And then we wonder why ...

MuBarack

It is almost definite, unless McCain follows his predecessor's tactics and steals the election, that Obama will become the 44th US President.

I cannot recall any US Election where the whole world was so involved.

For many of my generation Obama's win will be a great leap forward from the tales we read of The Scottsboro Trials, from the KKK lynchings we knew of in our childhood (Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit still sends chills down my spine), from the backdrop of Missisipi riots as James Meredith was escorted to class, from MLK's I Have a Dream and his assassination ... and more ...

But, for me, there is also a sense of sadness: The fact that the USA did not get that other first that was possible, a WOMAN President. Some will, no doubt, state that it was Hillary - as a result of her own doings and views and personality - who lost, but I contend that no woman, regardless of qualifications or stature or vision, could have won!

America, like the rest of this male-run world, is just not ready to face the practical sides of Gender Equality.

Last week I was asked by a TV show host (off-camera, since the show had to be postponed for other reasons) why a modern and 'enlightened' USA was so edgy about a female Head of State when "we" of the Asian 3rd World, with all our conservatism and even more visible signs of the Male Supremacy Syndrome, had elected Indira Gandhi, Mrs Bandranaike, Benazir Bhutto, Hasina Mujib, and Khaleda Zia (the last 3 in Muslim countries!) to power with little fuss.

"Let's not take undue credit. Think again!" I said. "With the possible exception of Indira, who could lay some claim to having been active in her Party while being groomed for a political career by Pandit Nehru (though being his daughter helped with the votes, too) in all the other cases cited we did not vote for women. We voted for the dead men in their lives."

Peace!

The 'Other' Heresies

Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer is as renowned for his powerful and provocative photographs as he is for his pioneering work with digital imaging. Meyer’s photographs consistently test the limits of truth, fiction and reality. With the advent of digital photography in the early 1990s, Meyer evolved from a documentary photographer who created so-called “straight photographs” into a digital-documentarian who often combines photographic elements from disparate times and places to arrive at a different or higher truth. Pedro's oft-expressed contention that all photographs — digitally manipulated or not — are equally “true” and “untrue” has been labeled “heretical” in the orthodox documentary photography community.

While fellow Apple-user Pedro Meyer (one of the first to adopt this platform and launch the very first intearactive CD-ROM!) may have his exhibition - Heresies - opening in 60 museums in almost as many countries (we are thrilled that T2F, where the exhibition opens on 21st October, has been selected as the Pakistani venue) there are others, like me, whose photographs have also made it to some of the greatest (virtual!) halls in the world. Here are just 4 examples.

"Happy viewing", as the Senator said!

;-)

Nuzhat

Ragni

Jehan Ara

Sabeen

See you at the real Heresies, where a selection of large original museum quality prints of Pedro's works will be displayed and changed almost weekly!

Please do keep checking out the schedule at T2F's website for the exciting related events, like workshops, talks, discussions, and presentations during the weeks that this unique exhibition is on, unless you're on FB and already visit T2F Pages for updates.

Oh ... did you know that you can also subscribe to T2F's Events RSS Feed so you get the news automatically? And, as the icing on the cake, sign up for SMS alerts and get timely reminders too. This saves you the task of 'remembering to remember' to go to the website and saves me answering calls - usually when an event is actually happening - Maddy, please note ;-) - about when and what time it's happening.

Sheer Magic

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

The Saturday T2F session by Jahanzeb Sherwani was a bit like its Science Ka Adda evenings. Despite the apparent geekishness of the topic, the non-techs who were there - because they owned an iPhone or iPod Touch - enjoyed it thoroughly, thanks to the lucid, layperson-friendly, informal style of the presenter who understood something most do not: he - not the Powerpoint or Keynote thing on the screen behind him - was the presentation.

The story of the development of Jaadu, the first iPhone/iPod application by a Pakistani, was almost as magical as the software itself. The timeline from the first 'proof of concept' to what it now is - an application that was selected by Apple for its What's Hot section at the App Store - was amazingly short. Equally fascinating was the way the business itself developed for his company - Jugaari. 

I really wish that more young people would realize what Jahanzeb did: You could be sitting in any remote corner of the world today and, like him, and many others - singly or in very small groups - have access to the markets of the world. All the opportunities are there and, generally, barring the cost of a computer, they are all FREE (rhymes with "Wheeeeee!"): Free wifi and a working table with an electrical outlet nearby { if you are in Karachi, come to T2F :-) }, free access to information, free-of-postage email, free voice calls and video conferences via iChat or Skype, free access to other developers and techie support groups ... what more can you ask for? And remember, developing a product with a coffeehouse space as your 'office' has some advantages: Caffeine Boosts Creativity ;-) as Delicious Library shows.

On the geekier side, of interest to many was the comparison between the development platforms under different OSs. Jahanzeb had been using Windows for a long while and even developed the first versions of his iPhone application using that environment but has now switched to a Mac ... so his comments on the development and usage sides for both platforms was informative.

The discussion on comparative use of Apple's App Store to market an application versus direct sales to the consumer was interesting, too, since most had felt that Apple retaining 30% of the sale price and giving the developer only 70% was a bit unfair. The argument for it, as enunciated by Jahanzeb - who made the switch to Apple's way after being on the other side (distributing the precursors to Jaadu through other sources) - rested on the number of people Apple gave him exposure to. Everyone with the iPhone or an iPod Touch was certain to visit the App Store, making for an outreach to several million potential customers. The fact that Apple also took care of several other factors that indie developers would rather not have to bothered by was a bonus. We also learnt from a member of the audience who had the experience of developing for two other mobile phone brands, that the others paid developers a much lesser %age because they had a larger market share.

