Shigar!

I have been here for over a month now. Shigar is far behind in terms of education , infrastructure and other amenities from many other places in Gilgit Baltistan. Posted to Shigar recently from Hunza which matches ,if not surpasses , all the geographic features of Shigar , i imagined the same development level as i witnessed in Hunza here.However , it didn't took me long to realize that mere land similarity doesn't necessarily bring two places at par in progress.My naivety of optimism took further blows as i started visiting the remote areas of Shigar. I worked as AC Hunza for over an year. That place is a fast developing hub in terms of all the social indicators. There are good educational institutes catering for quality education of the people. Health facilities are more than enough to meet the needs of the populace. Community-run welfare societies are utilizing the potential of villages to the maximum. More endeavors are afoot for future development. It may seem if the Government is showing extra grace and favor to the place. Thats not the case though. Almost all the progress has its roots in the community in one way or the other. Take the Information Technology sector for instance. The AKDN realized the importance IT there. It introduced the project through KADO (Karakuram Area Development Organization). Now the local people are doing on-line jobs from a cyber-hut in Karimabad. These are the people who do all the agri activity and still manage to come there and interact with the world. There are so many examples one sees , where the visionary policies of His Highness Prince Aga Khan are brining a silent revolution in the whole society. Having said that , this all activity is driven by faith. The religious bodies have a supervisory role on the activities of AKDN institutions even FOCUS , a humanitarian assistance organization, is answerable to the Regional Council there.Any resident of the headquarter Hunza has to get an NOC from the religious authorities before renting out his house to any non-Ismaili is another example of the overarching role the bodies play.
So this image was looming large in my mind when i first came to Shigar. With all the religiosity around , i thought people must have done something for social development too. One image after another proving wrong as i am slowly getting introduced to this society. There are numerous fire-brand religious leaders out well-known madressahs Iran and Iraq active here. Like their fathers and in some cases forefathers, they have focussed on keeping the religious sentiments of the people alive. When it comes to opening schools , providing clean drinking water , electricity or for that matter any conceivable infrastructure uplift , nothing has been done and sadly enough thought about.
So today's Shigar is like a medieval society. More than 90 percent of the population lives in mud-brick houses with no modern day washroom. "The stinking smell of shit is everwhere here" , commented one person who has lived here for quite some time for business. Many people prefer to keep their children away from schools to look after the vast agricultural land every household possesses. So the literacy rate is quite low. In the sub divisional headquarters , there is not a single privately owned RCC house. For an outsider , no living place is available on rent. A lecturer of Enlgish from Ghizer district came to my office asking for help in finding a place to live with his wife. We tried several Government quarters but couldn't accommodate him. So he was considering to get him transfered somewhere else!!
What troubles me most is that there is no awareness among the public about their abysmal condition. Political infightings are common.Politics comes in even with the matter is purely of religious importance. The spirit of volunteerism shown by the people of Hunza during the Attaabad disaster , was no where to be seen when devastating flood hit this place earlier this month. People would come on the street in protest against the Government for not being effective but would always avoid helping it or knowing where the problem lies. There are so many medieval attitudes. I wonder if i can do anything for these people as long as i m here on duty. Can i make the performance of Govt departments better , for example. I want to do something for this place before my Govt transfers me somewhere else all of a sudden. Lets see!

Uneasy as guest!

Since childhood, I haven’t been used to going and living in other people houses. Houses may not a proper term here. It’s any place like a flat, room and/or any other place. But forced to live there, I have great difficulty in getting adjusted with the people. The problem may not be the place itself, but my behavior vis-à-vis the people around. I have been living in hostel rooms and flat rooms for a long time. I am a pretty good host but can’t manage things that well when it comes to playing guest somewhere. I get all the feelings of self-consciousness and anxiety living side-by-side with the people there. I see two factors to it: One my inability to be outgoing with the people around me and secondly the feeling that it may seem wrong to behave in a certain way. This is despite all the special treatment I get in terms of special meals in my “honor” and attendant niceties observed by the hosts. The boredom syndrome perturbs me even when i visit or worse still stay at the homes of my relatives however close they might be.Sometimes i wonder it is too thankless to think that way when the hosts are putting up a good show of hospitality. The problem lies inside me and not the inside in most cases.
Well the only exception to this feeling comes when I visit the places of some of my informal/old friends. I can move around feeling and get clothes tugged anywhere; leave the socks around and/or do whatever I like. Hence another possible reason may be the level of informality one enjoys in any place. Feeling claustrophobic in one place and feeling like a flying bird in the other place by the same individual means that despite all the outer niceties its necessary that an individual feels home inside in any place.

