Picture(s) of the day: Photos of Eid in Pakistan

Would love to hear what you guys did for Eid? Here are some wonderful moments captured in photographs by various news sources.

 

Thousands of Pakistani Muslims offer Eid Al-Fitr prayer to celebrate the ending of Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006 at historical Badshahi mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. (AP Photo/K M Chaudhry)

 

 

Muslims attend Eid al-Fitr prayers to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, on the rubbles of a mosque which was destroyed by last year’s earthquake, in Balakot, 180km (112 miles) from Islamabad October 25, 2006. REUTERS/Ibrar Tanoli (PAKISTAN)

Eid Mubarik!

It is Eid today, the most festive day in the Muslim calender. Muslims around the world, including North America, are celebrating the day by praying in congregations at mosques, visiting friends and family at homes, and giving charity (fitra) to the poor.

Once again I am away from my family, but this year I have my wife with me to provide a sense of family union on the Eid day. My sister is only a few hundred miles away (instead of several thousand miles), and I have plans to meet several friends tonight for dinner at a local Persian restaurant. The only thing that could make it better is the closeness to parents (mine and L’s) and our siblings.

I spent the entire day at work, pretty much like any other day. Conference calls, meetings, phone calls, visitors, etc etc. same ol’ same ol’. But that is not how the day would go in Pakistan.

I would get up early, shower and dress into my new (typically also starched) shalwar kameez. My mom would serve dates that have been soaked overnight in milk, and give us tea to have before we headed to the mosque for Eid prayer. My father and all of us brothers would walk step in step towards the mosque, reciting a prayer said to have been said by Propher Mohammed on his way to the Hajj ritual. We would pray in a large congregation at the park (mosques would be too full on this day so outside arrangements are made). After the prayer, people would hug each other and forget all their differences, their anger, frustrations and worries. For a few minutes after the Eid prayers, the city feels a sense of peace and tranquility that otherwise escapes it on other days.

We would come home to see my mother, aunt and sister all decked out in their new clothes - colorful, elegant, and something special in their designs for each Eid. My sister would ofcourse be the center of all attention. Not a surprise, given her chamkeelay clothes with all kinds of accessories versus our boring plain shalwar kameezes :).

We would once agian have breakfast together, as a family. Lots of vermicelli dessert (sawaeean), kheer, parathey, anday and chai. We would spend the rest of the morning meeting, greeting and giving gifts to all those who work with us or for us in various capacities. Friends, workers, colleagues, family would visit throughout the day and eventally we would all pile into our car and go out to visit family, especially my grand mother and my uncles and aunts who all seem to live close to each other. That is where we would have a big dinner together and end the day.

I am thinking of each and everyone of them today and wishing them all the most joyous Eid ever. It is my first eid as a married man, and so is for my sister who got married only a few months before I did. So both of us are away from home, celebrating Eid with our spouses. It is not that lonely, but surely it will be nice to be closer to family.

On this day of festivity, celebration and food-galore, I do not want to forget the essence of Ramzan, the month of fasting that just preceded it. The month was all about restraining oneself from the fruits of this world (food, drinks, sex, etc) to enable an appreciate of the needs, wants, and desires of the less privileged in this world. We hope to train ourselves by fasting for one month, so we can be better prepard tof ollow the same principles for the rest of the year. I could not say it better than a poem that was posted by someone on ATP, my second home on the internet. I am pasting it here for you to read. I hope you understand Urdu.

Finally, ATP has done a serie sof posts on Eid. Check them out:

• We started with the advent Ramzan and a post about khajoors (dates).
• We followed it up with something about Ramzan Cricket, a uniquely Pakistani ritual.
• Next was something about Qawalli, which is a staple of PTV Sehri transmissions.
• Shirazi launched us into the Eid mood by writing about Eid Cards.
• We started getting into the mood of things with a post on auspiciousness of Juma-tul-Vida, Diwali and Eid.
• We have had our Eid poetry mehfil going for a few days now and as they say, ‘ab mehfil joosh pay hai.’
• Of course, food is integral to everything; especially Eid… in this case Eid Cakes.
• Eid Mubarak post a little while ago thanking you all for your support and interest.
• Eid is….Fill it in yourself to creat the post for us.

