our fates stitched in the same pair of trousers.

Han Yuguang

Han Yuguang, male, born in Yuanping City, Shanxi Province in July 1970. He began writing poetry in the late 1980s and has published poetry collections The Moon of 1970 and Light Catcher.

韩玉光，男，1970年7月生于山西原平市，二十世纪80年代后期开始诗歌写作，出版诗集《1970年的月亮》《捕光者》。

Translate by Ma Yongbo

Half of Spring

Where the qin lies, its melody lingers on, I and Ji Kang

our fates stitched in the same pair of trousers.

I have wandered crashing into the Southern Mountain time and again

certain history books are never worth glancing back at, true enough

I share one straw hat together with Tao Yuanming.

The whole spring is a pair of embroidered cloth shoes

Li Bai took one away for his journey, time will never treat me unfairly

it shall reserve the other shoe for me

only a shoelace is missing, no great matter.

Look at the Hutuo River

rushing forth, coming straight from the north of the county town.

二分之一的春天

琴在，琴声就在，我和嵇康

的确穿着一条裤子。

南山撞了无数回

有些史书不值得回头看，没错

我和陶渊明戴着同一顶帽子。

整个春天是一双绣花鞋

李白穿走一只，时间不会亏待我

会把另一只留给我

还差一根鞋带，不要紧

你看滹沱河

正从县城的北面赶来。

***

Ode to the Zither

I am worthy of but one zither all my life

at least twice each day

when my fingers brush my ribs, the urge to play surges up.

Leanness is undoubtedly an inherited grace

the strings of my zither

are unlike any others beneath heaven.

This ancient qin clad in mortal flesh, untouched by gods or ghosts

I play and sing alone to myself.

What trembles upon the strings

is not my own shuddering.

It is the shadow

I can never shake off through all my years—

this posthumous child of light!

琴赋

我这一生只配有一把琴

每天至少两次

在摸到自己肋骨的时候，生出弹奏的念头。

瘦，无疑是遗传的美学

我的琴弦

不同于世上别的琴

这披着人皮的古琴，神鬼也不能染指。

我自弹自唱

琴弦上泛起的

并非自己的颤抖

而是我

一生都甩不掉的影子——

这光的遗腹子！

***

The Low Ground

Stepping out onto the wilderness alone

all mortal distractions melt away entirely—

Fallen leaves swirling thick may serve for my flesh

the setting sun sinking into the river

may become my heart

Once the horizon

fills my field of vision, I behold the years gone by

Half my life has already been buried deep

no more burying

this is my bottom line

低处

一个人来到旷野上

已然杂念全消——

那落叶纷飞，可做我的身体

那落日沉河

可做我的心

而一旦地平线

成了我的视线，就会看见岁月

已埋了我的半生

不能再埋了

这是我的底线

___________________

Read: Laozi and the Butterfly – Chinese Poetry

The post Half of Spring – Poetry from China first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Coming are the golden days of MrBeast.

Rajendra Ojha

Rajendra Ojha (Nayan), based in Kathmandu, is a Nepalese poet whose work has been featured in international journals across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He is the author of several books, including Through the World (2011), The Weeds of Aspiration (2024, originally published in Nepali), The Paradoxical Civilization (2025), and The Gates of Silence (2026). He also served as a citizen diplomat for three months in 2018 with the Ministry of Population and Environment, participating in the Minamata Convention diplomatic program in Geneva, Switzerland. Rajendra holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations, bringing a unique global perspective to his literary work.

From Armstrong to MrBeast

Slowly, the era of Neil Armstrong is disappearing,

Coming are the golden days of MrBeast.

Gone are the dreams of diving into swimming pools,

Now the best swimmers prefer large bathtubs.

Give me your mind, I swear on the top,

I’ll set you free from all your anxiety.

For attention is the only meal I need,

And the price I pay will provide you mental stimulation.

Slowly, the soulless Frankenstein finds its dawn once more,

But this time, it has learned to master itself.

Coming are the golden days of MrBeast,

Coming is the golden era of struggle with Mother Nature.

That Frankenstein is asleep within me,

A fake mind that values roses as much as cacti.

Slowly providing remaining lilies to the era of Armstrong,

To welcome MrBeast with the captive aroma of the flicker market.

___________________

Read: Ozone of Utopia – A Poem from Nepal

The post From Armstrong to MrBeast first appeared on Sindh Courier.

But how will I face the world with a barren heart..?

Latifa Harbaoui

Latifa Harbaoui is a poet, writer and journalist from Algeria, the land of one and a half million martyrs, a proud North African nation known for its rich history, ancient civilizations, vast Sahara Desert, and vibrant cultural heritage. Algeria is the largest country in Africa, a land of freedom, dignity, and deep-rooted traditions. She graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bouzaréah and continued her studies at the University of Mohamed Khider in Biskra. She is widely recognized as one of Algeria’s distinguished contemporary literary voices, having published extensively in leading Algerian and Arab newspapers and magazines, where she authored influential literary and cultural columns. Her published works include the poetry collections A Sun Tailored to My Size, Fragments of Anxiety, and Close to the Front with a Kick, winner of the Dar Motoun Prize for Creativity (2023), while her forthcoming collection, Proof, is currently in press. She also published the literary epistolary collection Letters of the Blond Bat, wrote for children’s theatre, and authored the children’s book My Golden Steps in Smart Reading, published under the supervision of the Algerian Ministry of Culture and Arts in 2025. She is also working on her debut novel, Yet He Sees Me.

Harbaoui has served as Algeria’s representative of the Arab Writers League, President of the House of Poetry Biskra Branch, and a member of the Cultural Advisory Council of Biskra Province. She founded the children’s artistic troupe Shadou El Djazaïr in 1995 and produced several literary and radio programs.

Her writings have been the subject of extensive academic research at Algerian universities and translated into English, Turkish, Albanian, and other languages. She has received numerous national, Arab, and international distinctions, including the First of November Medal, two honorary doctorates, recognition among the 100 Most Influential Personalities for three consecutive years, and recent honors from the Governor of Biskra Province and Barcelona Magazine, reflecting her outstanding contribution to contemporary Arabic literature.

Fine!

I will bring people out of the locked boxes of my expectations,

But how will I face the world with a barren heart..?

How can I explain, through noise,

That the great machine

Which ran over the garden’s guard

Is innocent of the rose’s blood?!

Fine!

I will re-formulate the map’s awareness,

And draw the forest at the center

In the shape of an anaconda.

I cling to a felled tree,

To a spoiled perfume

Poured over corpses

Too many for the graves to hold,

And I wave a branch of a deformed poem!

I am the sole witness

To the massacres of language.

Isn’t that so?

They said:

The seasoned wolf

Is greater in poetry and conscience,

And that angels have claws and pockets.

Fine!

I will apologize to poetry,

Because I am the only one accused —

The one who left his fingerprint on hearts

And died…

Of love…!

You, my father, must shatter more doors,

Restore to the same threshold

What remains of the names.

Perhaps we will become a family

In a wilderness yet to come.

You must pull me by the ear

From an abyss of utter emptiness,

Where someone keeps repeating

More than once,

A stumble,

A rehearsal,

A rehearsal,

Then turns your coffin with my hands

To find your child’s leg beneath the stage,

And crosses over you,

Moving on without regret.

You, my father, must reassure

The corpse that has finally become a bridge

That I have not died yet.

It is not curiosity, my father,

That makes me now search for my complete death,

Nor the deficiency hidden within revelation.

It is language.

While the fragments were wandering here and there,

I forgot the crutch of mourning,

So we all fell

From the saliva of the poisonous pretender.

And we waited for you,

And we are still waiting,

Even though you have not returned.

You, my father, must find in the abyss

The measure of a merciful absence.

The garment of the journey is loose,

And in the jars of time

There are not enough shoulders

To water the distance.

For those present,

A hump that thirst has deceived into believing

That the neighbor who howls from bending

Has rescued whatever shadows had piled up.

