Child Labor In Pakistan

Human Rights......Issues of Human Rights.....Issues of Human Rights in Pakistan.....Child Labor in Pakistan

                    I was sitting in my car waiting for the signal to turn green. I had got very tired from the day's work back at office. So much so that I did not hear the gentle tap on my window until it was done twice again. I looked to my right and saw a very cute looking child looking at me through his twinkling black eyes. He would hardly be of ten years of age. I thought he was asking for some money and I rummaged into my pocket for a coin or two. But then I saw a yellow piece of cloth in his hand used commonly for cleaning the windscreens of cars. He was beckoning me to allow him to have a go at my windscreen too. 

When I nodded in affirmative, the child looked back for a moment and then started doing his job. I noticed a stout man standing at some distance away from him. He was carefully and constantly observing the boy. It drew me a bit of suspicion but I shrugged the idea. I gave some money to the kid when he had finished with his cleaning. There was some impassiveness in his eyes when he took the money without thanking me. The signal had turned green so I had to move my car forward. After crossing the signal, I looked back and saw the child handing over the money to the same obese fellow. I was true! The man was his mentor and was exploiting the child for his own objectives. It meant that my money had landed in wrong hands.

Through all my way till reaching home, I was thinking of the kid and his master I had run across. How many of such children are forced to do petty jobs at the age which is ripe for acquiring education. Instead of going to school, these children are working day and night under all circumstances to earn a handful of money, not for themselves but for those involved in the heinous crime of child labor. And that fat man! He is enjoying a happy life at the cost of the future leaders of this nation.

And what is the government doing to stop all this? Thousands of children are working in factories and workshops with the government high ups oblivious of the situation. Maybe they are busy resolving a myriad of other problems which threaten the welfare of the society. Merely passing a bill in the parliament does not actually change the reality. I was unable to fathom the vista I was framing in my mind where many Abdus Salam were mending the shoes of passerby, scores of Martin Luther were welding the car parts together and still many Einstein loading and unloading a truck full of garbage.

I reached my house and as soon as I entered, both my kids ran up to me shouting in affection. They started telling me about how they had spent their day. But I was just staring at their faces with a blank expression on mine. They were about the same age as that child, but they were living comfortably with their family in their home having no fear and responsibility at all. So what was the fault of that child? Just because he was born to a poor family unable to bear his expenses, he deserves to work like a laborer? Is it not our responsibility to extirpate this evil from our society? Till when shall we continue to carry on with this indifference and apathy? Till when??

Letter to the Olympian

Dear Mr. Rodriquez,

      I fell honored as I am writing this letter to you today. Whenever I saw you playing Table Tennis smashing the ping pong all over the table, I envied you very much as l have a passion for the sport too.

     I am from Pakistan and the fat is really in the fire here. No mega sports event has been taking place here in the wake of terrorist activities in our country. People are reluctant to come out and encourage the domestic sports events due to the terror prevailing in the society. In this scenario, I am more than ever longing for an exciting sports event to happen. London Olympics 2012 are nearing and I am already geared up in advance. I am pretty much sure that you would be practicing day in and day out with all your paraphernalia for the mega event too.

     Olympics is a platform which boasts of a multitude of sports, cultures and talent. People from all over the world watch the event closely and enjoy it. Those who attend in person present a beautiful view with people from different nationalities flocked together. But the special feature which I like very much is that nobody feels left out or bored as he finds a sport of his liking. Hockey, Badminton, Basketball, Fencing, Poll Vault, Skiing, Athletics and now Squash too. Then again, Pakistan would have somewhere to represent herself too.  It would help the country to come out of dejection and isolation, offering some cheerful moments to the fans back home.

     I hope everything goes perfectly well until then. Wish you good health and good practice ahead of the big challenge.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Martin.

Lahori Food

Food......Sub-Continent Food....Pakistani Food.....Lahori Food.

