6 undeniable reasons why Islamabad is Pakistan’s coolest city…. by far!

They call it the City that Always Sleeps. The Dead City some might say. “So boring,” commented one party animal, “No night life whatsoever, everyone asleep by 10 p.m.” No doubt that ‘person’ was from other, more “happening” cities; I won’t take any names so go figure. Always comparing Islamabad to their flashy, glittery, supposedly “yo” cities and bitching out our beloved capital to the nth degree. Let ‘em compare I say, let ‘em say what they will. For in the eyes of every loyal Islamabadi (and no I WILL not call us Isloo-ites, the phrase that y’all have so crudely coined for us), there IS no comparison. So why should we even waste our time, energy and breath listening to such comparisons? It’s not even worth it. It’s getting so old. YAWN.

What did the five fingers say to the face? *SLAP*

Now normally we wouldn’t even dignify the constant digs at us with a response but honestly, we from Islamabad are pretty darned sick of hearing the constant yak yak yak, day in and day out about how dull our town can be. Hence the time has come to reply to the jibes. The truth is: you’re all are just jealous. Jealous cats eat rats. And here’s why:

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# 6 – It’s clean

Hell yeah. You bet it’s clean! The air is fresh and not even half as polluted as that in the other cities of the country. The roads are wide and lined with trees. The city is planned and organized and divided into sectors alphabetically. There is no smog. And we like it like that. You can keep your fancy shmancy, over crowded, “exciting” cities. Keep inhaling that toxic air; be happy with the boggy smell that marks the entrance to your cities (hint hint) we’ll just keep breathing in clean, fresh air and live healthy and hearty!

“Gas masks are all the rage in Milan and Paris these days,” *cough*, *cough*

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# 5 – Surrounded by mountains

Beat that. If you can.

Every summer they descend upon us. From all over. They like bitching the city out. But they arrive all the same. Like the plague. To go to Murree. Nathiagali. Naran. Kaghan. Etc. Etc. Infact the truth is this: if you’re planning a trip up to Pakistan’s beautiful and rugged north, a stopover in the “sleepy” city is the sensible thing to do. We’d like to see the critics accessing the mountains from elsewhere in the country.

And we haven’t even played the Pir Sohawa card yet. Boom!

Fact is over the years, my beloved city has been bombarded by the arrival of ahem…”other” city dwellers, some of whom have taken up permanent residence even. The city has become more crowded and at rush hour, the traffic is mind-boggling. As far as we are concerned, here’s the deal. If you don’t like it and enjoy being crabby about it, kindly be gone. We like our city the way it was. Without your nagging presence. And furthermore, hear this, all you other cities: We, from Islamabad, like to hike. We like our numerous hiking tracks and trails. And no, when we say ‘hike’ we DO NOT mean a trip to the local, typical (read: BORING) mall. You are welcome to your malls and concrete jungles. We’ll just hop onto Trail 3 and become one with nature, thanks.

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# 4 – Sight seeing

Sure we don’t have the splendour of the Mughal era buildings or the might of the ocean at our doorstep. But we have plenty. Remember we are a fairly young city with none of the history that other cities can boast of. So kindly shut your beaks and your constant cribbing and give us a break. We have Daman-e-koh which has over the years grown from a small, obscure one-restaurant joint to a full-fledged tourist spot with top-of-the-line eating places. We have Pir Sohawa (we warned you we were bout to play it soon). It’s really very, very beautiful. We have the gorgeous and pristine Faisal Masjid which is quite amazing.

Please don’t drool; it’s so unbecoming.

There is Rawal Lake, Shakar-parrian, Golra Railway Station, the Islamabad Club AND we have Saidpur village. Yay! If you haven’t seen it, you ain’t seen nothing yet! There’s plenty more in The Green City. And if you’re in the mood for a bit of history, you can grab a cab and head on over to Taxila which is an hour’s ride away. It doesn’t get more historic than Taxila.

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# 3 – We have the ORIGINAL Hot Spot

Thank you very much. The original ‘train ka dubba’ Hotspot started off in the one and only Islamabad. And we like to claim it as ours first. The spin-offs in various other hip cities have only one purpose: to pacify the throngs of out-of-town-dwellers who went “oh-my-God-what-a-cool-place”. They loved it so much and went on and on about it so much back in the day that HotSpot was forced to appease them by opening up other branches (but not even half as cool as our train ka dubba).

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# 2 – Coffee from Gol Market

A personal favourite. I’ve never had a tastier cup of coffee anywhere. It’s mostly doodh-coffee but what the heck? It’s great. It’s sweet and milky and a sweet-toothed connoisseurs delight. Try it you’ll like it. And it’s cheap! Nothing like a steaming cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup, brought till your car on a cold Islamabad winter’s eve. Take that, all you high end snooty coffee lounges that have sprung up everywhere. We like our coffee to be just that: coffee. Not packaged in a fancy ‘cappuccino’ cup charging us a hefty Rs. 500 for the ambiance.

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# 1 – Exclusive

We capital city dwellers are an exclusive and smart-as-heck bunch. We don’t like rubbing shoulders with all and sundry. Our parties are exclusive. Our get-togethers are exclusive. Being a busy lot, we don’t like to waste time at random riff-raffy parties. We believe time is money. We don’t land up just everywhere in the hope that we’ll make it to the front pages of Sunday magazine. We pick and choose. We have standards. And they’re high.

Speaking of high, you have noticed all that wild weed growing about haven’t you?

We really don’t give a tiny rat’s ass about what y’all think about us. You don’t think we’re cool, that’s fine. We don’t care. Go ahead and keep calling us boring. That’s fine. Because here’s our motto (in the words of someone famous) “Being cool, is not trying to be cool”.

So there.