Fissures in the Middle i came here to post my comment on the article but was most distressed with the way jayp had hijacked the thread and posted a news item which does not have much to do with the article.

When will we learn civilized discussion?

The Unbearable Lightness of Seeing Beautifully written Wajahat, its sensitive and gets the point across

Indiana Jones, Iron Man and a Touch of Narnia I quite liked Iron man, perhaps because he is the first super hero who is truly global in nature. I mean Superman and Spiderman usually save children from burning buildings of Brooklyn and from drowning in Pacific or Atlantic. Iron Man, on the other hand, flew across half the world to save people in Afghanistan – and that too at super sonic speed. Here is the twenty-first century super hero who, like his vast global business empire, is a do-gooder at international level. I also like him for the fact that he is a super hero who is super confident with women (unlike Superman who could never summon enough courage to tell Lois that Clark and him are the same people) and self assured (not doubtful like Spidey) and a narcissist to boot, who knows how smart he is and not afraid to come out in the open (unlike batman who even hides it from the love of his life) and admits to being the super hero in front of a roomful of journalists. How super cool is that?

Kiss of Death Gutka is Pakistani elite fad!!!!!

this just proves that this guy has not read a single word I wrote.

A Friend of Feudalism As the English phrase goes, 'Handsome is what handsome does," and what ZAB did to Pakistan was not handsome at all. In my opinion, his greatest sin was making Zia his chief of army staff, because Bhutto, with his "GREAT" intellect, thought Zia to be least threatening of all the generals. He just thought about saving his own ass and did not care about either merit or seniority of other generals. We all know how it ended. Bhutto, in some ways, is responsible for all the fiasco Zia created. No other person in the 60 years history of Pakistan can be attributed to muck up the society for such a long time, we are still reaping the 'benefits' of Zia's legacy which ranges from communal and secterial violence to klashinikov culture to drugs to human traffic and what not. So in a way, it was Bhutto who introduced this deadliest of all viruses to Pakistani establishment.
We are honoured to have had such a great 'people's' leader

A Karachi Summer ok, so what was THE POINT?

the great editors of chowk never published anything i wrote, and i write with great coherence, but this early morning olpers and langanese ad gets published. Shit!!!!

Month of the Gun Re: # 174


Imagine misogyny and stupidity in ONE person and that too in gigantic proportions ....

thats UNFORGIVEABLE

Month of the Gun Re: # 156

can you contact me via email ... its on my profile

Month of the Gun Re: # 156

if i had that much farigh time, i would rather watch Salman Khan strutting his stuff, not the born-again-after-sowing-my-wild-oats-mullah Imran Khan.


PS: Unlike some other people who live off chowk, I have to earn my living by honest work.

Month of the Gun Re: # 40

spoken like a true democrat that you are

Month of the Gun Re: # 28

the response is late as i was away from chowk.
Yes, it indeed is an acquired taste. After all, where else in Pakistan could I have lived my entire life and still would not have been groped, molested and mauled in some way or the other. I drove from work as late as 3.00 am after putting the newspaper to print and was never hassled, I covered political rallies but was never pinched in the ass in the crowd of 100,000, but every time I go to say Lahore or Faisalabad, I get pinched and get to hear the most X-rated comments. The only time my purse was snatched was in .... Rawalpindii during the govt of Bharee mandate nawaz shareef.

If Karachi is so bad then why is it the single most migrated city in Pakistan, why dont people go and start living in Sialkot or Multan? Everyday, more and more people come to Karachi from NWFP and Punjab, why dont they go to Lahore.

Every Ramazan trainload of beggers come to Karachi to beg from Punjab as we are the most generous people in Pakistan (remember who donated most during the 2005 earthquake, definitely not the punjos from lahore).

Yes, we have bijli breakdowns and that is because of the bijli stealing and land grabbing people who come from the north and wreak havoc with the limited civic amenities. We on the other hand, buy land and build houses and pay property taxes, water taxes and additional taxes on electricity to feed the begger from the North.

Yes, we are the ones who are feeding the poor from Punjab and NWFP who run away from their own lands as the rich and powerful there colonize their own people.

We are the only city with a sizeable and educated middle class, living here is indeed and acquired taste ....


bandar kiya janay adrak ka sawad

Month of the Gun Re: # 137

I hate tribal, clan-based and ethnic politics (its so last century) and could never understood the almost god-like power Altaf Hussein wielded (remember how he made his followers stop smoking and how he encouraged boys to marry girls raped by Pathan men in 1980s) over the most educated and metropolitan group of people in Pakistan, until now. This almost pathological hatred emanating from the non-Urdu speaking intelligentsia spearheaded by that moron Imran Khan (thought he can never be classified as intelligent) against every Urdu speaking individual (irrespective of their political affiliations) is the reason why educated and intelligent people chose MQM over every other party. It gave them a sense of belonging to a city, a province where they were refugees, even after 40 years. The way OUR generation claims Karachi to be our city, our parents could never and still don’t own this place despite living all their lives here. I dont see anyone from my generation saying the we are mohajirs, we are Karachiites and most of all, we are NOT apologetic about not beings sons and daughters of the soil; we take pride in making the soil ours, by sheer tenacity, attitude and doggedness. In some way or the other, MQM is responsible for bringing about that change.

It is the audacity with which we Karachiites proclaim that this is our city does hit a raw nerve or two. Maybe the idea that this city belongs to the people who contribute to it rather than the colonists from the North who loot and plunder (Karachi generates 70 per cent of the GDP and what do we get in return ???), is hard to accept for the people who use and abuse the city but never really cared.

NFP was right on money when he said that if MQM is fascist, then all the people who have voted them into assemblies again and again are fascist. Politics of ostracism are passé, but as we, Pakistanis, have never learned from the past mistakes (see what happened when Int. community ostracized Taleban), we will continue to do so.

About the deaths of thousands of Karachiites in 1980s and 1990s, I saw Fauzia Wahab (PPP`s information secretary) on TV the other day and she refused point blank that those deaths were something akin to ethnic cleansing and said that all those who died were terrorists, when the host Mujahid Barelvi asked about the children who died, she first refused to believe that children died but later reluctantly relented and said, there may have been a couple of casualties but it was all ``collateral damage`` for a greater cause. Looks like someone is impressed with good ol` Madeline Albright and her love for the term ``collateral damage.``

God Bless the City of lights and the people (all people) who it belong to.

I think I have ranted enough for the day.

Month of the Gun Re: # 151

This man can only take Pakistan back to the stone ages ... thank God he is too stupid to make any real difference in Politics.

Month of the Gun Re: # 22


The biggest vomit to have come out of Zia Era has got to be Nawaz ``bharee Mandate`` Sharif, not MQM.

MQM have been winning elections consistently since 1988, how can they be undemocratic when there base of power is based on democracy and not on feudalism (as is th case with bhuttos, jatoees, chahudhries and what not).

I agree with NFP, Karachi is different from the rest of the country (THANK GOD FOR THAT), you have to live there to understand it. Living here is an acquired taste and when you get used to it, there is absolutely nothing like it.

The General vs. the Judge Re: # 8

i agree, plus the economic social and political condition is vastly different in venezuela and tariq ali`s obsession with V in connection with Pakistani politics borders on stupidity.


PS: getting a talkshow is no big deal, even Ant and Dec have shows and they prolly have not even passed their high school diplomas and there show is far more popular ...

The General vs. the Judge come on people, Tariq Ali is extremely over rated as a political analyst. All he has ever done is given examples after examples of Venezuela in general and Chavez in particular. If I didn`t know better, I would have thought that he has a `thing` for Mr. Chavez.