07/09/2013
MY SON UMAR ABDULAZIZ GOT HIS DIPLOMA AS REGISTERED KICK BOX TRAINER. HE IS A BLACKBELT SECOND DON.
A NEWS FROM THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER
He is 3rd from left (in black shirt)
Tuesday 8 October 2013
MY SON BECAME THE REGISTERED TRAINER OF KICKBOX
07/09/2013
MY SON UMAR ABDULAZIZ GOT HIS DIPLOMA AS REGISTERED KICK BOX TRAINER. HE IS A BLACKBELT SECOND DON.
A NEWS FROM THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER
He is 3rd from left (in black shirt)
Friday 9 August 2013
EID KI NAMAZ. MY EID PRAYERS
My father used to take us along us to the eid prayers. I could remember the same as back as to early 1960s. We used to live in the nazimabad aurangabad quarters. I must be around 7 or 8 years old. The nearest place of eid namaz gathering used to be the Paposhnagar Graveyard. There might have been other such gatherings at other nearby areas too, but my father used to go to the paposhnagar graveyard, perhaps because the graves of my grandfather and younger sisters were there.
The distance from our aurangabad quarters house was not too much, so we used to walk. But later on when we were shifted to Nazimabad number 1 house, we used to go to the eid namaz at paposhnagar by rickshaw. It had been always been a nice cool morning, and i always liked that.
After the completion of the eid prayers, we used to visit the graves of our grandfather and younger sister. We had always been joint by the husband and son of my aunt, who used to live in the Nazimabad Bara maidan area. After offering our fateha at the graves, we all used to walk back to their house. As part of the annual routine, my father had been buying one kilo of mixed sweets from one particular shop of the main road. At that age i always wondered why that shop owner and his children were supposed to work on the shop when all other children and the elders were enjoying eid.
We used to visit the house of the sister of my father. He used to give one rupee eidee to all of her children, alongwith that packet of sweets. After staying with them for a short period of time, we used to walk back to our home, which was more than a kilometre from there. Again on the way my father used to buy some swseets (at times jalebees) for us.
We continued to maintain the same routine till 1975, when the new eidgah was opened very near to our house. It has been called the Nazimabad Petrol pump eidgah. It was at a distance of about 200 metres from our house. Thence onwards the old routine of walking through the fixed trail, changed. We started visiting our aunts home at some later day during the eid days. The routine once changed became a permanent change/
When we shifted to our last house, (Rehman Plaza) just behind the Prince Cinema on the M.A.Jinnah Road. in 1985, we had had to find some other eidgah to offer our eid prayers. On our first eid at this new house, my father was totally undecided as to where we should go to offer our eid prayers. I had recently bought a Suzki jeep, and we went out early on the Eid day to find some suitable eidgah. I still wonder, as to why we went down the M.A. Jinnah Road heading for the Mereweather tower, instead of going towards the Numaish and Gurru Mandar area. Well whatsoever might be the reason, in the end we found ourselves in the
(?????????) hall, near the Lighthouse cinema. (I am forgetting the name of this historical hall. It is an old historical hall where once Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar was tried.
Well we offered our prayers in this hall. When the prayers started we realised that it was the eidgah of Shafi muslims. Although they are not different, yet some acts in the namaz were different from what we had been used of over years. Well it was not of much importance. The eid prayers were offered.
For the next couple of years till 1991 before i left Pakistan for good, we reverted back to the Nazimabad Eidgah to offer the eid prayers.
The distance from our aurangabad quarters house was not too much, so we used to walk. But later on when we were shifted to Nazimabad number 1 house, we used to go to the eid namaz at paposhnagar by rickshaw. It had been always been a nice cool morning, and i always liked that.
After the completion of the eid prayers, we used to visit the graves of our grandfather and younger sister. We had always been joint by the husband and son of my aunt, who used to live in the Nazimabad Bara maidan area. After offering our fateha at the graves, we all used to walk back to their house. As part of the annual routine, my father had been buying one kilo of mixed sweets from one particular shop of the main road. At that age i always wondered why that shop owner and his children were supposed to work on the shop when all other children and the elders were enjoying eid.
We used to visit the house of the sister of my father. He used to give one rupee eidee to all of her children, alongwith that packet of sweets. After staying with them for a short period of time, we used to walk back to our home, which was more than a kilometre from there. Again on the way my father used to buy some swseets (at times jalebees) for us.
We continued to maintain the same routine till 1975, when the new eidgah was opened very near to our house. It has been called the Nazimabad Petrol pump eidgah. It was at a distance of about 200 metres from our house. Thence onwards the old routine of walking through the fixed trail, changed. We started visiting our aunts home at some later day during the eid days. The routine once changed became a permanent change/
When we shifted to our last house, (Rehman Plaza) just behind the Prince Cinema on the M.A.Jinnah Road. in 1985, we had had to find some other eidgah to offer our eid prayers. On our first eid at this new house, my father was totally undecided as to where we should go to offer our eid prayers. I had recently bought a Suzki jeep, and we went out early on the Eid day to find some suitable eidgah. I still wonder, as to why we went down the M.A. Jinnah Road heading for the Mereweather tower, instead of going towards the Numaish and Gurru Mandar area. Well whatsoever might be the reason, in the end we found ourselves in the
(?????????) hall, near the Lighthouse cinema. (I am forgetting the name of this historical hall. It is an old historical hall where once Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar was tried.