      “Jinnay Lahore nae Vakhia o Jamia ee nae”. This phrase has been echoing around the area and everybody must have listened to it at least dozens of time . The reason behind it seems evident: the attraction the city of Lahore presents to the indigenes as well as the nonnatives. And its very main feature is the delicious Lahori Cuisine alluring people of all ages and tastes. In fact, Lahore is a city with an extremely rich food culture.  The essence of attraction of people to Lahori Food lies in its taste, variety and also the large number of restaurants and hash houses offering the food at competitively cheaper rates.

       The main characteristic of Lahori Food is its delicious taste. There is a wide range of dishes according to the taste and liking of every person. If someone likes moderately spicy food, then he should have a try at Biryani, Hareesa and Daal Gosht. Conversely if the inclination is towards the spicy elements of cuisine, then Nihari, Haleem, Gosht Karahi and Siri Paye are up to the mark. Liked alike by everybody here, even the foreigners coming to Lahore are not an exception to the captivating and enticing taste of Lahori Food. They too want to relish the great taste and experience the course after course of mouth watering delicacies.

      The variety which Lahori Food offers is very wide ranging and according to the predilection of every individual. Sometimes in a restaurant, a person gets bamboozled to choose from the large number of dishes available. The variety in taste lies from extremely spicy to very little spicy and extremely sweet to extremely salty. Even if to start from the breakfast, the choice becomes difficult in the presence of Halwa Puri, Channay, Kulchay, Kachori, Maghaz, Pathoray, Paye and Lassi. And the variety in lunch and dinner is exceptionally gargantuan. MurghCholay, TakaTak, Nihari, GurdayKapooray, Seekhi Kabab, MurghMusallam, ZafraniMutton, Mutanjan and LahoriChargha are the specialties ascribed to the Lahori culture. Scrumptious and mouth watering Fried Machli is another forte of Lahore whose sale reaches its vertex with the approaching winter season. The beverages taken alongside food include Lassi; both sweet and salty, Gannay ka Rus, NimbuPani and Qehva. The sweet dishes after proper meal are very famous and include Kheer, Zarda, Rabri, Firni, Falooda, Halwa, GulabJaman, Shahi Tukray, Rasmalai, Baklawa and many others. But if a person is filled up to the brim and is longing for some light snacks, he is not disappointed there too. Samosas, FruitChaat, ChannaChaat, DahiBhallay, BhailPuri and GolGappas are at his beck and call to satisfy his appetite. 

       People have with them a very wide ambit of restaurants and eateries to choose from and enjoy the Lahori Food. The archetypal traditional touch is found in the road side restaurants and Dhabas inside the walled city. Phajja inside Texali Gate is considered an authority in preparing delicious, sticky Siri Paye which are famous through out Pakistan and are oft-quoted in this regard. The food street in Gwalmandi is a hub of all such kind of restaurants and a paradise of the customers where they can find food according to their varying tastes. Lines of shops on both the sides of road become overcrowded at certain times so much so that they have to put up with the customers at their room access. Kebabs are famous of Bhayya of Model Town, Muhammadi Nihari House is renowned for Nihari, Siddiq and Sardar for Fried Machli and Goga and Aashiq for Channay and Haleem. M.M. Alam Road has recently emerged with many new restaurants including Bundu Khan, Salt n’ Pepper, Village, Namak Mandi and Bar.B.Q. Tonight.

    There are some unfortunate people who in spite of living in Lahore for ages have never had the privilege to savor the Lahori Food. This is in fact, a part of our cultural heritage and we should be the ones to promote and experience it. At least once trimonthly, an excursion to these places should be made. That’s for dang sure that the taste, variety and vast choice of restaurants would not leave a person wandering or disappointed.

And I was Kicked Out of the Class.....

