The Shanaakht Fiasco

{I started writing this post before the [heart]Breaking News of the cancellation of the festival hit me. Despite my criticism of some of it's flaws, I think that nurturing it would, over time, have had it evolve into something more sensible and sensitive. The closing down bodes badly for art and many other activities ... but the organizers were left with no options, given the to-ing & fro-ing of the PPP and governmental commitments.}

The incident at CAP's Shanakht Festival yesterday should convince people that all 17 crore hearts do not beat as one all the time. Oh, of course they do, sometimes. But NOT when an identity is being forced, instead of being allowed to develop.

The event - despite my personal objections to some aspects of it - is an effort that needs to be encouraged and guided. The very important and noble task that CAP (The Citizen's Archive of Pakistan - or The Citizens Archive of Pakisan) has undertaken, of gathering oral, textual, and image-based histories of Pakistan,is commendable. Yet, IMHO, the organization should be an archiver, not a view-point creator. Its archives should be resources for some to find their roots, others to understand individual or collective identities, for some to comprehend even the opposing views on numerous topics through the years, and yet others to use excerpts in whatever form of research they are undertaking (and for whatever cause).

In and of itself an archive is not meant to offer a slanted stance, though nuanced interpretations may be derived from it for diverse purposes. For example, a WWII Archive would not be the same as that of the Holocaust Museum, though images from the latter would certainly be part of the former. At least that is how I have viewed CAP's project.

Last year, too, I had questioned the reasoning about the CAP festival focusing on shanaakht and was told that it was "because the young are trying to find their identity". Being not-so-young, I felt that my criticism would be viewed as just another old-person's usual censure of the young, so I backed off … recalling in the process that one of the slogans I shouted in my visible hippie days was 'Never Trust Anyone Over Forty!' (With age, contrary to expectations, I have altered the 'Forty' to 'Thirty-Five' for my occasional talks.)

The festival's opening day - yesterday - had a successful start - 1500 children came for the festival and also participated in art activities organized by T2F. The evening offered some interesting and nostalgic moments for me. Listening, once again, to The Little Master was certainly one that brought tears to my eyes as he recalled the old matches and the tutoring he received from Master Abdul Aziz. He shared the evening with the wonderful commentator, Jamshed Marker, talking about his involvement with our sports and politics. Meeting Lutfullah Khan Sahab, was, as usual a delight. Photographs and images from his vast collection were on display and this energetic young man of 93(!) was there to be part of the festivities. His legendary music collection is now being digitized and, perfectionist that he is, the process will take 3 lifetimes - by his own reckoning - to be completed. Can't wait ;-)

As the evening moved on, the crowd swelled. Numerous strands - exhibitions, chats, speeches - attracted people differently.

The atmosphere was truly festive. Ethan Casey who seems to have a special relationship with our country was there to talk of his last and next book. And he was going to speak at T2F. Yessss! T2F, now. between its own old and new venues, was looking gorgeously cute (if you'll pardon my use of a word that I have all but expunged from my vocabulary since I heard a lady say she thought Zakir Naek was cute) in its little stall and the adjacent speaker's area.

It was during Ethan's talk that we suddenly became aware of a disturbance, followed almost immediately by an aggressive crowd screamin blue murder and ordering us all to close down and get away "before we burn the place down". Soon this led to sounds of firing and some people moving out quickly while others, almost led by Beena Sarwar, trying to 'talk' to the mob to get to the root of the problem.

We soon discovered that the crowd was PPP supporters—  (someone later said it was the PSF but, to me, the two main people were too old to be students. One, in fact, was a journalist I have encountered before) — who were expressing their anger at an obnoxious and meaningless piece of drivel passing off as art. Mind you, all art is subjective and it's drivel-ness (to me) may be challenged by a number of people, just as my disgust at Adnan Sami Khan's music usually is. On the other hand, even if my greatest favorite exponent of Classical Music, Pt Bhimsen Joshi, decided to sing a piece full of obscenities at the APMC, I'd certainly not support it.

The image in question, now sadly all over the internet (and I beseech those bloggers whom I count among my friends to remove it), was extremely offensive to me and objectionable at several levels. I am NOT a Benazir supporter, however immensely pained I was at her death. I am not a member of the PPP, nor have I ever voted for them (or for anyone else from among the menu of crooks, extortionists, rapists, kidnappers, fundos, and murderers offered to us by various parties). 

I will not reproduce the image here to give it further currency, but it is now common knowledge that it portrayed BB sitting in the evil and mal'oon Zia's lap. My reaction was that this was ridiculously meaningless.

We have seen 'photoons' - photo cartoons - of her being married to Nawaz and Altaf on the net before. I did not take offense to them because they were satirical comments on real alliances. After all, even the textual statements in the press referred to these, at times, as 'marriages of convenience' or 'an unholy political matrimony'. The images only carried the representation further. I admit that I, too, on hearing that JI chief Qazi Husain Ahmad had tried to prevent Mian Nawaz Sharif from forming an alliance with BB, had passed around (among friends) a photoshopped image of the two newlyweds - with Husain Ahmad looking sullen - and captioned it Jab Mian-BB raazi to kyaa karay ga Qazi.

BB & Zia? That cockeyed asshole had murdered her father! She had never ever negotiated any 'deal' with him. So just what DID this image represent? I mean merely the ability to manipulate images doesn't always produce art, does it? And what did the term Stiff Competition  - the title given to the image, signify? I will not repeat the remarks that brought out. 

Several posts/blogs hastily commented on the matter, one 'toning down' the image's offensiveness (and sexual connotation) by stating that it showed an infant Benazir. Not only was this untrue, but even in that case it would have been more suitable to show, as infants, those leaders of today who were nurtured through their political infancy by that bloody dictator. Would that have been acceptable to their followers? I suspect not. I assure you that at least one party would have burnt down the entire area had their leader been shown, even with justifiable sarcasm, in the lap of one of his several mentors. 

Add to this the fact that the Bhuttos bring out emotions far stronger - and the issue is not whether such emotions are wrong or right - among their supporters who have consistently laid down their lives for these symbols and icons. Yesterday one of those leading the mob was in tears as he said he'd spent 11 years in jail protecting the dignity of this woman who was being insulted. You may find such emotional outbursts, and the violent reactions that inevitably follow, condemnable but the problem is that we are a nation among which a large population is easily aroused to such acts. So, a little judiciousness and caution would make sense, too, specially when the creator and the curators of the image are risking the lives and properties of others.

