Greeting cards

This article appeared in daily the Nation, September 26, 2010 issue

The sense of insecurity, financial, social or personal, has blemished the traditional joy and excitement associated with Eid ul Fitr this year. The series of terror attacks, skyrocketing inflation and catastrophic caused by flood 2010 has changed the cultural landscape altogether. Result: Like many cultural hallmarks of festive days, the old tradition of buying greeting cards and sending them to friends and family member.

Exchange of greeting cards plays an important role in display of love, affection, emotions and nearness. It has been an established tradition to send greetings on Eid days as well as on occasions like birthdays, marriages, charismas, New Year, on passing exams just to name a few.

Personally speaking, I miss greeting cards very much. A greeting card delivered by a postman, with its lines of handwriting, loops and angles that give a reflection of personality and, perhaps, secrets tucked inside. Waiting for the postman to receive a card from someone special is old fashioned I still cherish opening envelops, reading, and reading them again. There is a romance in writing and receiving greeting cards. Sadly, I didn’t get any this time.

The messages printed on the greeting cards are poetic, passionate, persuasive and very comforting. They are some time sentimental, silly, sweet, sensitive, religious and sometime historic. The cards meet the requirements of all the conceivable situations in the human relationship. There are in endless varieties, designs, shapes and sizes from simple messages like ‘I wish you were here with me on this Eid’ to such questions as ‘I often wonder what made us fall in love’ and more.

With rather longer prelude, endeavour here is to look into cause of the slow death of this beautiful cultural tradition and related print industry. Before the prevailing depression in collective mood due to security threats and economic crunch, the cultural custom of sending greetings gave way to the Internet users when they started exchanging e-greetings through the Internet and cell phones. Now Hundreds of sites offering free e-greeting cards have come up on the Internet and they all are innovatively competing with each other to attract the every growing users’ base.

Internet has become an inseparable part of everyday life everywhere in the world. Their usage is exponentially growing (thanks to the near pure competition). What is surprising is that the Internet has taken over old cultural tradition like sending and receiving greeting cards.

Over the years, innovative trend of e-greeting has brought many radical changes in the designs, colour and themes of the e-cards but the initial significance of this tradition remained the same. What started as a data transferring device has come a long way and has become multifunctional – sending and reviving e-cards being one of the most popular functions. It is simple. Process takes only a few seconds, and it is trendier, it is cool. That is why millions of e-cards conveying greetings are already flying through the cyber space from one computer to another.

"I used to send so many greeting cards to my friends and family members through snail mail on every Eid in the past. Now I am sending and receiving greetings through my cell phone," emails Zaheer Hassan, IT professional who has migrated to Australia only about two months ago. His parents are in Pakistan and in laws in UAE, "I am saving lot of money and hassle."

Eid card sellers, publishers and distributors are losing profit. Umar Kahn, one of the established greeting card sellers in Multan says, "As usual we had ordered and stocked cards to meet the needs of consumers. We removed books and magazines to make place for the cards display. But this year there were very few customers. We are only losing profit but imagine the publishers who have to lift back all unsold cards. The increasing traffic on cell phones is service providers' gain and loss for the card publishers it seems.”

"Some other things that are sustaining the greeting card printing industry are increase in population and new entrants in the industry," says marketing executive Nadeem Moeen. "New entrants who come with new ideas and hopes are still there in any business despite the visible slum," he adds.

The greeting card printers and importers have been in business for quite some time. Early greeting cards are some of the most beautiful cards ever printed. Publishers competing for sales, printed cards using intricate embossing techniques, high quality art work, superior inks, expensive lithographic processes and even novelty additions such as glitter, ribbons, silk, music and feathers. With the proliferation of computers and cell phones, they have to look for other innovations may be.

In Pakistan, Internet users’ base has grown exponentially over past years. Similarly, cell phones have become ubiquitous and most of the population is equipped with cell phones, some with enhancements such as camera capabilities depending upon affordability and coverage of the area by cell service providers. Pervasiveness and the particularities of its usage are leading to developing online culture, in this context, on the coast of greeting cards printing industry. "I can see the time when greeting cards will only be found with collectors or only businesses and organizations will be the only users," wistfully says Umar Khan.

At least for the near future, I do not expect personal mail habits of the older segment of the society to change," says Dr. Muhammad Anwar, a sociologist and a card collector. Dr. Anwar has maliciously filed all the cards he had received in life, “Greeting cards in print are a traditional form of expressing one's emotions. On the other hand, the idea of e-greetings is undeniably relevant today, and it is intriguing. Trend has to change one day, adds Dr. Anwar.

