September 22, 2007

The (mis)spelling influence

This is with reference to Afia Amir’s article “The (mis) spelling galore” (YW, September 15). I agree with her that nowadays there is a lot of influence of deliberate misspellings on our minds. People misspell words to make things more interesting and so it is being adopted by every single person. The media is using misspelled words and is ruining the language of youngsters. The manufactures use these words to attract attention but are causing harm.

All this is now getting into fashion and therefore, I would like to request all those who use misspelled words to use correct spellings in order to develop language skills of the young generation.

Hina Jawed, Karachi


Who will protect the public?

A menacing voice calls out, “Chup chap bethey rehna, humen sirf thora agey utarna hai, police humarey peeche hai!”… Sounds familiar?

This dialogue relates to the most feared moment that some of us have lived through in our lives, the moment which made us feel so vulnerable, so helpless and yet preposterously angry. It was September 1, 2007, when I and other girls who use the service of a private van to travel to and from our university campus, situated at Shara-e-Faisal, were calmly waiting for a girl to come out of her apartment. Out of nowhere, two people, not above 30, opened the doors (driver’s door and the back one), got in and loaded their guns.

Everybody remained quiet and calm and the girl who we were waiting for, got in. Then came the dialogue already mentioned at the beginning. Needless to mention, each one of us was shivering from head to toe. The lethal weapon in the hand of the robber, who was sitting at the back with us, could have silenced anybody with a sane and rational mind.

Next heard in the deadly silence were the words, “Hand over all the cell-phones, jewellery and cash before we check for them ourselves” (in Urdu of course). One of them took the driving seat and the other one was sitting with us. They left the van at the Kala Pul, after having collected all that they had asked for. They also warned us not to go anywhere else other than university as they knew our route.

My question to all the people reading this is; are we, the future of this country, so unimportant that anybody could come, threaten our safety and go with such ease? Are the law enforcement agencies just there to provide security to influentials? What about the common people who face fatal crimes everyday?

Sana Jalal, Karachi


Amusement parks

In our country, there are a lot of so called amusement parks. In these parks many children come to have fun. But these amusements parks lack security. Improper maintenance of rides also causes a lot of accidents. Still the rides keep on running and children still play on them. I think the concerned authorities should take serious steps to solve this dilemma.

They should check if the rides in all the amusement parks are maintained properly, and if there is any doubt, they should ban their use. A few measures in this regard can save a lot of precious lives. The western countries have set an example for us. They have a lot of amusement parks but they are very safe as they are maintained properly.

Danial Tanveer
13 years, Lahore


Mobile manners

People are so much addicted to mobile phone that they take it everywhere even to the mosque. Mosque is a place where everyone should pray with full devotion and using cell phone at a sacred place like mosque is not the right thing to do. Therefore, I request every cell phone holder to mind the manners of using it.

Shakeel Rauf Soomro, Larkana