Well we offered our prayers in this hall. When the prayers started we realised that it was the eidgah of Shafi muslims. Although they are not different, yet some acts in the namaz were different from what we had been used of over years. Well it was not of much importance. The eid prayers were offered.
For the next couple of years till 1991 before i left Pakistan for good, we reverted back to the Nazimabad Eidgah to offer the eid prayers.
Sunday 4 August 2013
OF HOUSES AND HOMES
One spends his life in one or more houses, but its only one or a few of them, where he feels at home. In fact this is my personal observation, and belief, which may differ from person to person.
When i look back i see a number of houses where i lived, all through 36 years of my life in Pakistan. As told my parents, i was born in a an incomplete house of my maternal grandparents, in Nazimabad,Karachi. They were staying in a separate house, and my parents were staying in the house where i was born, temporarily. It was I-G-12/14 Nazimabad. The year was 1955. This house happens to be in the last row of the Nazimabad number one. Beyond this last lane was a huge vacant place leading to the water way, after which the industrial area of SITE was under construction in those days.
We did not stay in that under construction house for long. My father bought one refugee quarter, in Aurangabagd. This is the area where one room quarters had been built by the government, to house the migrants from india. They are located in the area called BARA MAIDAN, in Nazimabad, and in the area where used to be the railway Aurangabad (Bara Maidan) station of the Karachi Circular Railways. It was a thickly populated area, but had been a neat and clean quarter. I visited the same area last year, and found it totally lost under the heaps of garbage, and tiny huts by the nomads.
What i remember of that house was that my grandmother used to live in the next block. My maternal grand parents used to live in the same area , but in a different block. There were no water or electricity in the houses. I remember that there were street lights in the area. There was a waste open place, near to the area, from where the buses used to start in the morning. I remember that the passengers used to wait for the buses in lines. It had been a decent period.
The period was early 1960s. I was just 5 or 6 years old. The lanterns had been lit in the evening. One lantern used to be sufficient for studies of my father. He was perhaps doing his LLB in those days, alongwith carrying on his job with the Auditor General Pakistan Office.
There had been a huge water tank in the end of every block. We used to fetch water from that. I remember sometimes i used to fetch water in small DALDA cans, from that tank. I had been considering myself grown up while carrying water home.
I had started going to the school. The name of the school was CRESCENT GRAMMER SCHOOL, which was also in Nazimabad, but a bit far. The school van used to pick and drop us from school.
A couple of years later (perhaps 1962) my grandmother sold her refugee quarter, and got shifted to a new quarter scheme, in the Azizabad area. My maternal parents also sold their quarter, and shifter to their house, where i was born. By that time they had finished construction of the ground floor. After renting that, they had started constructing the first floor. This is where they had started living. It was just a skeleton. But perhaps they did not have any other option but to settle in there.
My parents too sold their quarter, and bought another house in the AZIZABAD area, at a distance of about a kilometre from the house of my grandmother. It was a two roomed house, with an open yard in the back part with kitchen, and bathrooms in the far end of the yard. I liked that house very much. It was very nice and clean. It was a totally new locality. Our house was at such a place, beyond which there were simply nothing. There were kilometres of wast open land. I remember my father at times used to visit his friend in Pir Ilahi Buksh Colony, by walking through that wast land.
There were no electricity in the area. We did have water facility. For the first time in my life i saw a shower in the bathroom. I remember enjoying taking bath by standing under the shower. It was the best part of the new house, ofcourse according to me. We used to take out our Charpais out of the houses, in the evening, in front of the house. In fact everyone used to do that. My father used to tell us stories, lying on these charpais, in the darkness, with moon and stars above us. Those were the wonderful days.
But we did not live in that house for long. My father again sold it and perhaps (if i can link the events correctly) bought a piece of land in Nazimabad No. 3.
This time we shifted to the house of the aunt of our parents. It was MUSLIM LEAGUE QUARTERS, in Nazimabad. They did not want to leave their house vacant, as they were being sent to the Quetta. The Uncle was in Excise department. They went and we got settled in that house. It was also a 2 room house. Neat and clean area. I remember playing cricket and other games on the road with the new friends there. I liked the area.
However we could not stay in that house there, as the Uncle of my father was reverted back to Karachi, after a period of 9 months.
Without any house of our own. We were literally on the road.