I was mainly offended by it as a feminist. What gives anyone the liberty to do this and display it publicly, inviting the wrath and endangering the safety of others. Would the artist - a woman, herself, I was shocked to learn - be ok if someone put up an image of hers in some insinuating position with any man? (BTW, Insiya also raises similar questions in a piece that presents the views of someone a generation apart. And the comments provide even greater insight into what the younger generation thinks.)

I realize that celebrities are fair game but only if the game is fair! And how far can this go? What if the pose or postures represented become more obscene - never mind whatever that means to different people? Isn't there a self-censorship or restraint that one is supposed to excercise? Do all of those who use a zillion swear words a day use them indiscriminately before their parents/children? Do we walk around naked on the streets because we believe that God created us naked and, therefore, clothes are the work of the devil? Do we shit in public? That IS self-censorship and respect for our surroundings.

Defenders of the terms, 'artistic license' and 'freedom of expression', may insist that there's nothing wrong and the reactions are stupid. I'd like to dare them to display some of the works from an international museum in their own open-to-public galleries. Not that I disagree with them that both freedoms must exist. It's just that there is a time and place for everything. (Pornography is available, including the kind that features hardcore images, in most book and video stores in the liberal West. But it is confined to a separate corner or a high bookshelf, out of the immediate sight of any other than those looking for it.)

None of this is meant to condone the aggressiveness and violence, threatened and carried out (at least to property) by the PPP jiyaalaas. Although they were clearly not acting on official PPP orders, I do suspect that there were other games at play. What was strangely obvious was the absence of the Arts Council biggies making any effort to tone things down. In fact some people among the mob said that they had received calls from the venue officials, asking them to come and see this image - and many felt that the members of the Arts Council were complicit in the planning, since they are having internal political struggles. Another rioter, obviously up in the hierarchy, claimed that they had been told (by whom, was not clear!) that the army had funded the exhibition and 'some Major' had instructed CAP to display the image. Bull!!! We shall, of course, never get to the truth.

Finally, it was the media that - as usual - sensationalized the story. By using phrases such as 'objectionable art' in their headlines they only help the fundamentalists and spineless moderates - both for different reasons - find excuses for not displaying art. DAWN reports PPP Leader Mr Mehdi as saying "controversial art should not be displayed publicly". This kind of statement will promote censorship and, sooner or later, art exhibitions will be asked, to 'clear' their works in advance with 'the authorities'. Following that, we will have nincompoops, with no understanding of art, 'failing' works at whim or 'passing' them against bribes. This is not a fantasy - it has happened before and will happen again.

And, remember, this leads to nothing but fascism in the long run.

Mr Mehdi went on to say, “The sympathisers protested to the Arts Council representatives and the organisers (the Citizens Archive of Pakistan) and asked them to remove the offensive picture. However, they refused. It was a peaceful protest, but there was some tension because of the refusal. People got emotional as the organisers refused to take down the picture.” If that absolute lie is what was conveyed to him, his statement should have begun: The sympathisers 'claimed' to have protested ...

I decided to withdraw from my sessions at T2F - scheduled for the 9th & 11th - in protest at the insensitivity of the organizers in including such an image. Despite being opposed to accepting the artificiality of the identity the festival was bent on creating, I had felt that such festivals and events would familiarize the younger audiences with various aspects of their free-flowing identities. So, I was there as a T2F board member and had planned a tribute to Urdu prose and poetry (under the title of Sheereenié Güftaar) and was, in the second session, to join Asif Farrukhi in a romp through Pakistan's history through Urdu shaaeri. 

Guess that'll now have to wait until T2F re-opens. (A small selection from what was going to be played will be on this blog by Sunday.)

A sad end to a great opening day … but, "We are like that only!"

A treat for Karachiites & visitors

They have many fans in Pakistan and overseas. They take qavvaali festivals by storm everywhere they go - and, boy, do they go everywhere! (See the embedded video at the end of this post.) Yet, it's surprising how many people in their own country have not yet been exposed to this amazing troupé. The Qavvaali Ka Safar concert on 28th March provides yet another opportunity for the uninitiated to change this state.

All of us qavvaali lovers in Pakistan have, in our collections, loads of Sabri Brothers and tons of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan ... but of the gharana that boasts of being the direct descendants of Saamat bin Ibrahim, the ace shaagird of Amir Khusrau and the head of the Qavvaal Bachchaas that Khusrau trained in this genre, we have precious little. 

One possible reason, I am sure, is the lack of audio and video recordings released by this group locally, something that I intend to help rectify over the course of the year (specially through the release of rare private recordings of their father, the incomparable Munshi Raziuddin). I also hope to convince the families of Munshi Ji's illustrious cousins, Manzoor Niazi sahab and Bahauddin sahab to let me include some of their recordings for the planned archives and special releases. Both these cousins' parties, too, being part of the same heritage, shared a fair amount of the repertoire but delivered the individual items with their own distinct flavours and each had a title or two that became associated with them forever: Manzoor Niazi's Naseema Jaanibé Bat'haa and Bahauddin's Kaesa Naach Nachaaya come immediately to mind. Both of these are available on the Citibank-sponsored set that is now a collector's item due, in part, to the wonderful notes that accompanied it. The audios were pirated (naturally!) and are available easily in most seedy CD stores. 

While Fareed Ayaz, his brothers - the amazing Abu Mohammad, among them - and the generation coming up (keep your ears open for Moiz and Hamza!), continue to preserve the tradition of rendering qavvaali in its purest classical form - they are at their best in samaa environments - those who have heard them in concerts know that their range extends way beyond that. Because their musical heritage includes, and is greatly influenced by, the famed ustaad Taan Ras Khan sahab, court musician to Bahadur Shah Zafar, they tackle shudhh classical raags - be it dhrupad ang or the more common khayaal form - with as much ease as they do pieces from today's popular repertoire.

