Sunday in London, when Pakistanis win the T20 championship

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Late last night, after watching an exhilarating T20 world cup final and a crazy facebook status update war, my friend Andrew in London - he is a Canadian by the way - started sending me live updates via text messages about how Pakistani fans have taken over St Johns Wood Road by the Lord’s, the amount of money Pakistani expatriates have with people draping hummers in Pakistani flags and white BMWs with a green Pakistan Zindabad slogan pasted on it. I told him it is all those curry houses owned by Pakistanis across Britain that are responsible for the riches of the desi Diaspora.

This is the email I later got from him, it would give you an idea how London goes nuts on Sundays, especially when Pakistanis win a major cricket tournament.

Dear All,

A crazy day here in London. I went to the demo at the Iranian Embassy for an hour or so in the late afternoon. Spoke to an Iranian guy for about 20 minutes about what has been going on. Lots of noise and emotion!!

Walked across Hyde Park and headed up towards Lords. Traffic was backed up so I guessed that the final of the 20-20 Cricket World Cup between Pakistan and Srti Lanka had ended. Lots of crazy happy Pakistan fans were running around making noise. A few were drunk as well. Then a group of Sri Lankan Tamils came by in an anti-Sri Lanka protest. "Sri Lanka, terrorist!" You get the idea.

I walked around Lords after a bit and came upon the Western gate where the team buses were to come out. A crowd of a few hundred Pak fans had gathered. They had the largest flag of Pakistan I had ever seen. It must have been 30 feet long and 15 to 20 feet wide. Lots of Anglo-Pakistanis too so the chants were football like: "Are you watching India?!" "Green Army!" "Afridi (the team's star player)!"

Someone had a sign that read: "I got my ticket from an Indian."

After being in Sri Lanka when they won the World Cup in 1996 and following things since then, it is clear that Mike Marquese was right to call his book about the World Cup "War Minus the Shooting".

Great fun!!!

Cheers

Andrew

PS: President Zardari has announced cash award for the team Pakistan and for the first time, I am ok with him spending our tax money like his personal treasure chest. Go Green Army, you made us proud. To quote a blogging buddy, you guys have gone from cricket chumps to T20 Champs.

PPS: Now that Younus Khan has announced his retirement from the shortest form of cricket, would we see Afridi as the new T20 captain?

PPPS: Younus Khan finally revealed his true age. According to cricinfo, he is still 31, but in a post match interview, he said he is 34 and too old to play T20.

PPPPS: Has anyone noticed, this is Intekhab Alam’s second world cup as a coach (the first was in 1992), is he our lucky mascot?



The last photo was added because I just wanted Afridi to be part of this post


Disclaimer: The post does not mean to hurt any Indian reader, I just reproduced Andrew's email.

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From Daddy's girl

Father’s day may be a creation of Hallmark cards to sell their merchandise in times of lull, but it is a beautiful reminder that we need to appreciate our fathers and tell them that we love them, something we often tend to forget. For a country that celebrates births, weddings and birthdays, we do not celebrate relations and our loved ones as much as we should.

When we do acknowledge the people in our lives, we tend to celebrate some relations more than others. Heaven lies at the feet of mothers, but fathers, who usually bankroll our lives and provide immense support throughout, are left out when we express love, gratitude and appreciation. This father’s day, I wanted to take time out to acknowledge fathers and tell them how wonderful they have been through the years. This is something all fathers would love to hear from their children, no matter what their age or relationship might be.

My relationship with my father has been like any other child’s. It started off with me adoring everything he did to indifference to rebellion without cause in my teenage years. Later, I developed the calm appreciation for my father that many people get as their parents get older. Abba, on the other hand, has always loved me, warts and all, and took pride in every little thing I did.

I look a lot like my father, at least that’s what I have been told by friends, family and perfect strangers. I now smile and accept it, but as a little girl I would sulk to no end whenever I was told that I resemble my dad. My argument was simple: I am a girl who braids her hair, my dad is a man with a receding hairline. We cannot possibly look alike. Instead of being hurt, my father was proud of the fact that his daughter could argue so well.

As a little girl, I had a huge, wall-sized map of the world in my room and my dad and I would spend hours in front of that map discussing countries, food, geography and wars. One thing we always discussed while standing in front of that map was traveling. We planned a million and one trips for later and my top three destinations of choice were the coffee plantations of Colombia, Cairo and Venice. Those trips together never materialised because his health deteriorated after my mother’s sudden and untimely demise. But he took great joy when I traveled to these places (I am yet to discover Colombian coffee plantations) and made memories for both of us.

Before I discovered the Internet, my father was my Google, encyclopedia and Wikipedia – all rolled into one. Whether I would want to know about the Stockholm syndrome, the Crimean wars or Issac Newton, my father was my go-to person and he never disappointed. Abba introduced me to Mumtaz Mufti, Ghalib, Jospeh Conrad and Anton Chekov and inculcated the love for the written word in me. I may have inherited more than just facial features from my dad because my wanderlust, my love for books, my pragmatism and my never-say-die attitude all come from him.

Although Abba has never been very demonstrative about love and affection, and I always thought that he cared about his children in a very casual manner, I know now that we have always been the centre of his life. I only realized how much he loved me when I left to go to college abroad. He never once told me how much he would miss me, but cried for hours after I left and even developed an eye infection as a result. When I got to know about it, I called Abba and said that I would come back if he wanted me to. He told me to stay put and finish my degree and joked that while Prophet Yaqoob lost his eyesight while crying for his lost son Yousuf, he only had conjunctivitis.

It was only after this I remembered all those incidents of quiet fatherly pride he took in everything I did, whether it was my high school results, my sports achievements or my work. I do remember him beaming with pleasure when I first got published. He called everyone when I was not around to make sure that the world knew about the accomplishments of his daughter.

I lost my mother when I was a teenager and never really had a chance to tell her how much I loved her and what she meant to me. My father is not well these days. He is hospitalised and fighting ill health and weakness. This father’s day, I want him to know that he is much loved and appreciated. Whatever I am today is because of my dad, because of his affection, compassion and guidance. He always encouraged me in whatever course of action I took, and never stopped me from doing anything because I am girl. Perhaps his greatest gift is that he never placed barriers to my flight of imagination. I love you Abba, and I want to thank you for enriching my life and being such a wonderful father.






Originally published in Dawn

The ghetto of women's writing

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Back in 2001 during my rookie reporting days, I wrote a piece on the renewed Intifada which was quite well received. One of the senior assistant editors who was at least 75 years old at that point in time (yes, it was the time when Dawn still had its geriatric brigade roaming the Islamabad corridor) called me and asked me why did I choose to write on intifada. Being the super naïve, extra exuberant idiot that I was, I went on and on about how international politics fascinates me and how I want to write political commentary regularly.

After I was done with my tirade, he smiled a benevolent smile and told me in no uncertain terms that I should stop worrying my pretty little head about stuff as gruesome as Intefada and should stick to things bright and shiny – like fashion and pop music. Before I could say that unlike the old gent who had a degree in Persian literature, being a student of International Relations in general and of people’s movement and confidence building measures in particular, I was actually qualified to write on Intifada and Middle East crisis. I was too young and inexperienced to know that assistant editor probably was afraid of a newbie taking over his area of expertise.



Hajrah Mumtaz’s excellent piece ‘The ghetto of ‘women are writing’ in Dawn today reminded me that I too have been pushed to the ghetto of light & fluffy writing at one point in time. Thank heavens that I was too stubborn to listen to the old gent and wrote about everything under the sun.


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