Pakistan Independence Day... A brief dialogue

14th Aug. 2009. Pakistan's 62nd Independence day.

As it was a local holiday across Pakistan, so some of my relatives from Kasoor visited us in Lahore. I had a brief discussion with my uncle, who is quite fond of the politics as he is a regular reader of the Editorial columns in the newspapers. Following is the dialogue that we had.

Uncle: Jawad. What do you think about Quaid-e-Azam?
Me: He is a great man and a great leader


Uncle: But people, rather his own daughter, say that he was a selfish person.
Me: I do not think so. As far as his private life is concerned, he may have been. But as far as his public life is concerned, I have found him a loving leader, great enthusiast and a person with inspirational motivation


Uncle: People say that he was a stubborn person, as he did not listen to the advice of even his friends.
Me: How can you say that?


Uncle: Many people gave him the advice that he should not create a separate country (Pakistan), but he did not listen to it.
Me: If I give an advice to you, it is upon your discretion that you either accept my advice or reject it. Based upon my advice, you are the one who has to take the decision. Givig an advice does not mean that I should accept your advice

Me: If we see the life of Prophet Muhammad (SAWW), he always took advice from his fellowmen (RA). But following are the 3 ways by which he took decisions:

I- He took advice from all of the people, he listens to all of them, he ponders over the views of all. But in the end, he took his own decision. (Here, none of his fellowmen ever argued that why did not he adopted my advice?)

II- He took advice from all of the people. And he took the decision with the majority of the advice (something like the Democracy that we talk about)

III- He took advice from all of the people. And he took the decision with the unique advice of any one of the advisors.

Me: One thing, which you would find common in all of the 3 ways is, that it was Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) who always took the decision, whatever it may have been


Uncle: But in the later years, it was proved that those reservations about which the advisors have been talking about, proved true. What would you say then?
Me: When a person takes a decision, he tries to ensure that he takes the best possible decision in the current circumstances, trying to envision all of the possible aftermaths possible... But Decisions could be wrong, as we are all humans and we can make mistakes


Uncle: (with a cunning smile) Jawad, you have wrapped the discussion very well. There is no need to carry on this discussion.


This is perhaps the dilemma of many of us. It has been 62 years that we have got independence, and still most of us are talking about the fact that whether a separate country is required or not?

Nobody perhaps want to address his/her personal responsibility to this country. What have we done for this country?
- Why have the public not taken to Roads when the first ever Martial Law was imposed?
- Why has the public not stormed the President/Army house when Fatima Jinnah was deliberately defeated in the elections?
- Why has the public not hanged Gen. Yahya as he was responsible for the defeat in East Pakistan?
- Was the public sleeping when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged?

Where the hell are we all? Perhaps all of us are looking for someone to come from the Sky and be our Saviour. Nobody of us want to get ahead against the atrocities being committed against us

If we cannot initiate a Civil Disobedience movement, we can atleast speak, and speak loud, for the wrong doings being carried out near us

Please please please. As a single person, we can make a difference. The only thing that we are lacking for it is the Self belief

Blogging… Some thoughts

Blogging, a new term which is in the lime-light for the past few years, associated with the informal/formal activities of people, about which they write and are shared with the general public on regular/need basis. The term seems to be new, but the concept is not

About two decades ago, when the technology has not been that cheap and easily accessible, most of us still blogged, and blogged regularly. This was in the form of a diary-writing activity, normally carried out at the end of the day, with all the details of that day. The only limitation of that form of blogging was its access to general public across the globe, all the time

With the current arena of blogging, we are using this mechanism to share our thoughts /ideas /experiences /findings with literally the rest of the world, and this information is easily accessible to all of us, round the clock. This feature has risen the significance of this activity to such an important level that everyone is recognizing the presence and effectiveness of Effective Blogging

If you could dive in to your daily routine, you can easily find out that each and every person in this world is involved in blogging; physically, verbally, virtually

Physically:

Most of the people write down, majority of which now write with the help of computers. Now you can find a number of blogging websites, each having millions of users, majority of them posting their views daily

Verbally:

Some people don’t have the time to write. Either they are not that disciplined or they are so busy that they perceive that it could take some extra time; so these people opt to speak. They speak with their spouse, family members, colleagues, friends etc.

