Message for migrants in the time of the Covid pandemic


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Karachi by PIA

F lying to Karachi on Monday morning instead of Sunday evening was a bad idea. The morning flight from Islamabad takes off at 8:00. I had hoped to be in PACP office by 10:30 which would mean missing first meeting of day but I had thought that I would be able participate in all important meetings with the health and the planning and development secretaries. The flight PK 365 arrived in Karachi 11:30 instead of 9:55. I hired a radio cab for Sindh AIDS Control Program near Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Center.   Kept searching for the PACP office on Rafiquee Shaheed road but it was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I got out of the taxi in front of the Blood Transfusion Center inside JPMC. Met a guy in the corridor who was wearing his staff ID. He led me to another guy in the lab who was able to described SACP location. It was already 1:30 in the afternoon,  which meant I had missed important meetings of the day. Thank you PIA!  The office of SACP was in a walled comp...
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rites de passage à l'anthropologie

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T he metaphor of threshold is central to understanding life-course changes in anthropology. Scholars such as Van Gennep (2011) and Victor Turner (1967) popularised the idea of rites de passage to account for cross-cultural practices of performing certain rituals to mark one’s transition from on stage in life to the next. A good example of such rites would be the initiation rituals which are usually performed around the time of puberty to mark the transition of an individual into adulthood i.e. the status of a full member of the society. Rituals associated with birth, marriage, death or even graduation are some other examples. Anthropologists have likened life-course to a series of rooms which are connected to each other through doors or portals between them. One enters the next room by leaving the previous room behind. Importantly, crossing the threshold is a moment of great uncertainty because it is at this precise moment that one is neither here, nor there . According to anthr...
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Wife on instalments!

They got her married to someone who was already married but was also well off, even if not around most of the year. A labour migrant in UAE (or was it Saudi Arabia). She fell in love with a Mirasian da munda, a   boy from a different village who she met in the town. He worked there at a barber shop in the town bazaar.  The Mirasi boy brought her home.  His family accepted her at once.  She was clever and beautiful.   They went to the court for a nikha .  She claimed that she was divorced from her previous husband. The husband's family contested that claim.  The court asked for a proof of divorce.  She presented her two sisters and a brother-in-law as witnesses.   Nikha was done with the court's approval but the litigation that followed cost them dearly. The Mirasi family had saved some money by selling an old house to buy a new (bigger) house. This money was now spent on lawyers,  court fees and police. Some of...
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