My Isloo on Eid Day

Strong family ties and close feelings of bondage and affiliation forced the people of Islamabad to visit their native cities on the festival of Eid. The city even today is presenting a very uninhabited and empty look. Almost 80% of the population left for their respective villages and towns. Most of the people have migrated to this modern city for the sake of employment and education. Announcement of the Eid festival a day earlier provided the inhabitants with an opportunity to get a long holiday span with their families. Apart from officially announced holidays, people took extra leaves from their offices and left the city, on 30^th September so that they could spend time with their families.

Such condition with empty roads, two or three cars at the signal, a few people at shops reminded me of that very old Islamabad which I used to witness almost ten years 10-15 years back. So much peaceful, calm and quiet; presenting a true picture of sleeping beauty. All this was very appealing to me, as now I only see my city in this state, just twice in a year at the festivals of Eid. This always strikes a chord me of my school days.

While driving around in the city tension free because of less traffic, I saw that most of the main avenues including Blue Area, 7^th avenue, Nazimu-ud-din road, and Highway were empty and hardly had three or four vehicles on them. Same was the case with markets. Apart from bakeries and sweet shops all other shops remained closed. Even at the forth day of Eid a few of the shops were opened but there were no customers. .

On the contrary, people who celebrated the festival in Islamabad, visited their relatives and other picnic spots. Main recreational spots like National Monument, Rawal Lake, Japenese Park, View point, and F-9 Park were crowded with the left over people. People enjoyed merry making with relatives and friends. Eid Milan parties were arranged, people visited food spots. Special security arrangements were seen outside parks and lakes to avoid any bitter incident.. One thing to be noticed was that public transporters and cab drivers charged fares of their will from the passengers as a token of Edi.

On the whole my city was presenting a great view of Old Islamabad with less population and reduced traffic which I memorize.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 6:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.