Drama Serial Humsafar has seen an unprecedented success for Hum TV. Since past few years, television audiences have forgotten what it was like to be glued to a TV set when the show is on air and to wait for the day to come when the show will be broadcast. It does not take much time to realize what has made the drama series so popular. The paramount reason is simple and that it is a complete cast and crew of drama, where everyone has done their part of the work really well. Already people are fans of the story as it is based on Farhat Ishtiaq’s novel of the same name.

There remains no doubt in the fact that the political and economic future of Pakistan lies with the current youth. But is our government doing anything productive to ensure that the youth commits itself to the future of Pakistan?

When it comes to the elite, the masses have always played the blame game, complaining that students attend universities abroad and then decide to find jobs and settle there. The effect, better known as the ‘brain drain’ is perhaps one of the bigger reasons why we have illiterate politicians sitting in the senate and failing macro-economic policies creating an only bigger income disparity between the rich and the poor. However, sometimes when one puts himself/herself in the shoes of such others, one comes across the fact that such decisions to pursue careers abroad are rather forced.

ISLAMABAD: She passed an O-level chemistry paper when she was nine; two years later she passed the O-level exams in biology, mathematics, physics and English. She was the youngest to appear for biology and the youngest to have successfully completed her O-levels. Now, she prepares for the A-level exams.

Born and brought up in a small town near Chenab Nagar in Punjab, Sitara Brooj Akbar is the eldest of her five siblings. At a young age, she developed a habit of questioning everything taking nothing for granted, according to her father Brooj Akbar.

Those 15 seconds, when you’re anxiously waiting for the red signal that is just about to turn green- a small child comes up to your car sticking his face in the window as hard as he can to make himself seen, or holding consumer goods, like tissue packets, biscuits, combs etc. asks you to buy something from him. Sometimes, they run to your front windscreen and start wiping the windscreen with water looking so dirty as if it was an algae habitat. Or sometimes, they just come to you selling their prayers for minimal change. And the ordinary man, thinking that he can do a good deed for the day takes out a shiny 5 rupee coin or a ten rupee note, and hands it over to that child.

The Indian film industry just copies ideas from wherever it can. Be it from China, Arab countries, Pakistan or the USA, Bollywood has turned in to mere replica. This is why I had to stop watching Indian movies.

What happened to the good old days, when a movie was just based on a good story line and didn’t have fancy animations?

Recently I saw low-budget movies like ‘Dou Dunni Char’ and ‘Love Express.’ Now these films really have substance. They don’t rely solely on dance and songs. Even high-cost comedies do not have any content these days. It is the low-budget Indian movies that really have something interesting and different to offer. This growing trend of shooting movies abroad and spending huge sums of money on promotion lead to growing excitement from the anxiously awaiting viewers.