Basant A Lost Festival Of Lahore English Literature Essay

Basant A Lost Festival Of Lahore English Literature Essay Basant, an event that marks the coming of spring, an event that would bring together people from all walks of life, an event that would cover the sky with colors, an event that would spread happiness ubiquitously. It was celebrated with a lot of vigor, passion and enthusiasm in Punjab, but unfortunately this vibrant and full of cheerfulness festival is becoming more of an historic event due to some unwise acts on part of illiterate, ignorant and reckless citizens. The ignorance of few has snatched away the happiness of million others and deprived the country of a great cultural festival. Basant is a centuries old cultural tradition of Punjab. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, all alike, celebrated it with great joy and gusto. Yellow is the color of the day as it depicts the blossoming spring flowers and the yellow mustard fields of Punjab. Girls would wear yellow saris and dupattas whereas boys would include yellow turbans in their clothing. There are no barriers of religions or different socio-economic class; everyone would get together and praise the day. Girls would get on the swings and sing the customary Basant songs that reflected the liveliness and romance of life in Punjab. Kite-flying was one of the main activities on the day and there would be competitions among people to cut loose others’ kites. There cant be a better place to celebrate this day than the cultural and historic capital of Punjab, Lahore. It is also known as extremely festive and the most happening city of Pakistan. During the February of almost every year the sky above Lahore is filled with colorful kites during daytime and with white kites at night. Words like Booo Kata, Patang, Pecha, Pinna and Charkhi can be heard almost everywhere. Music and dance is everywhere and the air is filled with the aroma of intoxicating traditional food. Everyone is involved in this festival and all enjoy the spectacle of hundreds of multi-colored kites filling the sky above their beloved city of Lahore heralding the coming of a new spring. In the early days Basant was confined to the old-walled city, however over recent past it has spread to far corners of the city as well. People from different places celebrate this day in their unique style; some do it by flying kites while others get together and enjoy traditional food and bhangra music. While I was researching about Basant in Gwalmandi (area near old food street), I interviewed this young lad about the age of 15. I asked him what do you know about basant. He replied..† jab hum patangein uratay hein..† (the day when we fly kites). When I asked him about his preparations for that day, I was surprised to hear about his passion. He told me that he would start saving money from his pocket money 2-3 months before Basant. He would use those savings to buy kites and strings and collect them until the day of Basant. It is celebrated with great joy in Lahore, as Daily Times states:

Multiculturalism Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Multiculturalism - Term Paper Example The political and demographic aspect of Multiculturalism has received a considerably high level of importance in society today. This refers to the diversity of two or more cultures in the same region or country (Kymlicka, 2012). A comparative analysis and evaluation of various countries policies on immigration shows a clear disparity in terms of level of acceptance and recognition of the minority immigrant community by the natives. Europe still lags behind in terms of adjusting their rules to accommodate immigrants among themselves and treat them as equal in terms of socio-cultural and political rights and privileges. United States has been promoting a similar cultural diversification campaign but is yet to fully realize its efforts. Canada is at the center of multiculturalism debate due to its popular positive approach that stands out in terms of global cultural tolerance rating. Today, the world experiences the highest level of globalization, thus people from different cultures hav e been forced to interact and live together. For this reason, multiculturalism remains an important aspect in the 21st Century. This proposal explores the aspect of multiculturalism and its importance in society today. It takes a particular look at the case of Canada where this social concept has gained much prominence and highest comparative unity. The political input into the issue within urban centers in Canada gives an insight into the positive contribution of multiculturalism in the society. Although there are four aspects of multiculturalism i.e. demographic, prescriptive, holistic, and political, we narrow it down to a specific case to exhaust the factors surrounding its applicability. This proposal will first explore the meaning of multiculturalism in broad terms. This is important, as different people have assigned meaning to this term, based on different principles. However, it will be core to understand multiculturalism as being grounded in

Surviving a Patrol Strike Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Surviving a Patrol Strike - Case Study Example However, linear regression requires that one of the two variables be fixed, which is possible in the current scenario. The yellow line (for fines) is fairly easy to deal with. If we eliminate the artificial blip of Christmas week and strike the clear outlier (Week 8) from the data, a trend appears. Smoothing would eliminate the faster spike right before Christmas, as well as the blip for the week when there were no fines, because of no enforcement. Over time, the car-park's traffic appears to be continuing to rise, even figuring in the seasonal effects of the Christmas shopping rush. This increase is leading to significantly higher revenues for parking fees in the weeks leading up to Christmas. However, both the higher changes in the weeks before Christmas and the lower results after Christmas do not suggest a business in trouble: instead they suggest a business that is in a highly competitive industry, City Centre Car-Park's market share appears to be growing, even if we smooth out the increases associated with the larger number of Christmastime shoppers. As will happen occasionally in the labor market, the staff who are responsible for operating the car park have threatened to walk off the job after week 23. Because this staff is responsible for making sure the self-pay machines are locked and for patrolling the lot and issuing fines, this could have a significant effect on the car-park's revenues. While it is likely that people would still pay the machines, the question of enforcement and collection would be a sticky one. It is possible to use time-series analysis to figure out the approximate effect of such a walkout on the revenues of the car-park. The fundamental assumption of time series analysis is that the data being considered contain a systematic pattern, interrupted by error, or random noise, which can make the pattern difficult to find. Successful time-series analysis takes the random noise out of the situation as much as possible. The majority of time-series patterns consist of one of two basic types: trend and seasonality. Trend refers to a linear or nonlinear component that undergoes change over time and does not repeat within the time utilized by the model. Seasonality is a smaller version of trend, because it represents a cycle that repeats itself within the time utilized by the model. A set of data may contain both trend of seasonality. A common example would be retail sales, which may grow from year to year but may also be easily predicted to spike around the Christmas season within each year (Time Series Analysis 2002). While there is no established or proven way to find trend components within a set of time-series data, trends are fairly simple to identify, as long as they consistently move in one direction or another. When a set of data is considered to contain a significant amount of error, though, the first step is to try a process called "smoothing." This consists of averaging data within the set with the goal of canceling out the individual data that do not fit within the existing system. The most common way that smoothing occurs involves moving average smoothing. In this technique, each item of data in a series is replaced by the simple or weighted average of n surrounding pieces of data, where n is defined as the width of the "window" used for