Bomb Psychology

I happened to see my nephews and nieces playing one day, they were all ready for some sort of an act, their seriousness made me observe more closely (without having been noticed of course). All of them are under seven years of age, here goes their scene: the youngest of them was walking when suddenly the other one made the sound of a bomb explosion! The passerby fell down then everyone else rushed to help him, pick him up and one of them very thoughtfully stated making the police siren sound!! The little bomber also ran with them and was seriously prompted by the eldest that “you’re dead; you’re not supposed to wake up” though a lot of innocence was involved in this act and they looked so cute while performing but this was really shocking to see.


I was really astonished to see their familiarity with the whole process! I mean they knew that first a person blows himself up, the police always comes ‘after’ the incident, and people get hurt.  For once I literally thought someone should play Rehman Malik in this scene!

To me this is the bomb psychology that this generation is growing up with; they are being brought up with this insensitivity towards the value of ‘life’, promoting the general attitude of not bothering unless you are actually a part of it! After all it’s their childhood game. Unfortunately, this insensitivity is gradually being promoted among all of us in Pakistan.

And we don’t even see the writers, the thinkers from the new generation to come forward and jerk the sleeping humanity. We have seen lots of work from the poets, writers, thinkers belonging to the pre-partition era though the situation we face now is even worse, but no one bothers! Those who dare to read at all are more inclined towards the likes of wasi shah and many have yet to return from the world of harry potter, while other have got their headphones on so they might not be in a mood to think or do anything! and not to mention thoe virtually living in bollywood. Our attitude needs to be revised.

But still lets appreciate when someone tries to make us think, this video and song is artistically done, ‘mein to dekhonga’ is an absolute click! Though ‘dekhonga’(I’ll see) should be replaced by ‘karonga’(I’ll do), still it has awesome lyrics especially the punch line ‘jab roti sasti hogi aur mehngi hogi jaan’


The effects in this video paint the picture of a desert, sunny and dried up, but they talk of hope! hope for the future! as they have the next generation in front of them. 

And we have learned to laugh!

           Ever since the Musharraf regime started to allow licenses to private channels the options of channels to watch from continues to increase. This welcome to new channels by the then regime was very good, Media has urged the people to think and learn, though this has not been their objective! Media does at times get misleading and controls the focus and attention of the people about various issues. But overall this media boom is beneficial for the people as the ‘poor and the plenty’ do get a chance to voice their concerns. Economic benefits are also visible as it flourishes as an industry.


        In the quest to compete, better sell their channel and come up with something different few channels came up with some sharp, witty and humor filled shows about the political scenario. These shows would show the exaggerated and sometimes true version of the situations our country was facing. Which was good, as humor is the only way to say it all without saying anything or without pinching.

I am a firm believer of the fact that ‘humor’ should be really taken seriously, specially at academic level such activities should be promoted. At times you realize that some time pass activities in the classroom ‘every one tells a joke’ really are useful. This is the best way to make students think about new and funny aspects of the things. Making someone laugh is a creative activity which requires sensibility. Plus humor also allows us to ‘laugh off’ many complications in our life and one would probably take a relaxed back seat.

There was a time when you got the feeling that we really have ‘learned to laugh’ while highlighting the issues on media. Later on this became a success formula for any TV show i.e. mimic, caricature everything everyone, every situation! And the show will sell out very well! The situation now is that in some shows the anchor persons and participants laugh at serious issues, they laugh to the extent of insensitivity! Sorry if I am being harsh but this laughter seems a little hysteric! This approach has become somewhat ineffective in bringing issues to the lime light. The practice of mimicking and caricaturing as increased pathetically and showcasing our non-seriousness to the world! And probably those who were being laughed at have started to laugh with us!

The element of ‘ridicule’ has overshadowed humor. Putting aside the fact that people being ridiculed are worth this, but moral values should not change from situation to situation or person to person. ‘do-nots’ for a person or organization should be according to self-standards not according to others!

Such shows should be continued and no way ‘stopped’ but they should definitely be ‘controlled’ as excess of everything is bad!

Apologize, Forgive and Smile!

Mannerism and etiquettes have always been the defining feature of us ‘humans’ and the reason that we think and can differ between right and wrong dictates us our values.I remember bouncing into many people while rushing towards my class in university and even though my immediate reaction used to be “Sorry!” but I seldom got a: “Its OK” or “no problem” in response. The problem in our society when you apologize is that people assume that you have done something wrong which makes you guilty and apologize in return. This thinking is most probably due to the fact that ‘apologizing’ is not a common practice and hence when some one does apologize he/she might get a deep glare in return rather than few nice words! This reaction is not just seen in minor incidents but also in bigger issues of life. If this habit of forgiving gains roots then this would not just merely be general mannerism but it would change our attitudes for good. I think that every apology should be followed by forgiveness. An apology should not always be treated as a confession! It could be a gesture as well! An effort from someone to make you happy and the positive side goes on.

