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What Living in Dubai Taught Me

Due to last night’s unfortunate fire incident in Dubai, lots of things have been on my mind. Watching The Address Downtown Hotel burn in front of my eyes, affected me the same way, as if it was someone close to my heart or a precious family member in distress. My attachment with Dubai does not only limit to the fact that this is a city where my home is and where I earn my bread & butter; but it extends to the whole city, its buildings, and its people. Last night I felt like if I had the power and the means, I would have personally gone on site and helped douse the fire out. It gave me heartache to see that hotel on fire, not only because the building was on fire, but because I was vary of the mixed reactions and publicity Dubai will get regarding the incident on International Media and Social Media. I was right of course, a lot of bitterness and hatred came out last night from people that don’t live in Dubai; a lot of jokes about the fire, a lot of jokes about Duba

Narcisstic Pakistani Parenting

Majority of the Pakistanis will be able to relate when I say, we’re born in to the culture where we have to put our parents on the pedestals and treat them like royalty, no matter what they do – good or bad. If it is bad, talking about it or talking about them amounts to seditious libel. It is blasphemy and forbidden. No matter what the parents do, the bottom line is, at the end of the day the Pakistani mentality rules. We have to silently accept it and live suffocated and jarred lives. Degree of suffocation differs from person to person, but every one of us suffers to some extent. Some suffer more, some suffer less; not to say that there aren’t healthy and happy relationships or families, there are, but that might be very rare. We might never know the exact details, because in Pakistani society and mentality, it is looked down upon to frown upon your parents and their actions. We are meant to tolerate it all and live our lives without complaining. The best thing ab

Supporting Independent Films - Crowdfunding 'The Chop'

The film industry has immensely evolved over the past decade, not only in how films are made, but also about how films are distributed and relayed to the audiences. In the past, conventional film making involved traditional means of capturing motion pictures and then projecting them to the audience in a theatre. As we evolved technologically and as the film industry’s popularity with the general public grew, there were a lot of developments and advancements made; even in the conventional cinema viewing.  These days however, due to the rapid growth fuelled by social media and the Internet, not only has the ‘viewing’ part of film making evolved, but also the ‘making’ part of the industry has developed greatly. Internet has made it easy to cost effectively distribute films; this phenomenon has propelled more people to get in to the business of film making. This is pushing a change in trends. No longer is the film industry controlled by big budgets and big name film studios. Indep

Kindness Knows No Religion

Lost faith in the dark days, but few people make you want to believe. They call it kindness and love, despite differences. They say that differences put aside, we have one in thing in common and I wondered what that is, they said “humanity”. You don’t need anything else, but humanity to be nice to someone. To smile at a stranger walking by, to make someone’s day by a little act of kindness. They say in Islam, that if you smile at someone and make them happy, it is an act of charity. But, I say leave religion out of this. If you smile at someone, you are being nice and kind. Forget making someone else happy and feel good about themselves, you feel good yourself! Religion is important to a lot of people, but at the same time, people should realise that they shouldn’t be too engrossed in religion, that they forget basic humanity. People follow their cultural beliefs and religion so closely, that they knowingly or unknowingly become biased and racist. They discriminate an

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Way Back To My Happiness

As I sit here in the park, I watch people walk by and smile at one another. I watch the kids play tag and have a good time. I even watch the birds’ chirp and fly about. All this while, what am I doing? I am just sitting here, so still and quiet. I had become quiet over the past few months, because of many different reasons. I had lost my will to talk and even more, I had lost my will to smile and be happy. I was never the negative pessimist, but circumstances had forced me to become such way and lose my smile and happiness. My heart wasn’t happy and neither did I ever feel like smiling. People around me tried their best to cheer me up, but there was this hollow feeling inside me always. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine that I was in such a state. It wasn’t even the fault of the person, because of which I had lost faith in people. It was purely my fault, because I had allowed myself to sink to such depths of sorrow and resentment that I had lost my way back to happiness and cheerf

Peshawar Church Blast: A National Tragedy

It is a shameful occurrence and nothing else can be said about it. At least 75 people have been killed and over 100 have been injured. What was their fault? Why were they targeted? Their only crime was that they were Christians, in a country called Pakistan. Whenever something like this happens, I feel slightly ashamed at calling myself a Pakistani.  Be it the massacre of Ahmadis, Shia genocide or in general terrorist activity in the country, it all is a reason to be shameful. Pakistan is a great country, but we have to get rid of the menace that is ripping our society and country apart. How much more blood is going to be spilled before the government realizes this?    TTP are barbarians who don’t want peace. They have proved that by showing disinterest in the proposed peace talks by the government – backed by parties such as PTI. First they killed mercilessly, Army personnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and now attacked a church in Peshawar. Their justification for this attack is th