Rice Flour Roti – Chau’nvran Jee Maani (with garlic variation)

Love these rice flour pancakes. Although the original way of making these rotis is rather hard (you are supposed to make hard dough and spread in on a hot pan with your hand or a circular bowl), making runny dough pancakes takes just a minute or so.

Simply add water to the rice flour and mix it well. Use a ladle to drop 4-6 tablespoons of the mixture on a hot pan.

Let it cook on one side, flip, and cook it on the other side too. Ta da!

To make Garlic pancakes, simply add some green garlic, salt and red chilli flakes to the rice flour mixture and cook it the same way as above.

Even yummier. Serve it with fried potatoes and some mint yoghurt. Or you can also splash some butter on to hot garlic rotis. Mmmm.

Celebrate Sunday? Haaye!

Since I missed a beautiful session on Sindh’s ethno-musicology this evening, decided to not end this beautiful week with sad feelings. Hence, here goes the post from the ever-so-amazing people of The Alternative, India who featured me this week as TA writer of the week. Sounds good, right?

You can read the post on The Alternative; here is a image from the article which I took in October while travelling to northern Sindh.

Fat Fridays – organic charred sweetness!

Busree (jaggery-flour bread) with butter-pepper sauce

Dawn in the Valley of Wisdom – Saaee’n Amar Jaleel

It was by sheer boring routine of the day that I decided to go through some pages on Facebook that I had joined over the past many years. In one of the academic pages, I stumbled upon a post sharing details of Sindh Abhyas Academy seminar on Sindhi literature. Sindh Abhyas Academy of Szabist has started a series of seminars focusing on Sindh – its history, literature, archaeology, and music.

Read: Does changing the script kill the language?

It was 4 am on a Sunday and the seminar timings were 3pm on the same day. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it since I need a good few days before I decide to go out and socialize. In the morning, I though decided to not miss this opportunity of hearing Saaee’n Amar Jaleel [you can read more about this great Sindhi writer and his published work on his website]. By some miracle, my brother (who hates reading anything and everything and despises any sessions on literature) agreed to accompany me and so we reached at Szabist 90 – a good 40mins late.

First session was a talk by G.M. Umrani. I could only catch last five minutes of his seemingly controversial talk and povs. He sounded aggressive like some religious clergy. Pardon me, if you are a fan. By seeing the heat on Twitter, I am rather happy (or not) to miss the first session.

Muharram in Skardu, ’75

Reading Murphy’s Where the Indus is Young during the month of Muharram has its own kind of fascination. My Facebook timeline is filled with odes from Shiah friends, hate (or rather judgmental) speech from Sunni friends, and then a few messages from those who are troubled by the stark intolerance of these two groups. Personally, I haven’t yet seen a Shiah friend talking insolently about Sunni followers or their leaders; however, Sunni friends are persistent the former group hates their khalifaas.

A midst all this, Murphy’s book takes us back to Aashuraa of 1975 in the areas of Gilgit/Baltistan, where the situation doesn’t seem any different. She is witnessing a Muharram procession which she finds similar to Irish Good Friday. Murphy talks about how she was switched off by this display of insensate grief. Throughout the book, Murphy has mentioned de Fillipi’s quotes from his journey

Does changing the script kill the language?

Note: Before I get attacked by the linguist-purists (if that’s a term), I am making it clear that I am NOT an expert on any language(s), nor this is any sort of an opinion post. I am most of the time an end user and sadly, I belong to the generation which feels sh*t to speak in its regional/native languages.

It was during a social media summit organized here in Pakistan when a debate on using regional languages for weblogs and epapers came in discussion. From the comments of not getting much viewership because the Google’s default English search to getting writers type in those languages was being discussed. I suggested how Romanized (representation of the spoken or written word using Latin script) versions of languages could have a better reach to younger readers and also easier to be typed into computers. The purists’ approach is to never play with the language script or it dies. Recently, this hard stand is being fought against though.

Do languages really die when their script changes?

انٹرنیٹ کی سکیور براؤزنگ کرنے کے لئے نعے سال کے ١٠عزم

.یہ ترجمہ گلوبل وائسز کے لئے کیا گیا تھا. بلاگپوسٹ کے لکھاری ہشام المرات ہیں

Global Voices Advocacy  پے ہم نے ہمیشہ انٹرنیٹ پے اظہار ے آزادی پے فوکس کیا ہے. ہم اپنے فیلو انٹرنیٹ یوزرز کی انٹرنیٹ پے سیکورٹی, censorship سے بچنے اور خود کو محفوظ کرنے کے لئے گائیڈز اور ٹولز پبلش کرتے رہے ہیں.

ہمارا اس نعے سال 2013 میں بھی یہی عزم ہے کہ ہم آپ کے حقوق کی حفاظت کرتے رہیں. اس کے لئے ہم رپورٹس اور گائیڈز پبلش کرتے رہینگے جو کہ citizen privacy journalism، online activism، surveillance، anonymity، advocacy جیسے بیشتر ایریاز پے مشتمل ہونگی.

سال ٢٠١٢ کے ختم ہونے کہ ساتھ ہم اپنے ریڈرز کے لئے ١٠ ایسی ریزولوشن پیش کر رہے ہیں جو مختلف ٹولز اور سٹریٹیجیز کے ذریعے آپ کو آن لائن اپنی حفاظت کرنے میں مدد کرینگی. ہمیشہ یہ یاد رکھیے کے کوئی بھی ایک تکنیک یا طریقہ آپ کو ١٠٠% تحفظ دینے کا واعدا نہیں کرسکتا. ہر وقت اپنے شعور اور ادراک سے خود کو مسلح رکھیں.

#1 موبائل فون استعمال کرتے وقت اپنی شناخت کو چھپائیں –