Muhammad Naveed, a blind man from Ali Husssainabad in Maraka, Multan Road fell in an open manhole. He reportedly went missing three days ago after saying he was going to the nearby stop. On his return, he fell in the open manhole, a 10 feet deep sewer, and remained there for three days.
Yesterday, passersby heard his cries and informed the shopkeepers on the street. They took immediate action, trying to pull Naveed out of the hole with the help of ropes. Meanwhile, the rescue team also arrived and helped speed up the process.
The sewage drain was right in front of the office of the National Highway and Motorway Police, reports Jang. Naveed was injured and was given first aid upon recovery.
Eying each other across a stream of traffic, rival biryani joints vie for customers, serving a fiery medley of meat, rice and spice that unites and divides South Asian appetites.
Both sell a niche version of the dish, steeped in the same vats, with matching prices and trophies commending their quality.
But in Karachi, where a biryani craze boomed after the creation of Pakistan, it is the subtle differences that inspire devotion.
“Our biryani is not only different from theirs but unique in the world,” says restaurateur Muhammad Saqib, who layers his “bone marrow biryani” with herbs.
“When a person bites into it he drowns in a world of flavours,” the 36-year-old says.
Across the road, Muhammad Zain sees it differently.
“We were the ones who started the biryani business here first,” the 27-year-old claims, as staff scoop out sharing platters with a gut-punch of masala.
“It’s our own personal and secret recipe.”
Cooked in bulk, biryani is also a staple of charity donations. PHOTO: AFP
Both agree on one thing.
“You can’t find biryani like Pakistan’s anywhere in the world,” says Saqib.
“Whether it’s a celebration or any other occasion, biryani always comes first,” according to Zain.
British colonial rule in South Asia ended in 1947 with a violent rupture of the region along religious lines.
Hindus and Sikhs in newly created Pakistan fled to India while Muslim “Muhajirs” — refugees — went the other way.
Pakistan and India have been arch-rivals since, fighting wars and locked in endless diplomatic strife. Trade and travel have been largely choked off.
Many Muhajirs settled in Karachi, home to just 400,000 people in 1947 but one of the world’s largest cities today with a population of 20 million.
Every Karachi neighbourhood has its own canteens fronted by vendors clanking a spatula against the inside of biryani pots. PHOTO: AFP
For Indian food historian Pushpesh Pant, biryani served in South Asia’s melting-pot cities such as Karachi is a reminder of shared heritage.
“Hindus ate differently, Nanakpanthis (Sikhs) ate differently, and Muslims ate differently, but it was not as if their food did not influence each other,” he told AFP from the city of Gurugram outside Delhi.
“In certain parts of Pakistan and certain parts of India, the differences in flavours and foods are not as great as man-made borders would make us think.”
Every Karachi neighbourhood has its own canteens fronted by vendors clanking a spatula against the inside of biryani pots.
The recipe has endless variations.
The one with beef is a favourite in majority Muslim Pakistan, while vegetarian variants are more popular in largely Hindu India.
Chicken is universal. Along coastlines, seafood is in the mix.
And purists debate if adding potatoes is heresy.
“Other than that, there is Pulao Biryani which is purely from Delhi,” says 27-year-old pharmacist Muhammad Al Aaqib, describing a broth-stewed variation.
“My roots lead back to Delhi too so it’s like the mother of biryanis for us.”
“Perhaps every person has a different way of cooking it, and their way is better,” says 36-year-old landlord Mehran Khoso.
The origins of biryani are hotly contested.
However, it is generally accepted the word has Persian roots and it is argued the dish was popularised in the elite kitchens of the Mughal Empire, which spanned South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries.
In spite of that pedigree, its defining quality is permutation.
Quratulain Asad, 40, spends Sunday morning cooking for her husband and son, Muhajir descendants of a family that arrived in Karachi from the Indian town of Tonk in 1948.
The origins of biryani are hotly contested. PHOTO: AFP
But at the dinner table, they feast not on an heirloom recipe but a TV chef’s version with a cooling yoghurt sauce and a simple shredded salad.
Asad insists on Karachi’s biryani supremacy.
“You will not like biryani from anywhere else once you’ve tasted Karachi’s biryani,” she says.
“There is no secret ingredient. I just cook with a lot of passion and joy,” she adds. “Perhaps that’s why the taste comes out good.”
Cooked in bulk, biryani is also a staple of charity donations.
At Ghazi Foods, 28-year-old Ali Nawaz paddles out dozens of portions of biryani into plastic pouches, which are delivered to poor neighbourhoods on motorbikes.
A minute after one of those bikes stops, the biryani is gone, seized by kids and young adults.
“People pray for us when they eat it,” says Nawaz. “It feels good that our biryani reaches the people.”
