk lately. I enjoyed it thoroughly. You are not responsible for how someone reacts to your writing.

I came across Chowk by accident. The first few articles were very interesting and of good quality. However, lately they have put out some real junk. Your piece is an exception. What I find even more disappointing is the reaction of the readers. I expected a discussion about the problems faced by women in our society. Instead, I read comments that are peripheral to the main story. It seems that some of the readers have this innate capacity to find the most tangential point and make a big issue.