Monday, July 20, 2009

The defunct settlement


Jewish graveyard located at Mewashah district of Liyari,Karachi.


Since time immemorial the different parts of the world have experienced the colonization, as well as exoduses of Jewish. The evidences from different periods of history highlights, that the dominion which did not safeguard the privileges, prerogative and rights of Jewish, and which did not allow them to thrive, or where all the odds went against Jewish philanthropic settlement in particular country,they migrated to a safer territory for the sanctity of their rights and emotional well-being. So, did the Pakistani region of South Asia was an abode to a strong Jewish community. A census took place in the year 1881 which accentuated that there were 153 Jews in the province of Sindh. An official archive of the British government published from Karachi in 1907 known as ''Aitken Gazetteer'' delineated that there were 428 Jews in Karachi enumerated in 1901s census.However, other sources claim that at the inception of twentieth century 2,500 Jews were residing in Pakistan.When the year 1919 dawned their number aggrandized to 650. A smaller group also resided at Peshawar, haplessly, the current population is not known. The Jewish community prosper because they are given a hand by their contemporary Jewish at the time of distress and pain.Thus, there was a creation of gamut of organizations designed to serve the Pakistani Jewish communities, details of these organizations are as follows:


  • Magain Salome Synagogue:

This sacred place of worship for Jewish was constructed in 1893 by Shalom Solomon Umerdekar and his son Gershome Solomon.Solomon David, a surveyor of Karachi Municipal Committee ; his wife's name was Sheeoobai, her husband built Magain Shalom Synagogue at his own expense; accounts another source.The gravestone of Solomon David reads:''A widely known and respected Solomon David always sought the welfare of the Jewish community and through his liberty erected at his own expense a handsome synagogue, Magain Shalom''. It soon became the center of a small but vivacious Jewish community. A member of this Synagogue,Abraham Reuben, became a councilor in Karachi City Corporation.


  • Young Man's Jewish Association:

It was founded in 1903, its aim was to encourage sports, as well as religious and social activities of the Bani Israel in Karachi.


  • Karachi Bani Israel Relief Fund:

It was initialized to take up the cudgels for poor Jews in Karachi.


  • Karachi Jewish Syndicate:

Karachi Jewish Syndicate was formed in 1918 and its aim was to provide homes to the poor Jews at reasonable rents.


The post-1947 period reflects that there were 2,500 Jews concentrated in Sindh,particularly in Karachi.These were the Jewish of Bani Israel, Baghdadi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, and of Bukharan descent. It was also promulgated from a different source that some 2,000 Jews remained in Pakistan at the time of independence, most of them were Bani Israeli Jews observing Sephardic Jewish rites. Recent media findings are of opinion that there may still be a small Jewish community residing in Peshawar.
In the Second Summit Conference Zulfiqar Bhutto asserted,


''To the Jews as Jews we bear no malice;to the Jews as Zionists,
  intoxicated with their militarism and reeking with technological
  arrogance,we refuse to be hospitable''.


 Probably as a repercussion Magain Shalom Synagogue was pulverized in the 1980s to make way for shopping plaza.When the Jewish usurped Palestinian land, and transformed it into Israel---the Karachite Jewish became a site of anti-Israel demonstrations.The first real evacuation from Pakistan came soon after the creation of Israel in 1948.It may be quite interesting to know that in Ramla,Israel many of the Karachite(Urdu speaking) Jewish dwell, where they constructed a Synagogue, they named after Magain Shalom Synagogue of Karachi. Some Jewish even migrated to India,where there Jewish culture can flourish, and where they enjoy religious liberty.
In 2008, a resident of Karachi reminisced,


''Jewish were innocuous people,used to palm off from
 political activities,when the Arab-Israel war sprang
 up in the late sixties,they were made aloof.
 Thus, they started migrating silently''.