Thank you, Jahanzeb, for a lovely evening. Hope to see more apps from you soon.

Keep out of my mailbox, please ...

I am angered by spamming, in general, and usually write almost instantly back, in as rude terms as I can, demanding to be taken off the offending list and often suggesting where they can stick their products, if the size is right. Sometimes it works (I am referring to being taken off the list, not to the suggested action), though more often it doesn't ... there are too many persistently annoying bastards in this world. But it does help me get rid of my anger.

Some spammers send me unsolicited religious messages, occasionally asking me to repent. To them I am politer, limiting myself to expressing the view that spamming is the cyber equivalent of entering a house without knocking - a practice, I believe, that is un-Islamic.

More often I get religion-oriented spam to understand why the sender's rival is a fraud (the recent spate of anti-Ghamdi emails is an example). To them, when possible, I send back their emailed .doc attachment after carefully replacing all occurrences of their names with their rival's and vice versa. Not too surprisingly every charge one brings upon the other holds equally valid after this switch.

Today, some ass whom I do not know - and certainly do not wish to know - has sent me 'warm regards' (I wonder what he sends real friends, if he has any) and says he is looking forward to welcoming me "at 5th International Defence Exhibition & Seminar – IDEAS 2008!" As a pacifist I am even further offended at this particular spam, not just because it represents all that I detest but for promoting an event that has the loony tagline: Arms for Peace!

What are we going to see next? Dicks for Virginity?

Ten years on!

When my company, Enabling Technologies,

(later owned and run by Jehan Ara)

developed and launched the internationally acclaimed

Interactive CD-ROM: Faiz - Aaj Kay Naam

the main members of the team were

Sabeen, Jehan, Nuzhat & myself.

Sabeen has also posted an earlier picture

of this foursome!

This was the same team that

had produced Pakistan's first-ever

Interactive CD-ROM for IBM Pakistan

(ironically developed on Macs)

on Pakistan's 50th Birthday.

For the same occasion

we had also developed another CD-ROM

50 Years of Art in Pakistan

(featuring 112 Artists, Sculptors, and Ceramists)

for ABN-AMRO Bank.

None of us are formally qualified
IT or Business specialists and have learnt everything
about both these fields on our own ...
so it's rather interesting to see how our lives
have revolved around Technology and Business.

Nuzhat is an Education Technology Consultant
and has facilitated the development of many
school IT programs and in-service training.

Jehan Ara is the President of P@SHA
(Pakistan Software Houses Association).

Sabeen is the President of the Karachi Chapter
of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

And I am a blogger!

:-)

Is it in the initials?

A few days ago I received an article (Two Nations, Two Choices by Vir Sanghvi, written sometimes in January 2008). Forwarded by an expat friend in the US, the Subject line of the mail was "Sad, but worth reading".

The same evening I received another copy from Australia, with the subject line changed to "Vir Sanghvi hits it on the head". I don't know why I am on the second mailing list ... I know no-one named Naseem F Mujtaba. (While I am glad, Naseem, that you F Mujtaba, please take me off the list. Thanks.)

Since NFM had committed the common but heinous crime of putting all 118 recipients in the "To:" field, as had the previous 3 FWDers, I know that in this particular chain, alone, 591 people had received the piece.

Why had this old piece begun to do the rounds suddenly, I have no idea. But I read it and passed it in on to 27 people, being careful to put all their addresses in the "Bcc:" field as courtesy, decency, and common sense demand.

The first of the 17 responses I have received so far (a response-rate marketers would die for!) came quickly. Only one other article I have ever forwarded has been commented upon by so many. Anyway, this is what I was asked in the very first message:

Hmmm... I can see why he's hitting it on the head - since he's Indian - but why are u forwarding this rather obnoxious article....?

My answer, since others, too, may have wondered but not asked: I forwarded the piece to 3 journalist/columnists and 4 members of my extended family. From the journos I had hoped for some cool, intelligent feedback. I then, on the spur of the moment, added 20 other names. (Sorry, folks!)

Now to the responses:

Quite a few felt that parts of it are true. Some wrote that it was 'depressing' to read this. A few pointed out that the tone was off-putting. One pointed out that Nehru was a crook and a bastard and slept with Lord and Lady Mountbatten to get Kashmir. (This knowledge will, of course, help cure all our ills!). One said our FO should protest to the Editor of HT, which published it. (I suspect if it does, HT will tell our FO to FO!)

The one Indian I passed it on to was splutteringly apologetic and said that while the article was 'perhaps true in some ways, it's just a point of view after all, and every developing country has made mistakes'. She pointed out that the author showed an anti-Punjabi bias, and was 'possibly an RSS agent.' ... (Hmmm, I thought, as I re- read this looking for clues).

She also went on to soothe me by saying that "no one takes him seriously, anyway." ... "Not taken seriously? That's carrying your peace-forum apologist attitude too far", I wrote back, and quoted an Indian Muslim's response to another piece by Vir Sanghvi.