Once in a while they have been known to include qavvaalis popularized by some of their well-known peers, although this happens only when the audience requests it - which is, thankfully, rare. C'mon, concert attendees … you've come to hear what these guys do best, so listen to their specialities. (In any case, how can one listen to a Sabri cover, however well sung, without Ghulam Farid's booming "Alllaaaaaah", or watch it without the silent qavvaali bit that only he could get away with by accompanying it with a twinkle in his eyes and a mischievous smile?)

They delight their fans with the works of Rumi, Hafiz, Khusrau, Bulley Shah, Kabir, and the later poets - such as Jigar Muradabadi (whose Saraapa never fails to entrance the listeners, even non-believers, with the sheer beauty of its words). They glide from Arabi to Farsi, Hindi, Poorbi, Punjabi, Seraiki, and Urdu smoothly. They sing modern foot-tapping qavvaalis and the traditional haal-inducing ones, but also inject the khaanqaahi slow, langurous melodies (such as Har Shab Manam Fataadah) into the performance, some - like Teree Yaad Hae Mann Kaa Chaen, Piyaa - transporting lovers into another time and place. But it is their sazeenaa, bahlaava, payvand-kaari, and the weaving of sargams and taans seamlessly into their performances that I enjoy most of all.

If you have not heard the full range of this troupé's capabilities, come and be converted. Bring others along, too, not just for a very enjoyable evening but one which will enrich your knowledge as Fareed Ayaz, Abu Mohammad, and others - (expect the unexpected!) - trace the development and growth of this all-encompassing genre. If you are already a fan, we'll see you there, anyway, but do bring friends to introduce them to this bunch of wonder-weavers and the genre ... and to financially support T2F in its shift to the new, expanded premises. That's very important, too.

(Thank you, Fareed & Abu, and everyone else in the party, for donating the proceeds and supporting a space that has helped enliven many of our evenings).

Here's a real first!

We Interrupt This Blog For Some Breaking News ...

Read this!

Yayyyy. It's Darwin Day!

This blog is not to enter into the age-old controversy. It's to celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest minds that ever lived.

Happy Birthday, Charles!

One hundred and fifty years after the publication of one of the most important books in human history, the debate rages on.

The criticism or fear of something, without having even tried to understand or know about it, is hardly a POV that needs to be even considered worthy of discussion or debate. But it deserves a mention, only because it turns up often enough.

The best (and most recent) example I have come across of this stubborn and disturbing attitude - disturbing because it was voiced by someone I thought was a sensible person. This is what she said: I really haven't given too much thought to this theory, I just firmly don't believe in it!

Wow! I guess this is the kind of person Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.) had in mind when he wrote, "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract."

Then there's that delightful 'just-a-theory' brigade.

JUST A THEORY? According to the United States National Academy of Sciences...
Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.

The other big issue - at least among many of the people around me - is the feeling that, since many of the atheists must believe in Evolution (after all, they have no one else to credit for Life), the whole Evolution enterprise, itself, must be an anti-God, anti-religious ideology and needs to be shunned offhand.

Hmmm. Most atheists I know also believe that the world is round, but I don't see anyone refuting that. Well, almost anyone.

••••••••••

Larson's excellent book, Evolution - The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, opens with this quote Darwin.m4a and, thus, sets the tone for what follows in this up to date and wonderfully readable work. Listenable, too: an audio-book version is now on sale at T2F. Do buy it. And if it's sold out by the time you make it there, order it from them. It's worth every penny.

But, if you are unfamiliar with the theory (10-to-1, it's not what you've heard it is!), Google Charles Darwin and get to know more about his dangerous idea!

Among those who deny Evolution, there are Creationists, in various flavors. Some believe that Earth was created 6000+ years ago, some who think that humans and dinosaurs lived concurrently and even interacted, and some who believe that fossilized bones were 'created' as is, in order to test us.

None of these clowns, however, convinced me of the flaws in Darwin's ideas as did this part of an email from someone (who, admittedly, reads a lot of Harun Yahya): The question I have is then for all Darwin's greatness and stories why has this evolution stopped all of a sudden? If it was a continuous process then that factor should not have gone away - it should have kept occuring. Then why do we see natural births and not have babies coming to us as apes or from apes ????

Damn! Damn! Damn! Why didn't I think of this? 

Na hota T2F to ...

Read Bina Shah's piece in the Dawn

(Karachi Metropolitan)

today.

Or read it on the net ...

Hitting the ground running ...

Please pass on the url of this post to your friends - Zak

A direct message from Sabeen Mahmud

17th January 2009

Dear PeaceNiche and T2F Community,

612 days ago T2F opened its doors to you. Our vision was lofty, and frankly, a bit mad. Who would walk up to the second floor of an office building on Khayaban-e-Ittehad to listen to a poet rambling on about revolution, or a scientist arguing in favour of evolution, or some kids playing drums? Well, as it turns out, thousands of people ...

In these 612 days minus Mondays, our tiny space has hosted over 150 events featuring thought leaders, artists, poets, musicians, scientists, magicians, writers, philosophers, dancers, actors, lawyers, and activists. Hundreds of you have written in to tell us how much T2F means to you and to the city of Karachi. Every e-mail, snail mail, text message, and Facebook Wall post that you have sent has given us the strength to carry on. Many of you have supported us through your donations and even helped us replace our stolen Mac. We can't thank you enough.

By now you are probably thinking that we're closing down and that this is a goodbye note. No such luck :D But there is some critical news that we need to share with you.

We called our landlord the day-before-yesterday, to ask him when he was going to get the lift fixed. He was non-committal and then said he wanted us to vacate the premises. The initial shock was soon replaced by calm determination and optimism.

At yesterday's literary event, we broke the news. Practically everyone came forward to express solidarity and support. Some of you graciously volunteered your offices, houses, gardens, and basements for us to conduct our events till we find our own space. And one of you, a volunteer/student/journalist, kick-started the donation drive with a contribution of Rs. 5,000. Thank you Batool.

So, here's the plan:

We plan to vacate the current premises by early February 2009. We have already been offered several temporary spaces to conduct our events until such time that we find a permanent venue. We would like to move to a new space - a home we can call our own - as soon as possible. It's going to be tough and we can't do it alone. We simply don't have the funds. As you know, PeaceNiche is a non-profit organization and we have meagre funding. We are reaching out to you to help us in any way that you can. We will be writing to you again with specific requirements, but in the meanwhile, please spread the word about our need for a permanent, rent-free space so that we can get up and running without losing momentum.

