If you cut your cyber-teeth on MySpace and Facebook, you probably won’t recognize the face of Khaled Mardam-Bay. For millions (yes, millions) of us, though, he is the Zuckerberg of the 20th century (that’s where the IRC generation comes from), and IRC is where we took our first cyber-steps. You may want to hit Google and do some digital archeology to find out about IRC in general and mIRC in particular. Meanwhile, I just want to list down all the things that IRC meant to us, the generation that was exhilarated when we upgraded from a Hercules to a CGA monitor. So join me as I reminisce about life online in the last decade… after the nag screen. Read more “N Things I Miss About IRC”
Year: 2008
We Pakistanis are People of the Mongol Horde
I just watched the movie ‘Mongol‘ which is based on the early life of Genghis Khan, or Temujjin. The movie was shot in the Mongolian language, so I was surprised to spot many words that sounded like their counterparts in Urdu. I always thought the word ‘Urdu’ was from Turkish, but after a bit of research, I found out that ‘Horde’ means ‘Military Camp’ in Mongolian too:
Urdu is a Mongolian and Turkish word meaning “military camp” and is the root of the English word “horde.” When the Central Asian tribal warriors came into northern India, Urdu is the creole that ended up being spoken in the camps so that Hindu traders could sell the Muslim grandees their goods).
Among the Urdu sounds that I recognized were “Aba” for “father” and “Utho” for wake up. I’m sure there are many more common roots, but sadly, most of the mongolian online dictionaries use their alphabet, which I can’t read.
Not a lot has changed since the 12th century – we have continued being a horde, there is something in our nomadic roots that disagrees with settling down mentally and calling a place home. Our military camps are always at the forefront, and like a military camp, we still don’t really care about trashing this piece of land with death and destruction. Like Mongols, we trade and kill our women like animals.
Here’s a podcast on Urdu for you:
So, do you like goat milk too?
Bajour, Bajor, What’s the Difference?
As a trekkie-in-denial who watched the whole Deep Space Nine this year and who is also a citizen of Pakistan, I can’t help being reminded the Bajor of DS9 each time somebody is killed in the Bajour of Pakistan. Those of you who have seen the series (and know about the Bajourian incidents) will know what I’m talking about. The rest of you, if you are in Lahore and want to see DS9, you know who to talk to 🙂
The DS9 producer denies that the planet was modelled after an actual location, and says that “unfortunately, the homeless and terrorism are problems in every age.” which makes the similarities between the two places all the more interesting. I’ll attempt to list a few of the similarities that I can remember below from memory and without any verifications. Purist trekkies, please forgive me.
Bajor [Bajour] is a stategically located planet [area] at the border of a worm-hole [Pakistan]. The quadrant [country] on the other side is supposed to hold a lot of resources and trading opportunities. The people of Bajor [Bajour] were occupied by an alien race, when most of the Bajorans joined the Resistance, sabbotaging and attacking the invaders whenever they could, and finally fought them off. Bajorans [Bajourans] are a religious race, consulting their gods and prophets before making important decisions. Their religious leaders have a very strong influence over their politics, and sometimes take over and rule the planet [area]. Now, the Federation [US + allies], an alliance of multiple races that is technologically much more advanced than the Bajorans [Bajourans] has arrived and wants to help them rebuild, and ultimately join the Federation. Many religiously inclined Bajorans [Bajourans] are resistant to the idea…
Uh oh, blogging time is up. Qapplah!
Celebrating Ramadan
I have invented this thing that I call “Roza-rolling” in the spirit of ‘rick-rolling’. It involves a Google image search on queries like “chicken roast” or “bbq meat”, wrapping a tinyurl around it, and throwing it towards my fellow Pakistani ‘Rozadaars’ on Twitter – during fasting hours. Thankfully, they don’t mind (I hope) due to their great sense of humor/pity towards me.
Now here’s a thought experiment for my Pakistani Muslim brothers (just to make it clear, I consider myself one too):
Imagine yourself, tomorrow noon (middle of Ramadan), at lunch time, sitting besides a fountain near a very busy road in Pakistan (say, Main Boulevard, Lahore) with your favorite pizza and cola bottle combo, eating and joking with another friend as people pass by. What are your feelings? Are you
a) guilty, because you are a Muslim and should be fasting
b) happy, that you live in a country that respects your freedom
c) uneasy, you can get beaten up by a mob, there might be a mosque nearby
d) afraid, you can get arrested for this
e) none of the above, you will not do any such thing as you will be fasting like a good Muslim
So your answer is e? But what if you are a non-muslim by birth? (you can answer in the comments if you want.)
Today, I met a Christian classmate from school (and school ended 20 years ago, so he is a very old friend) who has recently come back to Pakistan from the UK. He asked me that if Allah says that a roza (fast) is for Him alone and He will reward it Himself, then why is it that he can’t eat, drink (water) or smoke in public? Why can’t he go out and buy lunch from a nearby place?
I’m an idiot when it comes to religion, the Pakistani politics and many things in between them, and topics like separation of state from religion make me queasy, so I had to change the topic. He left a few hours ago, but left me wondering about what used to happen in the times of the last prophet when Muslims ruled the land but non-muslims co-existed with them. Did the Muslims let the non-muslims eat/drink as usual, or did the non-muslims change their ways out of respect/fear? Do you know of the Sunnah/history in this regard?