Chastizing him in he above-mentioned rejoinder to Mr Sanghvi's Counterpoint piece on the Muslim response - or the alleged lack of it - to fundamentalism, someone said:

Many Muslims have been surprised and even hurt at the article written by Vir Sanghvi in the Counterpoint column of Hindustan Times on Sunday, which is without doubt the most read column of any editor in India. The reason is obvious. Had it been written by any other person it would not have mattered that much but Vir Sanghvi is one of the best editors, an erudite and highly respected journalist. Like many others he also puts the onus on Muslims for not condemning fundamentalism of Muslims ... Muslims don’t remain silent and do condemn but our voices don’t reach you. The Delhi-centric (Delhi/Haryana/Punjab) papers never carry these stories. In small cities all over Northen India Muslims protest and raise voice, but who takes notice!

Only the 2 gora non-Pakistanis I shared it with asked for the author's or the newspaper's email address and wanted to write back counters to this in the light of their experiences. (Vir Sanghvi can be emailed here.)

The absence of any journos' response means that they are mulling over it and either busy writing counters or waiting for it to be erased from memory before plagiarizing from it.

I agree with the 2 firangees. The article has been published in well-circulated Indian daily. If there are parts of the analysis (or the entire piece) that one disagrees with - and there are some I do not subscribe to while accepting the truths I cannot deny - it should be countered with facts and opinions. I know too little about the political history of Pakistan to write such a piece - even on my informal blog. My knowledge is based merely on having lived through the mess - with 25 years at sea at a time when access to information was poor, to begin with. So my writing could only result in an emotional, rather than a knowledgeable or analytical, response. That is if I felt any emotion (other than a personal grief) on the subject at all.

Finally, pointing out that there is an Indian/Hindu bias, as some did, is stating the pointless obvious. Many of the responses contained a Pakistani/Muslim bias, too. So what's new? Unbiased opinions, anywhere, are hard to come by. Indoctrination from childhood - at home and in schools - nurtures nothing as strongly as biases. 'Religious' leaders and Nationalists (and their inevitable combo-product, the Fascist) continue to fan the flames throughout life. Mr Sanghvi, himself, shows off his unbridled nationalism through his 'need' to compare and compete.

Here's one example from a response sent in by someone who, in turn, quoted an unnamed source. I found it funny (though some of you probably will not).

Writings like these just reinforce my belief that the majority of Indians out there (and by Indians I mean Hindus more or less) are nursing a deep and ancient inferiority complex.

Apart from the give-away word 'belief', the phrase "more or less' had me ROTFL ...

Peace!

(And don't worry if you can't figure out why this post is titled what it is).

First they came for the Ahmadis ...

In a program aired on 7 September 2008 the anchor of the religious program 'Alam Online', Dr. Aamir Liaquat Hussain--also former federal minister for religious affairs--declared the murder of Ahmadi sect members to be necessary (Wajib ul Qatal) according to Islamic teachings, because its followers don't believe in the last prophet, Mohammad, peace be upon him. Dr. Aamir repeated his instruction several times, urging fundamentalists Muslims to kill without fear.

While on air the anchor person also pressured the other two Islamic scholars (from two different sects) on the program to support the statement. This resulted in a unanimous decision among the scholars, on air during a popular television show, to urge lynching with the intent to kill. This was not a one-off. On September 9, Mr. Hussain answered a query with the comment that blasphemers are liable to be put to death.

According to the information received, at 1:15pm on September 8, 18 hours after the broadcast, six persons entered the Fazle Umer Clinic, a two-story hospital at Mirpur Khas city and two of them went to the second floor and started pressuring 45 year-old Dr. Abdul Manan Siddiqui to come downstairs to attend to a patient in crisis. Dr. Manan left his office and descended into an ambush. He was shot 11 times and died on the spot. His private guard was also shot and is in a serious condition. A woman was also injured by firing. The killers remained at the hospital until the doctor was declared dead, then they walked out of the building's front entrance. Police registered the killers as unknown.

On September 9, 48 hours after the broadcast, Mr. Yousaf, a 75 year-old rice trader and district chief of the Ahmadi sect was killed on his way to prayer in Nawab Shah, Sindh province. Yousaf was fired on from people on motor bikes, and sustained three bullet wounds. He died on the way to the hospital. The assailants had taken a route past a police station. No one was arrested.

The above horrifying and disgusting episode is quoted from the ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION's Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-203-2008 which urges you to email the powers that be to take immediate action.

The jihaalat spread online by this sicko and lapped up as the Gospel Truth by millions, thanks to Geo (Aur Marnay Do?) was bound to eventually to come to this.

It is no secret how/why Aamir, a hot favourite of the ex-President (Mush is reported, by his wife, to have wept at Aamir's sermons and naats), continued to remain a federal minister - for Religious Affairs, no less! - even after his claims regarding his degrees (required for holding office) were proved to be fraudulent. It was for the same reason that Dr. Isa Daudpota "tried to canvass for getting him off Geo but failed!" ... but, now that his support has been taken away, there is no reason why he cannot be hauled into court for inciting to murder, if the AHRC report is true.

Let's face it, our media and schools and some mosques have been propagating what some refer to as a hardline version of Islam. Listen to the fiery mince-no-words Israr Ahmed or the king of warped logic Zakir Naik (who even seems to have stunned his normally clapping supporters into silence with his thought processes).