Irish author Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction on Sunday for his novel Prophet Song, a dystopian work about an Ireland that descends into tyranny.
The 46-year-old pipped five other shortlisted novelists to the prestigious award at a ceremony in London.
He becomes the fifth Irish writer to win the high-profile literary prize, which has propelled to fame countless household names, including past winners Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.
“This was not an easy book to write,” Lynch said after collecting his award, which comes with £50,000 (around US$63,000) and a huge boost to his profile.
“The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel. Though I had to write the book anyway. We do not have a choice in such matters,” he added.
Lynch’s book is set in Dublin in a near future version of Ireland. It follows the struggles of a mother of four as she tries to save her family from totalitarianism.
There are no paragraph breaks in the novel, which is Lynch’s fifth.
Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, who chaired the five-person judging panel, called the story “a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave”.
“With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment,” she said.
“Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings.”
The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2022, and September 30, 2023.
None of this year’s six finalists – which included two Americans, a Canadian, a Kenyan and another Irish author – had been shortlisted before and only one had previously been longlisted.
The shortlisted novels, announced in September, were chosen from a 13-strong longlist that had been whittled down from an initial 158 works.
Among them was Irish author Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, a tragicomic saga which looks at the role of fate in the travails of one family.
Murray was previously longlisted in 2010.
Kenyan writer Chetna Maroo’s moving debut novel Western Lane about grief and sisterhood follows the story of a teenage girl for whom squash is life.
The judges also selected If I Survive You by US writer Jonathan Escoffery, which follows a Jamaican family and their chaotic new life in Miami.
He was joined by fellow American author, Paul Harding, whose This Other Eden – inspired by historical events – tells the story of Apple Island, an enclave off the US coast where society’s misfits flock and build a new home.
Canada was represented on the shortlist in the shape of Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. The unsettling novel explores the themes of prejudice and guilt through a suspicious narrator.
The Booker was first awarded in 1969. Last year’s winner was Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.
The previous Irish winners are Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.
After six of a family were killed in an accident in DHA Phase 7 at the hands of a teenaged driver, another incident has been reported where a medical student’s car got hit by a teenager. The driver was reportedly harassing the girl who had returned from Saudi Arabia. As a quarrel ensued after the collision of the two cars, the underage driver called his family who then opened fire at the victim. She was rushed to the hospital where she died.
The unfortunate incident occurred in a private housing society in Chung Town, Lahore, on November 4. It has resurfaced as the police added murder charges in the case on Sunday. According to the police report, the girl succumbed to her injuries on Sunday. However, an eyewitness said the girl had died a week after the incident on November 12 but the police added murder sections later.
New reports are emerging as Tazin’s relatives have appealed to the chief minister in a letter to take notice of the incident, saying the suspect was from an influential family and they were being threatened for pursuing the murder case. They also said the teenager’s family was forcing them to reconcile with them.
According to a First Information Report (FIR), the underage driver identified, Abdur Rehman, rammed his car into another vehicle, in which the victim was travelling along with her mother and brother, which led to a quarrel. According to the police, the boy called his uncle who then opened fire. The female student was identified as Tazin Khan whose family had returned from Saudi Arabia for her education. She was hit with bullets in her abdomen and was shifted to a local hospital in life-threatening condition while the attackers fled the scene.
In another report, the Chuhng Police had registered a case against the attackers for attempted murder on the complaint of her maternal uncle Rizwanul Haq. The complainant in the case told the police that the suspects had harassed the female members of his family. Consequently, the offenders killed them, Dawn reports.
The armed men, including Sajid, his brother Amjad, and two unidentified men, ambushed their car, and opened fire at it.
In a report filed by Azam Malik, Tazin was hit by one of the nine bullets fired by the accused family. Her father kept pleading for her to be taken to hospital but they did not let him, eyewitnesses have stated. Her father was traumatized and pressured to the level that he did not lodge a complaint, deciding instead to leave the country for the safety of his family. Abdur Rehman, the teenaged driver, is hardly 17-years-old and other members of the colony have also complained about him harassing ladies in the park previously, reported Azam. The suspects have secured a pre-arrest bail till November 28 while the police is waiting till then to arrest them. CCPO Lahore has also aimed at including section 311 which is related to maintaining the charges and punishment even if the family forgives the culprit.
Instants of rash driving by underage drivers are increasing, especially in Lahore. Following the DHA mishap on November 11, Lahore police have registered 4,682 cases and seized hundreds of vehicles during crackdowns over the last 13 days on underage drivers, reports The News.
Three Palestinian students were shot for wearing their country’s traditional keffiyeh scarves in Vermont, USA.
The three boys – identified as Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdel Hamid and Tahseen Ahmed – were in Burlington for Thanksgiving holidays when they were targeted and injured, leaving one critically wounded.