Caption: Scan image of eid greeting card that was pasted by my friend Jalal Hamid Bhatti on the notice board of our platoon [Khalid - 4, 55 PMA] in Pakistan Military Academy  in 1975.

Reliving Memories

This article appeared in daily the Nation June 6, 2010 issue

There are lessons in the first landscapes of every one's life. Mine is a vista of green paddy fields, smoking with Salt Range mist, against a setting of ribbon of River Jhelum which from distance looked like a shore of another land altogether. The rough, rugged hill range appears very inviting against a sky withering with the morning, interrupted by the dawns’ red and blue brush strokes. My first learning in life is also rooted in my village.

In rural areas, people still live without assessable roads or other civic amenities of this modern age that are taken for granted in the urban areas. No telephone or the Internet, (in our village) even the electricity is the recent phenomenon; so many villages are still without it. You see one village and you have seen all. This was the setting where I spent first twenty year of my life savoring the freedom of adulthood. It is where I decided what (and how) I wanted to do with life. It is where my mother, brothers and friends live. It is where I return whenever my active life allows me to. It is where I want to settle and spend my future.

My village is awe inspiring -- pollution free and quiet. Different shades and colors of waving crops and trees - solitary, in groves or avenues - beautify the landscape. The scene changes after the harvest. The air is always fresh and fragrant with the smell of earth. The only sound is singing of birds, ringing of cowbells and sighing of wind or some youth loudly singing Heer Waris Shah, Sassi Punun or Mirza Saheban at night. One sees butterflies fluttering, ladybirds creeping and squirrels jumping around and you can see people partying with squirrels. Relics of some dilapidated temple and dharamshalas are also hanging out indicating the antiquity of the village. To me the place feels like a paradise.

My roots are in the village where nobody seems to be in a hurry. Every time I go there, from the different cities where I happen to be living, I take small things like candies and toys for the kids of neighbors and my own extended family in the village and they are so happy that the words cannot explain their delight. From the village I bring everything, and more than everything I bring lot of love.

"I help my neighbors and my neighbors help me", is the philosophy of life in our village. Faith, sharing, contentment, grit, hard work and humor are few others. There are no marriage halls or other renting places. Daaras (community centers where cultural diffusion takes place) are very useful 'institutions' for functions or for elders to sit and teach irreplaceable heritage of ideas to the younger generations. The learning that passed on to me in Daara in my village turned out to be very precious: it was the legacy of the fable. Tandoor (oven for backing bread) is still a meeting and talking place for women.

Guests of one family are shared by ever one at the time of marriage (or death). Hospitality is like one of the cultural benchmark, as villagers strongly believe that a guest comes with the blessings of Allah Almighty. Pull a hay cart into the shad, to rest, to dream. You shall be served with hookka (Hubbell-bubble), water and food. Cooing crows are still considered as a symbol for the arrival of guests in my village.

From our village, a group of students used to go to nearby town (Mandi Bahaud Din) for attending school (and then college). Murad was my buddy in the group. After completing education, my dreams become out of control and took me on the darker roads of the life whereas Murad, equipped with ten years of education (Matric), stayed back and started farming in the same village. He was a hardworking, gentleman, economically very sound and not very ambitious. Murad’s father married him early and now his son Aslam has grown into a very find young man. This time I went to my village and happen to meet Aslam. I was so amazed to learn that Aslam Murad knew so much about me. This is a sort of friendship (call relationship) that still breeds in the rural areas.

This time, when I was coming back from the village, lot of people - family members, peers and neighbors came to see me off, as always. My mother had packed my vehicle with vegetables (fresh from the farm), atta (floor), husked rice and even a few live chickens. Everybody was advising me to consume everything back in the city, as "they are fresh, pure, nutritious and desi". On my way back, a question kept coming in my mind: how much time this simple society will take to become complex and when will 'development' change the outlook of the villagers to life?

A cluster of memories - some overlapping, some isolated of 'the village boy' I once was - is a shadow of my life. I am a result of my childhood experiences. After having knocked on all the doors of opportunity that came in my way in life, I still cherish those shadow memories. Which is why I love to visit my village whenever I can?

Net Cafe Culture

Internet cafes have played a visible role in promoting internet usage. It is a public place where people can use a computer with internet access for an affordable fee. Café may or may not serve as a conventional café. Besides internet connection, a number of cafes also provide other services such as printing, scanning, CD viewing and burning. Some even conduct internet training classes for beginners. The word is that some of the cafes around the world are being used for activities much beyond their scope.

Eva Pascoe, a PhD student while sitting in the coffee shop of London City University conceived and decided "to put a permanent PC connection in a coffee shop and link it to internet."