However we were lucky. My maternal grandfather got transfer orders to go to Rawalpindi. The new capital of Pakistan was under construction in Islamabad. My maternal grand father was working with the Government Construction department. They had had to shift to Rawalpindi from Karachi. We shifted to their house. It was the same house where i was born. The year was 1964, and i had returned back to the same house after 9 years. However this time we were going to live in the top floor of the house. The construction was almost 90% complete.
We stayed there for a couple of months together with my maternal grand parents. They left shortly for Rawalpindi, after a couple of months.
We stayed in that upper floor of 1-G-12/14 Nazimabad No. 1, till 1967. After that we shifted to the ground floor. We stayed there till 1971.
I grew up in that house. I used to have many friends. Houses were still being constructed in the area, and our best activity used to jump over the dugged out foundations of the houses. We used to play cricket on the road. However lately we developed a permanent no-talk sort of relationship Due to that i started playing hockey with the boys in the next lane. Within a short span of time, i started playing cricket with other boys in another lanes.
I learnt bicycling there. There had been two open grounds at a distance. Different teams of young boys used to play cricket there. There had been much activity there in the evening and more on the holidays. These grounds were located next to the RELAX cinema. They were at a distance of about 200 metres from our house. Frequently we played cricket there on sundays. Now the huge building of SHABBIR AHMED USMANI LIBRARY at that place. I used to practice bicycle in tha ground. We used to take small bicycle on rent for an hour and practiced that inside the ground.
It would not be out of place to mention that i learnt painting in that house. Although my father had taught me basics of pencil sketching, yet i learnt a lot from the poster painters of the Relax Cinema. They used to paint the huge posters of films on the backside of the cinema hall. Whensoever i got chance to be in that area i used to observe them. I learnt a lot by watching them painting.
Ofcourse not at all times they used to paint, so it was not a chance for me to find them, everytime when i pass from there, yet i remember times when my mother had sent me to buy some eatables from the store there, for the guests at home, and i simply forgot everything if i found a poster being painted there. My mother used to shout at me, because in such cases i used to reach home back, much after the guests had left after waiting for their soft drinks, which i was supposed to bring. Well paintings had always been my weakest point.
I did my matric, while in that house. The year was 1969.
In the meantime the construction of our new house on the 240 square yards piece plot, in Nazimabad No.3, had already started. It was at a distance of some 300 metres from the house where we were staying since 1964. We used to visit the under construction house in the evening. The address of this house was 3F-6/14A. It was in the second lane behind the main road that links SITE area to Nazimabad Petrol Pump Bus stop. The Bus stop used to be known as Nazimabad No. 1 Bus stop.
The construction was completed (?) and we shifted to our new house, in the year 1971. I was the First year student in the Premier College. Our new house was having 2 rooms, with big windows. The windows were having iron panes. Interestingly, these panes remained without glasses for the next 3 or 4 years. The rooms were constructed in one part of the plot. There was no kitchen. Half of the plot was was filled with sand. The temporary bathroom and toilet were built at the far end of the plot, with tin sheets used as roof. The rooms were constructed a bit high from the ground level. There used to be 2 steps of stairs to enter the rooms.
I had found a large wooden container perhaps of some refrigerator. I had put that out of the rooms in the open. I had extended a wire and bulb from the room, over this wooden container turned table for my studies. That was my place of study. I passed my B.Com, by studying at the same wooden container turned table, in the open, and did my CA in 1979 by studying at the same place. (Ofcourse this was the system i could use only during summer only)
Here i would like to mention a very important part of my studies on that table, in the open at night. There was a 3 storied building just behind our house. As one can imagine, that half of our house was just like an open air theatre for the neighbours, who could watch everything happening even inside the rooms, through the glassless windows , and mostly in the open part of the house, where we used to sleep at night too.
Reverting back to the original topic. There used to be one Mr. Dawood living on the first floor of that 3 storied building . He used to sit in the window after returning from work. He had had a craze of indian songs. He used to listen to indian songs, since the time he returned back from work till going to bed. It was not just listening the songs. He was in the habit of turning the volume high, and if it was not sufficient, he used to sing songs along with clapping by hand. My father used to be very upset to that. He did have serious arguments with him on more than one occassion, but nothing could change his style of listening songs.
Now just visualise the atmosphere in which i used to study. I had had to study for hours , almost daily, together with the bombardment of high pitched indian songs coupled with harsh voive of Mr. Dawood and his clapping. I did my B.Com and C.A. in the same circumstances. However, the best part of the story is that under the given circumstances i had learnt how to concentrate under totally unbearable and unreconcible circumstances. The result............ I got First Class Third in B.Com and became a Chartered Accountant at the young age of 24 in 1979. Thanks to Mr. Dawood and his songs.
Interestingly, may be thats one of the reasons that i developed hate for the indian songs, because i realised that the indian songs can make one crazy. However, on the other side, i ended up with learning the famous indian songs of the 1970, by heart, simply because i had had no other choice but to listen to them repeatedly daily for hours.
