Boy is born to Ameer Hamza

Boy is born to Ameer Hamza
Originally uploaded by Ameer Hamza

Date: 1st December, 2011 / 6th Moharram, 1433 Hijri.

Time: 7:25 PM (P.S.T / +5.00 GMT)
Hospital: OMI, Saddar, Karachi
Wt. at birth: 3.25 Kg.

Name: Un-decided as to the time of the this blog (6:33 AM P.S.T).

The foot series of my travels had to be interrupted to accommodate this photograph of my first son. His name is yet undecided at the time of the writing of this blog but Inshallah it is expected that we will have the name today afternoon. Part reason is that we want to name him on Friday (today), and we'v been lucky to have son on the night between Thursday and Friday (Islamic / Lunar calender: 6th Moharram-ul-Haram, 1433 Hizri).

More photographs are expected today. Let us see.

[p.s I know this is not a travel-related photograph. But it surely is a breaking news of sorts!]

Window to history

Window to history
Originally uploaded by Ameer Hamza

Like this window, Karachi's history is left in piecemeal. Some broken, some dead, and some fuzzy. A single, long file of historical buildings are now rare to find. And on daily basis, some mysterious fire destroys yet another historical heritage of our city. We all know who is behind these mystery burnings of our buildings. You can easily count Ashura burnings of these buildings on M.A Jinnah road among the incidents which have become all too common.

And why not? Big money is to made out of these precious little stones.

This shot was secretly taken from a building which is now on a list of 'dangerous buildings of Karachi'. From here, early Sunday morning view of D.J Science college is fantastic.

Vanishing heritage of Karachi

British left too many structures in our city. The main reason is that they loved Karachi for its wide sea and no-nonsense attitude towards life. Already, they’d converted it into a large shipping base for their goods to arrive. Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to preserve lot of those wonderful buildings. And to top it all, corrupt politicians and land mafia has been very busy these days chopping good old buildings.

It is very clear that a nation which needs to understand its past needs to preserve the artifacts and structures from that past. If those are not preserved, there is no way of educating young people about the shared heritage. As a result, today lot of Karachi wallas are simply unaware of their rich heritage. They, at best, know something about KMC head office or maybe Quaid’s house at Kharadar.

Discuss below the ways in which common citizens may help preserve these beautiful and enduring heritage.