The little issue with forgiving is that we do forgive but we don’t forget because we don’t want to forget. Some hard core freak in us keeps us reminding that such and such happening must ‘not’ be forgotten and that simply means that we had not forgiven in the first place! All we need to do is to tell this hard core freak that this can and should be forgotten. This does not in any way mean that you should forget the lesson you learn from someone’s behavior but this is about how to think and minimize grudges, as they say that “a grudge is the heaviest thing you carry around”!

All that is said about apology was only when some one does apologize! Interestingly most of us feel really bad about apologizing and we find it extremely difficult to admit that “yes, I was wrong” This is the outcome of extremely rational and mature behavior that one has the courage to admit that he was wrong. Such brave people are bound to improve as improvement begins from realization.

Many philosophers and thinkers have been thinking about happiness, how to be happy or satisfied in a complicated world today. To me happiness lies in simplicity, the simplicity in you, your thoughts and conduct. Sometimes we complicate the things and situations around us unnecessarily. We are inherent to go for a complicated approach where a simpler one would fit in better. This simplicity would cause us to thank, forgive then forget, apologize and consequently smile!

Living in the Year 13 AG

We are right now witnessing the year 13AG (After Google) where google is more of a verb than a noun! And information on an awful lot of subjects is avalaible justa few keystrokes and clicks away.

Google is not just a search engine, now it’s a phenomenon. A reachable, fast and efficient and ever improving serach engine. Just as I had started to wonder that maybe now google would be focussing more on search optimization at the backend, as what more could features could the search engine put on but then Google came of with ‘Let me google that for you’,  intellisense, a callout showing the preview of the search result color based search in images and so on. The intellisense not only suggests you search keywords but also shows you the number of results against each search string! And that too within seconds. The callout showing preview of the page also saves you a lot of time as you can easily shunt off the irrelevant pages.  It seems pretty understandable that, in university,  one of my fellow presenter enlisted ‘Google’ as the only reference on the slide to show all references! Because google really is the ultimate reference and today search means ‘Google’!

Google does lead you to scores of data but validity still remains an issue.

With google googling with Maps, Translation tools, Google Sites,  Google documents, Google desktop, Gtalk, Gmail, Buzz, Chrome, Picasa, Android and now an OS for those who live their life online! Also other endless services provided by google: Blog, Currency conversion, weather, AdSense,  Adwords and so on The people at Googleplex never seem to stop. And this age can truly be called as google’s age. We would be seeing more of the expansion of google’s empire.

Each of the product presented by google has a trademark feature of efficiency and simplicity. Be it their browser i.e. Chrome is extremely fast, image editor Picasa, search engine, Google Desktop each of the products has the google effect i.e user friendliness, simplicity and remarkable speed.

As a developer one thing I have noticed is that Google still uses HTML frames! When many of us think that frames might have become obsolete but tell you what, Google is using it!

Lessons from Egypt

The egyptian nation came out of the 18 days long struggle victorious when on 11^th feb 2011 President Hosni Mubarak Steped down.

This was a moment of pride for us muslims that a Muslim country had shown so much discipline and character and remained steadfast to achieve their rights.

Those moments in Tahrir Square were simply not explainable when the news about the ouster broke, Thoug at first the televised address by Mubarak  a day earlier greatly shattered the spirits of the people and ignited their wrath but later on their efforts did pay off.  All of the noteable international television channels kept airing the celebrations live.

The few very impressive aspects, as I have noticed, of this struggle are worth mentioning:

 Conceived and Led by the Youth: The youth had came forward and using the internet and technology gadgets led this movement in a very organized manner. The most important factor behind the success of this movement was the ‘vision’ of the youngsters which was really clear and they knew they were fighting for their own rights and they used all possibles means to do so and turn up with a massive movement.  A youth when questioned that what did the president do which brought the nation  to protest, In response to this he said: Its not about what he did its about what he did not do and should have done!

Peaceful protest:The protestors showed their class and showed that they valued their people and their asssets and remained very disciplined and peaceful.  This was again due to the clarity of their vision they knew their objective was not to spread violence and unrest but to get their rights.  This vision led them to success.

Army/Police remained neutral:This was acknowledged by a protestor while talking to BBC news amid the celebrations.This is the right thing that the law enforcement of any country should do when people are protesting, they should just strive to maintain peace. The youngster was kean to go back to his friends a become a part of the celebrations but the host managed a few minutes of attention  from him. He said that the army remained neutral and was out there just to maintain law and order.  He also added that this was a people’s struggle not particular of any faith but of the nation.