According to a news item, there are suggestions in the U.K. to ban
cousin marriages. Those who want this miss the whole point. The
problem is amplified in case of marriage between two first cousins,
both of whose parents as well as grandparents were also first cousins.
This is what has happened in the case of Pakistani Muslims, and this
is the reason for the unusually large number of defective children
being born to British Pakistani parents (as well as a significant
population in rural Pakistan being mentally retarded). There is no
danger of this happening in marriages between first cousins whose
parents and grandparents were not first cousins.
The Friday Times, May 23-29, 2008
*/
All in the family
Overcoming power crisis
Someone recently suggested using buffaloes to generate electricity by using gear boxes to convert the animals' five revolutions per minute (while circling a well) to the thousand revolutions per minute required by generators. It may theoretically be possible to manufacture such gear boxes, but the cost would be prohibitive even if someone did succeed in making them. In fact, it would be much better to convert what comes out of the animals into methane gas which could then be used to produce electricity. However, there is one method which can be used by our feudals who have plenty of slave labour working in their fields. This would require a stationary bicycle to which a dynamo is attached. The dynamo would produce power to run a TV set or an energy saver bulb. About a hundred men could easily illuminate the palaces of our waderas. So if ever the electric supply to a feudal's house is suspended (for non-payment), he can easily get his slaves to produce electricity for him in this manner.
The Friday Times (April 14-21, 2008)
Contact Rehman Dakait to be a cop
Contact Rehman Dakait to be a cop
April 22nd, 2008 by Shakir Lakhani
I always knew that policemen had to pay fantastic bribes to get posted to places where they could earn millions within months. Such places like the red light areas in Karachi and Lahore, for instance, require “pugrees” of at least three million, because every time a cop sees a man entering the area, he can extract a couple of thousand rupees from him before the guy can proceed further. Then there are the pimps, who are hand in glove with the police. The drug smugglers cannot flourish in the Lyari district of Karachi without active collaboration with the cops. But what I read today in The Daily Times beats everything. According to the news item “Contact Rehman Dakait to be a cop?” many people from Lyari, including gangsters have started contacting Rehman Dakait for recommendations to join the force. It is believed that the Lyari gangsters themselves will police Lyari.
So now anyone who wants to join the Sindh police will first have to go to the notorious criminal Rehman Dakait, before applying for the job. It will also be necessary for the applicant to be a criminal himself. So you can be sure that no policeman will dare to arrest the real chief of Sindh Police, Rehman Dakait!
www.chowrangi.com
Sex problem solved
Sex problem solved
April 19th, 2008 by Shakir Lakhani
This is not something I’ve made up. It’s reported in today’s Daily Times. This female doctor (Jamila) in Lahore, although married, had a lover. No doubt the two enjoyed themselves when they were together. What I don’t understand is how the affair was not noticed by her neighbours, let alone her husband. Maybe her husband was mostly out of town and she wanted a man to satisfy her, and this guy met her somewhere and she fell madly in love with him. But then, it is not normal for a man to visit a woman in her house when she’s alone. I can’t imagine the neighbours not knowing about the affair. After all, everyone knows that when a man is alone with a woman, they don’t play ludo or scrabble (unless both are mentally unstable). So this is one mystery which will never be solved: how they spent so much time in her house without anyone noticing.
But now the story gets more intriguing. It seems that the lover (Shahzad) wanted to get married, but not to her (a divorce would’ve complicated matters, her husband and in-laws would never have agreed to it). Moreover, she should’ve realized that the Pakistani male ultimately has to marry and raise a family, and she shouldn’t have expected him to marry her (no Pakistani male can ever expect a woman like that to remain faithful to him after marriage).
So she couldn’t stop him from marrying someone else, but “hell has no fury like a woman scorned”, as the poet said. She waited a few days, then called him over to her house for another orgy (at least that’s what he thought it would be). She served him something which made him very drowsy, and then calmly cut off that which is a man’s most precious asset. The poor guy (now a eunuch) is in hospital, and even if he manages to survive, he will never be of any use to his wife or any other woman for the rest of his life.
The woman has been arrested, and it should be interesting to hear or read what she says when she appears in court. Maybe some media person will go and interview her and we’ll get to know something more about the affair.
www.chowrangi.com
Why did Bushra & Rehana commit suicide?
Why did Bushra & Rehana commit suicide?