Although I have never been confronted with any of the member having the Jewish ancestry, I tried to carry out expedition for the Jews in the city of Karachi, but had to renounce when I became aware of the fact that the fear of anti-semitism prevented Jews from evincing their religious identity some of them have camouflaged themselves as Parsis, who have a right to exist as free individuals in Pakistan. The demand made in Middle East peace process focused at maintaining peace between the Muslims and the disgruntled faction(Jewish) was ''the withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip'',howsoever,it led to the first high level meeting between Pakistani and Israeli foreign ministers. They publicly met first time in Istanbul, a diplomatic breakthrough brokered by Turkey.There are 15 independent communities in Pakistan. Efforts are being made to unite them into larger Jewish communities of Pakistan and Kashmir. Demands are restoration of Jewish synagogues, right to exist as free individuals, religious freedom, right to vote and have a separate representation in the assembly. The change in the government,their policies and the uniformity of antagonism and pugnacity in Pakistan are usually the digressions.

STAGGERING PAKISTANI CINEMAS

In order to create cinemas first look at the giant building of schools,colleges and universities.Demolish these buildings and construct cinemas.Many students run away from studies let them manage cinemas.Some people would have to sacrifice their studies in order to bring a revolution in Pakistani film.Lollywood is facing a constant deterioration in its standards.Probably because their is a sole man ownership:the director and producer is the same person,who has also written the story and screenplay.They have kept very nightmarish names of their movies,such as,''Channah suchchi muchchi,Haseena 20 20,Channay kay khait main’’.It seems like games played by small children.These horrible names scare the audience;the thought that dawns upon their mind is indescribable.It might be similar to Punjabi Folk horror movie.'',Chanay kay khait main-What happens there! Remains a mystery.Haseena 20 20-What is she trying to say? Probably,she is the first women telling her age.This is the reason that in these cinemas only rickshaw and taxi drivers visit not to watch movies but to sleep in the dead silence-a lucrative sleep which they can not avail at their house because of the presence of their witch(wife).
SOLUTION:
The minimum budget in Pakistan to create a movie is 2 khokay means 2 crore.So,the best solution is that a graduated(because the graduated human being has maturity of thoughts) story writer should approach a business tycoon of Pakistan,such as Aqeel Kareem Daddy,and must ask him to donate 2 crore.The directors of dramas and telefilms will flock towards money.The film should cast Nawaz Shareef as its hero-only on the condition the he wears a wig of Elvis Presley,Shah Syed as the Pashto heroine and there should be no villain.It will be a romantic story more likely to be a counterpart of 'Titanic'.Imagine Nawaz Shareef and Shah Syed making the pose of Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet as they did in Titanic movie.In case of loss Aqeel Karim Daddy won't care he would think as if he had paid for the flood victims.To insure against loss the movie can be sponsored by Amrus Candy and Chooran Chatni.Then as a result it would earn an Oscar Award without being nominated.And finally the families will divert their attention towards cinemas making our film industry earn its lost identity back.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Call Center's trauma

                         

The trend of call center in our society is spreading its tentacles like highly contagious germs;especially in the hub of Pakistan which is ''KARACHI''.The meaning of call center to a lay man would be:''a place where C.S.Rs(Customer.Service.Representatives) or Sales Executives(S.E) through telecommunication medium dial a belligerent country and engage in selling products''.This is known as 'Telemarketing'.When a foreign firm(not necessarily a multinational) aims to quadruple their profits by keeping its average cost of production as low as possible,it would not prefer making heavy expenditure on advertising and the establishment of a telemarketing department or company in their homeland requires paying higher wages to the domestic workers;and in the end it would leave the firm with fewer profits.


Mostly such firms have based their headquarters in United.States,Canada and Unite Kingdom where the state has established the system of minimum wage rate for their workers.These firms invests their capital in developing countries,such as,Pakistan,India and Bangladesh.It's a piece of cake for these firms to exploit the workers of developing nation, as agents(a term widely used in Call Centers to describe a Sales Executive) charge far lesser than the foreign labours.As in these countries there is mass unemployment and cheap labour supply,businesses are not very much under the thumb of the government.