Us bachay ki eid naan janay kaisee ho gee
Jis kee janat nangay paon phirtee hai

Eik chand kay nikalnay say ho gee naan eid apnee
Bharpoor zulmatoon ko mita lain tu eid ho

Ameeron kay liyay har roz roz-e-eid hai
Ghareeb khush hon tu janain ke eid ayee hai

Tankhwah das barhee hai tu mehangai sau ropay
Aisay main khak dosto eid manayaiy hum

Ek lamhe ko main nain tujhay dekha tha
Umr bhar meri nazar main naan jacha eid ka chand

Tujh ko tu har shaam ghadta barhta dekhtay hain
Us ko dekh kay eid karain gay apna aur Islam* hai chand
*Takhalus

Perdes main Eid ayee tu kia ho ga yeh dil shaad
Reh reh kay har ek gaam pay aataa hai watan yaad

Phir aaj eid hai apnay watan main hum nafso
Chalo keh hum bhee manayain musaraton ki bahar

Picture(s) of the day: This one takes the cake

Cake seems to have become a universal dessert, perhaps only rivaled by rice pudding.Frankly, I tend to prefer ice-cream cakes over cream cakes, but frankly I will take any cake, as long as it is not sugar free.

Over the years I have seen many shapes and sizes of cakes: from miniature cakes the size of brownies, to sheet cakes of 2 square foot area with a picture of edible Einstein on it.

But this one really takes the CAKE!

Press Clipping(s): Paying Telephone Bills by Phone

This post is also available at ATP: All Things Pakistan

—

If you are like me, you might be quite used to standing in long lines outside the Bank and the post-office to pay phone and electricity/gas bills every month. Now that I am no longer at home for most of the year, my brothers have to deal with the hassle. I have noticed over time that the lines are getting longer as more people have access to telephones, and the bank staff seems to have become less efficient and polite.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing it for yourself, trust me that standing outside in the sun for more than 2 hours in the summer heat is no joke, especially when it is just to pay a lousy phone bill. We managed by eating gola-ganda (flavored ice) or drinking gannay kaa juice (sugar-cane juice, see a related ATP post here and here).

An Affordable refrigerator using clay and solar energy

A refrigerator that uses solar energy combined with the traditional cooling mechanism of clay water matkas (pots) would be a cool idea. And now it seems it may have been accomplished within cost that even rural inhabitants of a developing country may be able to afford. I just read about this innovation from rural India in the newspapers. According to the Hindu Business Online,

“[t]he brown, rectangular refrigerator has an inlet for water, which is circulated in the system through internal piping. The refrigerator has a tap from which chilled drinking water flows out. Mansukh Prajapati, who put together the contraption, says, “What I have devised is `Mitticool - a village fridge’. It is a refrigerator made from special clay with three or more chambers for cooling water and storing fruits and vegetables.”

I am still looking up more technical details to see how the mechanism actually works, and will share as they become more available. Coming from a hot country where electricity is rather expensive an unreliable, I think this may be a remarkable innovation. Mitticool = Clay cool.

Several such innovations are being featured in a multi-part series on Discovery Channel titled “Beyond Tomorrow“. See a review of some technologies featured in the series here. Some Indian innovations mentioned in the list include a pedal operated washing machine, the clay-solar refrigerator, Micro windmill mobile charger, an amphibious bicycle, a tree climber etc…

AHMEDABAD - October 13: Indian inventor Mansukhbhai Prajapati poses with his ‘Mitticool Village Fridge’ at a stall at a craft fair here on Friday. The fridge, in which vegetables can remain fresh for five days and milk for two days, is made from clay and requires no electricity to operate. It runs on solar power. It takes eight days to make a fridge which is priced from 2,000 Indian rupees.—AFP

Muslim Nobel Prize Winners

Nobel Prizes are somehow among the very few annual events that I anxiously wait for. In days leading up the Nobel prizes I read about the nominations, and then follow diligently as the prizes are announced. In some ways it is a habit I picked up while in school, but in other ways, it has become a way for me to find some encouragement that despite all the problems that plague the world today (such as oppression, terrorism, extremism, war, etc), sincere efforts of a few are indeed leading to progress, growth and positive development. developments in humanity’s evolution. I find worldwide recognition of glorious advances made in physical, natural or social sciences as evidence that humanity is finding ways to improve itself and become a better collective self.