April 18th, 2008 by Shakir Lakhani
Two Pakistani women killed themselves along with their children recently. Bushra of Lahore wrote a suicide note explaining that she wanted to end her life because her husband was not earning enough to feed her two children. She lay down on the railway tracks with her kids and was run over by a speeding train. The other woman was Rehana of Azad Kashmir who couldn’t bear the thought of her husband taking another wife. First she threw her three little sons into a well, then jumped into the well herself.
Of course the media didn’t highlight this issue, it was more concerned with what happened to Dr. Arbab Rahim and Dr. Sher Afgan, both of whom are not the type who would be moved by the plight of poor women like Bushra and Rehana.
But the question arises, why did the two women have to kill themselves? One thing which we hear time and again is that no one in Pakistan has ever died of hunger. If Bushra’s husband (a welder), couldn’t earn enough to feed his family, something is seriously wrong somewhere. I had a hard time recently when I had to sack a peon. It took me a whole month before I found someone suitable to replace him. As for semi-skilled people, like those who know a bit of accounting, you have to pay them ten thousand a month, even if they have only six month’s experience. Nowadays you can’t get a driver for less than six thousand rupees a month. I myself used to pay welders a hundred rupees a day thirty years ago, so I’m sure nowadays welders earn at least three hundred rupees a day, if not more.
So why is Bushra’s husband so poor? As for Rehana, killing herself was not an option. If her husband wanted a second wife, she could at least have appealed to her relatives for compensation or equal treatment. Although I can understand her feelings, in Islamic societies the husband has the upper hand and she has to agree to his demands. But then, if a man wants to take another wife, he has to take permission from his first wife, as per the laws of Pakistan. In any case, a Muslim has to treat all his wives equally. Rehana could have insisted on this in the presence of local leaders before her husband married again.
www.chowrangi.com
Mad rush to buy Dubai property
Mad rush to buy Dubai property
April 17th, 2008 by Shakir Lakhani
Practically everyone I know is involved in the mad rush to buy a piece of Dubai, even if it’s a small studio apartment which can’t accommodate more than two people. So much money has flowed out of Pakistan in recent months to Dubai that the property market in the country has declined by upto 30%. Somehow, everyone seems to be under the impression that property prices in Dubai will escalate rapidly in the coming two or three months.
It’s just like what happened in the past in the Karachi Stock Exchange, and thousands of investors found themselves bankrupt after the market crashed. But apparently those who invest in the U.A.E. property market believe that prices will go on rising indefinitely. There is nothing to support this belief, since the population of Dubai has not increased by leaps and bounds to justify so much construction activity. One fine day, when the buildings are complete, owners of apartments and offices will find that there are no buyers and that is when the panic will set in. But then, greedy people are blind, and never listen to reason. The only people who will get rich (besides the brokers) are those who sell their properties and get out of the market before the bubble bursts.
www.chowrangi.com
Fatwa on alcohol by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi
Fatwa on alcohol by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi
April 12th, 2008 by Shakir Lakhani
I remember a time when a bottle of brandy was kept in every house to be used as a remedy for colds and nasal congestion. A tea spoon of brandy in a warm cup of water would clear the nose and in a few minutes you were asleep. This was in the early fifties, when very few families had cars and the nearest doctor was four kilometers away and you couldn’t find a cycle-rickshaw to take you there after ten in the night. Later, when mullahs began to shout from their pulpits that even a drop of alcohol was forbidden, almost everyone I know decided not to use any liquid which contained alcohol (like after-shave lotions and perfumes, for instance). But most people continued buying cough syrups and other medicines which contained very small amounts of the stuff. It was widely rumoured that in Saudi Arabia, medicines with alcohol content were banned, but during my two visits to that country I saw such medications on sale in all pharmacies.
So you can imagine what a pleasant surprise it was to read in the newspapers that a cleric in Qatar (Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi) has decreed that consuming drinks containing small quantities of alcohol that is “constituted naturally through fermentation” did not violate Islamic teachings. Now even a layman like me knows that Islam is very liberal in such matters, since a Muslim is allowed to consume forbidden things if it’s a matter of life and death. Although I’m a teetotaler, and have never drunk the forbidden liquid except the minute quantities found in allopathic medicines, I do think this fatwa is in line with the teachings of Islam, as postulated by Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi. May his tribe increase!
www.chowrangi.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