Life and death

“Life is what is happening while you are planning other things”

Not recovered from that trauma of accident last night, I wonder whats my take on life. Am I a devout muslim inside waiting for a certain time to start practicing the tenets of Islam? Until that time starts I m at liberty to enjoy life and go about doing whatever pleases me for the moment. I read a famous quote once the gist of which is that in each phase of our lives, we live on hope that our ideals will come true and life will be good onwards. But once we are into that phase, it takes little to realize that it wasn’t the end and there is another to go. So another endeavor starts again in the hope of a better life. The struggle goes on endlessly. Death of a person , besides signifying a termination of bodily activities , also underlines the end of his or her struggle. The significant thing here is that one never knows when the death will put an end of any on-going struggle phase of one’s life. Death and life go hand in hand. No matter how one tries to evade it , the shadow of death follows a person.Having such a close shave of death , I have realized one thing : Life is subject to death in this world. All the dreams, aspirations and plans have to be implemented now and here. There is no tomorrow.
Regards...

But I m Alive

I had a very dangerous accident last night at about 2:00 am. While crossing a turn near Garelt in Hunza, i lost control of my vehicle and plunged down into shrubs upside down. For a moment i thought i was dead. I think i screamed when while slinging down. Luckily enough,i incurred no serious injuries. A vehicle of XEN B&R was behind me who must have seen me going down. They immediately came to my rescue. Inside the vehicle i wasn't able to figure out the doors and my position there. I thought i was badly hurt but on moving around i found that i could move. My neck had curled and i still feel pain while moving it. I was taken to Aga Khan health facility in Aliabad immediately by some police persons who happened to cross the road at that time. It was almost 2:00 am. Every body who looked at vehicle thought either i was dead or must have suffered severe injuries. A flabbergasted XEN Ghulam Rasool came to the health. SHO , Haji Afzal , had reached by then along with some of AC Office levies. Some of them looked at me as if something irreparable had happened. Later DC HN , Zafar sahb visited me. All of the sympathizers were of the view that I was safe. I think thats more than true. AC Nagar , Wazir Iqbal, even congratulated me that no harm had happened to me. Sympathies and thanks aside, it was my fault at the end of the day. I was going over-speedy. Just before i took that fateful turn, i had to to manage a frantic juggle of the steering which brought the vehicle again on track. This must have served me as a sign of the accident to come. I shouldn't have slowed down. I didn't. I think it was the speedy turning which coupled with some machinery of the steering which cause the vehicle to go down.

I realized how uncertain and tenuous life is? Had the vehicle taken another turn while plunging i must have suffered severe injuries. The accident couldn't have been fatal. But its God's grace again which saved me. I m thankful that my life is saved and i have suffered no serious injuries.

Regards....

Hello world....
This is my first blog. I kept a diary when i was in college. The practice continued when i went to university. I still have those diaries. The problems ranging from taking a crush off my mind to bouts of shyness are all there. From the very beginning (by that i mean the time i realized that i had some issues with me) i had a knack for books.Perhaps self-help books were my first love. Dale Carnegie , Qazi Javed( that literiate from Lahore who wrote books from a cocktail of Western self help writers) and many others attracted me. How to be more confident socially was the single question nagging my mind. Every time i read a book and got introdcued to a new idea , i thought this was it. My problem(s) seemed to have been solved. I would repeat the words of the authors i read and thought i had made a breakthrough. That almost always seemed short-lived.
Ironically , i was the most "intelligent" student during all that time simply because i stood first and second in all my exams...but that was just one facet of me. I had world of feelings to bring out but couldn't and simply went with the flow.....The reason for coming on this blog is do away with that old feeling and express myself , the real me here. Why i m doing that?? i don't know . Perhaps i want approval from others? Perhaps i need people like me to interact with me? Perhaps i haven't discussed these things with anyone in my life so far...or perhaps...
Is this how one writes a blog... i was carried away by old memories. More later, but hope i will choose a topic and stick to it next time....
If u have read this far, u made my day,
Thank you...
Please visit again...