Over the next few days, please come to T2F as often as possible - we'll recreate the magic wherever we go but this is where it all started. Thank you Karachi for believing in us.

Peace/Sabeen

__________________________________________

Sabeen Mahmud
Director

PeaceNiche / The Second Floor
Phone: (92-300) 823-0276
http://www.peaceniche.org | http://www.t2f.biz

About Us

The Second Floor (T2F) is a project of PeaceNiche, a not-for-profit NGO committed to becoming a vibrant centre of Pakistan’s developing civil society. T2F is a community platform for open dialogue and features a coffeehouse, bookshop, and exhibition gallery.

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

Only around 10 days ago I had spoken with the landlord regarding the elevator that has been out of commission for a while, as a result of vandalism, and during promising to arrangethe repairs soon he had mentioned how much - with our association of several years (he was also the landlord of our office,  b.i.t.s., in the same building for years) - he would like us to stay on in the present space "for 10 years if you like". Now he was suddenly asking us to vacate and, while there was no direct threat that he was making, he certainly wasn't dropping big names, from A to Z, needlessly and without rhyme or reason during his conversation ...

باغباں نے آگ دی جب آشیانے كو مرے

جن پہ تكیہ تھا وہی پتّے ہوا دینے لگے

All my friends had told me not to be hopeful about there ever being any changes in the way this country runs. Being the optimist I am, I chose to not lose hope ... a hope that was bolstered further by one particularly important person in our politics, who had expressed over several mail exchanges that "this time it will be very different". HaaH! 

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

Sunday Update: Dawn Metropolitan carried this piece today. Thanks a million, Bina.

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.

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.

The Twain Meet

Waiting for Professor Aslam Farrukhi to show up for what became, in his delightful retelling, a grand - almost visual - tour of Karachi, 1947, I was fortunate to be to be at the same table as Yusufi Sahab, who, with just 4 books pubished, is arguably the finest writer of Urdu prose today. 

Apologizing for a really pita hua question, I asked him whom he read and was influenced by. I am not sure what name[s] I expected ... but without a moment's pause he surprised me by saying "Mark Twain", which - in retrospect - doesn't seem so odd. He also went on (with almost childish awe) to describe his recent visit to Twain's hometown and the house he lived in.

I hope that T2F will, one day, be honoured by an evening of Yusufi Sahab's readings. How we'll accommodate the hundreds that will turn up, I don't know. Guess that's reason enough to increase the space, Sab ;-)

As a possible result of our colonization, older readers in this part of the world were traditionally more familiar with writers from Britain, as compared to those from the USA, a legacy they passed on via textbooks and home libraries to their young. Over the years, the one good thing to emerge from the Americanization of Everything, is that we have all become familiar with several new and powerful authors from the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, one has to look really hard for good British, non-desi authors in our bookshops!

However, Samuel Longhorn Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is still not as commonly read in this part of the world as he should be. Here's a piece by him that is as relevant today (and to us) as when it was first published as part of a short story.

O Lord, Our Father

by Mark Twain

O Lord, our father, 

Our young patriots, idols of our hearts, 

Go forth to battle - be Thou near them! 

With them, in spirit, we also go forth 

From the sweet peace of our beloved firesides

To smite the foe.

O Lord, our God, 

Help us to tear their soldiers 

To bloody shreds with our shells; 

Help us to cover their smiling fields 

With the pale forms of their patriot dead;

Help us to drown the thunder of the guns

With the shrieks of their wounded, 

Writhing in pain.

Help us to lay waste their humble homes 

With a hurricane of fire; 

Help us to wring the hearts of their 

Unoffending widows with unavailing grief;

Help us to turn them out roofless 

With their little children to wander unfriended

The wastes of their desolated land 

In rags and hunger and thirst, 

Sports of the sun flames of summer 

And the icy winds of winter, 

Burdened in spirit, worn with travail, 

Imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, 

Blast their hopes, 

Blight their lives, 

Protract their bitter pilgrimage, 

Make heavy their steps, 

Water their way with their tears, 

Stain the white snow with the blood 

Of their wounded feet!

We ask it in the spirit of love - 

Of Him who is the source of love, 

And Who is the ever-faithful 

Refuge and Friend of all that are sore beset

And seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen!

Biting Apple Back

The Apple-Microsoft wars are, now, nothing but infotainment ... or, at least until very recently, were just that. They helped sell magazines (Steve Jobs had only to sneeze to be on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Fortune, even The Maori Tribal News!), newspapers, books, TV spots. Even a movie or two. (Watch out for the September Screenings at T2F!) Let's face it: how could there be a real fight among a 2% market-share holder and someone that, once, all but held the remaining? (Yes, there were other OSs around, too, guys, like the OS2 ... just like there are Linux and others today).

Some, of course, found in this unequal battle the symbolism of David slaying Goliath ... an image that Apple's 1984 SuperBowl Ad (Thank you, Lee Clow!) planted by equating IBM with Big Brother. Others continue to see it as the battle of two young hippie kids in a garage taking on a big corporation despite the fact that Apple, itself, has become one. No surprise there, for - in any battle, large or small - you eventually become what your enemy is.

The "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads were satirical, hilarious, even lovable. OK ... that's how most Mac lovers felt. To many, and not PC users alone, they were 'rude'. But that's a matter of taste, I guess. I love irreverence and black comedy, grew up on sick jokes, chuckled at the macabre cartoons of the totally brilliant Gahan Wilson and still rotfl (admittedly with an occasional wince) at the grotesqueness of JoeCartoon.

Did I say 'were'? Once I used to download every one of them as soon as they aired. I admired the fact that they didn't resort to outright lies ... but then why would they? One could never run out of material while poking fun at the real flaws in Windoze. Lately, though, I don't even click to view most of them with anything remotely resembling my past urgency. In fact, I am sure I've missed watching many. No, they haven't lost on quality, or humour, judging by those I have peeked at ... but, in terms of quantity, there have been just far too many of them! Why didn't anyone at Apple say "Enuff already!" ... ? (Of course, those who know Steve Jobs know why.)