My thesis advisor for the Ph.D. was a Nobel laureate (Mario Molina, 1995), and if I had not spent 5+ years day and night working right by his side, I would have continued to think of Nobel laureates as some super-humans that ordinary people like myself would never get to know, understand or meet. But now that is not the case. While I have utmost respect for Nobel laureates, and remain in awe of their inspiring and amazing achievements, I am also able to see them as mere human beings who have been able to make a difference in their fields by applying their intelligence, determination and creativity. They are ordinary human beings whose work has made the world a better place.

Muslims, unfortunately, have not been recipients of many Nobel prizes. Is it because our greatest academic achievements were made before Alfred Nobel decided to donate his money for the international awards? Ibn Khaldoum, Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn-Sina, Al-Biruni etc are all ancient names, sometimes only remembered fondly because the names sound mysterious, and sometimes only when their names are seen on history walls in museums. Despite the achievements by these great people, it is often surprising ad embarrassing how few Muslim students have any idea what they accomplished. That ignorance speaks volumes for how our societies have come to value advances in academia (and sciences in particular).

But that trend of Muslims not winning Nobel prizes may be changing. Among Muslims, the name that stands out for me is of course that of Abdus-Salam (also see my post here). He was a Pakistani muslim, who won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1979. However, how sad that internal squabbles within Islam in Pakistan prevented him from ever really getting the recognition he deserved in the Muslim world.

Arabs have had some success in getting to the Nobel Prize pedestal. As a chemist, I am of-course reminded of fellow physical chemist Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry (1997). Another name that I have been recently introduced to is of Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate in literature from Egypt (1988). Eteraz correectly state son his blog that perhaps Muhammad Iqbal was the only other person who came very close to receiving this price (back in the 1940s).

This year has brought a second Nobel prize in literature to the Muslim world. This year’s prize went to Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who has often been criticized in his home country for highlighting the genocide of the Armenians in the 1st world war period (under the Ottoman empire).

Muslims have received the Nobel Peace prize as well. Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist, won the Nobel Peace prize in 2003. She was the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel prize. And today Muslims scored one more. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and his Grameen Bank received the Nobel peace prize for creating microfinance institutions and for economic empowerment & development of the very poor in rural communities. One more person, waiting in line, is Abdus Sattar Edhi, the Mother Teresa of Pakistan. Us Pakistanis keep waiting.

A $3 Water Purifier That Could Save Lives

I have written about the problems of water shortage before. Water is most certainly going to be the most important commodity in the future, not only because it is becoming scarcer to find in drinkable and pottable quality, but also because the ever increasing world population is finding many uses for it outside of drinking as well.

Treatment of water to make it drinkable has recently attracted many investigators, both in basic research and in product development. Fortunately a significant body of knowledge is developing even though th eproblem is not yet fully solved. While reverse osmosis or membrane based filtration systems are used in large field deployments (e.g. in Saudi Arabia and Israel), a big problem plaguing this field is that the treatment systems are needed for the developing parts of this world, and that is exactly where the associated costs quickly become prohibitive. However, I am encouraged to see lots of activity in this sector, esp by budding scientists and young entrepreneurs, who have identified this as a great opportunity to create value for their businesses and do good at the same time. Kudos to VC and private equity firms that are supporting their efforts with investments. I wish them luck.

Here’s an idea that showed up on NYTimes recently and I am highlighting here. This, together with ideas that are as simple as building small clay vessels lined with adsorbing ferrous catalysts, or small scale filters for family use, iso an indication that a ground breaking technology may be just around the corner.

 

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

Published: October 10, 2006

 

In very poor countries, the family that has to walk miles to fetch drinking water from a well or a stream may be the lucky one. In many villages, the water source is a filthy pond trod by animals and people, or a mud puddle out next to the yam field.

As a result, about 6,000 people a day — most of them children — die from water-borne diseases.