But the neighbor who howls

Is a wolf!

A wolf that ruined the courtyard.

While a cloud was bartering with a roof,

And a scrap dealer

Was stripping the paint from an old door

So it would become more beautiful

For a mourning ceremony,

And more.

You, my father, must raise the gasp

High enough for the fly to pass without hypocrisy.

And these stale words

No longer suit our sky.

And the sea

That draws from your child’s tear

Lies too.

Do not tell it, “Well done.”

Tell it, “I do not love you.”

They must, my father,

Look upon the zero of the beginning

With an eye of mercy.

Before they close the circle,

They must make sure

That emotion behind the fence

Is mute,

Mute,

Mute.

___________________ 

Read: When Evening Comes – Poetry from Algeria

The post Fine! – A Poem from Algeria first appeared on Sindh Courier.

• The province has answered every threat to its boundaries with a resolution. Its own twentieth-century history shows that resolutions alone once weren’t enough — and explains why the fight has never really stopped.

SINDH CIVILIZATIONAL AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH SERIES

Dr. Nisar Ahmed Solngi 

Every few years, someone in Islamabad raises the idea of redrawing Pakistan’s provincial map, and every few years, the Sindh Assembly answers with a resolution. It has now happened five times — 1948, 1954, 2014, 2019, and most recently in February 2026 — and each time the language has been almost identical: Karachi is inseparable from Sindh, the province’s boundaries are not open for negotiation, and any attempt to divide it is a betrayal of the compact under which Sindh joined Pakistan in the first place.

What gets lost in the retelling is that this is not simply a proud, unbroken record of a province defending itself. It is also the record of the one-time Sindh’s resistance was not defeated by argument, but by force — and it took fifteen years to undo.

1948: A Warning Ignored

Ten days after independence-era euphoria had barely settled, word reached the Sind Legislative Assembly that the central government intended to strip Karachi from provincial control and administer it directly as the new federal capital. On 10 February 1948, a member moved a resolution on behalf of his member colleague, seconded by another member, recording the House’s “apprehension and alarm” and warning that the move would cripple Sindh economically and politically. It invoked the 1940 Lahore Resolution’s promise that the units joining Pakistan would remain sovereign and autonomous.

The Assembly’s alarm changed nothing. Karachi was separated from Sindh and declared a federal territory regardless.

1954: Resistance, Then Removal

Six years later, with Karachi still under federal control and no compensation ever paid to Sindh for the lost capital and its revenue, the Leader of the Opposition at the time, moved a second resolution — in the year 1954 — asking the Sindh government to press Islamabad for Karachi’s return. An amendment, added on the floor by a member from Hala’s, spelled out exactly what Sindh felt it had been promised and denied: protection for Sindhi employment in Karachi’s administration, protection of local interests, and financial compensation. None of it, the amendment noted, had materialized.

This is where the story usually stops in the retelling — a second resolution, passed, on the record. What it leaves out is what happened eight months later, and why it happened in the same year.

Through 1953 and into 1954, the federal government was quietly finishing the design of a much larger scheme: merging all of West Pakistan’s provinces — Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, and Balochistan — into a single administrative unit, eliminating Sindh as a province altogether. Sindh’s Chief Minister at the time, fought it directly. By early November 1954 he had secured written commitments from seventy-four members of the Sindh Assembly opposing the scheme — a clear majority in a house of little more than a hundred.

Two days later, Pirzada’s ministry was dismissed. His replacement delivered Sindh’s vote in favour of the very scheme he had been removed for opposing.

On 8 November 1954, the Governor dismissed Pirzada’s government. Ayub Khuhro was installed as Chief Minister the following day — and within weeks, the province’s position had reversed. Sindh’s resistance to One Unit was not voted down. It was removed from office and replaced.

The scheme went ahead. On 14 October 1955, One Unit was formally enforced, and Sindh ceased to exist as a separate province. It would not exist again until 1970.

Fifteen Years, not a Footnote

What followed those fifteen years is usually compressed into a single sentence in accounts that move quickly from 1955 to restoration in 1970, as though the interval were empty. It was not. The Sindh Hari Committee organized against both One Unit and the feudal structures it entrenched. The “Jeay Sindh” movement, born in this period, became the defining current of Sindhi nationalist politics for a generation. Sindhi literature — prose and poetry alike — turned into a vehicle for a grievance the province had no legislature left to voice through ordinary politics. When restoration finally came in 1970, it came after a decade and a half of a province arguing, in every forum still open to it, that its erasure had been wrong.

This is the part of Sindh’s history that the language of the later resolutions — “unbroken legacy,” standing “beyond party lines” — tends to smooth over. The legacy is real. It was not, in fact, unbroken. It was interrupted for fifteen years and had to be fought back into existence.

2014, 2019, 2026: The Fight Resumes in a Different Constitution

The three most recent resolutions were passed under a different constitutional order — one built, in part, precisely because of what happened in 1955. The 1973 Constitution’s Article 239 requires a two-thirds vote of a province’s own assembly before its boundaries can be altered.

In 2014, when smaller-province proposals circulated nationally, the Sindh Assembly passed a unanimous resolution arguing that Talukas, Districts, and Divisions already provide the administrative decentralization such proposals claim to want.

In 2019, after a federal minister floated invoking emergency powers to place Karachi under central control, the Assembly rejected it as an unconstitutional end-run around the same provincial autonomy Article 239 was meant to protect.

The fifth resolution, tabled by the Chief Minister on 21 February 2026, was the most elaborate — and the most contested. It grounded Sindh’s claim in the fullest version of its own history: separation from the Bombay Presidency in 1936, the province’s role as the first in British India to pass the Pakistan Resolution in 1943, resistance to One Unit in 1955, and restoration in 1970, layered over the older civilizational claim running back to Indus Valley Civilization. But unlike the resolution of 2014, it did not pass unanimously. MQM-P’s MPAs opposed it on the floor — consistent with the party’s public campaign, led by Mustafa Kamal, for Karachi’s separation from Sindh, a campaign the party itself had not pursued when it supported the equivalent resolution in 2019.

The Lesson Article 239 Cannot Fully Answer

Article 239 is a real safeguard, and a considerably stronger one than anything available to Pirzada’s government in 1954. A governor today cannot simply dismiss a resisting chief minister and manufacture a two-thirds vote from a reconstituted assembly with anything like the speed the center managed in November 1954. That much has genuinely changed.

But the deeper lesson of 1954–55 is not really about the specific mechanism used against Sindh. It is that a province’s resistance is only as durable as the political conditions that let it stand. Pirzada had the numbers — seventy-four members on record — and it did not matter, because the numbers were not the thing that mattered. What mattered was who had the power to remove the government holding them. Sindh’s assembly has passed five resolutions asserting that its boundaries are settled. Its own history is the clearest evidence available anywhere of why that assertion has needed to be made five times.

This article draws on the original texts of the 1948, 1954, 2014, 2019, and 2026 Sindh Assembly resolutions, on contemporaneous reporting of the 2026 resolution and its aftermath (Dawn, Geo News, The Express Tribune, Pakistan Today, Dunya News), and on historical sources for the One Unit period including The News on Sunday, The Friday Times, the South Asia Journal, and Sindh Assembly Debates. Two details await primary-source confirmation before further use: the full text of the 1954 amendment and speaker list, and the reported vote count by which the Sindh Assembly ultimately endorsed One Unit.

Read: Lessons from the Indus Valley Civilization

_______________

Dr. Nisar Ahmed Ali Nawaz Solangi is a distinguished Public Health Specialist with over 28 years of experience in primary healthcare, health management, and policy development. Throughout his career, he has served in leadership capacities, He holds MBBS from the University of Sindh and a Master of Public Health from Griffith University, Australia. He is a dedicated polymath committed to the intersection of ancient civilization and emerging technology. He is deeply engaged in the study of the Indus Valley Civilization—focusing on its maritime history, trade networks, and egalitarian governance. Currently based in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Solangi is a tireless advocate for the digital preservation and global dissemination of the Sindhi language and culture. He is actively involved in pioneering initiatives on social media” Our Digital World”. By bridging the gap between historical heritage and digital innovation, he aims to create a new paradigm for cultural representation in the AI era.

