Thursday, January 31, 2013

Karachi Fashion Week January 27-30, 2013

Karachi Fashion Week 2013 is yet another illustration of the fact that life goes on in Pakistan in spite of the terror and violence that makes daily headlines. It's a testament to Pakistanis' extraordinary resilience and great capacity to take it all stride. Here are a few pictures of Pakistani models wearing the creations of Pakistani designers at the show which concluded on January 30, 2013:
















 Here's a video clip of Karachi Fashion Week 2013:



Pakistan Pictorial:


Find more photos like this on PakAlumni Worldwide: The Global Social Network


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Life Goes On in Pakistan

Resilient Pakistan

Pakistan's Top Fashion Models

Music Drives Coke Sales in Pakistan

Pakistani Cover Girls

Veena Malik Challenges Pakistan's Orthodoxy 

PakAlumni-Pakistani Social Network 

Huma Abedin Weinergate

Pakistan Media Revolution

Protest Music in Pakistan

Resilient Pakistan Defies Doomsayers

Pakistani Entrepreneurs Survive Economic Downturn

Silent Social Revolution in Pakistan



4 comments:

Hopewins said...

Dr. Haq,

You were right!

Chicago is just like Karachi...

http://alturl.com/p28h9
http://alturl.com/ftd93

Thank you.

Hopewins said...

You were correct.
Texas is just like FATA..
http://alturl.com/24o2f

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Dawn story on Karachi Flower Show 2013:

Flowers bloom and nature smiles at the annual Karachi Flower Show, which will continue till Feb 27. Seasonal flowers, herbs and ornamental plants were beautifully displayed at the show. Nursery owners, organic farmers, gardeners, bonsai planters and fertilizer suppliers put their expertise and products for the promotion of gardening and farming.

Serious gardeners, nature lovers, horticulturists and ordinary people attended the flower exhibition to view the variety of cactuses, herbs, bamboos, flowers and gardening related items which were on sale and on display at the show. While Innovative green projects were also on display by school children.

People were also interested in growing vegetables at their home gardens or in planters and pots.


http://dawn.com/2012/02/25/karachi-flower-show-in-full-swing/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Time magazine article on literature flourishing in "troubled Pakistan":

Salman Rushdie was recently asked for his opinion on contemporary Indian fiction. The celebrated novelist surveyed the landscape for his interviewer, offering nods of approval to what is now a well-established range of Indian writing in English. But it wasn’t as attractive as what was happening across the border. “I actually think,” Rushdie said, “that the Pakistani stuff is more interesting.”

Thirty years ago, Rushdie published Shame, still considered one of the finest novels on Pakistan, and one that narrowly missed out on the Booker Prize. For much of that time, there was only the occasional novel written in English from Pakistan. Now, as Rushdie noted, there’s “the sense of a sudden explosion.”

As the world’s attention has been drawn to Pakistan’s problems with Islamist militancy in recent years, a flurry of exciting new voices have stepped forward to share with their readers a more intimate and rounded look at the country and its people — winning many plaudits along the way. Mohsin Hamid was recently described by the New York Times as, “one of his generation’s most inventive and gifted writers.” Nadeem Aslam’s latest novel, The Blind Man’s Garden, was praised in the Guardian as a product of “grace, intelligence and rare authenticity.”

This past month, Pakistani novelists writing in English also had the opportunity to meet readers from their own country at two different literary festivals in the largest cities of Karachi and Lahore. “For a while now we’ve had issues with public events,” says novelist and journalist Mohammed Hanif. “I guess weddings are the only things that really happen in public now. Music concerts have mostly disappeared. Other festivals are less well attended.” The literary festivals in Karachi and Lahore, adds Hanif, offer a rare occasion for “people to get out of their houses and go and talk about books.”

The two cities, with a combined population approaching 30 million, are also suffused in a rich cultural history. It would be difficult to pull off similar events in relatively soulless cities like Dubai, Singapore, or even Islamabad. “There is the requisite infrastructure here, engaged audiences, and a critical mass of novelists and poets that reside in each city,” says novelist H.M. Naqvi, the prize-winning author of Home Boy. “I expected large audiences. I expected energy.”

Strikingly, the festivals attracted thousands of young school and college students who had eagerly consumed the books and were brimming with questions for their authors. In Karachi, Hamid met a young man who handed over a missive composed by himself and two other friends. The trio, from the southern Punjabi town of Rahim Yar Khan, had pooled money together for one of them to make the several-hour-long bus journey to Karachi. The letter carried seriously worded instructions for the novelist. “We loved the sex-and-drugs scenes in Moth Smoke,” they wrote to Hamid, referring to his first novel. “We want to read more of this stuff.”


http://world.time.com/2013/03/04/pakistans-literary-festivals-a-showcase-for-a-different-view-of-the-troubled-country/