Not just in Pakistan but throughout the Muslim Ummah we hear the steadily increasing sound of violent talk. At home, the PMC Faisalabad incident (read Sabahat Zakariya's Facebook Note), may seem minor compared to the current tragedy, but it was yet another example of the apathy of the majority that allows this escalation. For an example from the UK, watch this British Mulla. In fact, even the services of poor old Mickey Mouse have been enlisted in the cause of spreading hatred. Is NOTHING sacred?

===============

PS: If some of you can't get to the Facebook note mentioned above (Sorry, I have no idea what non-members can access on FB), I'd like you to at least take a peep at my comments on that note.

===============

Remember this?

And now hear this ...

A couple of years ago a visiting friend (who has asked to remain anonymous) played me a 'boot-leg' copy of a speech. As far as I could make out - the recording was an excerpt that was missing the beginning an the ending - the theme was was Liberal Education . It was a delightful lecture and I always wished we could have heard the whole thing. Unfortunately, we knew not where the speech was given nor, even more of a plight, who the speaker was ... such is the tragedy of poorly pirated material ;-) I even took a sentence or two from the speech, at random, and tried to Google it ... but nothing was found at that time.

Last week I was gifted "The Philosophy of Religion", a course recorded by Professor John Hall for The Teaching Company (TTC). Impressed by the simple lucidity and tone of the very first of the 36 lectures), I searched for him on the internet and was delighted to be led to his homepage, which, in turn, led me to the Convocation Address delivered by him at The University of Richmond in 2005. And that's the one we'd heard!

While I suggest that you download and read the entire lecture (it's only 3 pages long), along with the Collegian piece, I would like to quote one of its sections here with permission from Professor Hall.

Liberal Education and Impracticality

One of the hallmarks of liberal education is that it is does not have immediate applications, results, or investment returns. This is what people mean when they say that it is impractical. But is liberal education really impractical?

If the desired outcome of schooling is job-skill, then Strayer would be the model school. My wrestling with the ambiguities of Ionesco, studying the complexities of natural selection, trying to figure out what the American Civil War was really about, and exploring the mathematics of musical key transposition, are not likely to increase the GNP or lower the CPI overnight, if at all. On the other hand, my learning to keyboard data into a computer, take accurate telephone messages, keep a double-entry ledger, and figure profit margins, might. Indeed, I could measurably increase my disposable income simply by addressing envelopes at home in my spare time. (Many matchbook covers tell me so, and I believe them.) But who will write the programs for me to keyboard? Who will leave a message worth my taking down? Who will create the business that needs me to keep its books? Who will invent a product that will generate profits for me to calculate? Indeed, who will create something worthwhile to put in the envelopes I address?

For individuals and their communities to thrive, people need to know more than the answers to familiar questions. They need to know what questions to ask, and that means that they need to be inventive enough to come up with new ones. They need to be able to make judgments without bright-line criteria, and that means that they must be able to wrestle with ambiguity without having a panic attack. They need to be able to make informed political decisions, and that means that they need to understand historical connections and the difference between appearance and reality. And they need to be able to function in a complex society that divides its labor, which means that they need to have some understanding of what everyone else is doing, even if they don’t have to do everything everyone else does themselves.

And this is where a liberal education is most liberating. By freeing us from the expectation of an immediate payoff for each thing we learn or do, it opens us up to learn and do things that, while they may lack an immediate payoff, may have long-term potentials that we cannot even imagine in advance. This is why a highly placed corporate officer once told me “when we want worker bees, send us trained technicians; but when we want leadership send us people who have studied history and literature and science. We can train new hires to run the machinery if we need to; but we are not equipped to teach them how to use their minds.” So the “impracticality” of liberal education is not necessarily impractical at all. By allowing students to go beyond job training, it encourages them to stretch themselves to the absolute limit of their potentials and, unhampered by external or artificial constraints, to be flexible and to grow.

[I am not sure if the good professor will be willing to talk to a T2F audience in far away Pakistan via Skype - but I'd love for him to spend a few minutes with us during a Science Ka Adda evening on another topic he enjoys: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal.]

I had, very recently, finished listening on my iPod - overflowing with several audiobooks and brilliant podcasts - to Professor Esposito delivering his balanced and very informative TTC lectures on Islam (as a part of The World's Great Religions series). The Philosophy of Religion course promises to be an even more enjoyable learning experience.

The range of subjects that TTC courses cover is extremely vast. I wish Dr Atta ur Rahman (HEC) or Dr Naveed Malik (VU) would strike a deal with those guys and make several of these courses available locally at subsidized rates. I'd be willing to enroll, even at my age (and with the way I feel about educational institutions), in a college to take advantage of such a deal, if it was required.

Postscript: Lest some of you worry, no, I am not about to be 'born again'. Religion has always been a subject of great interest to me and the current revival (in its worst forms, I might add) and its political impact, globally, has just re-kindled that. But next on my course list - if I can raise the money (HEC/VU are unlikely to even consider this one) - is Professor Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. 48 lectures of 45 minutes each. I can't stop drooling.

Who will we be defending ourselves from on THIS September 6th?

For many years Pakistanis have observed September 6th as the National Defense Day (also dubbed Army Day), albeit with decreasing fervour. The decline in excitement, other than one that any joyous escape from school a holiday brings, has been caused, partially, from the passage of time from the 1965 war: most of the readers of this blog had not even been born then, while others now have a better understanding of the misadventure. Another factor, however, is also the growing disenchantment with, and opposition to, the political role of the Army.