The post Sindh’s Fight Against Division: Key Lessons first appeared on Sindh Courier.

• The map of modern South Asia was forged on the anvil of imperial decline. In their rush to relinquish a burden they could no longer carry, the British drew arbitrary lines through a continent, handed over power, and sailed away

By Noor Muhammad Marri Advocate | Islamabad

Ask anyone across South Asia how Pakistan came to be, and you will almost certainly hear one of two neatly packaged stories. On one side, standard textbooks will tell you about the unyielding ideological struggle of the All-India Muslim League, the weight of the 1940 Lahore Resolution, and the intellectual vision of Allama Iqbal. On the other side, conventional narratives frame it as a tragic failure of diplomacy between political heavyweights—a bitter clash of ambitions between Congress and the League that broke a continent.

Both accounts make for compelling national lore, but they miss the real engine driving the events of 1947. If we step past the speeches and the political theater, a far more pragmatic truth reveals itself: Pakistan was not carved out simply by local resolutions or ideological debate, but by the raw, chaotic mechanics of an empire collapsing under its own weight.

To make sense of 1947, you have to look at London in 1945. World War II had left Great Britain utterly broken. Bankrupt, heavily indebted to the United States, and completely drained of resources, Britain could no longer afford the exorbitant cost of running an empire that stretched from the Suez Canal to Singapore. Colonial rule in India had never relied purely on white soldiers; it worked because the native army and civil bureaucracy remained loyal, and because people believed imperial power was permanent.

By 1946, that illusion of permanence had evaporated. When Indian sailors mutinied in Bombay and unrest rippled through the armed forces, Whitehall realized the terrifying truth: the coercive machinery of the Raj had failed. The British did not leave India out of constitutional generosity or high-minded statesmanship. They fled because they were exhausted, broke, and terrified of getting trapped in a massive, uncontrollable civil war they had neither the money nor the men to suppress.

This imperial collapse completely redefines how we must view the creation of Pakistan. While local political parties had mobilized millions, it was the British Crown that held the ultimate legal authority to decide how, when, and where power would be handed over. The decision to divide the subcontinent—and specifically to slice through the living bodies of Punjab and Bengal—was an imperial decree designed to execute a quick, dirty exit before total administrative collapse took over.

Look at how the partition of Punjab and Bengal actually happened. Neither the Muslim League nor Congress had the power or state apparatus to draw an international border. So, what did the British do? They brought in Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a London lawyer who had never set foot in India, knew nothing about its culture, geography, or canal systems, and gave him five weeks to draw a line through thousands of miles of populated land. Then, Viceroy Lord Mountbatten sat on the final boundary maps, hiding them until two days after independence was celebrated. Why? To ensure that when the inevitable bloodshed and massive refugee crisis erupted, the blame would fall on the new successor states rather than on retreating British troops. It was an act of cold, calculated bureaucratic self-preservation.

Yet, this hasty retreat was guided by another crucial factor that standard histories rarely mention: post-war military strategy. As the British prepared to leave, the Cold War was already dawning. British military planners—specifically the Chiefs of Staff in London—looked at a map of Asia and saw the Soviet Union looming to the north. They needed a strategic foothold to guard the oil fields of the Persian Gulf and the entries into South Asia.

When Jawaharlal Nehru made it clear that a unified India would follow a policy of strict non-alignment and refuse to host Western military bases, British defense planners panicked. Conversely, the Muslim League signaled a willingness to remain in the Commonwealth, maintain Western defense ties, and retain British military officers during the transition. Declassified British military reports from late 1946 explicitly argued that if a unified India loyal to the West was impossible, securing a sovereign, Western-aligned state in the northwest—controlling the Khyber Pass, the Arabian Sea ports, and airbases near Soviet Central Asia—was an absolute geopolitical necessity.

When the United States took over leadership of the Western alliance in the 1950s, Washington simply adopted this British blueprint. They integrated Pakistan into Cold War pacts like CENTO and SEATO, operating spy flights directly out of the Badaber airbase near Peshawar. The geographic reality of Pakistan was instantly locked into global superpower rivalries.

Ideologies, resolutions, and political rhetoric certainly gave the era its vocabulary, but cold, hard structural power dictated its actual outcome. Had the British Empire retained its pre-1939 wealth and military dominance, it would have suppressed domestic demands and delayed independence for decades, just as it had done before. It was the total material depletion of the empire, paired with cold calculations of post-war military strategy, that converted domestic political demands into an immediate reality.

The map of modern South Asia was forged on the anvil of imperial decline. In their rush to relinquish a burden they could no longer carry, the British drew arbitrary lines through a continent, handed over power, and sailed away—leaving the people of the region to inherit both the prized reality of independence and the devastating human scars of an enforced partition.

Read: The Architecture of Domination

__________________

Noor Muhammad Marri, Advocate and Mediator, Islamabad

The post History: The Real Story of 1947 first appeared on Sindh Courier.

OPEN YOUR EYES: YOU’RE PAYING MORE FOR LESS – LESS IN THE PACKET, MORE FROM YOUR POCKET

By Ramesh Raja

Inflation has become an unavoidable reality of everyday life in Pakistan. The prices of food, electricity, fuel, transport, medicines, education and household necessities have risen so frequently that consumers have almost become accustomed to checking prices before purchasing even the most ordinary items. Yet there is another, quieter form of inflation that often escapes public attention. It does not necessarily appear on the price tag and may not be immediately visible to the consumer. The packet remains familiar, the brand remains the same and sometimes even the price remains unchanged, but the quantity inside has quietly become smaller. This phenomenon is known as shrinkflation.

The Hidden Face of Inflation

Shrinkflation occurs when a manufacturer reduces the weight, volume or number of items in a product while maintaining the same price or, in some cases, increasing the price as well. Unlike conventional inflation, where the consumer immediately sees a higher price, shrinkflation can remain hidden behind familiar packaging and familiar prices. A product that once contained 200 grams and cost Rs100 may be reduced to 170 grams while continuing to sell for Rs100. The consumer may therefore believe that the price has remained stable, but in reality the cost per gram has increased from 50 paisa to approximately 59 paisa, representing a substantial rise in the effective price. The consumer is consequently paying more without necessarily realising it. When such reductions occur across tea, biscuits, bread, detergents, toiletries, snacks and other frequently purchased goods, the cumulative impact can become significant for household budgets. Shrinkflation is therefore not simply about a few grams disappearing from a packet; it represents a less visible erosion of purchasing power.

Pakistan Is Already Experiencing Shrinkflation

The issue is not merely theoretical in Pakistan. Reports have documented changes in the quantities of several commonly consumed products. Branded tea, for example, has been reported in reduced pack sizes, including changes such as 190 grams to 170 grams and 95 grams to 70 grams, in some cases accompanied by price increases. Consumers have also raised concerns about biscuit packets containing fewer pieces than previously, while retaining familiar retail price points. Similar changes have been reported or discussed in relation to bread, detergents, shampoos, milk products, confectionery, chips and other fast-moving consumer goods. Such changes must, however, be examined carefully because a reduction in pack size is not automatically evidence of unethical conduct. Manufacturers face genuine increases in raw-material, energy, transportation, labour, packaging and taxation costs, and changing the size of a product can sometimes be a legitimate business response. The real question is whether consumers are being given clear and sufficient information about the change so that they can make an informed purchasing decision.

