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SMS ‘cheating’ catches on The short message service has become so popular that people of all ages receive and send out text messages. Youngsters utilise this service oftener than their elders and, therefore, are more adept in its use and employ all the common expressions peculiar to parlance used over the internet: — b4, yr, y, 2morrow, gr8, asl, diku, plz, cmon, cnt. These messages may contain a piece of information, congratulations, a demand, an offer, an admonishment, a sermon, a blessing, a prayer, etc. A man was really surprised last week to note that the message he received contained no such thing. Rather it had some examination questions. Soon he realised that the sender was his own son who was supposed to be at his examination centre at that time. Cheating in exams has been so popular a topic of discussion with men that when erstwhile classmates get together and reminisce about their student life, the topic of cheating invariably comes up. Some people who somehow manage to reach high positions feel no compunction about narrating their exploits at exams. There are those who avoid telling the truth and insist that they have never cheated in exams or otherwise in life. I have met students who said they hated cheating but carried a piece of paper — or had their palms inscribed with hints "in case they forget the sequence of an answer". I know a highly brilliant man with matching innocent looks, a student of prestigious English-medium institutions, who says: "Yes, I did cheat. First it was my matric exam when I cheated in the maths paper. Then it was in college exams where I did it several times," he says. "Actually, bold people take their chances. Only the timid ones fear a resort to what is called `use of unfair means'," says the man. "In exams and competitions, everything is fair." "Sometimes I would get stuck in a question and had to seek help. Otherwise, I have no experience of cheating," says a Karachi University graduate, who at first took offence to my question about cheating. There are a few conscientious students who never cheated in exams but boast that they helped others do so. Gossip on cheating seems to have mixed facts with fiction. We as schoolboys would hear our seniors tell us how someone drove his dagger into the desk, or put his TT in front of him, to scare off invigilators while he copied from a book or `pharra', a scrap of paper. Youngsters particularly enjoyed the story of a girl caught copying from answers written on her garments. It was stated that the invigilator got so tough with the candidate that he attached the piece of cloth, probably a scarf, to the answer sheet. Cheating has been institutionalized in certain parts of the city. Activists of pressure groups go to schools and colleges and advise the head invigilator to be lenient with certain students. They are often obliged. There are heads of private schools who play intermediaries between the invigilators and the students to help the latter solve the paper. It is particularly true about practicals as these tests are given in the institutions where the students study. So they may ask their students to pay a certain amount of money if they want good marks in the examination. Such schools can be identified easily because the result gazette shows their students getting poor marks in exams and good marks — or cent per cent marks —in practicals. Many people have appreciated Indian movie Munna Bhai MBBS. In this Bollywood film, the hero (played by Sanjay Dutt, the popular actor convicted of keeping illegal weapons) becomes an MBBS doctor by cheating in exams through a mobile telephone. That seemed impossible in the real world then but now it has become a reality. The father who received questions through the cellphone wouldn't have liked his son to cheat in the examination. But the choice was hard to make. He could either be strictly honest and ignore his son's request or help improve the boy's future by promptly sending him answers. Actually, examinations have become a game of marks. If a student is brilliant but does not fare well in the examination, he would lose to a student who manages to get higher marks by the use of unfair means. So, the father was quick to decide and began feverishly punching answers to the questions sent in by his boy. It was, however, more surprising that this was happening on the campus of a university which had declared its campus to be `a no-go area' for cheating. Old troughs No city in the world would have such a different immediate past as Karachi has. A nostalgic account of some of the wonderful things this city no longer has is greeted with disbelief or wonderment. Dozens of water troughs to provide water to animals was just one of those things. These lovely places have been encroached upon by various mafias now. A study of the city's history shows that there was a Drinking Trough Society of Karachi that had been established in the late 19th century and remained operational till 1947. This society, established by the local Hindu and Parsi philanthropists, had built dozens of beautiful troughs for the city's pack animals. The society had also arranged for water and meals at various points for travellers and other needy people. In the early 20th century a public horse-tram service commenced from Saddar to the harbour area at Keamari. The past accounts show the horses wore straw hats to avoid sunstroke and water for them was provided by the Drinking Trough Society of Karachi. "My grandmother had travelled on these trams. She narrated wonderful facts about how watchfully our animals would be taken care of," a sexagenarian lady, Fatima, living in Old Town, says. According to her, there were dozens of water troughs in Karachi and she was witness to the destruction of many of them. "That happened after partition," she says. "I do know the locations of some of them and could point them out but many of them have now become shops or apartment buildings," she says. At present only a few of such troughs are there and two of them could be seen at Saddar Dawakhana and Boulton Market. They are located at the Tonga stands, which clearly show a link between the two wonderful things of the past, now diminishing fast. Both these troughs are victims of neglect. The negligence on the part of the municipal bodies could be judged from their dilapidated conditions. The accounts show that there were still over a dozen of water troughs existed in Old City till the early 1980s. Some of them were even decorated with beautiful carvings, which were either stolen by individuals or gangs or municipal authorities uprooted them in compliance with the orders by General Zia's military regime and destroyed them. The regime snatched the original beauty of many of the old parks and monuments of Karachi. These troughs were among the victims. Such century-old structures, constructed mainly to facilitate animals pulling carts and carriages, were civic monuments and landmarks. The land-grab mafia and municipal authorities' criminal attitude have deprived Karachi of its identity. Dhamal The last week witnessed the Urs of two mystics -- Syed Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai. Though Urs is observed on the death anniversary of a sufi-saint, the crowds coming to pay homage, the foodstalls, the lights, the elegies, the flowers, and the drumbeats give the event a festive look. Amid the milling crowds at the shrines, one can see groups of devotees dancing to the beats of the drum. The dance is popularly called 'dhamal'. Once a 95-year-old `malang' was asked how come he so enthusiastically danced at that advanced age, he replied: "Love (ishq) never grows old." Dhamaal is associated with Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, who used to feel the scorching soil of Karbala, where Hazrat Imam Hussain, his family and friends were martyred, and could barely put down one of his feet at a time. This appeared dance to many. Only a few devotees know the concept behind dhamal and mostly people take it to be a dance. Indeed, it is a dance — a barefoot dance on the embers of a dying fire. — KarachianEmail: naseer.awan@dawn.com