      I studied in a convent school for most of my childhood. It was a both girls and boys school and was administered by Irish fathers and nuns. Like all others, they were quite strict viz maintenance of discipline, curricular matters and sports activities. And naturally, too it was over disciplined. Pupils getting rusticated on hardly major issues was normal there and punishments were handed down on minor issues. Mostly I used to escape them due to my good academic record but sometimes it did not hold good.

    One day I was attending my English class. The teacher was quite an old and grumpy man (good for nothing) who had fallen a prey to those certain rotten pedagogics. I was unable to understand even one word of his lecture which, if I am not mistaken, was on transitive and intransitive verbs. I was looking here and there for some kind of interesting activity. The teacher was also noticing my disinterest and my quest for a mischief but was not inclined towards its eradication.

     Same were the feelings of my bench mate. She had had enough and remarked that she was not ready to accept it anymore. She started making some silly noises with her head down. I at once laughed at that looking directly into the eyes of the teacher. He did not very much appreciate the joke. After some time, she made the same noise and I could not resist it again. This time too the teacher saw me laughing. The third time when she made that noise, the teacher got angry and I was shocked to death when he told me to stand up and come to the front. It was then that I realized that in addition to being what I have already written, he was also completely devoid of his senses and had thought of me as the culprit. I desperately made a dive and pointed at the girl that she was the one making noises and I am innocent. To our horror, he got really angry at that and said “okay you both get up and get out of the class.”

     We silently got up and left the class. I was cursing my friend as well as myself for laughing at her noises. She was feeling very embarrassed because I was being punished just because of her.  When the period became over, the teacher came out and asked us to follow him to his office. Once inside, he started a long rant about indiscipline and disobedience and attitude and God knows what else. After that he handed us 1000 lines to write and a whole week standing outside the class too. Heavily I accepted the punishment for the sin I had never committed. It took me a good amount of time to bear and complete all those tasks. I vowed never to sit with that girl again.

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Moral: Don’t sit with girls. It is better both the ways.

We are a Pakistani when........

We are a Pakistani when.

1.  We are sitting together at a place and upon the entrance of an elderly person, one of us gets up and offers his chair to the man; because we believe in values.

2.  We are present at a bus stop or any public place, we leave the sign of our presence there, mostly through inscriptions on walls or seats; because we are creative people.

3.  We are gathered somewhere to deposit our bills or anything of that sort, we never even try to make a queue; because might is right.

4.  One of our friend is in need of help, we abandon our own pursuits and strive together to resolve his problem till the end; because we do not believe in isolation and self-centeredness.

5.  A guest comes to our house even at an odd time, we leave no stone unturned in our hospitality and warm welcome; because we care about others too.

6.  Our parents get old, we do not kick them out of our house into old age homes. Instead we feel pride in keeping them with us and treating them with kindness to our level best as they had done with us beforehand; because we are not forgetful of our benefactors.

7.  There is some kind of an accident, we rush to the scene immediately, not to enjoy ourselves but because we want to help.

8.  In case of a mishap or accident involving a male and a female, we give precedence to the female in offering help because………………….. Ladies First!!!!

9.  A person senior to us is speaking, we do not dare interrupt him midway in his speech, not out of fear of bearing the brunt of a slap from him, rather because we respect out elders.

10.  No matter how much we criticize our country and its politicians, we do not tolerate as much as a scratch on our country’s sovereignty and stand united as one unit at the time of need; because we love our motherland from the core of our heart and that is what has been taught by our beloved Allah.

My Philosophy of Life

A man in the modern day times thinks about himself, his life, his pleasure and his well being. And he is really concerned about that. He has, hidden underneath his cunning intellect and garbed in ulterior motives, his own philosophy of life. He is not inclined towards anything that does not, by sense or the other, seem beneficial to him. He has become so absorbed and engaged in chasing the worldly pursuits that it has become very difficult, sometimes literally impossible for him to sneak out of the mundane realms. According to many, he is leading quite a happy life. David Daiches - in on of his poems- christens such person "a poor man" .