"All is fair in Love and War" goes the cliche ... and Business, now, is War! So the Apple ads got noisier and noisier and more and more aggressive and while Bill Gates poohpoohed and chastised them for their attitude and Microsoft turned up its collective nose at them, the strategy made waves. The brilliantly simple iPods and the simply brilliant much-in-demand iPhones (13000 orders per second in the UK alone today!), working in tandem with these ads in a 3-pronged attack, have helped Apple's market share grow beyond the industry norm.

[Click image to enlarge]

Finally, the company I love to hate for its awful OS and bloatware (but thank, genuinely, for having made computing accessible to millions) has taken notice.

As a lover of humour, a keen follower of the art and science of Advertising, someone who spends a lot of time with technology ... and a dedicated Mac user (until something better for my way of life comes along), I am excitedly looking forward to this counter-campaign. Let's hope it's as funny as the early Mac/PC ads were.

Let the games begin ...

An unforgettable hour

Events at The Second Floor have featured many well-known and some not-so-well-known but exciting personalities. However, some very out-of-the-ordinary people drop in for coffee and conversation on non-event days, too. Ardeshir Cowasjee, Tina Sani, Asif Farrukhi, Attiya Dawood, Sheema Kermani, along with several popular young musicians, writers and artists are frequent visitors. Seated at other tables, the many students who gather here to prepare for their exams and take advantage of the air-conditioning and free wi-fi, get a surprise opportunity to interact more closely with such luminaries than they could at large gatherings.

Yesterday, however, was a really unforgettable treat for me when Asif Farrukhi turned up with Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi Sahab and Zehra (Nigah) Apa for an hour-long chat over coffee.

My association with the latter (Zehra Apa, not Coffee!) goes way back to my childhood when she was a teenager. This young girl had just exploded into the universe of Mushaeraas, with her scintillating ghazals, coupled with a tarannüm that became the talk of the town. "She has upset many poets who, at her age, used to get their ustaads to write for them ... and especially those who still do", said my father once, naming 2 poets as examples. But I shall disappoint you and refrain from such gossip ...

Zehra Apa has promised not one, but two sessions at T2F ... so, if you have not yet subscribed to its mailing list, the time to do it is now! The first - scheduled for the 18th of June - will focus upon her own works and life. For many it may well be the first experience to enjoy her delightful retelling of anecdotes. The second - at a date to be announced later, when she returns from her trip abroad - will have her reading and reciting her favourite pieces of Urdu prose and poetry, paying homage to works of others - including her contemporaries - something she does with a style all her own. Anyone who has heard her recite Faiz Sahab's Heart Attack on my Aaj Kay Naam CD-ROM, or her stunning unforgettable rendition of Nasir Kazmi's poignant '... kidhar say aaya kidhar gayaa voh', recited to a thoughtful sitar accompaniment by Ustad Kabir Khan  - a far cry from the mauling of recitations by other similar efforts - will vouch for the fact that these examples remain unsurpassed.

Yesterday's hour was spent with Asif, Sabeen and I in guffaws as we heard stories about Saqi Farooqui, Jaun Elia and others and enjoyed the barbed wit of arguably the greatest satirist Urdu prose has ever had. Here's a page of timeless prose from Aabé Güm describing Pakistan's politics. Penned years ago (and sent to me only last week by fellow sea-farer, ANL, from the UAE), this could well have been written today.

While discussing people who 'read' well, the conversation moved to examples of great readers (Gielgud, Guinness, Burton). When I pitched in with my criticism of someone who, generally a brilliant and respected performer, often imbues pieces with unnecessary drama, Yusufi sahab agreed and added: Achchha pa∂hnay kay liyay laazmi hae keh mazmoon iss tarah pa∂ha jaae jaesay müsalmaan Qurãn pa∂htay haeñ ... yaani baghaer samjhay! ("Good reading requires one to recite texts, like Muslims recite the Qurãn: Without understanding!").

Let me end by sharing one anecdote about Jaun Elia that was new for the 3 of us in the 'audience' and embodied that unique man completely (requiring no embellishment on the part of either Zehra Apa or Yusufi Sahab). Sorry about not translating the punch-line ... it just would not work in anything but Urdu:

At the airport, Jaun sahab raised his little finger and excused himself, promising to return in 2 minutes. When he arrived, more than 15 minutes later, a worried friend asked him if all was well and what the cause of the delay was. "Bhai maeñ do minat mayñ aa jaata, laykin vahaañ Urdu Qadamchah daykha to ekhlaaqan küchh dayr aur baeth gayaa", replied the inimitable Jaun.

Looking Back / Looking Ahead

Prof. Niaz Zaman (of Dhaka) and the multifaceted Asif Farrukhi (of Karachi) have jointly edited Fault Lines, a book of excellent short stories centred around 1971. Many of these stories were translated from Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu into English for this publication from Bangladesh, now available at T2F courtesy OUP.

Along with respected Urdu writer Intizar Husain - flown in from Lahore by T2F to attend the launch of the book in Pakistan and a later evening to be devoted to his writings, alone - both Editors, whose own stories also appear in the collection, were present on the evening of the 11th May for an event that was the first of a series of happenings to celebrate T2F's birthday. 

Reading Fault Lines was not easy for me, partly because it brought back so much to mind. Actually, the very first time I opened it to a page at random, I was confronted by a few lines that made me put the book down, numbed.

"Baby, there's blood on your finger. Did you hurt yourself?"

"No ... I did not hurt myself", the little girl says.

"Okay, but let me wash it away."

"NO! I won't let you wash it! It's my mother's blood."

It took me a few days to muster enough courage to start reading it again. And those opening lines from Masood Ashar's Versions of Truth still haunt me.

While Bangladeshi writing is full of references, in works of fact and fiction, to those horrible days Pakistani prose has been very skimpy on the subject - with the occasional story sometimes being treated allegorically (e.g., Forklift 352 by Asad Mohammad Khan - included in this book and read out in the original Urdu by him at the launch). Admittedly, references in poetry from Faiz, Jalib, Faraz and others have been more direct.