 

Vestergaard Frandsen, a Danish textile company that supplies water filters to the Carter Center guinea worm eradication program and mosquito-killing plastic tarps to refugee camps, has come up with a new invention meant to render dangerous water drinkable.

 

The invention is called Lifestraw, a plastic tube with seven filters: graduated meshes with holes as fine as 6 microns (a human hair is 50 to 100 microns), followed by resin impregnated with iodine and another of activated carbon. It can be worn around the neck and lasts a year.

 

Lifestraw isn’t perfect, but it filters out at least 99.99 percent of many parasites and bacteria, the demons in most fatal cases of diarrhea.

 

It is less effective against viruses, which are much smaller and cause diseases like polio and hepatitis, and it wouldn’t protect American backpackers against the parasite giardia.

 

Nor does it filter out metals like arsenic, and it has a slight iodine aftertaste (not necessarily a bad thing in the large stretches of the globe with iodine deficiency).

 

It can be manufactured for about $3, but it needs more field-testing. Only about 100,000 have been handed out, 70,000 to earthquake victims in Kashmir last year.

 

Already in the works, however, is a Lifestraw toddler version — which will be squeezable.

Recipe of the day: Pakora - most favorite food during Ramadan

I love pakoras, especially the way my mother makes them. Instead of just having diced onions or sliced potatoe sinside them, she would use spinach inside. Deep fried spinach pakoras dipped in lal-mirch (red-pepper), hara dhanya and Podina (coriander and mint), and imli (tamarind) chutnis is just unbelievable at Iftar time. You gotta try it!
Thanks to HDF Newsletter for highlighting this delicious recipe:

PAKORA: Most Popular Iftar Item among Pakistanis

By Taha Ghayyur

According to the January 2001 Gallup Polls in Pakistan, Pakora has been rated as the most popular food item at Iftar every Ramadan. As one Pakistani lady once remarked, “I wonder what Ramadan would be like without my Pakoras!”

A typical Pakora is simply a slice of potato or a bunch of onions coated in a mildly spiced, turmeric coloured batter, and then deep fried. Variations include using chunks of broccoli, cauliflower floret, or even slices of aubergine!

Usually small, the crisply fried Pakoras are most often served as appetizers or snacks, beside Ramadan.

What makes this little Pakora so special?

A Yes Pakistan Staff member embarked upon the mission to solve this mystery. After interviewing several Pakistani cooks and women, the following 7 reasons seem to emerge as the major factors contributing to Pakora’s fame:

1- It takes relatively less time to prepare;
2- Its ingredients are few and simple, available at any local market;
3- It is very economical. It is probably one of the most affordable fried items you can have at home;
4- It is small in size and very light, compared to other things usually fried in oil, such as Samosas, Vegie Rolls, etc. This feature allows great quantities of Pakoras to be consumed;
5- The fact that Pakoras can only be cooked and served fresh makes it even more attractive. People like eating fresh and crispy food at Iftar time;
6- No Pakistani meal could be complete without spices and onions! Pakora allows people to have both of these requirements fulfilled;
7- Even though Pakoras are usually eaten hot and fresh, they still taste good and retain their crispiness if eaten a couple of hours after being fried, unlike other fritters.

“Pakora is not only our favourite item in Ramadan. Traditionally, in Pakistan the season of rain or spring is celebrated by serving deep-fried potato and onion pakoras!” stated an enthusiastic elderly woman.

Pakora Recipe:

> Preparation time: approx. 45 minutes
> For 6-8 people

• 1 cup chickpea flour (Besan)
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 finely chopped green chillies,
• 1 tablespoon coriander, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• oil for frying
• An assortment of vegetables: Onions, cut into rings or sliced, potato

> Steps:

1. Stir the flour, salt and chilli powder into a bowl.
2. Pour in sufficient water to make a thick batter and beat well until smooth. Leave to stand for at least 20 minutes.
3. Stir the chillies, coriander and baking powder into the batter.
4. Drop in the potatoes/onions to coat with batter.
5. Heat the oil in a deep pan, drop in the battered potatoes/onions and deep-fry until crisp and golden.
6. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon, drain on kitchen towel and keep warm.
7. Serve hot.

