This house is worth much more than its monetary estimated value of $400 million. It was a house built by Mr Jinnah in 1936 at a then exorbitant price of 2 lakh (200,000) rupees when he returned to Mumbai from England to take charge of the Muslim League. Jinnah House is located on Mount Pleasant Road (now Bhausaheb Hirey Marg) in the upmarket Malabar Hill area of South Mumbai. Malabar Hill is the most expensive area in Mumbai today. Right opposite it is the residence of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
Mr Jinnah had shown willingness to return to that house after partition and had requested Mr Nehru, India’s first prime-minister, through the Indian High Commisioner to not sell the house or declare it evacuee property, but give it to a foreign mission or family to live in so that they may appreciate its European architecture.
Nehru, on his part decided not to declare Jinnah House as an evacuee property and in a note to the Cabinet on March 7,1955 had said. “I think we should further be prepared to make a gift of it to the Pakistan government,” as documented in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. But, Nehru could not get approval from his cabinet.
Continue reading ‘Quaid’s daughter lays claim to Jinnah House’
Yup! Anyone who has lived in Pakistan has seen them. Those colorful lyrics and poems painted behind a number of trucks, buses, rickshaws and taxis. In but a few lines, they convey thoughts and feelings which the average Pakistani would find hard to express.
This is no doubt a great display of creativity. Perhaps our movie-makers and talent-hunters need to consider tapping this abundant resource. After all, it’s not like our movies are any better than these lyrics!
Unable to keep this pool of creativity hidden from the rest of the world, I took the trouble of compiling the top ten of the week…feel free to add your own favourites. For further amusement and the benefit of our readers who don’t speak Urdu, I have translated the lyrics-which makes them even more hilarious. Enjoy!
Continue reading ‘Top Ten Bus Lyrics of the Week’
Published on March 7, 2007
in Culture.
Thanks to Ghafoor we have added Morven Gold’s Rhythm of Unity ad to our videolog. This ad was usually only aired on national holidays such as Eid, Pakistan Day, Independence Day etc. It is my favourite Pakistani ad for the way it depicts Pakistani culture and puts forward a message of unity.
I think, today, we need unity more than anything. With all the growth and economic prosperity, unfortunately, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In an atmosphere of injustice where the smaller provinces and the weaker communities feel marginalized there is no scope for unity. Hence, Pakistanis seem to have abandoned the motto of Quaid’s Pakistan in its entirety - Unity, Faith (very little in anything, but bribery, nepotism, abuse of power and abuse of process) and Discipline (never had much to start with).
Please visit the videolog here. We regularly add videos to this page. If you have any videos to share please post a comment at the end of the page with the link to the video.
This is a humourous piece that has been forwarding around the net. Missing anything?
1. You get shocked when someone stops at a yellow light
2. You never really know what to say when someone asks you what there is to see in Karachi
3. You know where to find a “dhol vaala”
4. You’ve never really seen a tourist
5. Its December and you attend 5 mehndis/shaadis in one night and end up meeting the same people at each of them
6. You use the phrases “whats the scene?” “scene on hai” or ”whose he sceening with?”
7. You still have some of Everest/ABBA Videos movies and dont plan to return them
8. You’ve met a Parsi Continue reading ‘You know you are a Karachite when…’