When the teenagers are over with their board examinations(pivotal examinations) or their O and A levels,boredom prevails their life thus they start searching the newspapers for internships and apprenticeships,haplessly their eyes catches the attention of a fascinating advertisement headed with ''JOBS AVAILABLE IN A CALL CENTER'' and further it's mentioned''R.S 10,000 MONTHLY SALARY''.A teenager already has an itch for money and advertisement becomes a fat in the fire for him/her.The renowned and well-reputed companies never mention their salary package along with their vacancy's advertisement.

Through word-of-mouth publicity teenagers gather their cronies and try to apply for that job.The call center carries out their activities at the evening and at night,and parents usually only allow their children to work in the evening but the telephone pick-ratio is low because the time scheduling in the dialed location is different from Pakistan's time -scheduling;Pakistan follows Greenwich.Mean.Time(G.M.T),when there is evening in Pakistan there is morning in the U.S.A and there is afternoon in U.K,so the majority of the prospects are in the rush hour(going at their work place) thus, for juvenile C.S.Rs to achieve their job targets become a herculean task.On the average an agent dials 150-200 calls per day but still it seems conter-productive,because the output is not up to the mark.

The supervisor or the floor manager arrives to motivate the agents,supervisor informs them about the fruitful output they could have if they opt for night shift;it's like pouring oil on troubled waters.Agents envisage that supervisors are their job's comforter,so they wheedle their parents to allow them to pursue night shift in the call center and parents come under duress.Working in unsociable hours disrupt person's routine life.The boys/girls can not fraternize because after returning to their dwelling;what they can do is sleep,sleep and sleep.

And finally when one's ship comes home(agents start earning money) then it affects their studies,as they still have to continue it an nobody after earning wishes to study diligently or many even put a brake over their student life.Who wishes to compromise then?

A research was carried out in Canada in which it was found out that per day a Canadian receive 15 to 20 telemarketing calls.This irritates them to an extent of torture that they sometimes even abuse the telemarketers,plummeting the prestige of the C.S.Rs.

By working in a call center the students may wreak havoc over their life,because their top most priority is the 'studies' which can give them a hand in future,nobody would even care about telemarketing experience in their retrospective,it is just a short cut to or most probably a short-term way to earn money.







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Food OH Food!!!!


Fortunately,it has become quite clear that one can not trust another person but,but when it comes to food people are adamant on the issue of trust.Someone who is having pangs of hunger and haplessly confronts with a small bakery,he/she would jump out of the car and would in land in the bakery in order to fetch baked cake or pastry.Even a small bakery in topsy-turvy state may prove as a paradise.But as more customers are aiding these small scale businesses to burgeon their sales turn over the more they are working against the interests of the consumers.A couple of days back some officials from electronic media broke in the manufacturing section of a bakery located in the rich suburb of Karachi called 'Tariq road'.The food inspector from quality control department of Karachi was flabbergasted when interacted with the conditions under which food was manufactured.The employees wore the same clothes as their night suite(Shalwaar Qameez).The workers under international food manufacturing laws are ordered to take a bath and then wear rubber gloves.But in that bakery state-of-the-art ways were launched,that is,to manufacture food according to the whims and fancies of the workers,they did not take a bath neither wore gloves.That small room was painted some centuries back.To the employees the substantial spider webs in that room were eco-friendly.There laid some trays of 'Qalaqand'(a scrumptious Pakistani sweet),it was facing the toilet's door which was opened.These bakeries on one hand help house-flies to forget people's house and make the sweets and cakes their abode.The mouth watering food becomes eye watering.More than 50% of catering services cook food in the worst conditions and the fat is in the fire when the cheap food food colours are purchased which hits the inner organs of human beings as the rugby players hit each other and the result is malfunctioning.Poo street hawkers are accused of manufacturing poor quality of food.However,mostly people know about all the multitalented ways of food production mentioned above,yet they do not call to complain the food inspectors just to save the credit balance of their cell phone.The food inspectors do not receive any complain from the citizens thus they sleep as they have nothing to do.The government mistakenly established the system of quality and control department of food and stiff-necked citizens of our state do not feel incumbent upon them to contact them.

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