The question that is often asked - and was brought up again that evening - is how/why did people in 'West' Pakistan "let it happen" and "not raise a voice". The stock answer has been "We did not know..." (an answer that was also partly supported by Shuja Nawaz during my interview of him about his intriguing book, more about which later in this post). So, Muneeza Shamsie's statement "We knew - and said so to others. But nobody wanted to hear..." came as a twist that led to numerous discussions within smaller groups after the event. (One of many interesting discussions on 1971 by today's youth has been also triggered through Jamash's coverage of the launch.)

There were, as was to be expected, conflicting views. While most of the audience generally felt that the Army had been brutal, there were still a few - including a conscientious objector from the armed forces who had refused to fight and returned to 'West' Pakistan - who believed that events before the 'army action' (what a mild euphemism for a bloody genocide!) had reached a pinnacle with the merciless killings of Biharis (someone suggesting a figure of ten thousand in a single incident). It was this, they held, that had resulted in the violent (though regrettable) reaction of the Army. Khalid Ahmad, of stage and TV fame, was not willing to buy this and countered with an argument: If the lives of Biharis were so important, why has Pakistan not ever considered accepting their repatriation? The reasons, he felt, were entirely different and pre-planned. This view was partially reinforced when Prof. Niaz - a Punjabi who lives in Dhaka with her Bengali husband and, thus, with access to the thinking of both sides - said that contacts in the army had told her, well before that tragic March, that war was on the cards and preparation were in full swing.

•

Will the truth ever be known? The question falsely assumes that there is one single truth. There are, always, several truths - and glimpses of them are found in books safely labeled as Fiction. Truths are rarely, if ever, found in History, which, as Will Durant (and who can be considered more qualified to make a statement on the subject?) says, is 9/10th conjecture and 1/10th bias.

•

Having very close contacts in the army is one of the advantages that Shuja Nawaz holds over many others. His easy access to the military top brass adds dimensions to his research generally not found in other analyses.

A seasoned journalist and member of several Think Tanks in the USA, where he lives, Shuja Nawaz has recently authored Crossed Swords — Pakistan, its Army and the Wars Within, a book that is making waves everywhere even before the launch. Internationally, leading publications are showing exceptional interest in talking to him and in reprinting extracts from the book. A big launch is scheduled in Delhi soon. In Pakistan, the media is battling for time with him to conduct one-to-one interviews during the 2 days he is in Karachi.

OUP is holding a large launch on the 15th - which is also T2F's birthday and where we hope you'll join us on one or more of the sessions scheduled - but, for a more intimate (albeit brief) conversation with Shuja, you can come to T2F on the 16th. If you buy a copy of the book at T2F you will also get a free Audio CD of an interview I conducted with him over Skype.

I am not usually interested in reading books about the Army but, I admit, I couldn't put this one down. The breadth of its scope is matched by its depth - a rare occurrence, indeed. To younger readers I would certainly recommend it strongly since it spans the entire history of the country and is filled with 'inner' anecdotes. You can hear two clips from the interview here: One deals with the MQM and General Asif Nawaz (Shuja's brother, whose controversial death - or was it murder? - is also dealt with in the book). The other shows his current state of optimism.

Excerpts from my interview on other topics, including Kargil, can be heard on the OUP website. Such additions make the book much more interesting than the drab text books that turn Pakistan Studies into an almost detestable subject for many.

On a related note, Shuja Nawaz has been following the dynamic blogging community in Pakistan and has expressed a desire to meet some of its members during his visit. So, fellow Karachi bloggers, do come! 16th / 7 PM. Be on time ... he only has an hour in his very hectic schedule.

Absolut Joy!

You deserve a really big round of

SABEEN

§

Also, a big

THANK YOU

to

EVERYONE

who helped

make it happen.

A great leap forward

When my daughter, Ragni, screened her very first short film (Bindiya Chamkay Gee) - during one of T2F's Cinema for Change sessions - the star of the documentary was also the star of the evening, answering questions and countering comments (some rather accusatory) with a confidence that many had not expected. But then they had never met a Hij∂a like Bindiya!


Among the post-event post-Q&A discussions that followed within small groups (and the place was buzzing) there was one recurring thought: Given the scale, number, and variety of problems developing countries face, it was a wild fantasy for Bindiya or her supporters to imagine that the difficulties encountered by such a small subset of the population would even be on the radar of the governments of any of the countries in the majority world (to use Shahidul Alam's term of choice). Some felt that the vote-bank was not large enough for any politician to try and woo. Others, that any decent politician (yes, it is possible, though admittedly rare) who truly wished to support such a cause would be mocked so much that he would lose his general credibility.

It was a joy, then, to see this news item from our 'neighbouring country' (a euphemism that our state media uses for India, lest the invocation of the actual name result in that evil genie materialising and devouring us).

DISCRIMINATED AGAINST and forced to live in secluded communities, India’s hijras have always had to fight for basic entitlements. Two weeks ago, however, a major victory was achieved when Tamil Nadu added a third gender to ration cards. Hijras may now enter a ‘T’ (for transgender) in place of a ‘M’ or ‘F’ on ration cards. The move makes Tamil Nadu the first Indian state to officially recognise its hijra citizens.

Incidentally, the article is by Morgan Harrington, who was at Hampshire College with Ragni. Read the whole story

John Shelby Spong Re-Visited

I have frequently (including very recently) circulated, among friends, sections from the writings of Bishop Spong whom I hold in extremely high regard not only for the lucidity of his writing, but also for his analytical skills, sincerity, courage of conviction, and genuine compassion.

His bestselling "Jesus for the Non-Religious" requires some basic familiarity with The Bible. Its Audible edition has found a permanent space on my iPod along with Dawkins's "The God Delusion". While one would be inclined to think that a Bishop and an Atheist would make for odd neighbours, even in an iPod, read what Spong once had to say about Dawkins:

I think Professor Dawkins is both brilliant and an incredible communicator. The definition of God that he rejects is the same one I reject. The difference being that he thinks the God he rejects is the western God of Christianity and I believe that deity is a distortion of who and what God is. The Christian Church has made such incredulous claims about who God is and who God hates and how God acts that it is always on the defensive when new learning that challenges old definitions appears.