The people who are not disciplined, when they speak, they are really a treat to hear. If you could sit silent against them, without disturbing them, you would really enjoy hearing them and you would end up in discovering some new aspects of speech and new ways of analysis. They speak without giving a second thought to their views. They do not actually care about the consequences, which they could have to face, after expressing such kind of views. Their undisciplined approach really teaches you much of the facts, caring for some makes you a disciplined and effective speaker/blogger

The other group of the people, who does not have time to do so as per their much busy schedules, are much disciplined while they speak. They would speak according to an agenda. Their conversation would be chronological, well-directed, focused and they would end with an appropriate conclusion. They are experienced speakers, flexible in their chosen vocabulary, and can simply play around with the words effectively

Virtually:

You must be wondering, how could anyone blog virtually? But its true and you would agree with me. We all think, we make analysis in our minds, we take decisions, and all of this is without uttering a single word. This is what I perceive as “Blogging Virtually”

We are doing it all the time. Random ideas, random thoughts keep on coming to us all the time. We start to build upon a hypothesis based upon those random thoughts. And all of this is done in our mind

Effective Blogging:

The Skill, by the help of which one can transform the details of Virtual Blogging to Physical Blogging, with completeness in terms of the information, could be termed as “Effective Blogging”. And this is perhaps the need of the hour for all the bloggers around the world that they should strive hard to build upon this skill, so that they could effectively transform their ideas in a documented form. The only way to strengthen this skill is blogging regularly, as practicing regularly would mature the skills by time

Regular blogging should also be accompanied with regular critical analysis of both the content and the writer. This critical analysis should be carried out by some other person, whom we term as a ‘critic’ but the final verdict would be of the writer himself, in the light of the comments given by the critic. Critical analysis from more than one critic would yield better results

However, I believe that we can strive for Excellence in this regard, but Complete Excellence in terms of Effective Blogging could not be achieved, as it would remain a human practical limitation

Death... and Callertunes

Recently, the mobile companies have introduced an idea of Callertunes. A subscriber can opt for a particular callertune to be heard by the caller when he is being called. Most of the time, you would hear latest songs when you call a person, however in some cases, you would also hear Quranic recitations/ naats

But I have come across a couple of such situations, in which this facility really becomes extremely embarrassing.

Mother of one of my friend died and he informed me via SMS. I called him instatnly, and got really embarrassed to hear a 'song as a callertune'. So now you can imagine that whoever would be calling him, as he was the eldest child, would be hearing, rather forced to hear, that song

Owing to this fact, I told him to remove the song as his callertune, and to my surprise, he told me that neither had he subscribed to any nor he knew how to remove it? It may have been possible that her younger sister would have done that, without even bothering to inform her brother about the act

If you happen to be in some kind of this situation, the first thing that you should do is to remove your callertune, and perhaps that would be the least and the most that you could do at that time

Long March...what can we do?

All of you would have plans for this weekend but let me divert your attention to a much noble, effective and needy cause, participating in which can can have a very long-time effect as per yourself, as well as your generations, and may be we could have a much-paid benefit for it in the after-life

You know that Long March is on its way. All of you would be well aware of the facts behind it. I know some people have reservations for that also, which are just to some extent, but we would not go into the details of it

Some of you might say that "First you voted and had this so-called democracy, and now you are protesting for its actions"... very True.... Perhaps a couple of days back, one of my friend Rashid Kaleem quoted "Lack of Questioning yourself"

I am questioning myself now and I am asking you to do so....

This is my country, my homeland, my mother.... and I want justice here, I want peace here.... coz I want to live in here

I dont want such people, when they get elected, they start looking upwards only

The other thing that can come to your mind is.... what would be the impact if a single of me would go.... Just imagine, if all of us would think like that, what would be the impact.