Putting Sand in the Eyes of the Consumer

There is a familiar expression in our society for deliberately making something difficult to notice: putting sand in someone’s eyes. Shrinkflation can create precisely this impression when a product’s appearance remains almost unchanged while its contents are quietly reduced. The colours, logo, shape, branding and general appearance of the packet remain familiar, so consumers naturally assume that the product itself remains essentially the same. Yet a closer examination of the small print may reveal that the quantity has declined. A packet that once contained 200 grams may now contain 170 grams; a biscuit packet may contain fewer pieces; a loaf may weigh less; or a bottle may hold a smaller volume. The consumer may continue buying the product based on familiarity and brand loyalty without realizing that the value received has changed. This is where ethical business practice becomes important. A manufacturer has the legitimate right to change the quantity or packaging of a product, but the consumer has an equally legitimate right to know clearly what has changed. Transparency should not require the consumer to become a detective.

The Consumer Must Learn to Measure Value

The Pakistani consumer now needs to look beyond the price printed on the packet and develop the habit of measuring actual value. The important question should not simply be how much a packet costs, but how much the consumer is paying for each gram, kilogram, litre or individual piece. A product priced at Rs500 for one kilogram is not necessarily more expensive than another priced at Rs450 for 800 grams. When calculated on a kilogram basis, the second product actually costs Rs562.50 per kilogram. Such simple calculations can expose differences that remain invisible when consumers compare only the prices of packets. Net weight, volume and unit price therefore deserve much greater attention in everyday shopping. Retailers and supermarkets can also contribute by displaying unit prices clearly, while consumers can protect themselves by comparing quantities as carefully as they compare prices. In an inflationary economy, understanding value is becoming as important as understanding price.

This Is Not an Attack on Manufacturers

A responsible discussion of shrinkflation should not become an indiscriminate attack on manufacturers, entrepreneurs, businessmen or capitalism. Businesses operate under difficult economic conditions and face rising costs of raw materials, electricity, fuel, wages, transportation, taxation and imported inputs. Currency depreciation can further increase production costs, particularly for industries dependent on imported materials and machinery. No business can indefinitely sell its products below the cost of production, and legitimate price adjustments are therefore an unavoidable part of economic activity. Manufacturers also provide employment, generate investment, pay taxes and contribute to economic growth. The issue is not whether manufacturers should make profits. They should. The real question is whether those profits are being achieved through efficient and innovative production or through practices that make it unnecessarily difficult for consumers to understand what they are buying. Capitalism depends upon competition, and meaningful competition requires informed consumers. A market functions more fairly when buyers have enough information to compare products, prices and quantities.

Profit Is Legitimate, But Trust Is Also an Asset

There is nothing inherently wrong with profit. A healthy economy needs profitable businesses capable of investing, employing people, developing new products and surviving difficult economic conditions. But profit is not the only asset a company possesses. Trust is equally important, although it does not appear on a balance sheet in the same way as cash or machinery. A customer who trusts a brand may continue purchasing its products for years because of perceived quality, consistency and fairness. If that customer repeatedly discovers that the quantity of a familiar product has been reduced while the packaging and price remain deceptively familiar, confidence gradually begins to disappear. Once consumers start believing that a company is constantly finding ways to give them less while charging them more, even legitimate future price increases may be viewed with suspicion. Responsible manufacturers should therefore understand that transparency is not a burden imposed upon business; it is an investment in long-term consumer confidence. A company may save a few rupees today through an obscure packaging strategy, but losing the trust of millions of consumers can cost far more in the long run.

Consumers Should Respond With Awareness, Not Hatred

The public has every right to question practices that appear unfair or misleading, but consumer frustration should not turn into hatred against manufacturers, businessmen or capitalism as a whole. Such a response would obscure the actual problem and create unnecessary hostility. The stronger response is informed consumer pressure. Consumers can compare competing products, calculate unit prices, examine changes in net weight, choose alternatives and report genuinely misleading practices to the relevant authorities. Social media can also be used constructively by documenting changes in product weight and price and presenting verifiable comparisons rather than spreading emotional accusations or unconfirmed claims. A photograph showing an old packet beside a new packet, together with the respective quantities and prices, can often communicate more effectively than an angry allegation. When consumers become knowledgeable and organised, companies receive a clear signal from the market. Consumer choice is one of the most powerful mechanisms within a competitive economy, and manufacturers that consistently provide better value and greater transparency can ultimately benefit from that informed market.

Government and Regulators Have a Responsibility

Consumer awareness alone cannot address the problem. Government departments and regulatory authorities also have an important responsibility to ensure that consumers receive accurate information. Pakistan needs stronger and more visible consumer-protection mechanisms capable of monitoring widely used products and identifying practices that may mislead buyers. Net weight and volume should be displayed clearly and prominently on packaging rather than being buried among other information. Where there is a significant reduction in quantity, regulators should examine whether the change is being communicated adequately and whether the overall presentation could create a misleading impression of continuity. The objective should not be to prevent businesses from changing product sizes or responding to economic pressures. Rather, regulation should ensure that consumers are not deprived of the information necessary to make an informed choice. Effective consumer protection ultimately benefits both sides of the market because it protects consumers from unfair practices while encouraging honest manufacturers to compete through quality, efficiency and value.

The Silent Burden on Poor and Middle-Class Families

Shrinkflation becomes particularly serious when viewed from the perspective of ordinary Pakistani households. A reduction of 20 or 30 grams may appear insignificant when considered as a single transaction, but the situation changes when the same pattern is repeated across dozens of products and hundreds of purchases. Low-income and middle-class families already have to allocate limited incomes among food, electricity, transport, education, healthcare and other necessities. When the quantity of regularly consumed products gradually declines, families may not immediately recognise that their purchasing power is being eroded. A slightly smaller packet of tea, fewer biscuits in a pack, a lighter loaf of bread, a smaller detergent pack or a reduced volume of shampoo may each appear trivial in isolation. Together, however, such reductions can represent a significant additional cost over a month or a year. This silent burden deserves greater attention because it affects precisely those households that have the least flexibility in their budgets.

We Need a Culture of Consumer Intelligence

Pakistan needs to develop a stronger culture of consumer intelligence rather than remaining limited to general complaints about rising prices. Consumers should learn to ask not only what a product costs but also how much product they are receiving for that money. The three basic questions should be simple: what is the price, what is the quantity and what is the price per unit? Schools, universities, newspapers, consumer organisations and civil-society groups can play an important role in developing this awareness. Newspapers could periodically publish comparisons showing how the weights and prices of commonly used products have changed over time. Digital applications and social-media platforms could also be used to record and compare product prices and quantities. Such information would turn ordinary consumer complaints into documented evidence. Evidence is much more powerful than anger because it enables consumers, regulators and manufacturers to understand exactly what is happening in the marketplace.

Manufacturers Should Lead Through Ethical Business

Manufacturers themselves can play the most important role in ensuring that shrinkflation does not become a source of consumer distrust. If production costs rise significantly, companies should be prepared to explain the situation honestly. If a product has changed from 200 grams to 170 grams, the consumer should not have to discover the difference accidentally after purchasing it. Clear communication can make an enormous difference. A manufacturer that openly tells its customers that production costs have increased and that the company has therefore changed the quantity and price may face criticism, but it demonstrates respect for its consumers. Customers may not welcome the increase, but they can understand the economic reasoning behind it. Ethical business is not about preventing companies from earning profits. It is about ensuring that the pursuit of profit remains compatible with honesty, fairness and consumer dignity. A responsible company should be able to explain its commercial decisions openly rather than relying on consumers not noticing them.

The Real Cost Is the Loss of Trust

Ultimately, shrinkflation raises a much larger question than the weight of a packet or the price of a box of biscuits. It raises the question of what kind of market economy Pakistan wants to build. A healthy market should encourage companies to compete through quality, innovation, efficiency, service and genuine value. Consumers should be able to make purchasing decisions based on reliable information, while manufacturers should be able to earn legitimate profits without resorting to practices that obscure important changes in their products. Inflation may sometimes be unavoidable, production costs may rise and product sizes may have to change, but consumer ignorance should never become a business strategy. The packet can become smaller and the price can become higher, but the manufacturer’s responsibility to inform the consumer must remain unchanged. The public does not need to hate manufacturers or reject capitalism; it needs to become aware, informed and demanding of transparency. When consumers understand what they are paying for, businesses are encouraged to compete on genuine value. When manufacturers respect their consumers, profitability and ethics do not have to stand on opposite sides.

