Little hopes! (Just an observation)

I "hope" the title of the post will match to the post. Writing something that I've been observing over sometime now. There is one stop which is at a walking distance to my house, its a chowk actually. On 6 out of 7 days the part of my daily routine is to drop my sister there in the morning and then pick her in the afternoon.
That spot or chowk is somewhat different from others in a sense that, its also a stop for the laborers(mazdoor). On Daily basis a huge number of laborers gather there excluding some that prefer waiting in the nearby market.
I go there as early as 8am and mostly find hustling and bustling among them as whenever they see a stopping motorbike or vehicle they gather around them hoping to get some work for day. Few of them could be seen rushing towards such people without caring that they are on road or caring for themselves with just one thing in mind to find the livelihood for them and their family. Well will come back to the morning latter.
When i go in the afternoon at around 1pm i could see no activity left. At that time almost half of them have gone to their work with others lying in the shade of trees, few still waiting for any work and few leaving in despair. The thing that irritates me most is the age of few of those laborers i.e how bad our economical system is, that in the age when they should be playing and passing time with the grandchildren and resting at home they are waiting for the work. The things gets further severe in summers in our part when the temperature goes around 50 degree Celsius.
Even with all those sort of hardships these people are not paid well. Me myself on many occasion have heard people bargaining with them and settling a lumpsum amount if they take 3 or 4 laborers with them, which of course is always less then the individual amount they could have received.
Seen them working during the night. There are no labor rules being followed as well. I think it was Bhutto who crafted labor laws which could now be only found in the worn off pages of some well mounted book placed in somewhere cupboard.
At morning after some days i started to observe something really strange, i.e almost everyday i used to find a "Naan"(bread) in the hands of almost every laborer. There was a "naan channe wala" at the walking distance. I thought they buy it from there as they couldn't have their breakfast that early but it wasn't the case as after few days the mystery(sort of) resolved. There was a person who used to bring two to three packs of Naans(one has a total of 50 i guess) and something to eat with them. Don't know why he was doing this as part of his daily routine. Must be getting some bliss out of this activity or don't know. One can say that it isn't anything noticeable but don't know why I found it something really great as one can't say how many of them could have slept the last night without eating anything especially those who failed to find anywork and things like that.
It was just an observation but these things do pinch when sitting idle and thinking or when i pass that place.

PS: One thing that i forgot to mention was that i couldn't see the face of that person who used to come up with the breakfast as he had everytime covered his face with some sort of veil(gents chader) etc.

Mosques as the community centers!

In the last month or so I've thought and talked with some of my friends and others on this thing i.e only Namaz is not the only thing mosques are there for (even that we don't do ;( )....

Coming straight to the point, what I think is that the mosques should be used as community centers not just for offering prayers and doing nothing for people.

Whenever we give something to those who are begging in streets and etc we often hear some elders "don't give them ... they have made it a business" and when we ask them who are the real "haqdars" of these ... they say that they never beg and stretch their arm. We should find them and deliver their right at their door step. And we almost never able to find them.

If this thing is done through mosques it can get very easy. In mosques people from almost all the surroundings come and offer prayers, People from different economical background are also there .... If there is a fund in mosques for the needy and people contribute to the fund and if mosques point out those people through a committee or something like that, things would get damn easy and the needy would also not hesitate taking that from mosque (and their pride won't hurt) rather then given by someone personally .....

Similarly mosques can also help in carrying out marriages and helping if someone is jobless or etc. Mosque should and can also help in resolving minor family disputes by having some sort of counselor. The money can also be used for helping someone ill who is unable to pay for treatment.

MashAllah almost in all mosques there are people who can easily pay thousands of rupees just from their pocket money.

If transparency is ensured and things are carried out in the right direction we can easily help those who deserve and can stop someone from taking any extreme steps just out of depression or something like that.....

I have been to many mosques but never experienced any such thing being done. But there must be such mosques out there working as the community centers. On Television I've seen on a couple of occasions few of these things being done in mosques outside Pakistan but nothing here.

Hopefully we do try and implement these little things that can help us on a long term basis!