In 1978, my father decided to add three more rooms to the house. Lack of finance, led him to construct small temporary rooms, with tin doors and windows, and asbestos sheets on the top. The rooms were never painted. I was happy to have a room of my own. It was not more than about 12 feet long and 8 feet broad. It was a very small room, however, for me it was large enough to accomodate my bed, my drum set, and one chair with a very small table. When i think back now, i wonder how could i manage all these things in that small room. My friends too used to sit in the same room whensoever they visited me.
I never felt ashamed of living in that house. It was not just a house. It was Home. It would not be out of place to mention here, that my father was Deputy Financial Advisor at that time, and later on became the Financial Adviser, and after that the Director Administration and Accounts.of Karachi Civic Authorities. Unfortunately, he never had sufficient funds to finish the house. According to my understanding there were two reasons behind that. One, he never wanted to take House building or any other loan from banks etc. The reason behind this as he had discussed repeatedly, was that he never wanted to leave any debt for his children, after him. Secondly, a well decorated house had never been his priority. He was a very simple person, who always preferred to live very simply. Being a son i never questioned or raised any objection or even discussed , as to why our house was not like the houses of other officers of KDA. I never realised a necessity to question his decisions.
It was from this house that we went out for the most thrilling adventure of our lives. In 1972 my father had decided to leave Pakistan for good and to settle in Istanbul, Turkey. For this he had sold out everything in the house. We went and stayed in Istanbul for 3 months, when the adventure was declared as a total failure. Our family returned back on 21st December 1972, to re-start our lives from the scratch. There had been nothing in the house, and i remember how difficyult it had been to re-start the life from zero. All praises go to my brave mother, who struggled hard to make things bearable for us. It was indeed a very tough period for our family. The 3F 6/14A house evidenced all this difficult period of our lives.
This house was sold in 1985, and we shifted to another place. This time it was a apartment flat on first floor. This is where my mother still lives. It is on the first floor of the RAHMAN PLAZA, just behind the Prince Cinema building off the M.A.Jinnah Road. It was a totally different life there. As for the first time we were staying in an apartment flat. I was about 30 years of age at that time. My only personal memorty of this place is that i got married in this flat in 1987. My eldest son was born while we were there. Another memorable event during my stay in that flat, was my first expedition to go to Northern Cyprus. I went with my wife and one year old son to Northern Ctyprus, but unfortunately returned back. I stayed there for one more year, and got shifted to my own flat in Mayfair Centre, near Empress Market.
We stayed in this house for 2 years, till 1991, when we decided to re-start the lost adventure of my father. I with my wife and son, moved on to Northern Cyprus to re-start the life from a fresh zero.
When i look back i see a number of houses where i lived, all through 36 years of my life in Pakistan. As told my parents, i was born in a an incomplete house of my maternal grandparents, in Nazimabad,Karachi. They were staying in a separate house, and my parents were staying in the house where i was born, temporarily. It was I-G-12/14 Nazimabad. The year was 1955. This house happens to be in the last row of the Nazimabad number one. Beyond this last lane was a huge vacant place leading to the water way, after which the industrial area of SITE was under construction in those days.
We did not stay in that under construction house for long. My father bought one refugee quarter, in Aurangabagd. This is the area where one room quarters had been built by the government, to house the migrants from india. They are located in the area called BARA MAIDAN, in Nazimabad, and in the area where used to be the railway Aurangabad (Bara Maidan) station of the Karachi Circular Railways. It was a thickly populated area, but had been a neat and clean quarter. I visited the same area last year, and found it totally lost under the heaps of garbage, and tiny huts by the nomads.
What i remember of that house was that my grandmother used to live in the next block. My maternal grand parents used to live in the same area , but in a different block. There were no water or electricity in the houses. I remember that there were street lights in the area. There was a waste open place, near to the area, from where the buses used to start in the morning. I remember that the passengers used to wait for the buses in lines. It had been a decent period.
The period was early 1960s. I was just 5 or 6 years old. The lanterns had been lit in the evening. One lantern used to be sufficient for studies of my father. He was perhaps doing his LLB in those days, alongwith carrying on his job with the Auditor General Pakistan Office.
There had been a huge water tank in the end of every block. We used to fetch water from that. I remember sometimes i used to fetch water in small DALDA cans, from that tank. I had been considering myself grown up while carrying water home.
I had started going to the school. The name of the school was CRESCENT GRAMMER SCHOOL, which was also in Nazimabad, but a bit far. The school van used to pick and drop us from school.
A couple of years later (perhaps 1962) my grandmother sold her refugee quarter, and got shifted to a new quarter scheme, in the Azizabad area. My maternal parents also sold their quarter, and shifter to their house, where i was born. By that time they had finished construction of the ground floor. After renting that, they had started constructing the first floor. This is where they had started living. It was just a skeleton. But perhaps they did not have any other option but to settle in there.