But is this is the just and pertinent approach towards life or of life?? A leftist may support the stance and antithetically, a rightist may become outrageous at the behavior. Thinking cognitively, this does not appear to be the purpose of the creation of him and his kind. For the purpose of eating, drinking and having leisure, luxury and recreation, the animal kingdom was already accomplishing the job sufficiently. In this manner, creation of mankind would have been to add to the existing prodigally inept creatures. It seems that the line of demarcation between the two species is presence of feelings, sentiments and emotions for others. The Poet of the East remarks:” Humans were created to share sorrows and pain”.

        This naive thinking might lead someone to call the person a lunatic out of his mind. And he has reasons for it too…!!! Why should a person waste his wealth on others? He has earned that money through various hardships and he deserves to be the sole person on whom that money be spent. The refutation is the evidence that in most of the cases, the ramification is such a person getting devoid of complacence and self satisfaction. So again comes all the brouhaha about values, virtues, good deeds and compassion. Ironically, their attrition attributes to the temporal avocations. Patently, this means the answer lies in rejecting the false claims of materialists and understanding the true essence of life.

Albert Einstein states:” Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile”. Glancing at the history, one concedes to the fact that history remembers only those figures that live a life, not for themselves but rather for others. In the case of otherwise, he becomes just one of those impalpable to discern in the never ending swarm of people who come and go each day. The name of a person who lives in the hearts of people can never be erased. To gain a place there, he has to work constructively. He has to perform such actions that have everlasting or long lasting effect. Handing over the poor some money is not that sort of thing. But the establishment of an institute where people get themselves educated, get themselves treated or find a permanent footing indeed comes into this genre.

A famous Greek proverb says:”By love serve one another”. Spreading love is a very easy job to do. It gives us mental relaxation, pleasure, satisfaction and calmness more than any other activity does. And why the likes of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela and Abdus Sattar Edhi are remembered still now even though some have been dead ages ago? Simply because they set their self and esteem aside and plunged day in and day out in philanthropies and humanitarian work for the greater good. Still now, especially in our region, there is so much work to be done for the ailing humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people do not get even single meal a day. Millions do not have access to clean and potable water. Sanitary conditions in most of the areas are absolutely pathetic. More than one fourth of the population lives below the poverty line. And talking about education and health facilities in the contemporary scenario seems a mere far fetched thought. If we are not concerned and trying to eradicate these problems, then who else would? Our fate perhaps would be the same as of millions of other people who live a life throughout circumscribing themselves to their coveted shells with shutters closed down.

As humans, we should be bound to uphold virtues as “Virtue is mightier than wealth”. We should be truthful, contented, honest, just and ever ready to alleviate human sufferings. We should make our lifestyle simpler and simpler considering our poor brethren having a share in our wealth. Materialism always leads to self centeredness. We should be courageous enough to shun away such states of mind and work for the collective benefit. And furthermore, ought to be strengthening ourselves through prayers and supplications to gain the blessing and bounties of our Creator side by side. Only in this way, we would become able to make this world a true haven and an abode of peace, love, harmony, sacrifice, fraternity and brotherhood.