Traditional Christianity has been buffeted by the insights of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud and many others. They have destroyed the credibility of much of our God talk. Richard Dawkins points that out in powerful ways, feeding his conclusion that God is a harmful delusion that ought to be dismissed. I agree that God is in fact a delusion and ought to be dismissed. We disagree on the question of whether that God is the God encountered in Jesus of Nazareth or a gross distortion. I believe it is a distortion.

I met Richard Dawkins some years ago when I gave a lecture at New College, Oxford. I had just that day read his incisive book The Selfish Gene in the Bodleian Library at Oxford so I was pleased to find myself seated next to him at the High Table for dinner.

From among Spong's many shorter pieces, the following paragraphs taken from On Faith (a wonderful Newsweek / Washington Post series) probably explain his amazing qualities and convictions best.

Obsessed with Sex, not Morality

This nation has a strange fetish with sexual sins. The press obsessed on President Clinton’s tawdry sexual behavior, but seems to regard the Bush administration’s distortion of truth about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify its military adventure in that land to be of lesser significance. Even the intelligence report on Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons reveals that this administration was caught once again in what can only be called deliberate acts of misinformation. President Clinton’s actions, distasteful as they were, did not cost the lives of some 4,000 American military personnel and thousands of innocent Iraqis. Yet the Congress wasted time and money in impeachment procedures on the Lewinsky affair. The far greater, but not sexual, nature of this administration’s crimes has not had a similar response.

We live in a time of changing sexual standards. Premarital sex is almost a universal practice in the developed world against which an “abstinence campaign” is laughably ineffective. The reasons for this are not that we have become an immoral generation, as ecclesiastical leaders like to presume. Rather, it is caused by the fact that we have created a 10-to-15-year gap between puberty and marriage. That is not a reality that contemporary moralists seem to notice. Better health practices have lowered the age of puberty in girls, while the opening of the doors to higher education and thus for career opportunities for young women has postponed the age of marriage to new and more mature age levels. In the Middle Ages when life expectancy was much shorter, females tended to marry within 12 to 18 months of puberty. Today marriage in the late twenties for young women is commonplace. In the past the double standard that governed sexual activity meant that the male was not expected to be chaste until his marriage. Today, not only has that double standard disappeared, but so has the rigid chaperone system we once employed to protect the virginity of upper class females.

Is sex outside of marriage a sin? That is the way religious people still pose the issue, but that question does not address reality. As a pastor I have confronted issues where sex inside marriage was sinful. I have known rape to occur inside marriage. I have seen sex inside marriage used as a weapon in marital disputes. It is not marriage that makes sex holy and good; it is the quality of the relationship. So before answering that question we need to face these facts. Only then can we move on to the question at hand.

Are young people who live together prior to marriage sinful? If they love each other, if they are committed to that relationship and if their life together makes both of them more whole and more deeply human, then I do not think so. If they are merely using each other, then they have turned that relationship into an act of personal diminishment. A relationship that diminishes one or the other of the partners can never be called holy.

I have know post-married people, either divorced or widowed, who have formed bonded and sexually active relationships, some times in old age that are both beautiful and life-giving, though neither person ever planned to get married. I have known gay and lesbian couples whose fidelity to each other is wonderful to behold, but who are told by church and state alike that there is something defective and even evil about their relationships. I find that deeply prejudiced, life-denying and simply wrong [...] The issue is not about sex, either inside or outside marriage, it is about the quality of the relationship [...]

It is God’s business, not the state’s or the church’s, to determine whether any act is forgivable or not. Private morality does not seem to me to be the state’s business unless it compromises the public welfare. The sexual debates that go on in the public arena are to me little more than diversionary attempts to keep the public attention away from the great moral issues of our day such as war and peace, the corruption and exploitation that takes place in business, the environmental degradation that occurs in the name of the bottom line and the manipulation of the market place for private greed. Until the state and church pay attention to these moral issues, their credibility on matters of sexual ethics will have little about it that is worthy of much attention.

Vaah!

--------------

NOTE 1: I had blogged about him earlier, too, and received some flak offline and via email for daring to suggest that we need Muslim Clerics (see note below) with similar skills of analysis and communication. Around the same time, several anti-Spong pieces by Muslims also appeared on the 'Net, egged on particularly because of an NPR program in which he was praised by Irshad Manji, an almost certain way to gain unpopularity among the Ummah.

NOTE 2: While not clerics, two scholars do offer cool and clear views that, in general, differ from the views proffered my most hardliners (such as Dr Israr Ahmad) and many accepted historians. One is Dr. Ghamdi - now often seen on TV and the subject of fatvaas, hatemail and threats. The other, the lesser-known Professor Ziauddin Kirmani, whose book ("The Last Messenger with a Lasting Message"), has now been reprinted and is available at T2F. For several people, this rather unconventional study has been a source of great inspiration, while annoying many others for what Kirmani sahab referred to as "the clearing of cobwebs" around Islamic History. (Another Zia - the General - wanted to present him the Seerat of the Year Award, provided he would alter/delete certain parts but he refused to compromise his years of research.)

International Women's Day @ T2F

From 2 PM to midnight, T2F had loads of acivities, long and short, with intervals for coffee and change of audience (many were rushing between the numerous other events marking the day in the city).

The afternoon started with the screening of the 2001 telefilm, When Billie Beat Bobby. A turning point in the business side of tennis and a delightful strike for feminism, the match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was termed The Battle of the Sexes.

The film is often repeated on TV channels and is well worth watching, if you have not seen it already. Billie is played by Holly Hunter, whom many will recall from her Oscar-winning performance in The Piano and also for her role, the same year, in The Firm.

The next session, Sex Sells, was well-attended and attracted many media & advertising personalities and feminists (some were all three!) discussing the exploitation and stereo-typing of women in ads. A short excerpt from Jean Kilbourne's Killing Me Softly 3 (short clips from which can be seen on YouTube) was followed by a few local tv commercials. Fair & Lovely ads seemed to be the most reviled by those present, almost everyone finding the 'fairness meter' a really obnoxious idea. On the other hand, senior ad execs told us that the product was the largest selling one. Not only did it respond to the inner desires of the majority of our females - as discovered by various focus groups - it's biggest buyers are those not seen recently, by many, as being Fair or Lovely: The Pakistan Army! No, no, these guys are not cross-dressers or make-up freaks. The product, apparently, is also an effective sun-block cream.