My parents too sold their quarter, and bought another house in the AZIZABAD area, at a distance of about a kilometre from the house of my grandmother. It was a two roomed house, with an open yard in the back part with kitchen, and bathrooms in the far end of the yard. I liked that house very much. It was very nice and clean. It was a totally new locality. Our house was at such a place, beyond which there were simply nothing. There were kilometres of wast open land. I remember my father at times used to visit his friend in Pir Ilahi Buksh Colony, by walking through that wast land.
There were no electricity in the area. We did have water facility. For the first time in my life i saw a shower in the bathroom. I remember enjoying taking bath by standing under the shower. It was the best part of the new house, ofcourse according to me. We used to take out our Charpais out of the houses, in the evening, in front of the house. In fact everyone used to do that. My father used to tell us stories, lying on these charpais, in the darkness, with moon and stars above us. Those were the wonderful days.
But we did not live in that house for long. My father again sold it and perhaps (if i can link the events correctly) bought a piece of land in Nazimabad No. 3.
This time we shifted to the house of the aunt of our parents. It was MUSLIM LEAGUE QUARTERS, in Nazimabad. They did not want to leave their house vacant, as they were being sent to the Quetta. The Uncle was in Excise department. They went and we got settled in that house. It was also a 2 room house. Neat and clean area. I remember playing cricket and other games on the road with the new friends there. I liked the area.
However we could not stay in that house there, as the Uncle of my father was reverted back to Karachi, after a period of 9 months.
Without any house of our own. We were literally on the road.
However we were lucky. My maternal grandfather got transfer orders to go to Rawalpindi. The new capital of Pakistan was under construction in Islamabad. My maternal grand father was working with the Government Construction department. They had had to shift to Rawalpindi from Karachi. We shifted to their house. It was the same house where i was born. The year was 1964, and i had returned back to the same house after 9 years. However this time we were going to live in the top floor of the house. The construction was almost 90% complete.
We stayed there for a couple of months together with my maternal grand parents. They left shortly for Rawalpindi, after a couple of months.
We stayed in that upper floor of 1-G-12/14 Nazimabad No. 1, till 1967. After that we shifted to the ground floor. We stayed there till 1971.
I grew up in that house. I used to have many friends. Houses were still being constructed in the area, and our best activity used to jump over the dugged out foundations of the houses. We used to play cricket on the road. However lately we developed a permanent no-talk sort of relationship Due to that i started playing hockey with the boys in the next lane. Within a short span of time, i started playing cricket with other boys in another lanes.
I learnt bicycling there. There had been two open grounds at a distance. Different teams of young boys used to play cricket there. There had been much activity there in the evening and more on the holidays. These grounds were located next to the RELAX cinema. They were at a distance of about 200 metres from our house. Frequently we played cricket there on sundays. Now the huge building of SHABBIR AHMED USMANI LIBRARY at that place. I used to practice bicycle in tha ground. We used to take small bicycle on rent for an hour and practiced that inside the ground.
It would not be out of place to mention that i learnt painting in that house. Although my father had taught me basics of pencil sketching, yet i learnt a lot from the poster painters of the Relax Cinema. They used to paint the huge posters of films on the backside of the cinema hall. Whensoever i got chance to be in that area i used to observe them. I learnt a lot by watching them painting.
Ofcourse not at all times they used to paint, so it was not a chance for me to find them, everytime when i pass from there, yet i remember times when my mother had sent me to buy some eatables from the store there, for the guests at home, and i simply forgot everything if i found a poster being painted there. My mother used to shout at me, because in such cases i used to reach home back, much after the guests had left after waiting for their soft drinks, which i was supposed to bring. Well paintings had always been my weakest point.
I did my matric, while in that house. The year was 1969.
In the meantime the construction of our new house on the 240 square yards piece plot, in Nazimabad No.3, had already started. It was at a distance of some 300 metres from the house where we were staying since 1964. We used to visit the under construction house in the evening. The address of this house was 3F-6/14A. It was in the second lane behind the main road that links SITE area to Nazimabad Petrol Pump Bus stop. The Bus stop used to be known as Nazimabad No. 1 Bus stop.
The construction was completed (?) and we shifted to our new house, in the year 1971. I was the First year student in the Premier College. Our new house was having 2 rooms, with big windows. The windows were having iron panes. Interestingly, these panes remained without glasses for the next 3 or 4 years. The rooms were constructed in one part of the plot. There was no kitchen. Half of the plot was was filled with sand. The temporary bathroom and toilet were built at the far end of the plot, with tin sheets used as roof. The rooms were constructed a bit high from the ground level. There used to be 2 steps of stairs to enter the rooms.