We all want justice, but none of us has the time to go and protest. We all want success but none of us want to do the hard work. We all want to have the highest ever prize, by entering the Heaven at last, but none of us want to endure the hardships for that prize.... Come on people; be practical and be brave

It is our this individual thinking that is causing all the disrupt..... The World is not facing brutality due to the brutal forces; it is the Silence of the Nobles that is enabling the Brutals to carry on

And we need to break this silence

We have to go, stand, speak up..... This is perhaps the least that we could do

The least which could be done is to join the protest on this Sunday. It will be in Lahore. We all can manage to at least go there..... Perhaps, by doing so, we can give a legitimate answer to the Almighty ALLAH, that I was unable to go beyond this limit

And I am pretty sure, that all of us would be held answerable and accountable for, as per this crisis

While the Project Manager is away...

The real value of a thing is only realized when it gets out of your reach or is lost. We all know this fact but for one reason or the other, practically this statement is true in most of the cases

I have always used to think and wonder quite frequently about the role of the Project Managers in general, during the course of the project. I knew the fact that he is basically a bridge, a communication channel, a protocol by the help of which all of us (the whole team) get to know of the client and its requirements. But I have always thought that this is perhaps not the toughest job on earth; even a person with some experience and having good common sense could do it. But I was overwhelmingly wrong when my own project manager went to an onshore center for a few weeks

While he was away, I really got to know the real value of the managerial role that he has been carrying out. I would explain each of them briefly here, as per my understanding:

Task Assignment:

He knew about the task assignment of all of us. And most importantly, he knew the overlapping of the tasks which have been assigned to all of us, and he managed that all, without having any one of us wonder that perhaps I am being utilized the most

Resource Utilization:

Effective resource utilization is the factor that discriminates between Good project managers and Effective project managers. And I believe that he belongs to the latter. He knew about the potential of his team at the collective as well as the individual level, which empowers him with the ability to transform the complex situations faced during the course of the project, to simpler ones

Vision:

To foresee the things before they actually happen is considered an inherent ability of a manager, and perhaps this is the ability for which he is paid higher than any of the project team members. As a testing resource, sometimes I do get the feeling that I know more details than him, but at most of the times, he has proved me wrong by guiding me with some cheeky technical details that I could have easily missed. In addition to this, he always had a run-time Impact Analyzer running in his mind, which would always predict the possible problems that we could face if we had taken a specific implementation/testing decision

One-stop solution:

A manager is always a one-stop solution. He has the way out for every problem and most interestingly, that way is always practical, achievable and in most of the cases, effective. I have come across a number of scenarios where I had put my problem solving abilities to find a quick solution to a problem and failed. And whenever I have put the same problem with all of my failed solutions to the manager, he has given me a practical solution in no time which had always left me wondering, why I have not been able to figure that out. And in the end, I used to say, if I could have found out this, I should have been the manager

Protective shield:

While my manager was with us, all of us never bothered about the client; never ever. We simply don’t know what a client actually means. But in the absence of my manager, we really got to know how the client actually deals, and at that time, we simply praised our manager by heart for dealing with clients in such a humble manner. He used to endure all the harsh mails and comments of the client and communicate the issues to us in an effective manner. He unwillingly, had to get his fingers crossed for both; he has to tackle the always aggressive client and also has to manage us

A couple of years back, I have came across a survey conducted by a company (perhaps Wipro) in which they came to the conclusion that people don’t leave the organizations, they rather leave their managers

And I am glad that it has been above 3 years that I am in the same company, under the same manager

CIA is tapping the phones of our top officials...

Today when I read the news that CIA has been tapping the telephonic conversations of many of our Army generals, including the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Kayani, it just left me wondering what is our Intelligence Agency (ISI) has been doing? Why have they not been able to figure out this before... And if CIA is able to do this, then where the hell do a normal Pakistani stand?

The circumstances in which this government came to power and the Agenda being followed, right from the very first day, truly speaks of the fact that our rulers are strictly following a very detailed and clearly specified Road Map. And perhaps it has some relations with the new Map of Pakistan, published back in the Year 2006. The unrest in Swat & Baluchistan, Regular drone attacks, Drones being serviced at Chaklala base, Civilian awards for the Americans etc.; all of these speak of the fact loud and clear that these rulers have been imposed upon us so that we could be divided

The entire nation is being pushed to its limits with the shooting prices of the daily households, deteriorating situation of Law n Order... and all of us are busy in our routine lives

It is because of the Silence of all of us that we are being treated like this. But the question of how would we break this silence, still needs an answer... that I am also expecting someone to answer