Teachers......

When a child borns, his very first institute of learning is in his mother’s arms. A mother is the teacher of newly born infant who teaches him how to survive. When the child become few months old, she teaches him how to crawl, how to respond on his name calling, how to drink how to eat. A lot of basic things she helped her child to learn about patterns of living. When the child reaches to an age of 3 years she share this teaching responsibilty with a person who is known as a teacher  in our society. Every mother gives  responsibilty of her child in hands of the teacher as she believes that the basic training of her child would be done honestly by the teacher.

When ever I recall my childhood I found many teachers whom I admire and who are still as role models for me. There was a teacher Mrs. Arjumand who used to teach us urdu in 10^th standard. She was a vry loving lady, but some of my class fellows were under the impression that she is over strict. I always found love behind her harsh words. She never showed her anger on unnecessary things but on things like proper dressing, way of walking, way of talking, how to greet others, not to talk silly. She always tried us to act mature, not to behave childish as she again and again mentioned to us that we are girls and we will be the future mothers so we have to be very humble, very smart in all ways, and very mature to run a whole family.

Another teacher who is my favourite till now is Mrs. Iftikhar. She was our science teacher. Very polite and loving lady I must say. She was the favourite of my whole class. Every girl wanted to become close to her but she treated all of us with same love and care. She never did favouritism between us. In short, not only these two teachers I have memories of a lot of teachers who some how directly or in directly influence my personality and helped me to learn the ways of life and teach me how to walk on difficult roads of life.

This is all my past, now when I think about the teachers in the present, I feel really upset. They are not teachers, they are business men trying to get more and more profit and name in market. They donot care about non formal education. Infact they are not honestly giving the formal education they supposed to give. All they want is to get more and more profit in less time. This is happening in all stages, at school level, coaching centres, colleges and universities. Teachers are not honestly performing their duties.

I must say that teaching is very respectful profession and it should be carried with dignity, honesty and care. But now a days teachers are earning from their profession and giving nothing to it. They don’t care whether their students are satisfied with them or not. Its my personel experience that I found a few teachers who want favours from us and did not even think of the respect and responsibilty they are holding. A very pathetic situation for all us. Only need is of the youngsters to come up and bring revolution. As only hopes are tied with the youth.

DADA HATHI.......

Since the Cricket world Cup 2011 has started, there are a lot of news circulating about DADA HATHI who is predicting about the winning team and its predictions are coming true. I have seen coverage about this on a local news channel in which DADA HATH was shown predicting about the match between Pakistan and Canada. I was very showked that being the media of a Muslim state, they are propagating myths like this. It is not the culture of Muslims to get information about the future happenings, infact it is strictly prohibited in Islam to have knowledge of the future.

We being Muslims believe on ALLAH and HIS PROPHET MOHAMMAD (S.A.W). We are not allowed to believe on such things.

(Quran Surah Al-An'am 6:59)

“With Him are the keys of the unseen, the treasures that none knoweth but He..........”

(Quran Surah Al-An'am 6:73).

“He knoweth the unseen as well as that which is open. For He is the Wise, well acquainted (with all things)”

What is going to be happen in the future is not open in front of us. Only ALLAH has the knowledge about the future and this knowledge is kept hidden from us. Whe are strictkly not allowed to search about it. This will lead us to the paths of sin. It is not the spirit of Muslims to search about future. Non Muslims are interested in such things as they donot believe in ALMIGHTY ALLAH. If any one of us will go to search about the future, Islam has punishment for him.

Muslim Book 026, Hadith Number 5540

“Kahanat (Divination) is prohibited and it is forbidden to go to Kahin”.

People become very emotional when we talk about match between India and Pakistan, but a great Muslim is one who keep his emotions in control and do not lead to the wrong paths. To believe on DADA HATH or any other prediction whether made by any animal, any game, or any person is purely a wrong deed. What the point is, that our media which is the platform to guide us, is giving us wrong directions by promoting such things. Media must be very responsible while reporting on such issues, it should keep in mind that we are MUSLIMS and we are not allowed to act against the will of Islam and are not allowed to promote any thing against Islamic rules and laws.

We are MUSLIMS and we have the key to success, that is, we have the power of dua. We have the opportunity to ask success from ALLAH 5 times a day in namaz. Why don’t we left asking help from the living creatures on earth about future and start praying for our dear homeland. Nothing is more powerfull than the dua which is asked with full believe on ALLAH. I wish very best of luck to our players and my all prayers are with them.

             INSHALLAH VICTORY WILL BE OURS……………..

Kill Yourself.......

 “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”

(ALBERT CAMUS)

Suicide is not a new topic for any one of us neither I am the first person writing about it. Many people have raised their voices on this critical issue but no changes are observed as far.  I do not want to list the statistical figures about suicide rate in Pakistan neither I want to debate about the reasons nor triggering factors behind such act. My main concern is towards the role that media is playing in promoting this disease in our society. May be you people would not agree with me but I have my reasons for saying this.

Whenever I switched on any news channel I usually saw news regarding suicide cases like a woman committed suicide due to poverty or a father give poison to his children and then committed suicide. Such cases are given very especial coverage on every news channel with an essence of sympathy. According to my view, these people are not give sympathy as they are the most passive people who cannot fight with the problems of their lives. I know I am quite cruel in writing such lines. But this is the fact that bravery is to fight with problems not to jump from the bridge or hang with the fan. Such acts are the most foolish acts. Suicide is not allowed in Islam. Quranic verses and Ahadis are stating again and again in against of suicide.