I had found a large wooden container perhaps of some refrigerator. I had put that out of the rooms in the open. I had extended a wire and bulb from the room, over this wooden container turned table for my studies. That was my place of study. I passed my B.Com, by studying at the same wooden container turned table, in the open, and did my CA in 1979 by studying at the same place. (Ofcourse this was the system i could use only during summer only)
Here i would like to mention a very important part of my studies on that table, in the open at night. There was a 3 storied building just behind our house. As one can imagine, that half of our house was just like an open air theatre for the neighbours, who could watch everything happening even inside the rooms, through the glassless windows , and mostly in the open part of the house, where we used to sleep at night too.
Reverting back to the original topic. There used to be one Mr. Dawood living on the first floor of that 3 storied building . He used to sit in the window after returning from work. He had had a craze of indian songs. He used to listen to indian songs, since the time he returned back from work till going to bed. It was not just listening the songs. He was in the habit of turning the volume high, and if it was not sufficient, he used to sing songs along with clapping by hand. My father used to be very upset to that. He did have serious arguments with him on more than one occassion, but nothing could change his style of listening songs.
Now just visualise the atmosphere in which i used to study. I had had to study for hours , almost daily, together with the bombardment of high pitched indian songs coupled with harsh voive of Mr. Dawood and his clapping. I did my B.Com and C.A. in the same circumstances. However, the best part of the story is that under the given circumstances i had learnt how to concentrate under totally unbearable and unreconcible circumstances. The result............ I got First Class Third in B.Com and became a Chartered Accountant at the young age of 24 in 1979. Thanks to Mr. Dawood and his songs.
Interestingly, may be thats one of the reasons that i developed hate for the indian songs, because i realised that the indian songs can make one crazy. However, on the other side, i ended up with learning the famous indian songs of the 1970, by heart, simply because i had had no other choice but to listen to them repeatedly daily for hours.
In 1978, my father decided to add three more rooms to the house. Lack of finance, led him to construct small temporary rooms, with tin doors and windows, and asbestos sheets on the top. The rooms were never painted. I was happy to have a room of my own. It was not more than about 12 feet long and 8 feet broad. It was a very small room, however, for me it was large enough to accomodate my bed, my drum set, and one chair with a very small table. When i think back now, i wonder how could i manage all these things in that small room. My friends too used to sit in the same room whensoever they visited me.
I never felt ashamed of living in that house. It was not just a house. It was Home. It would not be out of place to mention here, that my father was Deputy Financial Advisor at that time, and later on became the Financial Adviser, and after that the Director Administration and Accounts.of Karachi Civic Authorities. Unfortunately, he never had sufficient funds to finish the house. According to my understanding there were two reasons behind that. One, he never wanted to take House building or any other loan from banks etc. The reason behind this as he had discussed repeatedly, was that he never wanted to leave any debt for his children, after him. Secondly, a well decorated house had never been his priority. He was a very simple person, who always preferred to live very simply. Being a son i never questioned or raised any objection or even discussed , as to why our house was not like the houses of other officers of KDA. I never realised a necessity to question his decisions.
It was from this house that we went out for the most thrilling adventure of our lives. In 1972 my father had decided to leave Pakistan for good and to settle in Istanbul, Turkey. For this he had sold out everything in the house. We went and stayed in Istanbul for 3 months, when the adventure was declared as a total failure. Our family returned back on 21st December 1972, to re-start our lives from the scratch. There had been nothing in the house, and i remember how difficyult it had been to re-start the life from zero. All praises go to my brave mother, who struggled hard to make things bearable for us. It was indeed a very tough period for our family. The 3F 6/14A house evidenced all this difficult period of our lives.
This house was sold in 1985, and we shifted to another place. This time it was a apartment flat on first floor. This is where my mother still lives. It is on the first floor of the RAHMAN PLAZA, just behind the Prince Cinema building off the M.A.Jinnah Road. It was a totally different life there. As for the first time we were staying in an apartment flat. I was about 30 years of age at that time. My only personal memorty of this place is that i got married in this flat in 1987. My eldest son was born while we were there. Another memorable event during my stay in that flat, was my first expedition to go to Northern Cyprus. I went with my wife and one year old son to Northern Ctyprus, but unfortunately returned back. I stayed there for one more year, and got shifted to my own flat in Mayfair Centre, near Empress Market.
We stayed in this house for 2 years, till 1991, when we decided to re-start the lost adventure of my father. I with my wife and son, moved on to Northern Cyprus to re-start the life from a fresh zero.
Tuesday 19 February 2013
STRENGTHEN YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM
http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/strengthen-immune-system-z10m0vau.aspx#axzz2LMpo5YPL
12 Strategies to Strengthen Your Immune System
Bolster your immune system naturally with these easy tips!
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Eating a variety of colorful vegetables is just one easy (and delicious!) way to naturally strengthen your immune system.
PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO
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Infections are as inevitable as death and taxes. You spend your first years catching (or being caught by) colds, influenza and strep throat. You sniffle, scratch, cough, vomit, ache, sweat and shiver. Your immune system remembers the microbes it has encountered and protects you the next go around. At the other end of life, your immune system wearies from years of fighting. In that great expanse of active, productive life in between, you still get colds and flus and “stomach bugs.” You may wonder why you are sick more or less often than your partner, co-workers and neighbors. You may wonder why one person hacking on the airplane successfully sickens the passenger to his right but not the one to his left. The answer is that not all immune systems function alike. A number of factors affect immune system health. Some you can’t control: The very young and the very old are vulnerable. Surgery and wounds give microbes a chance to sneak into the inner sanctum. Other risks include chronic disease, poverty, stress, living with lots of other people (dormitories, low-income housing), and drinking tap water (with its local microbes) in many foreign countries. Fortunately, there are ways you can strengthen your immune system.
1: Eat Like Peter Rabbit. Malnutrition impairs immune function. French fries, soft drinks and bourbon don’t build strong white blood cells either. No, it’s those virtuous, self-righteous diets high in fruits, vegetables and nuts that promote immune health, presumably because they’re rich in nutrients the immune system requires. Adequate protein intake is also important; the source can be plant or animal.
Medicinal mushrooms such as shiitake, maitake and reishi contain beta-glucans (complex carbohydrates) that enhance immune activity against infections and cancer and reduce allergies (cases of inappropriate immune system activity). While studies have focused on purified mushroom extracts, fresh shiitake and maitake (also called “hen of the woods”) mushrooms are delicious sautéed in a little olive oil.
One substance to avoid is simple sugar. Brigitte Mars, herbalist and author of The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicines, notes that sugary foods and juices impair immune function; research bears her out.
If you’re a new mother, breast milk provides essential nutrients and immune system components to your developing child. Compared with formula-fed babies, those nourished at the breast have fewer serious infections.
2: Stress Less. When you’re stressed, your adrenal glands churn out epinephrine (aka, adrenaline) and cortisol. While acute stress pumps up the immune system, grinding long-term duress taxes it. For instance, psychological stress raises the risk for the common cold and other viruses. Less often, chronic stress can promote a hyper-reactive immune system and aggravate conditions such as allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease.
While most of us can’t move into a spa, we can learn to save our stress responses for true emergencies and not fire them up over stalled traffic, bad hair days and aphids on the begonias. Stress-reducing activities such as meditation produce positive changes in the immune system. Massage has shown to improve immune function in studies of Dominican children with HIV. Quiet music can aid recovery from everyday hassles and may therefore buttress immune function.
3: Move Your Body. Moderate exercise discharges tension and stress and enhances immune function. In a 2006 study, researchers took 115 obese, sedentary, postmenopausal women and assigned half of them to stretching exercises once a week and the other half to at least 45 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise five days a week. At the end of the year-long study, the stretchers had three times the rate of colds as the moderate-exercise group.
4: Sleep Soundly. Sleep is a time when growth-promoting and reparative hormones knit up the raveled sleeve of daily life. Sleep deprivation activates the stress response, depresses immune function and elevates inflammatory chemicals (which cause you to feel ill).
Chronic sleep deprivation raises the risk of the common cold. Mothers whose small children interrupt their sleep have more respiratory infections, particularly if those wee ones go to day care. In one study, after researchers inoculated volunteers’ noses with cold viruses (a reward was involved), men and women who habitually slept less than seven hours a night were almost three times more likely to develop a cold than those who slept eight hours or more.
5: Socialize More. People with richer social lives enjoy better health and longevity than loners do. You may think that the more people you interact with, the more chances you have for picking something up. Not so. Again, researchers blew cold viruses up people’s noses and sent them into the world. Compared with the lone wolves, the social butterflies were less susceptible to developing common colds, and, if they did get sick, they had fewer symptoms for a shorter period of time.
Many of us count furred and feathered companions as friends, and it turns out they do us a world of good. Animals such as dogs and horses get us outside exercising. Stroking an animal stirs feelings of well-being, lowers blood pressure and, according to recent research, boosts the immune system. Researchers assigned college students to pet either a stuffed dog or a live dog. Those who petted a real dog had a significant increase in levels of salivary IgG, an antibody (immune protein) that fights infection. Those who petted the stuffed dog just felt silly.
6: Make more love. While having lots of friends is healthy, science also shows that intimate, sexual relationships have immune system perks. Michael Castleman, renowned health writer and publisher of Great Sex After 40, writes, “A 2004 study shows that the close contact of lovemaking reduces the risk of colds.” Specifically, this study found that college students who had sex once or twice a week had 30 percent more salivary IgA antibody than those who had sex infrequently.
7: Shun Tobacco Smoke. Tobacco smoke triggers inflammation, increases respiratory mucus, and inhibits the hairlike projections inside your nose (cilia) from clearing that mucus. Children and adults exposed to tobacco smoke are more at risk for respiratory infections, including colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, sinusitis and middle ear infections.