Cyberia, the world's first internet cafe, was opened in London's Whit field Street in Sept, 1994. Earlier in 1991, SFNet, the prototype of the present internet cafe, has started in the US. After only a decade, cyber or net cafes found places world wide. Most people use them to access their email accounts, chat, play games, search, and surf or do other things online. In this day and age, in more connected countries, there are also Wi-fi cafes, or in other words hotspots, where users can connect their laptops, notebooks or PDAs using the cafe's wireless access to internet.

Justly or unjustly, the freewheeling internet access in cyber cafes embodies both hopes and fears at a time: internet connectivity and usage is anticipated as central to long-term economic interests and development by every one and is encouraged. Fears are that unsupervised or unguided children can browse pornographic, violence, and other perniciousinfo sites, or they can become centres of some other nefarious activities and places where youngsters hang around and spend time in unproductive activities. Besides, terrorists and cyber criminals can take advantage of these cafes as they provide multiple layers of protection like public call offices.

In a latest study of "terrorism and the internet", United States' counter terrorism analyst Gabriel Weimann noted "that cyberspace has advantages for terrorist groups. First is easy access from anywhere to a very large audience around the world. The report says, "You don't even need a computer; you can just go to a public library . . . or, you can go to an internet café. There is no control, no regulation, and no laws. Nobody is censoring the messages."

Cafes provide complete anonymity. "You can sit in a coffee shop, an internet café in London, use a server in South Africa and send a message to North America, without anybody being able to trace it," he adds.

With increase in criminal activities online, discipline of cyber laws emerged some four years ago. By now more than 30 nations including the Central Asian States, China, Cuba, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore and United States have cyber laws in place, though all may be having different inten t. Some other countries - Australia, Burma, Saudi Arabia, and Syria - have blocked pornographic sites. Gambling sites are outlawed in South Korea.

Internet café business has remained a flourishing cottage industry that requires relatively little investment. So far they have not been regulated and it is unlikely to change anytime soon,specially in the developed world. Recently, there has been a strident crackdown on net cafes in China which resulted in shutting down thousands of unlicenced cafes across the country to restrict "juveniles to enter or allowing unhealthy information to spread through internet followed by Indian government's crackdown on net café where the owners were asked "to ensure that the net cafes are not used for viewing pornography. The law is enshrined in the Information Technology Act, 2000, emailed Lubna, a journalist from India.

Vietnam government has also issues a decree (number 55) ordering net cafes to register with the Internet Services Providers. A foreign news agency has recently reported (and the story was run by many international publications) that "cyber cafes in Pakistan will soon be made accountable as the government is all set to draft a law to regulate their activities."

Consider this in order to see the relevance of any regulation for net cafes in the context of Pakistan?

Comparatively, few users can afford computers and telephone line at home in the country and an overwhelming majority go online in the net cafes where they can enjoy inexpensive services incognito. Not only that, some of those who have a net connection at home also visit the cafes.

The IT-hype created public demand that helped net café to come up in every nook and corner of towns and cities, wherever net access is available. They are of different types; high-end and cool places with comfortable working environment in posh localities or noisy and smoke chocked cubby-holes in back alleys. Those with work stations in cabins with chains, behind partition walls, monitors screens facing walls where others cannot see or in open where every one can see whatever is on others' monitors.

So far there are no comprehensive cyber laws to deal with the issues and the legal consequences on internet, the World Wide Web and cyberspace in Pakistan. Given the nature of internet, execution of any cyber law anywhere in the world is a big question mark.

Earlier, government's abortive effort to ban pornography sites in Pakistan is one case in point. But if the situation demands, making the cyber cafes accountable for the collective good of our society should not be impossible. That said; let us see what major concerns are when it comes to regulating local net cafes? What do café owners and users think about any regulation? And who will implement the law if and when it is made?

Privacy and civil liberties are generally mirrored in all discussions when it comes to controlling any aspect of internet. How privacy, civil rights and personal freedom is threatened if net cafes are run under some standard rules? Does viewing what is on others' screen endanger the basic civil liberties of others and who wants to do that? Does showing personal ID before using net facilities at public computers is a breach of privacy? Or is anonymity - using a public facility without leaving any traces to be tracked back - being categorized as privacy?

In the context of net cafés, privacy can be defined as "the state or quality of being secluded from the view and or presence of others," reads RSA Laboratories site.

Amjad Iqbal Sindhu, an advocate Lahore High Court says, "Individuals are entitled to keep to themselves what they do online or offline unless some special situation like public interest in general demands otherwise. In a civilized society, no body has the right whatsoever to snoop over others." He quoted English philosopher John Stuart Mill as saying that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

Public places are not the best spots for privacy. "Imagine what ordinary users do when they log on; they check email and fire off replies, chat, surf some sites, brows or play games. What is there to be secretive or cautious about? However, cafes may be registered with some central authority. Seating arrangements in them should be open - screen facing outwards. This alone will clear so many doubts about the policy of any café and will define the kind of crowd that gathers there," adds Sindhu.