A smaller packet is an economic decision. Hiding the reduction from the consumer is an ethical question. Pakistan must ensure that the first remains a legitimate business choice without allowing the second to become a normal business practice.

Read: Lithium Discovery in Khairpur Sindh

______________________

Engr. Ramesh Raja is a civil engineer and managerial/ planning professional who also contributes as a freelance writer on technical matters. He may be reached at engineer.raja@gmail.com

The post Paying Full Price For Half Empty first appeared on Sindh Courier.

fled war turmoil and famine, drifting all the way to the State of Chen…

Li Ziguo

Li Ziguo, pen name Xicun, is a poet and First-Class Writer. He works as a Senior Editor at Stars Poetry Journal and has been awarded the National Honorary Medal for Thirty Years of Service in Periodical Publishing.

His poetry collections include The Third Eye, Salt of Life, Walking Forest, My Book of Soul (2018–2019), Deities of the Rider-Herdsman (Chinese-English bilingual edition), and The Crow’s Enclosure. His works have been anthologized in more than one hundred selected volumes, won dozens of literary awards of various kinds, and translated into multiple foreign languages.

He is a Member of the Chinese Writers Association, Director of the Chinese Poetry Society, Vice Chairman of the Sichuan Provincial Poetry Society, Vice Chairman of the Sichuan Provincial Association for Literary and Art Communication, and Vice Chairman of the Sichuan Youth Literature Association.

李自国，笔名西村，诗人，一级作家，《星星》诗刊编审，获国家从事期刊出版工作30年荣誉奖章。著有诗集《第三只眼睛》《生命之盐》《行走的森林》《2018一2019我的灵魂书》《骑牧者的神灵》（中英文）《乌鸦的围墙》等。作品入选百余种选集，获各类文学奖数十次，被翻译为多种文字。中国作家协会会员，中国诗歌学会理事，四川省诗歌学会副会长，四川省文艺传播促进会副会长，四川省青年文学协会副会长。

Translated by Ma Yongbo

Laozi and the Butterfly

A butterfly from the State of Zhao

fled war turmoil and famine, drifting all the way to the State of Chen

Along the winding endless road, it met Laozi, breathless and weary

Laozi fell for the butterfly’s silhouette at first sight

The chill butterfly slipped into Laozi’s dream, pouring forth endless gratitude

before it knew it, it became an indentured bride betrothed to the autumn wind

The Tao Te Ching, laid high on a shelf

murmured soft drizzling whispers from an armchair

Laozi jolted awake from his somniloquy, letting his two arms fall limp

arms that once soared over a stretch of green mountain ridges

Recalling his oft-chanted maxim: “Cultivate virtue within yourself, and true integrity shall abide.”

Laozi’s face burned crimson, the unruly butterfly filled him with overwhelming regret

老子与蝴蝶

一只赵国的蝴蝶

为躲避战乱和饥荒，飘泊到陈国

在蜿蜒不息的路上，遇见气喘吁吁的老子

老子与蝶影一见钟情

冷蝴蝶撞入老子梦中，不停的感恩戴德

不小心作了秋风的童养媳

束之高阁的《道德经》

从太师椅上，流出喃喃细雨声

老子从梦呓中惊醒，无力地垂下两只

飞翔过一脉青山的手臂

想到自己念念有词的“修之于身，其德乃真”

老子满脸酡红，出格的蝴蝶使他后悔万分

Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage

The lowly thatched cottage, through the midnight wind’s howl

utters the hardship of wandering exile, like an old rustic farmer from the fields

the cottage cranes its neck to gaze afar, longing for

the imperial troops to return after recapturing Henan and Hebei, yet it only greets

the Mid-Tang Dynasty sliding from prosperity to decline

The cottage endures wind and dew, catching fleeting glimmers of hope

the cottage totters amid storms, its inner spirit tossed and unsettled

the cottage greets the joyful spring night rain, and again and again cries out to the sky

“Chengdu now rests safe from peril,” “All things in Chengdu go well.”

This cottage steeped in the grace of regulated verse stands tall

its frame forged by tonal cadence and rhyme

resting upon the thread-bound volumes of Tang poetry

standing firm above the Great Tang shattered by An Lushan’s rebellion

standing firm above the empty satchels left behind after The Three Officials and The Three Partings

The unrestrained, open Cottage of Du Fu

the resilient thatched cottage that bends low to rise grandly again

every straw upon its roof wails wildly as it grows rampant

each tuft of thatch is a wisp of hoary hair. How I wish the whole nation

and ten thousand households sheltered under spacious mansions could live in joy

all dwelling in ease, all bathed in bright light

All night long the Huanhua Stream flows; a stanza forged from bitter sweat and lonely tears

sustains a gaunt, sleepless night. I vow to glorify rivers and mountains through poetic meter

the ancient land of Shu staggers forward with faltering steps

these thatches along the thousand-year-old Shu Road, their cry blazes into sword-like valor

they sprout the pastoral integrity of The Book of Songs’ Picking Vetch

they nurture the boundless heaven, earth and moon born of Chu Ci and Li Sao

杜甫的茅屋

低矮的茅屋，用子夜的风啸声

说出颠沛之艰，如一介田夫野老

一间茅屋伸长脖子仰望，盼等那个

收复河南河北的官军归来，却等来

一个由盛而衰的中唐

茅屋在餐风露宿、片羽吉光

茅屋在风雨飘摇、心旌摇荡

茅屋在春夜喜雨，在不停地仰天长啸

“成都适无虞” “成都万事好”

七律悠然的茅屋，以平仄腰身

挺立在一卷唐诗的线装书之上

挺立在被安禄山揉碎的大唐

挺立在三吏三別后的空空行囊

大大咧咧的草堂

小屈大伸的茅屋

它的每根茅草，都在哀嚎而疯长

一丛茅草，一丛白发，安得华夏

与广厦俱欢颜的万户千家

一齐被悠游，一起被照亮

一夜浣花溪，一阙苦汗与孤泪的

瘦夜无眠，誓言用格律去炳焕山河

古蜀国的步履踉踉跄跄

这些千载蜀道的茅草啊，啸成剑气

长出采薇的诗经，长出楚辞与离骚的

朗朗乾坤与月亮

With a Drop of Bell Chime, I Wait for You in the Covenant of the New Year

I am touched by year-end wisdoms

like fresh green leaves gifted by the New Year

glad prince, you catch loose winds or let them run free

you disregard the yearly pact

which stretches like a lifetime, your fervent words for everyone alike

all souls glow in the old year’s last glow, held by Mother Earth

who watches your twelve months. Cosmic order stands unshaken

sun and moon carve life’s rings. When heart and soul bloom a birdsong rainbow

I glance back. The moment our eyes lock, we plant gold into earth

I have not yet known life’s true shape

each New Year dawn greeting, each dusk tea

guides me home: gentle parents, quiet kitchen smoke

is this warmth worldly simplicity, or hardship’s alien charm

visit no kin in poverty; return not home in wealth. I must learn wisdom

five hundred long stares kindle one fleeting earthly encounter

I ask the village locust not to repeat old tales, nor do I fake hollow closeness

I falter, as the New Year bell bursts wild and unrestrained

I draw away yet keep you etched in mind, a fruit charmed by each passing second

I seek no stolen joy, no vain renown. When time slips away like a fleeting steed

only inner goodness is wrapped day and night in your timeless, precious sanctuary