This September 6th, again, if the Presidential Election takes place, the Army may be on many minds - or at least in the warped minds of those who continue to look upon it as the only possible political saviour. Let us hope, however, that politics is not on the Army's mind - an oxymoron, some would argue - and General Kiyani (despite the warning bells that the letter quoted Ardeshir's column today echoes) will continue to depoliticize the Army.

But, hey, there is such a thing as pushing someone too far! And we may be leaning too hard on him already.

President Zardari? asks the headline in today's Dawn, announcing the acceptance of the proposal (to contest the presidential election) by arguably the most controversial figure Pakistan's politics has ever seen.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Saturday formally named its Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari as its candidate for the office of the president.

“Being the party’s deputy secretary-general, I am pleased to announce that PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has accepted the will of the party to become Pakistan’s next president,” said the Leader of the House in the Senate, Mian Raza Rabbani, while announcing the decision of naming Zardari as the candidate for the office of the president.

The News, another national newspaper, featured a story yesterday, spelling out why many are afraid of such a possibility. Here's how it ends:

Zardari’s nomination has generated a stir among the political, social, bureaucratic, and security circles of the capital. It would be for the first time that a single person would run the state, the government and all its organs, as well as the country’s biggest political party.

If elected, president Asif Ali Zardari will also be Chairman National Security Council, who will be armed with the authority to appoint the Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, provincial governors, Chief Election Commissioner, Attorney General, and the powers to dissolve the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies under Article 58-2(b).

Compared to Musharraf, Zardari as president will be much more powerful as he will also control Pakistan’s biggest political party bequeathed to him by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto along with all her political and monetary assets.

After having a hand-picked, “yes” prime minister, compliant judiciary, presidential powers under 17th Amendment and the biggest political party which would wait for his nod for any action, Zardari is set to become more powerful than Musharraf or any politician in Pakistan would ever have dreamt of.

[Aside: Does no one at The News know that a preposition is not something you end a sentence with?]

Dawn's headline proved really disturbing for a dear friend, Tony Afzal, living in the USA. He was horrified enough to write a letter to the newspaper's editor, suggesting things I wouldn't suggest. I cannot quote it in full, since it has not yet been published - though he did send me a copy. This is what he asks all of us: As a people, have we now come to this? Are we all collectively deranged?

My short answer: Yes! (Based on my conviction that the majority is always wrong. After all, when everyone thinks the same, no one really thinks. And those that try to do so, loudly, get shafted!)

Stewed!

Haeraañ hooñ dil ko ro-ooñ ...

Taking time off from the back-breaking work I was engaged in (see previous post), I switched on the TV. Begum Nawazish Ali flashed (well, not quite) on the screen, extolling the qualities of her guest in her usual risqué manner. I am not a regular TV watcher and, so, have missed out on how the BNA Show has developed over the years. There didn't seem to be a change in format but I found that her tongue-in-cheekisms were nearer the bone now.

Not a problem.

The guest was Shehzad Roy - a young singer who has begun to devote his energies to Education.

Not a problem, at all. Until the young man decided to inform us of the sorry state of Urdu. He was shocked, he told us, to find that there was no Urdu word for 'kick', having decided that 'laat' and 'thokar' could not be used (though he offered no explanation why). He pleaded with language specialists to take note, add new words to the language, make sure it remains alive by keeping it progressive. And to produce a suitable word for 'kick'!

BNA mischievously added that there was no Urdu word for 'cake', either, but SR took the bait seriously, going on to say that while we could call it 'meetha', that really was not 'precise'. Urdu so needed attention.

Dear Shehzad: I have before me 3 dictionaries open. Sangaji (1899) Platts (1930) and the more recent Shan-ul-Haq Haqqi tome from the Oxford University Press. And it is my mother tongue. Trust me - 'laat' and 'thokar' are alright, depending upon context. Football khayltay vaqt gaind ko laat maari jaatee hae aur raah chaltay huay theekree ko thokar say hataaya jaata hae.

(Oh ... and will the English Language world please find words for 'Barfi' and 'Gulaab Jaamun' while the Muqtadirah and the Text Book Boards work on our most important needs of the hour).

This is a bit of a cheat ...

I've been tied up with a Spring-cleaning job in my Library, home to my books and audio-visual collections. (OK ... OK ... it's not Spring. But, then, in Karachi it never is, except on special occasions!) This massive task has been undertaken to meet a deadline: Nuzhat returns from her Isloo/Lhr trip tonight and I think she deserves to see a cleaner space (though, to really make her happy, I'll need to do similar things in 5 other spaces :-( There was another incentive, too. I've wired up new speakers (nothing special ... just a small surround set-up to go with the new DVD player) and the sound-colouration caused by the stuff lying all over the space was bugging me.

This 'detour' from my planned tasks for the weekend means I have had to postpone the post(s) I was supposed to put up today. Maybe by tomorrow night, if I haven't collapsed in a heap (probably indistinguishable from the one that's getting built up with the junk I am throwing away) I shall add one or two of the 4 pieces I have simultaneously started. So much has happened that I want to rave/rant about ...

Anyway, among the piles of unsorted papers I found a little thaéla containing cartoons I'd clipped from magazines and papers --- and was immediately distracted from the task at hand. There are 2 - both by that absolute genius, Schulz - that I wish I'd found just a few days earlier, since they'd have made apt inserts into recent posts. However, I am so bent upon sharing them with you that I am reproducing both below, with links to the originally blogged bits. This way, I also get to lure those of you who cruelly ignored my earlier posts to take a look at them, too. (I warned you this post was a bit of a cheat!)