8: Consume Friendly Bacteria. Beneficial microorganisms colonize our intestinal, lower urinary and upper respiratory tracts. They outcompete bad “bugs” and enhance immune function. You can consume such bacteria in the form of live-cultured products such as yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi. Probiotic supplements, available at natural food stores, may reduce the risk of antibiotic-induced diarrhea, viral diarrhea, vaginitis and respiratory infections.
9: Expose Yourself. Vitamin D plays a number of roles in promoting normal immune function. Vitamin D deficiency correlates with asthma, cancer, several autoimmune diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis), and susceptibility to infection (including viral respiratory infections). One study linked deficiency to a greater likelihood of carrying MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in the nose.
Unfortunately, nearly one-third of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient. Because few foods contain much vitamin D, your best bet is to regularly spend short periods of time in the sun (without sunscreen), and to take supplements in northern climes during the colder months. Guidelines for the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin D, currently set at 400 IU/day, are being revised. Experts predict that the new RDA will be about 1,000 IU/day (25 ug/day).
10: Choose Vitamin and Mineral Supplements Wisely. Studies link deficiencies of zinc, selenium, folic acid, and vitamins A, B6, C, D and E to reduced immune function. But scientists have yet to pinpoint exact levels of these nutrients for optimal immune function, much less whether dietary supplementation really helps the average, well-fed American. For instance, research on vitamin C for prevention and treatment of the common cold has been inconclusive. Some micronutrients, notably vitamin A, can be toxic in overdose. Excessive levels of zinc paradoxically suppress immune function. A varied, plant-based diet and a good multivitamin supplement should meet your needs.
11: Immunize Yourself. Routine vaccinations have had a huge impact on reducing, and in many cases nearly eradicating, a number of infectious diseases. Most immunizations occur during childhood. Vaccinations for adults to consider include yearly influenza vaccines, tetanus boosters, the shingles vaccine for people 60 and up, and the pneumococcus vaccine for people over the age of 65. For more information, check with the Centers for Disease Control.
12: Familiarize Yourself With Immune-Enhancing Herbs. A long list of medicinal plants contain chemicals that enhance immune system activity, including echinacea, eleuthero (also called Siberian ginseng), ginseng (Asian and American), astragalus, garlic, and shiitake, reishi and maitake mushrooms.
Garlic is the favorite choice of many. In addition to boosting the immune system, it’s anticancer and antimicrobial against a variety of bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. Key ingredients don’t survive cooking, so add a clove or two of raw, minced garlic to meals just before serving.
When someone in my family sniffles, I make an immune soup based on a recipe Brigitte Mars shared with me years ago:
Pretend you’re making chicken soup. Sauté onions, shiitake mushrooms and chicken, adding just enough water to keep the chicken from drying out.
Remove the chicken when it’s cooked and set aside. Add fresh vegetables such as carrots and celery. Cover with plenty of water. Toss in three or four astragalus roots (the pressed roots, available in natural foods stores or from online herb retailers such as Mountain Rose Herbs and Pacific Botanicals). Toward the end of cooking, add Italian seasonings (thyme, rosemary, oregano), which are tasty and antimicrobial, and the chopped, cooked chicken. Before serving, add fresh, pressed garlic (one to two cloves per person) and remove the astragalus roots.
DO NOT OVER-STERIALIZE YOURSELF .... BE NORMAL IN LIFE
The Hygiene Hypothesis
Some people respond to front-page news about microbes — bird flu, flesh-eating bacteria, pathogenic E. coli — with excessive soap, water and hand-sanitizer use, along with avoidance of fun activities such as dining out, hugging dogs, camping, French kissing and mud wrestling. But the science says to get a little dirty. Some exposure to “germs” will mature and strengthen your immune system.
Some experts even point to evidence that an over-sanitized environment is bad for your health, increasing the risk of allergic, autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. The so-called Hygiene Hypothesis posits that exposure to microbes early in life flexes and shapes the immune system to do what it was designed to do, like fight off the ebola virus. Growing up in an ultra-clean environment, though, may produce an immune system that attacks innocuous things (animal dander, ragweed pollen, your own cells), leading to chronic inflammation. In support of that hypothesis, children who grow up in larger families (blessed with germy siblings), live in the country (around barnyard animals), or attend day care have lower rates of conditions such as asthma, hay fever and eczema. On the other hand, improved sanitation (along with vaccinations and antibiotics) has clearly decreased the death rate from infections and lengthened our lives. Infections, however, continue to challenge us, which means that the Hygiene Hypothesis (and other immunity-boosting practices) remains a hot topic in immunology circles.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/strengthen-immune-system-z10m0vau.aspx?page=4#ixzz2LMqAkXuo
THANKS TO http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/strengthen-immune-system-z10m0vau.aspx?page=4#axzz2LMpo5YPL
Monday 28 January 2013
WE MUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP WASTAGE OF FOOD
WE MUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP WASTAGE OF FOOD
http://youtu.be/1b8O1goYM6o
http://youtu.be/HpQ0Fafe1Mw
WE MUST DO SOMETHING
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