   携一滴钟声，等你在新年的契约里

让我感动于这些岁末的教诲

就像是新年馈赠给人间的每片绿叶

快乐的王子，风被你捡漏、或是传销

你似乎全然不在意，一年的契约

如一生一世，对谁都一样的慷慨陈词

对谁都一样被年末的尾灯照亮，都有大地母亲

回眸你的十二个月份。规律永不动摇

日月撼动年轮，当身心竖起一道鸟鸣的云霓

蓦然回首，目光交会的刹那，去泥土播撒黄金

是的，我还不懂得生活的样子

新年的每滴晨安，每道晚茶

就像故乡的方向，父母慈祥，炊烟安康

是来自世间的外部，还是并肩于年荒的异景

穷不走亲，富不回乡，该涨知识了吧

头颈有五百次凝眸，唤醒今生一次擦肩

没让村口的老槐树翻唱经典，或对错口型

我踌躇着，新年的钟声变得不顾一切

就这样远离你，又记取你，被分秒催眠的果实

不求摘取，不求贪婪殊荣，白驹过隙之后

唯有内心的善行，旦夕间被你珍贵的时光秘境包围

_________________

Read: Book of Heavy Snow – Chinese Poetry

The post Laozi and the Butterfly – Chinese Poetry first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Abdullah Usman Morai | Sweden

After a long road journey from Luleå in northern Sweden to Svolvær in Norway, my friend Dr. Imran Jamali and I finally had the opportunity to sleep properly at our Sommerhotell og Vandrerhjem in the Lofoten Islands. The previous day had been filled with long hours on the road, changing landscapes, mountains, forests and the excitement of crossing into Norway. Now, after a peaceful night’s sleep, we woke up ready to begin exploring Lofoten.

Outside, the weather was typically northern: cloudy, cool and slightly chilly. But the clouds did not make the landscape gloomy. On the contrary, they seemed to add another layer of beauty to the already dramatic scenery.

Lofoten looked as though someone had painted mountains, sea, fishing villages and clouds on a giant canvas.

A Breakfast Full of Travellers

We headed towards the breakfast hall, which was included in our room reservation. The hall was simple but attractive, with a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Many guests were already enjoying their breakfast, while others were preparing themselves for another day on the road.

What caught our attention immediately was the variety of travellers.

There were biker couples dressed in their riding gear, single travellers, women travelling independently, and families with children. Some were clearly preparing for long motorcycle journeys through northern Norway, while others appeared to be tourists who had come to experience Lofoten’s mountains and sea.

For us, breakfast became an experience in itself.

There was so much delicious food that it was genuinely difficult to decide what to eat first. Breads, cheese, eggs, fruits, cereals and other breakfast items competed for attention. And, naturally, being in Lofoten, Norwegian fish was also part of the spread. We could not resist tasting it.

A journey through Lofoten, we quickly realized, was going to involve not only beautiful landscapes but also an introduction to the food traditions of the far north.

The accommodation itself was much more than simply a place to sleep. In a nearby building there was a large, fully equipped kitchen where guests could prepare their own food whenever convenient. There was also a separate television room, a library and even a sauna.

As we looked around, we began wondering about the history of the building. Perhaps it was a school during the academic year and transformed into accommodation during the summer holidays. It seemed like a clever Scandinavian idea: make practical use of the building while providing affordable accommodation for travellers during the busy summer season.

Whatever its original purpose, it had created a wonderful international atmosphere.

Our First Map of Lofoten

After breakfast, we went to reception and collected maps of the area. The receptionist was extremely helpful. We explained the places we were hoping to explore during our stay, and she marked several locations on the map.

Holding that map in our hands was exciting.

Until then, Lofoten had been an idea, a destination we had read about and seen in photographs. Now the map showed us the actual geography of the islands, the roads, villages, mountains and coastlines that we were about to experience.

Our first destination was nearby Kabelvåg.

But before driving there, we stepped outside and discovered a scene that immediately made us stop.

A Picture-Postcard by the Water

Not far from our accommodation was a beautiful body of water forming part of the Norwegian Sea. The view was almost impossible to describe.

The water was calm, reflecting the buildings, mountains and clouds around it. Small boats were resting quietly on the surface. Behind them, mountain peaks rose dramatically, while clouds moved slowly across the sky.

Everything appeared twice, once in reality and once in the water.

Buildings stood beside their reflections. Mountains seemed to continue beneath the surface. Clouds floated above us and appeared again below.

For a moment, the entire landscape looked like a giant picture postcard.

One could almost doubt whether the scene was real.

This is perhaps the special magic of Lofoten. Its beauty does not always arrive with dramatic weather or spectacular sunsets. Sometimes it simply sits quietly in front of you: a boat, a mountain, a red wooden building and a patch of calm water and somehow becomes unforgettable.

Kabelvåg: Where Lofoten’s Story Began

We drove towards Kabelvåg, one of the historic settlements of Lofoten.

According to Visit Lofoten, today, Kabelvåg is a relatively small and peaceful community, but its history is enormous. The area is regarded as the birthplace of the Lofoten cod fishery, with roots stretching back more than a thousand years. During the Viking Age and Middle Ages, the settlement then known as Vágar became an important center for fishing and the stockfish trade.

It was fascinating to think that the quiet streets we were travelling through had once been connected to a major northern trading center.

The cod that arrived in these waters was not merely food. It became an economic force. It supported fishermen, traders, boat builders and communities, and eventually connected these remote Arctic islands with markets far beyond Norway.

That history is still visible today.

The Lofoten Cathedral

One of the most impressive landmarks of Kabelvåg is Vågan Church, popularly known as the Lofoten Cathedral.

According to Visit Lofoten, the first church at this site dates back to the early 12th century, traditionally associated with King Øystein. The present wooden church was built in 1898, largely because the annual Lofoten fishery brought huge numbers of fishermen to the area. With around 1,200 seats, it is one of the largest wooden churches in Norway and the largest church in Northern Norway.

Behind the church were the enormous mountains of Lofoten. In front of us stood a great wooden structure built by human hands more than a century ago.

The church seemed almost like a bridge between two worlds: the spiritual life of the fishermen and the unpredictable Arctic sea on which their livelihoods depended.

For generations, fishermen came here before facing the waters. They knew that the sea could provide everything, but they also knew that it could take everything away.

The church therefore was not simply a building. It was part of the emotional and cultural landscape of Lofoten.

Svolvær: The Living Heart of Lofoten

From Kabelvåg, we continued towards Svolvær, the main town and an important centre of eastern Lofoten.

Our first stop was the tourist information office, where we collected additional information about the region and discussed places we could visit during the coming days. The tourist office is centrally located in Svolvær and serves visitors looking for information about the entire Lofoten archipelago.

But Svolvær itself required no brochure to impress us.

It was the kind of town where mountains seemed to rise directly from the sea.

Fishing boats, wooden houses, red fishing cabins, harbours and dramatic peaks came together in a remarkably compact landscape. The famous mountain formation Svolværgeita could be seen among the surrounding peaks, reminding us that this was not an ordinary coastal town.

Tourists were everywhere.

Many were waiting near the harbour to board boats for excursions and sea adventures. We noticed a particularly large number of Asian visitors, apparently from countries such as China and Japan. Interestingly, we did not encounter the same number of Indian tourists that one often sees in major Central European destinations.

The atmosphere was international, but the town itself remained unmistakably Norwegian.

Along the waterfront, wooden platforms provided places where visitors could simply sit and enjoy the surroundings. We did exactly that.

Sometimes travelling does not require movement.

We sat by the water and looked at the mountains, boats and reflections. There was something deeply peaceful about it. The temptation was to forget the clock completely.

Nearby, tourists were preparing for kayaking. Others were gathering for boat trips. Some were taking photographs, while others simply stood quietly, absorbing the view.

Svolvær seemed to offer different ways of experiencing the same landscape: from the water, from a kayak, from a fishing boat, from the harbour or simply from a wooden bench.