The first cartoon makes a great companion to the Giles Coren post:


And if anyone like the reporter mentioned in this post ever submits anything to you for publication, I suggest your response be based on:

An exhilarating leap ahead ...

Karachi's long-lost "Musicals" scene is finally back. And how! Director/Choreographer Nida Butt - and everyone else behind the scenes - must be thanked profusely for the Herculean effort Chicago must have taken to provide us with the kind of delightful evening it turned out to be.

The sounds of genuine old-time Jazz in Karachi, alone, would have made my evening. But the talent. Wow. What a delightful surprise to see the songs and the music being actually performed on stage and not the lipsync and miming that some other productions have so far made do with. Here's to the band! You rocked, guys! The choir - so easily overlooked because of its lack of visibility - needs a special mention. You were great!

The cast was brilliant I wonder how many rehearsals and time it took to get the essential 'timing' - so crucial to the deliveries - just right. But you did it. (The little extra pause by Momin, before his last line in Mr. Cellophane was better than in the movie. I just replayed the recording to check!) Nida, Faraz, and Ahmed Ali did full justice to their parts and Omar's dual responsibilities of conducting and delivering the chorus-like announcements were handled perfectly. 

Sanam Saeed: You deserve a line just for yourself, which is why you are not in the above paragraph. You stole the show and, if the buzz in the intermission is to be taken at face value, several hearts, too!

The limitations of putting up anything like this are colossal: Sound Engineers who do not treat every event as if it were a mehndi celebration, or a political rally, are hard to find. When coupled with architecture that considers the aural experience secondary to the visuals on stage, things really get bad. The Arts Council Auditorium, presumably designed for the performing arts, is acoustically awful at the best of times unless one has choice seats. I did not :~( (having gotten the tickets at the last minute with great difficulty and string-pulling) and, so, was unable to hear some of the dialogue and the vocals, unless they were on my side of the theatre. I say this not to knock or fault the production in any way. If economics would permit such ventures, ideally (impractical though the suggestion is) several seats would be blocked off as being detrimental to the experience.

Perhaps, having imported an energetic dance troupe from India, the sound set-up, too, should have been left to the pros from across the border. (Hint: Maybe that's what the Lahore production should do ... and, while I am at it, one request: Leave the stupid smoke machine back in Karachi. It adds nothing.)

There was some talk of the tickets being a bit pricey at a thousand bucks, not that it stopped people, at every performance, from lining up for hours to get them. Given that, these days, a straight-forward play, amateurishly performed, with a fairly bare stage-setting at the PACC, is charging 500 bucks, I think that, relatively speaking, this was fine ... even without part of the proceeds that, I believe, are going to a hospice. Sure, not everyone can afford to pay that much ... but why assume that such plays are for 'everybody', anyway?Entertainment, good live entertainment, costs! Everywhere.

Among the many things, other than the sound quality, that need to develop around our performing arts culture are Reviews. C'mon guys/gals. Your access to writing in the skills-starved popular press does not take away from you the onus of responsibility you have towards your readers for providing them with a review. Don't pass the blame to equally clueless, editors. It's YOUR review. YOU have to get it right. First off, remember, it's not meant to be an article padded with internet extracts. Of course that may have something to do with being paid by the word if that's what your arrangements are. Secondly, 'spoilers' - revelations that give away the plot or ruin surprises, as did the mention of "the twist in the end" in one review - ensure that people will not read your review before watching plays again (I won't!) ... and who reads your reviews after seeing the plays, anyway! Thirdly, get the basic lingo right: Sanam Saeed did not play the "title role", dear reviewers. That would have happened only if either the play was called Roxie or the character she played been named Chicago. To be fair, all of these things are interdependent and will get better with time and more exposure.

Once again, thank you Made for Stage Productions! Good luck in Lahore and India!!! (Oh ... I now anxiously await your production of Hair ... if anyone can do it, you guys can!)

I tried, but it was hard to not post this

I swear I am not well enough to post as frequently as I seem to be doing. I had promised myself some rest after the two previous posts - written in fairly quick succession despite some decidedly 'off' Lebanese Lamb Kebabs laying me low, but I opened today's morning paper and am now not sure about which session of my gripes was worse.

A full 2-page 'Special Supplement' (which is a misleading euphemism for an advertisement) glared at me and, given how venomous I feel about the way the school system is taking people for a ride, I just had to rush to my Mac.

How confident would you feel sending your child to a school that claims it will help her achieve "Excellence in English Language" when its own ad is full of errors of spelling and grammar. And the offender is not a new fly-by-nighter but a school that has been around for years.

In addition to being unable (or, infinitely worse, not caring) to spell or write correctly, my dear "Experienced AMI directresses", school-owners and administrators, you also have the temerity to make meaningless claims. Your ad states, for example, that "ONLY [your school] has ... ONE OF THE most spacious ... etc., etc.", which is kinda absurd. ONLY means ONLY!

As for the other ONLYs, I am sure that many schools could challenge the statements if they'd just take time off from doing much the same. For crying out loud, how can you be the only school that has 'an extensive library'? Or any of other things you claim uniqueness about?