The victims, aged 20, were students of Harvard University, Brown University and Trinity University.
According to the police, they were walking while visiting the home of one of the victim’s relatives when they were confronted by a white man with a gun.
“Without speaking, he discharged at least four rounds from the pistol and is believed to have fled,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a statement.
“The fact is that we don’t yet know as much as we want to right now,” he added. “But I urge the public to avoid making conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less.”
According to a statement released by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the victims were Palestinian American college students and that there is “reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab.”
It further revealed that a man shouted at and harassed the three young men, who were chatting in Arabic, and then shot them.
The FBI Albany, New York, posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) stating that they are “actively” investigating the case with the Burlington Police Department, ATF and other federal, state and local agencies.
The second retake of the MDCAT exam in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has gone viral despite secrecy measures, raising concerns among students. The test was conducted on Sunday across the province in 11 examination centres. More than 40,000 students appeared in the exam.
The test was conducted by Khyber Medical University (KMU) after the Bluetooth Scandal in the previous attempt conducted by the Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (ETEA). Neither the students nor the security and administrative staff was allowed to take phones inside the examination centres. Section 144 was imposed with signal jammers installed around the examination centres along with the deployment of 2000 security personnel in the province. Despite all of this, the paper went viral.
However, Vice Chancellor KMU Doctor Zia ul Haq told Geo that the paper leaked post-exam, not during the exam. He stressed that the document is public property after the exam. A picture captured with the backdrop of a bedsheet also hints towards the conduction of the exam being transparent.
A fire broke out in Karachi’s RJ shopping mall on Rashid Minhas road, causing the death of 10 people so far. The incident took place early on Saturday.
Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab has confirmed the number of casualties and injured, taking to his X (formerly Twitter) account. He also confirmed that the fire has been extinguished, while the cooling process is underway.
Fire had been extinguished & cooling process is going on. I can so far confirm 10 casualties & 22 persons have been injured https://t.co/x3I873U7fG
A statement from the Fire and Rescue spokesperson said they were alerted about the incident at 6:30am, after which eight fire tenders, two snorkels and two bowsers were sent to the location.
Earlier, police surgeon Summaiya Syed told Dawn that nine bodies have been brought to hospitals — eight at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and one at Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK). Wahab said one was also brought to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
She further said that an 18-year-old was currently admitted at CHK.
District East Deputy Commissioner (DC) Altaf Shaikh, who was personally supervising the rescue operation, said 30 others, including the wounded, were rescued, reported Dawn.
Experts say around 12,000 to 15,000 people die in hundreds of fire incidents in the country every year. More than 90% of the industries, residential buildings, and structures in Karachi, which is the largest industrial hub of Pakistan, lacked fire safety arrangements as building codes were not being implemented by the authorities concerned, Geo reported citing experts.
A thief entered a home late at night in China, however, in the midst of his heist, he fell asleep and was eventually caught by homeowners when they heard loud snoring.
The robber entered a house in Yunnan province in southwest China at around midnight on November 8, but became spooked when he heard people talking inside. So, he decided to wait in a separate room until the homeowners went to sleep.
The waiting criminal then smoked a cigarette and fell asleep, according to The Paper.
The homeowner, surnamed Tang, had gone to sleep with her young child when she was woken by loud snoring, which she initially ignored, assuming it was coming from a neighbor’s house.
When 40 minutes had passed, she got up to clean her child’s milk bottle and noticed that the snoring grew louder and realised it was coming from another room in her house.
She then decided to investigate further and found that the robber, surnamed Yang, sleeping soundly on the floor in another room.
Ms Tang immediately alerted her family and police, following which the man was arrested.
The cops revealed that the intruder had a criminal history, including being jailed for theft in 2022. He resumed his ‘old profession’ after being released in September, the cops said, adding that for now, his case remains under investigation.
Film screenwriter Jemima Khan took to her X (formerly Twitter) account to share the happy news that her son Kasim Khan, has finally launched his own app Mifu, which will help influencers connect with marketing brands.
Many tweets congratulated Jemima while others were heartbroken at how his father, former prime minister Imran Khan, was not able to attend the joyous occasion because of imprisonment.
Imran Khan left his family and always missed these big and little achievements of his children for this forsaken country, which has instead thrown him in a dungeon. https://t.co/UAhqZnjXcR
pains me to realise that Imran Khan is not there to celebrate this milestone in his son’s life. heart aches every time i realise about this one big sacrifice he made for this nation. hurts. https://t.co/SfPkjwg4aj
Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) has lodged a complaint against the ex-CEO of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for acquiring the position on the basis of a fake PhD degree, reports Geo.
Sheikh Akhtar Hussain remained CEO DRAP from 2018 till 2019. FIA has begun searching for Hussain to investigate the matter
The findings were discovered by the anti-corruption circle in FIA.