Café owners and proprietors think that any kind of restriction in usage or asking patrons to show and record their identities will adversely affect their business.

"This is not the best way to track back miscreants. Any one up to some thing bad can sure outmanoeuvre such barriers. Big worry is that will any rule shift the onus of customers' actions on café owners or will we be made accomplice if and when something wrong happens," says Tanvir Ahmad, a manager of "open policy" cafe in Gulgasht Colony Multan.

Imran Nazir is able to make his living through net café, despite "open policy" with all work stations in semi circle facing outwards plus cold drinks and tea, because "I am located near the University of the Punjab hostels and my clients are mostly serious student who come here for preparing their assignments. I try to provide them with an academic atmosphere in the cafe. They search, brows, download documents and get required material printed or save it on their floppy disks for later use. Or they sit her and compose their assignments," he says. On the other hand, some customers go to the cafés only for viewing porno sites or to have long sessions of chats; every one knows that.

A proprietor of the café in Lahore confessed, "I have some regular clients who can hardly read or write English but they have learnt to operate computers and internet. What do you think they do online? Stop them and they will go find another cafe. If the government has to ban pornographic sites, ISPs should be regulated and not the net cafes."

Qamar uz Zaman Khan, an owner of a cafe in Multan told, "The scene in net cafes in Multan is no different than any other city in the country. Some 70 to 80 per cent of the visitors come for entertainment whereas only 20 per cent visit for educational pursuits. Most of the visitors are male; young boys. In posh areas, however, female students are also seen visiting."

After the Rawalpindi scandal (I still get maxium search queries leading to this page about Rawalpindi Internet Scandal), the city administration here is already asking the café owners to adopt open policy and remove all partitions. Qamar suggests that separate "female only cafes" should be opened instead of removing the partitions.

Users' response to any kind of restriction in net use is mixed one. When asked some say there is no harm while some other say they will not go to the cafes if every time they have to enter identification particulars and sign a register of attendance. Given the lax law enforcement in the country, any rule is likely to be neglected both by the cyber cafe walas as well as the users," comments Tanvir Ahmad.

"I travel to different places all over the country in connection with my work and have to use net cafes to stay in constant touch with my company. I use the nearest cyber café where ever I happen to be. I will revert back to telephone if some legal procedures are introduced to use the cafes," says Fazal Qureshi, a sale representative of greeting cards publishing house. He starts from Lahore and tours the country with card albums, takes the orders from books and card sellers and sends them back to the company. He adds, "I do not want to get into legalities later on."

One more concern that was voiced during scouting is the authority that will regulate the net cafes and how. Any agency which is entrusted with the responsibility to oversee that PCs and internet are not misused at public places have to be tech savvy and should be able to stay current on technologies that are changing every day. The civil police force is not organized for such technical jobs. "Police certainly cannot do that," thinks Iqbal Sindhu.

Cyber cafés have contributed great value to spread net usage in Pakistan. If they have to be standardized, serious issues like privacy and human rights should be given due considerations when suggesting any ways internet cafés should be run and managed across the country. The matter should be discussed thoroughly between café owners and the government at an appropriate level. There should be an open and extensive public debate on the subject. The consensus should be build before any regulation is enforced. Or else we may be poised to lose a budding business and reduced Internet users' base in the country. The choice is ours.

Bannu Postees

The land of cultural diversity I come from is full of beautiful and happy ways to live. Only most of the things have been relegated during our race to modernity.

Lately my friend Muhammad Yaqoob had to go to his home town Lakki Mawat to attend a family event (it was sad occasion though). The lunch had to be served to all those who were attending. Yaqoob shot this video while Bhatyaares from Bannu were backing huge Postees (breads) for the guests.

I could not and eat that Postee but given my interest, I asked him the detail. Rotti (bread) is called Postee some areas of NWFP. Bhatyaree (bakers) from banuu are famous for baking Postees; hence they were called from Bannu to bake

Postees are broken into small pieces and put into a big sized coldrum filled in with a special soup and chicken which is called Painda (panda) and is cooked separately and served to group to eat together. Eat it with hands because poking fork (or spoon) in it is considered bad; culturally.

Painda is a thin gravy of chicken or beef prepared with a lot of spices and butter oil (Desi Ghee). This reminds me of Arab dish called Sobat-e-Sareed only their bread is smaller in size.