HEAD_LIGHTS

In addition to being a requirement of travelling in the dark, Crystal Clear, glittering headlights are the most prominent component of persona of a contemporary car today. They add looks and emotions to the ride as a headlight can easily make any car look happy, angry or gloomy. People even use to call certain popular models of Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan and Chevrolet as snake, dolphin or cat all due to their facade. Since my childhood, I personally feel attracted most towards cars with the smartest headlights and I wonder how cars would look if they don’t have the headlights.

 Why do all classic cars have round headlights and why do modern cars have more architecturally designed headlines? These question creep to my mind when I was rubbing the wax out of my 2012 Corolla GLI headlights today. Was it style, choice or other techno limitations?

I then also remember my father’s saying, “They are the eyes of my car,” he once uttered these words to me when he was polishing his early Mazda 929 headlights. Indeed, they look like the eyes of a car! But it wasn’t just a styling choice or technological limitation rather it was the law.

The story trace its origin back to 1940 when the motor vehicle administrations of several states in USA came up with the idea of uniform standard of seven inches sealed-beam headlamps for all the vehicles throughout country. These one-piece lights combined the filament, reflector, housing, and lens. They were supposed to improve reliability as the chances of dirt and dead bugs finding its way into the lamp, possibly causing hot spots and early burnout were nearly impossible. The standard was adopted by the government and remained into effect for the next 40 years known as a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108. USA being the large market for cars in those days compelled the Japanese and European manufacturers also to adopt the same standard for all their productions.  

  

Healthy Viewing Choices

It wouldn't be wrong in saying that the mushroom growth of media in the last decade has left us with an important question of how can we have the healthy viewing choices for  whole family, particularly when it has the tremendous liberty, lot of audience and 24 hours seven days screen presence in majority of the bedrooms in Pakistan. I believe screen time for public is like chocolate. It’s delicious, pleasure in small portions, but eating too much can lead to a lifetime of bad habits.

 Although there's no single recipe for producing a successful program that could be valuable to the whole family yet with the inclusion of certain fundamentals we can easily have a high quality television contents for the entire family.

A RANDOM DAY AT SHRINE

Located at the foot of Margalla Hills, a few miles away from the Prime Minister House, the shrine of SHAH ABDUL LATIF KAZMI ( Bari Imam) is the center of hope for the disappointed, ill, heartbroken and needy people of the subcontinent for centuries.

It’s been more than 300 years when (Bari Imam) came to this place- barren land in those days - from District Jhelum.

 After helping his father in grazing animals, at the age of 12, he left for Ghaur Ghashti (now Attock) to learn fiqh, hadith, logic, mathematics, medicine and philosophy. The Saint is believed to meditate there in a cave for about twelve years visited only by the wild beasts and demons. A rock in that cave resembling a snake is also believed to be the miracle turned into stone by the holy man for being the devil’s advocate to break his meditation.

QADRI: MYTH OF DISPLAY & POWER

 Qadri holding the Constitution

What impelled a dual national Dr. Tahir ul Qadri to suddenly terminate his self- exile in Canada and come back with so much display, money and publicity?

Is the only question I can ask of myself in a situation when I've been limited to my guest house’s room watching everything on TV due to emergency identical situation in Islamabad today.

Is it the pain and love for the nation which he had shunned six years ago or is there some other hidden agenda? Only time will tell!

Dr. Qadri however says he is not interested in power and claims to be back only to save the nation from a total disaster.  He appears and poses to be a Khomeini- type messiah and savior of the nation and believes he can transform Constitutional Avenue into Pakistani tahrir square.

  

 He certainly demonstrated one thing that he has the capacity to gather mammoth crowds.  Two factors in my opinion helped him in this task, the influence of political Islam in our society and the extreme frustration that the people have towards the present regime.

With more focus on the few emotional clauses, Qadri’s demands seem very inconsistent with the provisions of the constitution.  As the document which he urges to be upheld in its spirit and totality, unfortunately didn't have any provisions for a caretaker government to make decisions beyond running of routine affairs and the holding of elections.

Similarly an individual cannot arrogate to himself the right of representing people by merely gathering them together under the constitution. He or she has to be first elected by the people before he/she gets the constitutional prerogative of representing them.

Above all, our constitution does not prescribe any role for our army or judiciary in holding elections under a caretaker government.