“Do not kill yourself. No doubt Allah is merciful and anyone who does so will be pushed in fire. And it is easy for Allah” (Nisa: 5:29,5:30)

Now let’s see the role of media in this regard. Our media is portraying the suiciders as role models for others who are facing economic or social problems. Take a recent example; media give coverage to a woman who tries to commit suicide as her transfer orders were issued from one government school to the other. I personally do not know why she risks her life on such a small issue. She has her children, her family, why doesn’t she think of them. And our media portrayed her as being the poor helpless lady. She is helpless, she needs attention by the authorities but her act is not proper neither according to Islam nor according to the laws of the state.  People who committed or try to commit suicide are given special coverage and media try to blame government for such acts. Audience who watch these cases get an idea that it is an easy way to get escape from problems or in other words people also think that if we try to commit suicide we would be successful in getting attention from any minister or NGO worker through media and that will end all our problems. Both the outcomes are being projected by the media. In spite of this, media should demotivate people who try to commit suicide and do not portray them as the most helpless ones who do not have other options. There are other options also, only the need is of awareness and I think media is the best option to spread awareness as it is the basic role of media.

Stereotyping of Women in Pakistani dramas

Once Quaid –e – Azam has said that:

“No nation can rise to the height of glory unless its women work side by side”

It is clearly evident from words of our Quaid that if any nation wants to develop or to touch the peaks of success, the women of that nation must have to work side by side with men. Not only Quaid-e- Azam but all the great leaders have admitted the feminine strength necessary to build up a nation.

We being Muslims follow the paths described by our religion Islam and live our lives according to Quran and Sunnah. The Quran provides clear cut evidence that a woman is completely equated with man in the sight of ALLAH in terms of her rights and responsibilities. 

“O Mankind, keep your duty to your Lord WHO created you from a single soul and from it created its mate (of same kind) and from them twain has spread a multitude of men and women” (Quran 4:1)

It is not the tone of Islam that brands woman as the product of the devil or the seed of evil. Nor does the Quran place man as the dominant lord of woman who has no choice but to surrender to his dominance. It is we who are responsible for mistreating the woman and for projecting and promoting negative image of woman. Arts and literature always reflects the pure situations of the society. What are people thinks of the woman that is portrayed in our early literature and drama.

According to Gerbner in cultivation theory, television among modern media, has acquired such a central place in daily life that it dominates our symbolic environment, substituting its (distorted) message about reality for personal experience and other means of knowing about the world. Television is also described as the ‘cultural arm’ of the established industrial order(which) serves primarily to maintain, stabilize and reinforce rather than to alter, threaten or weaken conventional beliefs and behaviors.

There was a time when our writers emphasis more on portraying women as strong enough to fight with all hurdles in life and they encouraged women in society by creating role of women as strong, confident and educated in dramas. But as the time passes this trend changed and the later writers adopted a trend of showing either women as the most mistreated being on the earth or as the most independent, bold and in short a bad girl who is creating problems for her parents. They try to portray just the WHITE and BLACK of the society. There are no shades of GRAY which constitutes the majority of our women. This trend is very popular now days, whenever I switched on television set whether it is GEO TV, ARY DIGITAL or HUM TV all the productions are of same plots and holding same kind of characters.

First major problem which I noticed is that women who are shown from a rich background are portrayed as very fast, confident, wearing jeans is must, dupatta and shalwar qameez is prohibited for the ones who are shown rich, having all sensibilities of spending independent life. Now the thing writers usually do with this kind of characters that they are shown as the VAMP like in drama serial DAAM, PARSA on Hum TV and HAAL E DIL on ARY Digital. Other type that is portrayed is of women who are very compromising, silently facing all troubles, do not speaking up for their rights and are simply passive in nature. Like SARAH in drama serial DORAHA, NADIA of drama serial DIYA JALAY, not only this but also MERI ZAAT ZARRA E BENISHAN.

Another problem is that these dramas are creating stereotype women of upper and lower class. Upper class women are shown very sophisticated, sensible, highly educated and well mannered. The lower class is merely portrayed as uneducated, vamp attitudes, connected with wrong deeds. A great example of this is the drama serial YH ZINDAGI HA on GEO TV. It is portraying the lower class as these women are fighting all the time, throwing shoes on each other, cursing each other in slang language. This is creating far more differences among the lower and upper class of the society and creating very bad and negative impact of the middle and lower class.

After thinking a lot, I came to a conclusion that our media is portraying a negative and a passive image of our women. One woman is shown negative and the other is passive in character. Negative one doing wrong with the passive one and the passive one is facing all troubles with silent lips. I do not think that this is a real reflection of our society. I admit that this type of cases exists in our society but not every case is same like this and if we portray these on media than it will project this type of attitudes. Our nation is the one who believes on media with heart and soul, our children have started doing PUJA and singing BHUJANGS after watching Indian soaps. So when we have this extent of influences than we must have to portray good impacts and to give positive lessons to our audiences.

There was a time when our dramas were so popular in neighbor country that they used to smuggle our dramas. But now we are copying their plots, their glamour and their way of production and direction. Topic of saas and bahu is of very important in India and we are also copying them. India is a country where relationships are not as closely bond as here in Pakistan because we are Muslims and our religion has given most emphasis on our relationships. It is India’s necessity to give emphasis to such issues, why are we copying them.

Our women are so strong, working on channels covering live from sites of blast, working as politicians, social works, wining elections like ASMA JAHANGIR, wining games like NASIM HAMEED, ANEELA SHAHEEN and this list goes on and on. Than why don’t our media is portraying these types of characters in dramas as role models for the society. Our need is to portray women as strong working for the country, coming out of the family issues and passiveness. It is very necessary for us as we are in a developing state and we need a lot to run towards the peak of success.