Ten years ago, a relative living in Saudi Arabia told me that most of the government offices switch their office timings to night shifts, probably so that the daily productivity is not affected. I used to wonder if that is how God intended fasting to be. My idea of fasting was to put up a constraint on a single variable (our intake of food/drinks etc.) and keeping the rest of my life constant, but this Saudi adjustment sounded a lot like my physics lab data manipulation practices of keeping only the ‘good’ string lengths and dropping the rest so that the value of ‘g’ turns out to be ‘9.8’ and not ‘10.5’.
Today, I stumbled upon this page reporting how Ramadan was welcomed in different countries around the world this year. A few excerpts:
- Pakistan’s government marked Ramadan by halting a major military campaign against Taliban rebels on its border with Afghanistan, launched after intense pressure from Western nations.
- Ramadan started on Sunday in Libya, according to a decision by the authorities based on “astronomical calculations” rather than an actual sighting of the new moon.The calculations mean that the start of Ramadan does not clash with festivities normally reserved for the anniversary of the Libyan revolution on September 1, 1969.
- Iranians, still waiting for the new moon to be spotted, are likely to start Ramadan on Tuesday, with office hours cut down from eight to five. Iranian police have issued a stern warning to crack down on people violating a ban on eating and drinking in public as well as eateries offering food before iftar except for designated places on the roads for travellers.
- For many Muslims, Ramadan also means spending time with friends and family watching lavish television productions filmed especially for the festive season.However, the Egyptian Gazette quoted one man as being “shocked that state-run and privately owned studios wasted 500 million Egyptian pounds (93 million dollars) on producing TV soap operas to be show in Ramadan.”
- Turkish Muslims meanwhile resolved a debate about whether they could resort to appetite suppressing diet patches to get through the daily fast after theologists reassured them they have nothing to worry about. The patches, cannot be considered as corrupting the fast because their effect amounts to “showering or applying a pomade on the skin” rather than eating, theology professor Kerim Yavuz said.
And here is how the Arabs do it. Google search results from a few other websites looked interesting as well, but ironically, most of them were blocked/restricted either from the Pakistani PTA end or the server end, and I didn’t bother going through a proxy. I fail to see how we can fight “evil” when we don’t know “evil”, but that is the topic of another post by somebody else.
If I had the power to change things, I would have asked all restaurants and food shops to continue business as usual during Ramadan – whoever wants to eat should be allowed to eat, it is his roza, for his God! Who am I to stop him from eating? Actually, I would have gone one step further and subsidized all food items during fasting times. If I am a Muslim and see someone eating while I am fasting, shouldn’t it make me a bit more stronger (and perhaps earn me some extra bonus thawab in the process)? I should not have to grab a person by the collar and tell him to stop eating and start ‘respecting’ my roza. How is this any different from the Taliban wanting everyone to grow a beard, or Bush wanting to convert all the islamic countries to democracy?
But since I do not have such power, I guess I’ll just go watch a movie, or three, before going to sleep until iftar. You ought to do the same. Have a safe and easy Ramadan.
My new found respect for Zardari
I never thought I would waste ten thirty minutes of my life praising our new president, but I just have to write this one. This post on Karachi Metblogs is criticizing Zardari’s comments in the visitors’ log of Jinnah’s tomb on his death anniversary. Though I secretly hope for a day when discussing the Pakistani President’s language skills becomes our only concern, but we have to solve a lot of more fundamental problems before we can focus on developing the desi version of Bushism.
The blog also shared this scanned image of his comments, which says something like:
May Good give us the strut to save Pakistan. Asif Ali Zardari, President, Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
I think there are many possible reasons for this ‘writo’ and I believe that we should forgive Zardari for this writing “Good” instead of “God”. You see…
- He was not typing it, and hence, did not have a spell checker handy. When was the last time you wrote a complete sentence using a pen? (for me it was many years ago). This shows that he may be a l33t geek in disguise who relies on the underlined red lines too much.
- He has written either ‘Gaad’ or ‘Good’ – if it is ‘Gaad’, he was either in his l33t mindset, or he wanted to emphasize the word but lacked the tools (bold/italics) to do so, and used the long ‘aa’ as a last resort. If he used ‘Good’, then he was probably trying to translate one of Allah’s 99 names to English. I’m pretty sure one of those names means ‘Good’. This shows that he does care about Islam.
- He did not use Allah, as these days, the word has negative connotations, thanks to our terrorist brethren. God is a more neutral and ‘enlightened’ word. After all, the American Army top guys are visiting Pakistan these days, what if the next visitor signing the visitor book is one of them, and what if he gets the wrong impression? We must appericate his foresight and attention to detail.
- Good, God or Allah, the important point is that he capitalized the G, and that, my friends, is the line that separates a believer from a non-believer, or so I have been told many times. So Zardari strives to be politically and religiously correct.
Even though the above is enough to start respecting Zardari, we are not done yet. The second word that he used, and one that has been misquoted as “strength” by many people, is actually “strut“. Let us check wikipedia for the various meanings of ‘strut’.
A strut can be
- A structural component designed to keep two other components apart. Struts provide outwards-facing support in their lengthwise direction, which can be used to keep two other components separate, performing the opposite function of a tie. That is a beautiful analogy! It doesn’t take an engineer to see what Zardari is trying to say. Not only that, but a strut can also mean
- to walk proudly and with a bounce. and pride is one thing that we need, if we want to save Pakistan.
The above is conclusive proof that Zardari picks his words carefully and has a good command over the English language – good enough to make puns and say a lot in a few words. On top of that, I am assuming he can speak Urdu and perhaps Sindhi equally well, which makes him a trilingual. Now you tell me – how many languages can the US, Chinese or the British leaders speak?
Oh yea, one last thing, he loves his deceased wife so much that he still carries her picture everywhere he goes, even when he is on TV. Brings tears to my eyes really.