Is the VC model broken?

I consider myself to be only a part-time student observer of the venture capital world, largely because I have a full-time job that requires me to focus on one technology startup, and getting its product out into the market. However, I am intrigued by the institutional energy that VCs bring to early stage ventures. VCs are not always useful to early stage ventures (for example, my company is so far not VC funded), but when they understand the markets and have experience in them, they can bring quite a useful support system with them to take companies to success.

However, all has not been well recently in the VC community, at least as reported in the publications I try to follow. Howard Anderson, a prominent VC, partner at Battery Ventures, and then founder of YankeeTek Ventures was among the first people to declare that the VC model was broken. Or at least that the current market was not favorable to VCs. Now there is news that Sevin Rosen Funds has also indefinitely postponed fund-raising for its tenth fund, and in a letter to the LPs they have argued that the exit environment for VC-backed companies has fundamentally changed for the worse.

Well, is that really true? Is the VC model broken? And if yes, what are all the VCs doing, especially those who are pumping millions into the cleantech sector, some without even fully understanding the technologies or the markets that they are invested in?

It is difficult to believe declarations that the VC model is bust, or that it has become difficult for VCs to do what they best any more, i.e. invest in early stage companies and create most value when only a few can see through the risk associated with early stage ventures. But , it wasn’t long ago that one of my investors, who has himself invested in several VC funds, also said something similar….so I am looking for reasons why Howard anderson’s of the world are either wrong, or just misunderstood in what they actually said.

A note by Dan Primack in the PE Wire today was very useful in clearing up some of my thoughts:

Please forgive my impertinence, but SRF is wrong in its premise. The VC model isn’t severely damaged. It’s the VC firms themselves.

 

I spent 40 minutes on the phone last night with Steve Dow, a general partner with SRF for more than two decades. He elaborated on a letter sent last Friday to prospective limited partners, in which SRF argued that the exit environment for VC-backed companies has fundamentally changed for the worse. Part of the blame will sound familiar to those who read last week’s discussion with MPM Capital’s Paul Brooke, in that VC-backed IPOs have been hindered by (A) SOX-required separations between I-bankers and analysts and (B) Impatient hedge funds becoming larger IPO buyers than more patient mutual funds.

 

Dow also does not believe that the M&A market can adequately make up for IPO market failures, because VCs have created a buyer’s market by over-funding just about every sector. Sure there are a few homeruns, but a surprisingly high number of M&A deals actually are $1 dispositions that don’t get included in the quarterly “disclosed value” data. And, without a viable exit market, VCs are setting themselves up for a second-straight decade of cash-on-cash losses (which could begin in 2008). SRF doesn’t want to be a party to that.

 

All good points, and ones that have been raised previously by Battery Ventures founder Howard Anderson, Matrix Partners founder Paul Ferri and Greylock partner Bill Hellman. The key difference, however, is that both Matrix and Greylock keep raising new funds, while Anderson continues to invest in them as an indivudal limited partner (even though he officially said “Goodbye to Venture Capital,” after shuttering YankeeTek Ventures).

 

Why? Because Anderson, et all realize that a strict early-stage discipline – with just a few opportunistic expansion plays — can still produce strong results. Even Dow acknowledges that some of SRF’s best hits lately have come from companies that it seeded, not from ones it jumped into bed with at Series B or Series C. Too many firms have spent the past few years rushing downstream in the name of risk aversion, without realizing that the water is actually safer up above. These shops might get shaken out when all is said and done, but that’s more on them than on the VC model itself (which they abandoned).

 

The exit environment is undoubtedly tough, but early-stage investing means that you don’t need your average exits to be quite so enormous (since your starting valuations are lower). This opens up plenty of alternative exit avenues, including reverse mergers with public shells, AIM-listings and sales to small-cap or mid-cap buyout firms. Marry a few of these with one or two homeruns – which VC funds of any era have required for success – and you’ve produced strong ROI for your limited partners.

 

Picture(s) of the day: In memory of the earthquake victims

I don’t have words to add to this picture. I pray for all those who suffered, and for those who continue to struggle.

Pleas read ATP’s post on this.