The Silent Architecture of Stockfish

One of the most distinctive sights of Lofoten was the traditional wooden structure used for drying fish.

According to Visit Lofoten, Stockfish is not merely a food product here; it is part of the identity and history of Lofoten. The annual cod fishery has shaped the region for centuries. Migrating Arctic cod, known as skrei, travel from the Barents Sea towards Lofoten to spawn, creating the foundation for the region’s historic fishery.

The fish are traditionally hung on large wooden racks and left to dry naturally in the cold, windy Arctic climate.

Standing beside one of these structures, we could almost imagine the generations of fishermen who had depended upon this simple process.

No complicated factory was required; nature itself became the drying machine, and wind, temperature, and time did the work.

The fish hanging from the wooden racks also served as a reminder that Lofoten’s breathtaking scenery is not merely something to be photographed. For centuries, these mountains and seas have been workplaces, sources of food and foundations of entire communities.

The Fisherman’s Wife: Waiting by the Sea

Later, we drove towards the area near the famous Fisherman’s Wife, locally known as Fiskerkona or Feskarkjerringa. We parked nearby and continued on foot.

The walk itself became part of the experience.

The route leads towards the breakwater, where the mountains and open sea create a dramatic backdrop. The walk is considered easy, and along the way visitors encounter traces of Svolvær’s fishing and cultural history, including fish-drying racks.

And then we saw her.

The Fisherman’s Wife stands at the end of the pier, looking out towards the sea.

According to Visit Lofoten, created by Norwegian sculptor Per Ung, the statue is about 4.5 metres high. Her posture conveys a powerful and timeless story: a woman standing by the sea, waiting for her fisherman husband to return.

We stood there for a while without saying much.

The statue seemed to represent far more than one woman.

She represented the wives, mothers and families who spent generations waiting for fishermen to return from dangerous waters. Behind her was the enormous Norwegian Sea, the same sea that had provided Lofoten with prosperity and had also demanded courage from those who depended upon it.

Looking at her against the open horizon, the meaning became even more powerful.

The mountains behind us were solid and permanent. The sea before us was restless and unpredictable. And between the two stood a woman waiting.

Perhaps that is why the statue leaves such a strong impression.

I thought about Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s Sur Samondi there and smiled.

A Day That Became a Beginning

By the end of that day, we had not travelled an enormous distance. We had simply explored the surroundings of our base, visited Kabelvåg and Svolvær, spoken to local people, studied maps and wandered beside the sea.

Yet it felt as though we had travelled through centuries.

From the ancient fishing traditions of Kabelvåg to the wooden walls of the Lofoten Cathedral; from the busy harbour of Svolvær to the silent stockfish racks; from modern tourists preparing for kayaking to the Fisherman’s Wife standing eternally at the end of the pier, the day had introduced us to many different faces of Lofoten.

We had arrived expecting mountains and sea. Instead, we discovered a living story.

A story written by fishermen, travellers, churches, boats, wooden houses, Arctic winds and the endless movement of the sea.

And as we looked at the mountains disappearing into the evening clouds, one thought became clear: Our journey through Lofoten had only just begun.

Read: Crossing Borders into Norway’s Wild Beauty

___________________

Abdullah Soomro, penname Abdullah Usman Morai, hailing from Moro town of Sindh, province of Pakistan, is based in Stockholm Sweden. Currently he is working as Groundwater Engineer in Stockholm Sweden. He did BE (Agriculture) from Sindh Agriculture University Tando Jam and MSc water systems technology from KTH Stockholm Sweden as well as MSc Management from Stockholm University. Beside this he also did masters in journalism and economics from Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur Mirs, Sindh. He is author of a travelogue book named ‘Musafatoon’. His second book is in process. He writes articles from time to time. A frequent traveler, he also does podcast on YouTube with channel name: VASJE Podcast.

The post Where Mountains Meet the Sea first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By: Raphic Burdo

Few people inherit wealth. Fewer still inherit businesses. Hardly any inherits a way of seeing the world. The rest of us must learn this craft of seeing the world the way these rare people do.

There is a mistaken belief that entrepreneurs are born different. That somewhere in their DNA lies a mysterious founder gene. According to this view, certain children are destined to build companies while everyone else is destined to become their employees. It is a comforting theory. It absolves us of responsibility. If success belongs to genes, failure belongs to fate. History, however, tells a different story.

The life of Jahangir Siddiqui is one such story. His is not merely the biography of a successful businessman. It is the story of a young man who slowly trained his eyes to notice what others overlooked. Before he built one of Pakistan’s largest financial groups, he built something far more valuable: a mind that could recognize opportunity. That transformation is the real beginning of every fortune.

Most biographies begin where success becomes visible. Though, the more interesting story begins much earlier. Many stories compress the early struggle part where the founder-in-making was striving hard.

Born in July 1948, somewhere in the 1960s, a young Jahangir Siddiqui failed his Intermediate examination. There is something refreshingly ordinary about this episode. Our culture worships flawless report cards. We quietly assume that the future belongs to those who never stumble. Yet markets, businesses and history show the opposite. They reward people who recover. Failure, by itself, predicts very little. Response predicts almost everything. He appeared again and passed. The incident soon disappeared from public memory. But perhaps it should not. Every entrepreneur will fail many more times after school than during it. The ability to recover quickly is therefore a far more valuable asset than the ability never to fail.

Jahangir Siddiqui completed a Bachelor of Commerce and began articled training to become a Chartered Accountant. That is the formal story. The informal story is much more revealing. During lunch breaks he wandered into the Karachi Stock Exchange. Can you Imagine the scene. A crowded trading floor. Voices rising and falling with prices. Fear travelling faster than facts. Greed disguising itself as confidence. No textbook could teach this. Markets are theatres of human psychology. Every trade contains hope, fear, conviction, ignorance, discipline and ego in unequal proportions. Most people saw noise. Siddiqui was learning to hear information. That habit would shape the rest of his life. Great investors are not merely readers of balance sheets. They become avid readers of people, their moods, their hopes, fears and greed.

Long before finance entered his life, commerce already had. As a teenager Jahangir Sidfiqui distributed Coca-Cola and ice cream, buying it from Karachi selling it in Hyderabad. It sounds almost insignificant. However, it was not. Many young people dream of creating billion-dollar companies without first learning how difficult it is to persuade one customer to buy one product. Distribution teaches lessons that no MBA can fully replicate. Inventory ties up cash. Customers delay payments. Margins disappear through carelessness. Reputation travels faster than advertising. Every day becomes an examination in economics. Looking back, those modest ventures appear less like side businesses and more like apprenticeships. Business was quietly educating him long before business schools could. Every entrepreneur eventually encounters a moment when aspiration collides with limited resources. The difference between dreamers and founders is often determined in that moment. According to one widely repeated account, Siddiqui approached his father for capital to begin his own venture. The answer was no. Many careers end with that word but his did not. Jahangir Siddiqui’s instead took off from there on.

The now-famous story of selling family assets to assemble the capital needed to begin has become part history and part legend. Whether every detail has acquired embellishment over time matters less than the principle beneath it. Entrepreneurs like Siddiqui are distinguished less by access to capital than by their unwillingness to surrender to its absence. Money follows resourcefulness far more often than resourcefulness follows money.

One notices a pattern running quietly through Jahangir Siddiqui’s life. Before every expansion came a period of observation. Before brokerage came watching markets. Before banking came understanding finance. Before building institutions came understanding systems. This sequence deserves attention. Modern culture celebrates speed. Markets reward preparation. The best entrepreneurs spend years accumulating invisible knowledge before the world notices visible success. People see the tree. They rarely see the decades spent growing roots.