I sincerely suggest that, unless it's a Boarding School, you get rid of the "24 hour doctor" you have and invest in a simple Grammar and Spelling Checker if your computer did not come loaded with one.

One humble request, though: In a society where nothing seems to have remained sacred, I would plead with you to not invoke in future ads - merely for adding credibility to your school - the names of the great institutions that your community has bequeathed to my city. (And, in any case, pidaram sültaan bood has no real substance.)

In closing, I apologize if this feels like a personal vendetta ... but it's not about you. You just happened to have been the straw that broke the camel's back (one that was already aching from the after effects of food-poisoning). It's about what has become of all schools today. When announcements for admission dates (and even that was not a practice that good institutions followed) become competitive 2-page ads (and even radio-spots), when more money is spent on advertising 'fully carpeted, computerized and airconditined' premises - a common sight on hoardings today - than on the quality of education and staff development, hype and drivel will obviously become the norm.

If, as you claim, yours was a great school once (though I am unable to guess from the ad who its 'deliveries' were), perhaps you should re-visit that time and see what put your institution in a league that was, then, "synonimus" with good education. We could do with a good school, here and there ...

Subs and Eds (& Contributors): Take note!

When I got back from a week-long trip to India last Monday, I planned to write several posts about the trip, but a bout of food-poisoning (caught here ... and furthering my resolve to stay away from 5-Star Cuisine) has laid me low. So, until I am back in action - in a couple of days at most - I thought I'd share a particularly delightful piece from the Guardian.

While Giles Coren - quoted in full below - makes a solid case (and the response from The Time's subs, imho, is a poor effort at one-upmanship), it is to the credit of The Times to have responded in another newspaper and The Guardian to have published Coren's piece, in the first place. It also highlights the maturity of the press in the UK. I doubt if such an exchange could have been possibly published, in a daily of such a vast readership, in the USA or any other part of the Free[Speech] World.

Several friends and I have been victims of sub-editorial misdemeanors, often at the hands of twerps still unweaned, it seems, from their Radiant Way series. I hope this will help both sides of what should not be a divide to start thinking about the process.

(Subs & Eds have my sympathies, too. To those who submit the trash that these poor guys have to wade through daily, Giles offers one helluva lesson on what good, precise writing requires. Learn from it!)

And now to Giles Coren: frequently controversial, as a quick peek at this Wikipedia entry will show, but, in the true Oxbridge tradition, delightfully witty, barbed, and almost always fun to read. Here’s Giles Coren's letter to Times subs: Caution (or Temptation?): Strong Language Ahead! — ZAK

Wednesday July 23 2008

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who I am supposed to be pissed off with (I'm assuming Owen, but I filed to Amanda and Ben, so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on Saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and I know best". Well, you fucking don't.

This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.

1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardization of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what I meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. You can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. The sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what I meant. Why would you change a sentence so that it meant something I didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, I was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is Soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "Looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. The joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking Jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittiest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and I have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time I mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word I got in all sorts of trouble) but I care deeply about my work and I hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing Joe and Hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on Sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. Weird, maybe. But that's how it is. It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. I've got a review to write this morning and I really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and I'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and I have never asked this before - I have never asked it of anyone I have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that I am sent a proof of every review I do, in PDF format, so I can check it for fuck-ups. And I must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way I can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right ... Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger, can make a man verbose.

All the best.

Giles

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2000

I am a trifle old-fashioned, I guess ...

While I sort of pride myself on not just how accepting I am of change but on how much I try and do to add to its pace, I admit to being guilty of conservatism when it comes to certain matters.  Among them, are the writing standards that I expect from newspapers. Lately, the quality of writing, as of everything else, has become so bad that it has added to the reasons which have weaned me away from the habit of starting the day with the morning edition of The Daily Yawn.

I agree with some of my friends that desi English (though it occasionally grates my sensibilities) is as legit as, say, American English, but I do believe that neither should be considered acceptable when poorly used in professional work.

Had bad writing been a crime, time was when the correspondent who filed the following (and who calls himself a scribe. How quaint!) would have been 'held' instead of the concert he reported upon.

This excerpt is from a business paper and probably speaks the language the majority of its readers do  ... but, to be fair, it deserves to be thanked that it reports on such matters at all in its effort to forge some links between Cents and Sensibility

Surprise, Surprise. Or not.

Harsh Kapoor's SACW mailing this morning (subscribe to the list if you really wish to know what's happening in the region) included the following editorial from today's Daily Times - a popular Pakistani newspaper. [My comments follow.]

CARTOONS, THREATS AND JOURNALISM

Daily Aajkal, which is a sister publication of Daily Times in Urdu, is under attack from the clerical partisans of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad for its anti-extremism editorial policy in general and a cartoon in particular. The Lal Masjid mullahs say the cartoon is "insulting" and they say their "patience with the paper is running out" because of its "editorial policy". The cartoon published in Aajkal showed the leader of the partisans, Umme Hassaan, in a burka teaching her burka-clad students the radical political philosophy of the group. But since this could hardly be construed as insulting in any way- after all, the various statements of the group's philosophy are already public knowledge - the group has clutched at the argument that the cartoon "insulted those who taught the Quran", implying some sort of "Islamic" justification for their threats.

This is completely untrue and totally divorced from the purport of the cartoon. The cartoon was made and published within the tradition and practice of satire in the Pakistani press. It was aimed at political partisans, like all political cartoons against other partisans in the political parties and groups.