Role of Youth in Pakistan

      Above all the great possessions, Youth of a Nation are its greatest and real asset. They are really an edifice of a nation; upholding great qualities of mind and character and exhibiting moral and physical strength with great vigor and vivacity. Youth are the class that is the wellspring of talent, energy, ability, passion and courage, sufficient enough to bring about a positive or a negative change in a prevailing social setup. Our Quaid addressed the youth of his nation by reiterating that you are made of sterling material and are second to none.
      Diogenes Laertius once remarked “The foundation of every state is the     education of its youth”. Keeping in view their potential and importance, the youth are able to work for the progress and headway of a country provided that they achieve requisite advancement in the field of education, especially in modern sciences and technology. If we look at other parts of the world, youth have become so empowered and sceptered that in some places, almost the entire functionality of the state stands dependent on them. So in order to compete at international level, we would have to impart quality education to our youth in the fields of social, natural and management sciences. Without education, they would be merely a juxtaposition of people utterly of no use. Antithetically, China and some other western countries are a living example of turning their youth into an unbeaten educated mighty workforce.
        Our youth should be made responsible; their talent, time and money should be properly channelized and their emancipation in every walk of life ensured. They should be brought be up in a manner that they start realizing themselves as the future leaders of the system of the country. They are a catalyst for change in a society and they should exercise this status to the hilt. They can dishevel a flagitious political or social system or uphold an existing one by their robust force. When they say ‘no’ to oppression and transgression, nobody can dare snub them. As it happened in the case of Ana Hazare, the little known yesterday but unforgettable today; Ana accomplished his mission solely with the succor of the youth of his country. 
       In our country where many people live below the poverty line, illiteracy is a common and grave problem. This can be eradicated by concrete steps taken by the government and carried out by the educated youth to promote literacy. Moreover, general awareness regarding health, social setup and law enforcement could be created among the masses by our young generation. Patently, this could happen only if they themselves are well aware of the social norms, abide by the laws in letter and spirit and so on and so forth. Retrospectively in our country, the younger generation has played a radical role at every crucial moment, be it the devastations caused by the earthquake and floods or the upheaval triggered by some ruling political parties, they stepped forward and worked for the sanctity and protection of their beloved homeland and its citizens.
       We as a nation should accentuate much upon the fosterage and nurturing of its youth as it is the time when the zeal and zest and a fervor to do something substantial is at its vertex.  Once this time is lost, there is no use repenting over it. That is the reason Herbert Asquith said that:” Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.”

My Experience of Eid

        When someone mentions Eid, happiness and joy springs up in our mind, and a second thought gives us a vision of many individuals and families rejoicing. Eid means something that recurs. It comes after a certain period of time every year and brings true happiness and sense of relaxation to those who had pledges themselves as slaves of Allah the Almighty during the Holy month of Ramazan. Eid is in fact a gift of blessing s for a person who had remained steadfast during Ramazan. I am of course talking about Eid ul Fitr.

This year at Eid ul Fitr, I can proclaim that I enjoyed to the maximum extent, presumably because I kept fast nearly in the whole of the month of Ramazan and that I also completed one course of recitation of the Holy Qura’n. So I had a certain feeling of elation that I am being rewarded for something none other than my own deeds and actions. As far as preparations are concerned, I had already bought my new dress, shoes and accessories even before Chand Raat. I had got a chocolate brown Kurta and Shalwar with russet dress shoes.  In the morning on the day of Eid, I Put them on and went to the Mosque to offer prayers. A need to extend the blessings of Ramazan for the whole year was emphasized in the sermon. After the sermon and Namaz, I met Eid with my friends and family and returned back home.

When I stepped inside the house, it was full of sweet smells of Sheer Khurma, Chaat and other delicacies prepared especially for Eid. Soon some guests arrived and were served the things.  At noon, we went to a lunch hosted by one of our relatives. In that manner, I got the chance of meeting some more members of my family.

Next day we set off for Jhang to celebrate the rest of the Eid with my Nanhial. One of my cousins had also come along with her family all the way from Dubai. So the next few days spent with them all were really enjoyable and relaxing with nothing to worry about studies or anything else . Special food was cooked like Biryani, Koftai, Pasandai, etc. We also had some home cinema entertainment and much more. As Eidi  is a special feature of excitement in this Eid, I bagged a lot of amount this time which of course cannot be mentioned here. In these moments of celebration, we did not forget our poor and deprived brothers and sisters and distributed Eidi and gifts among them too.

My cousin left for Dubai two days after Eid and we followed suit to Lahore on Sunday in view of the holidays coming to an end. So in short, our prayers and supplications in Ramazan made our Eid a very, very special and memorable one with an inner satisfaction alongside.