By the early 1970s Jahangir Siddiqui had founded a modest brokerage. Nothing about it suggested that it would one day become a diversified financial group spanning banking, investment management, insurance and capital markets. Yet there was a hidden advantage. He was not merely buying and selling securities. He was studying how capital itself moved through an economy. Brokerage revealed investors. Investment banking revealed businesses. Commercial banking revealed credit. Asset management revealed long-term behaviour. Insurance revealed risk. Each business became a window into another layer of the economic system. He was not diversifying randomly. He was constructing an increasingly complete map of how wealth is created. That distinction explains why some entrepreneurs build collections of companies while others build ecosystems.

Accumulating wealth is difficult. Building institutions is even harder. Institutions require trust that cannot be purchased. It compounds slowly through decisions repeated over decades. Siddiqui’s contribution to modernizing Pakistan’s financial markets is perhaps less celebrated than the growth of his own group, yet it may prove equally important. Markets flourish when participants trust the rules, the infrastructure and the integrity of transactions. In strengthening the system, he strengthened opportunities for countless others. That is the highest expression of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur graduates from creating wealth for himself to creating conditions under which others may create wealth as well.

People continue searching for a founder gene among successful entrepreneurs. Perhaps because genes are easier to admire than habits. Genes ask nothing of us. Habits do. If Siddiqui possessed a defining advantage, it was not an inherited chromosome but disciplined curiosity. He watched longer. He learned faster. He connected ideas across industries. He treated every experience as an education. Above all, he acted. Knowledge without action becomes trivia. Action without knowledge becomes gambling. His career demonstrates the extraordinary power of combining the two.

When people look at Jahangir Siddiqui, they see banks, investment companies, boardrooms and billions. Those are visible assets. The invisible assets came first: Curiosity, Patience, Observation, Credibility, Judgment, and Trust. These qualities seldom appear on balance sheets yet they are the assets from which every enduring fortune is ultimately constructed.

Young people often ask how much capital they need before starting a business. They ask the wrong question. The more important question is this: Capital can be borrowed, Ideas can be copied, and Technology can be purchased but judgment, the ability to distinguish a passing trend from a lasting opportunity, is earned slowly, through years of observation, reflection and disciplined action.

Jahangir Siddiqui’s true inheritance is not wealth, not connections, not destiny but a way of seeing things differently. Everything else has followed.  The book on entrepreneurship that Siddiqui is writing, like Warren Buffer, is not finished yet.

Read: Billionaire Sindhis: Forbes Billionaires Index

________

(Raphic Burdo writes on leadership and entrepreneurship.)

The post Wealth and Leadership: Timeless Principles first appeared on Sindh Courier.

The whole mortal world trembles gently along with you.

Lv Mu

Lv Mu, birth name Zhang Yongfa, was born in Jishishan, Gansu Province in 1988. He serves as an editor for the monthly literary magazine Qinghai Lake, a member of the Chinese Poetry Society and Qinghai Provincial Writers Association, and a participant in the 36th Minority Writers Workshop at Lu Xun Academy of Literature.

His poems have been published in numerous journals including National Literature, Chinese Campus Literature, Contemporary Poetry, Poetry Monthly, Stars Poetry Journal, Caotang Poetry Journal, Feitian Literature, Qinghai Lake and Snow Lotus. His works are collected in anthologies such as Sixty Years of Excellent Xinjiang Poetry, Ten Years of Qinghai Literature (Poetry Volume) and Anthology of Chinese Ethnic Minority Poetry.

He received the Newcomer Award at the 2nd National Rural Poetry Grand Prix and the Third Prize in the 2023 Global Poetry Contest of Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival, and was shortlisted for the 4th China Contemporary Poetry Award. He has published two poetry collections: Songs of Little Birds and I Wait for You by Qinghai Lake. He currently resides in Xining.

绿木，本名张永发，1988年生于甘肃积石山，系《青海湖》文学月刊编辑，中国诗歌学会会员，青海省作家协会会员，鲁迅文学院第36期少数民族作家班学员，作品散见《民族文学》《中国校园文学》《当代.诗歌》《诗歌月刊》《星星诗刊》《草堂》《飞天》《青海湖》《雪莲》等，入选《新疆60年诗歌精品》《青海文学十年选（诗歌卷）》《中国少数民族诗选》等多种选本，曾获“第二届全国乡土诗歌大奖赛”新秀奖，2023“青海湖诗歌节全球诗歌征文”三等奖，入围第四届“中国当代诗歌奖”，著有诗集《小鸟之唱》《我在青海湖边等你》，现居西宁。

Translated by Ma Yongbo

Book of Heavy Snow

From the tinkling of countless mountain streams,

from jagged cliffs split open on barren hills,

from the hush left behind when lunar tides recede…

Ah, this is no shiny panpipe of silver sheen,

this is an age of silver bestowed by heaven.

Freeze over, freeze over—gathering myriad clear new births.

The dull cold ache lodged in the flesh

needs no testimony to prove its existence.

(At what hour shall we melt into blank emptiness?)

When the season bends down to gaze at its own reflection,

the whole mortal world trembles gently along with you.

Birdsong hangs suspended mid-air, never falling to earth;

a faint trail of footprints leads straight to the wooden cottage gate.

Is it the self who once wandered apart and lost its way?

There is no need for anxious brooding.

Ahead, amid the morning glow, winter plums are blaring forth

a solitary, resounding ode to spring.

大雪书

自众多溪水的叮咚

自荒山破裂的巉岩

自月潮退却后的寂静

……啊，这并非银亮的排箫

这是天赐的白银岁月

冰封，冰封，汇集众多明澈的初生

身体中寒凉的淤痛

未必需要证词

（我们将在怎样的时辰汇入空白？）

当时节俯向自身的倒影

整个人间便随你微颤

空中未落的鸟鸣

一行浅浅的脚印通向柴扉

可是走散的自己

无需多虑

前方晨曦中，梅花正高奏着

孤绝的春曲

_____

Ballad of Late Autumn

I hear the steed from my dreams

has settled on the high hills of hometown.

I hear the wilderness stretch vast and bare;

frost arrives overnight,

shaking the hidden cares of plants and trees

into golden fragments covering the ground.

Autumn deepens.

The deepened autumn is a cold, drowsy pool,

cradling an unseen tiger in its depths.

Clouds chant their own ballad,

water hums its own ballad, wild ducks croon theirs,

forever singing of a world shrouded in pale reeds.

All things dissolve and drift apart in the wind:

some will bloom anew, others vanish forever.

The mere thought of this

fills my heart with sorrow and joy intertwined.

深秋的歌谣

听闻梦中的骏马

已在故乡高高的山坡安家

听闻四野寥廓

寒霜一夜之间登场

将草木之心事

摇落成遍地黄金

秋深了

深了的秋是一泓暝寐的寒潭

怀抱着看不见的老虎

而云有云的歌谣

水有水的歌谣，野凫的歌谣

时时唱颂着一片蒹葭苍苍的人间

万物都在风中爢散

有的还将重生有的永远消逝

一想到这些

我就悲欣交集

_____

Encountering Snow Upon Homecoming

Snow falls on the road, falls on

the farmland, and heavier snow settles deep within my heart…

Past days and future paths

blend into boundless misty white.

Oh, hometown,

I have come back.

Oh, Mother,

I have come back.

I am but a fleeting wanderer,

clutching fervent affection alone,

to embrace you tight.

From afar I behold

mother standing before the old house,

beside the gnarled, lopsided elm tree with weathered bark.

Before I draw near enough to stand beside her,

her voice drifts to my ears: My child,

why has so much snow

landed upon your head?

回乡遇雪

雪落在路上，落在

田野，更大的雪落在心里……

往昔与前程

一片苍茫

噢！故乡

我回来了

噢！妈妈

我回来了

我是个短暂的旅人

空怀一腔热情

拥抱您

远远就看见

老屋门前站立的母亲，与

老皮皴裂的歪脖子榆

还没走到母亲跟前

就听到母亲的声音: 娃啊

咋有那么多雪

落在了你的头上

______________________

Read: Grassland in Mist – Poetry from China

The post Book of Heavy Snow – Chinese Poetry first appeared on Sindh Courier.