My trip to job fair!

Yeah, as the title say i did go to a job fair organized by our university and it was for the first time I had ever paid a visit to such an event 'coz I think it is for the first time that I'm in need and in search of a job.

There was also a job fair last year but it wasn't of any use to especially students like us who belong to the field of telecom & networking as told by one of my friends who was a witness of the last year activity.
But this time companies like Telenor, Wateen and Zong had their official presence there. So we thought that we should pay a visit as we had nothing to lose :P if not gaining anything ....

I was to leave with one of my friends around 11 am and so we did. Our university is out of city and it takes more then an hour to reach there provided no traffic jam and other stopages and just according to our daily routine of 4 years university life we took IB that took us to 9 Number which is at the half way mark from where we have had been catching the university shuttle that is available every half an hour.

We reached universtiy around 12:30 pm. First went to our department to freshup as it was saturday an offday university so there wasn't anybody there except the guarad uncle. Spent some time in checking the noticeboard for whats been going on in our department. Two of our classfellows arrived in the mean time and they were coming from the job fair, we asked whats the progress and they told that telenor was conducting interviews and asking things from the topics like GSM, CDMA etc ..... I was good at topics but hadn't revised them for some time then so something started to pressurise(depress a little) me by the time I listened to the interview thing as I've never been to an interview before.
We had our CVs in the quickdrive and got them printed. The print wala was charging 2 Rs extra for the occasion ( Typical Pakistani thinking ... kama lo kia pta kal ho na ho! :P )

Skipping the wait thing that we did for our friend and etc we reached there at around 1PM and I was really astonished by the number of people that had reached there for the job hunting. I never thought that there was that a bigger crowd waiting there .... Student from all types of field had reached .... There were students who had reached there by car, by bike and like us on Public transport (ek he suff mein kharhe ho gye mehmood o ayaz! :P) for a common goal that was job.

I had read and listened that the "berozgari" is one of the major problems but at that time i was watching sadly for the first time the biggest demonstration ....

I moved in the big covered place with a huge shamiana and started looking the different stalls...... Many different companies had their presence there ..... there were also consultancies and counselors there ..... I could see many different students giving interviews ...... I could see students' faces, few of them had really worried looks, few of them were confident and few of them were just there for enjoyment.

Some strange kind of depression started to prevail ...... shayad the situation was such ..... I moved on and witnessed the 3 mentioned companies' stalls that were of interest to me .
Telenor were having a break of an hour and zong people said just upload the CV to our website but we do have some "golden numbers" at ok price for you .. (:@) and the wateen people were doing don't know what! ......

Another thing that started to depress me was the way students were dressed ( most of them were is suit shuit .... yeh woh ...fit shit)...... i was just in my routine clothing with unshaved face :( ... Never thought i could be there for an interview.....

An hour passed by and telenor had again started cunducting interviews ... When i reached there there were 3 long lines waiting for us ..... one comprising of students for the marketing thing ... one with the IT and CS people and the 3rd having telecom and electrical people .

I also put myself in line ..... The time I was waiting for my turn somebody told that now wateen and zong are also receing CVs(dekha dekhi shayad) .... I thought first let this interview be over then give them the CV . I stood there for around half an hour and the lines then had become 4 as announced "Those people who are here on the reference should make a separate line" (:@)

I was depressed further when i met 3 of my university seniors who were jobless for more then a year now and they also put their selves in the line ..... I was standing there thiking ..... most of them were negative thoughts ..... A strange kind of anxiety took over me and I could stand there no more ..... I started to think that those people were there to make us fool and nothing else .... the line wasn't moving either ...... I left the line , went to zong and wateen .... droped the CV knowing that it was useless and left the university , took the university route(bus service) that could drop me to my home .

I was depressed and really feeling low that day ... don't know why (i guess i do know) ....Don't know whether i should have left or not but .......

Zong had also started cunducting interview around 5pm as told by my friend who was there almost till the last moment ... I think again dekha dekhi.

Learnt a lot from the event but few of my worries are still with me especially the overall condition economically ....

I think the account has lengthen too much ... :P