The umbrage has been taken owing to the heat produced by the political fallout of the operation against Lal Masjid. This is understandable and Aajkal is not too happy about offending any side involved in the controversy. But the cartoon itself was not intended to attack anyone; it was published in the spirit in which all political cartoons in Pakistan are accepted as the lighter side of our political life. There was nothing more and nothing less in the conceiving of the said cartoon. It was not directed at the faith that Aajkal itself upholds within the permitted variety of belief among Muslims. (Italics mine! Just curious as to where one gets these 'permits' ... Zakintosh)

A cartoon is the yardstick by which you measure the level of tolerance in any given society. When states are troubled, the first institution that is attacked is the institution of public criticism through satire. This is simply because satire is always considered less harmful and subversive than a detailed indictment of any person or institution. It is light-hearted and asks the victim to smile rather than take offence. In Pakistan, as everywhere else in the world, all public events, all happenings that touch the consciousness of the people, become the subject of a cartoon. The caricature tries to capture what the people at large think of a certain issue. This is the way it has developed in Pakistan in the last 60 years.

The fact is Lal Masjid involved itself in public affairs when it took in hand the task of "social cleansing" some years ago. The subliminal intent was to attract public attention and plead for approval because it was, according to its lights, doing moral correction where the state had failed. This was the beginning of the public image of the madrassa at Lal Masjid. Its leaders sought public limelight and asked to be judged at the court of public opinion, partly by vigilante action. The result was a mixed verdict. That was natural because any invitation to arbitration by public opinion will yield positive and negative opinion. This process also activated the journalistic device of the cartoon.

If you pick up the newspapers of the past few years, you will come across a lot of cartoons made on the events related to the activity of the Lal Masjid clerics and their pupils. The crux of these drawings was the same: to highlight an incongruity through humour and satire. Pakistan has now a well established tradition of cartoons. The politicians don't mind being portrayed in a funny manner, and even when they do, they keep quiet rather than hurl threats. Therefore the clerics in the public eye should also know that this is the process they have to go through. Neither the politician nor the cleric has suffered any lowering of his respect and honour because of the cartoons.

With the spread of the private TV channels, the business of cartoons has been revitalised. It has become dramatised with live characters mimicking well-known personalities including the ulema who, incidentally, also teach the Quran. The cartoon itself has become a "cartoon strip" and has supplemented and strengthened the tradition of cartooning in Pakistani journalism. The tragedy of Lal Masjid in 2007 happened right in front of the seeing eye of the cartoon. Where Lal Masjid received a lot sympathetic support, and the government had to face criticism, there were occasions when the opposite happened too.

There are always two sides to an issue, even a religious issue, and there will be partisans of this or that point of view. That is the essence of a free society and democracy. Even the issue of suicide-bombing has two opposed ways of looking at it. The division is there even among the ulema. Over fifty ulema in 2005 issued a collective fatwa saying suicide-bombing was against Islam. It was their right to say so, but it was wrong on the part of some other ulema to threaten them to cow them into silence. They would have been within their rights had they issued a counter-fatwa saying suicide-bombing was right.

Threatening a newspaper into silence indicates the level of intolerance that will do no one any good in the long run. The mission of moral correction taken up by the Lal Masjid partisans will be successful only if it is accepted by the people without coming under duress. Indeed, any order imposed through intimidation and threat of violence is not durable and will be rejected by the people in the long run. Therefore Lal Masjid should become the symbol of struggle against the use of violence; and it should not give the impression that it can use violence to achieve its ends.

Many of you may recall the heavily choreographed and manipulated protests, nation-wide, when the provocatively irresposible Danish cartoons first surfaced. That the major portions of rallies were, initially, quite obviously 'staged' until they pulled others into their fold as the frenzy caught on, is a widely accepted fact. Still unsure of this line of reasoning? Think, for a moment:

(a) Where would thousands of unconnected people suddenly appear from out of all nooks and crannies of our small towns, waving identical Danish flags? Maybe I am wrong and most Pakistani homes usually keep all the world's national flags as part of our standard household inventory, ready to be whipped out (and burnt! Who pays for that and the required 're-stocking', I often wonder...) at the drop of an ink-spot. We have, over the years, seen Indian, US, Israeli, British, Bangladeshi, Russian, UN, and other flags suddenly unfurl in hundreds. Hmmmm. (Of course, there are also reliable reports of a leading foreign journalist, at least on one occasion, passing out flags for burning, in order to get a good video clip for her channel!)

(b) When the Government, the 'agencies', and the Islamist parties - at the behest of their common paymasters - thought that it was an inopportune time for a 'repeat performance', the Geert Wilders movie, Fitna, came and went almost unnoticed. Maybe we ran out of combustibles, but no flags, tyres, or effigies blotted our streets.

Given that some irresponsible sections of our popular press, in an effort to play to the gallery and increase sales, supported the unruly and misdirected hooha in the cartoon cases, isn't what's happening to Aajkal (the paper with, incidentally, the best layout in our vernacular press world) just a case of chickens coming home to roost, albeit in the wrong coop?

Regardless of how we got to this spot in our sad history, if this direction is not actively reversed NOW (and I have little hope that it will be) we will keep heading further and further into an abyss from which there is no return.

The recent disgusting and offensive hero-ization of the Lal Masjid miscreants, including the burqa clad