The session covered many aspects of the MNC/Advertising/Media approach as a whole, rather than focus just on the women's issues, since the latter is part of a greater malaise.

(For more on how ads use 'sex associations', watch a couple of Psychology with Sandy segments on the subject. Also, read this blog entry from South India for other misappropriate elements, such as - in this case - subtle elements of racism, in ads by even the most powerful vendors.)

War Against Rape - one of the most commendable NGOs in Karachi, with chapters in other cities - held a session, next, to introduce its work. What made this session powerful and different from the usual presentations was the presence of Medical and Legal experts discussing the difficulties in supporting the victims. We learnt of the numerous hurdles, irregularities, and prejudices that make justice or help near impossible. The in-house lawyer at WAR has received death-threats as well as being told that she would soon face the same fate her client-victim had to undergo.

The audience sat spellbound, some moved beyond tears, while listening to a brave poor couple who had come to share with us the difficulties they have encountered since the rape of their 8-year old daughter two years ago and the child's continuing ordeal. As expected, the various authorities, bribed by the rapist's side, have made the case proceedings difficult. Far worse, the neighbours have pushed the family out of the area because they are ashamed by the victim's presence! The fact that the rapist lived in their neighbourhood has not been a source of anger or shame. The couple's parents and other members of the family have also cut off ties with them as they feel that the family name has been brought to shame by their reporting the case to the police and making it public. How does one change such mindsets? Where does one begin? How does one tackle the combined effects of feudalism, superstition, false sense of honour and shame, corruption, poverty, unbelievably stupid laws and rules, male-bonding and chauvinism - all of which are at work in such instances?

The mother of the child has suffered a heart attack and minor attacks of paralysis, depleting all the funds that the family had gathered. Her husband has lost his job - the employers held that they were unable to deal with his frequent leave-taking to attend courts. He has been living on an occasional day-wage stint and, mentally, becoming less able by the day to cope with this state. He is hoping to collect the grand sum of Rs 30,000 as a down-payment for an auto-rickshaw that he can use to earn. He knows that that path, too, will be paved with extortion money, police corruption and more, but says he has no other choices.

Next: Sheema Kermani - activist, feminist, dancer, actor - presented a very brief video and then joined two members of her theatrical team in presenting the enjoyable Voh Naak Say Boltay Haeñ, a short one-act play.

Wow!

The next session was a 10-minute reading by Nuzhat. She chose Bayvah - a story about widowhood - written by my father in the late 1920s. While his story is set among a Hindu home, where the traditional attitudes about widowhood were extraordinarly bad, the fact is that a number of Muslims in India, perhaps because of their Hindu ancestry, share almost the same negative views, thankfully stopping short of suttee - the cruel practice of burning widows at the husband's funeral pyre, of which a recent example can be seen in Anand Patwardhan's superb must-see documentary, Father, Son & Holy War.

The story was a great preamble to the screening of Shaali by its author - well-known feminist poet Attiya Dawood.  The story of a tragic child marriage, sadly still a common practice in our villages, had everyone in tears at the end. The young Director, who has treated the subject with great sensitivity, was there to talk about how moved he was during the making and had often wept. The irrepressible little star of the film whose appearance in each scene won the audience's heart afresh, is Attiya and Abro's daughter, Suhaee. She was there, too, and deserved the thunderous applause she received. The tele-film is part of a Hum TV series, Aseer Shahzadi, based on stories by Attiya on women's issues.

The session was followed by a long break, during which, at the request of some audience members, Nuzhat read two of Kishwar Naheed's poems from Beyond Belief - ASR's excellent bi-lingual (Urdu, with English translations) anthology of feminist poetry. (C'mon, ASR, we are waiting for reprints ... but please, please, please skip the crazy Urdu formatting, it's a strain to read.)

After the break the final session of the evening ended on a celebratory note with a gentle musical performance that seemed apt after a day filled with so much. Tp, you have a lovely voice! Hope to keep having you back at T2F often!

----------------------------------

Slightly unrelated footnote: An organization called Ladies Fund held an event at Karachi's Mohatta Palace to award some women for their diverse contributions to society. This is to congratulate the three I know well: Tehrik-e-Niswan's Sheema Kermani, School of Leadership's Shireen Naqvi (who, to celebrate, brought me freshly baked bread from Bakerei, an initiative for the deaf and dumb that she has helped set up in Karachi), and PeaceNiche/T2F's very own Sabeen Mahmud :-)

Voting: A Right or A Duty?

"There is no Compulsion in Religion", says the Qur'an ... so should there be one in Voting?

One reason why I have waited until the end of the Election Day to write this is that the responses, if any, will hopefully not be emotionally charged after the event. Another is that the matter has been already discussed in several other fora, including the popular ATP.

Well, I did not vote!

There. I've said it. And with no idiots screaming at me without even listening to my views. (Yes, I do have a point of view!). As I write down my thoughts on the subject, I am aware that some are probably a little more than loud-thinking. A few are well-formed; others continue to hang before me as questions that, perhaps, some of you will help me answer. So, please do comment. A request: Don't just tell me I am wrong, tell me why and where.

The first problem I faced when trying to make up my mind about voting or not was to understand why I was voting. I mean it's not an act in itself that has to be done (unlike defecating) but what the process leads to, na?

So I needed to analyse what the criteria would be for my giving my vote to someone, if I were to cast it at all. It was obvious that it was not the person whose picture appeared on the posters: after all in the case of some of the images on the banners, they were not even of the people who were standing ... for example, MQM's Altaf Hussain ... or PPP's Benazir ... or PML(N)'s Nawaz Sharif).

This meant that I would eventually be casting my vote for the symbol that was assigned to a party or to an independent candidate. Naturally it did not depend upon whether I liked the Icon, itself, but what the party stood for. In other words, I needed to check out their manisfestos. Never mind whether they stood by these in practice; that's another track. At least I wasn't going to vote for someone whose very vision of Pakistan or the shrinking world was the antithesis of mine! So the manifestos, specially in some of the key areas - and on issues important to me - had to be clearly different among the parties.

(When buying a house, one tries to choose the one that most closely meets one's needs ... which is not the same as 'choosing the lesser of the evils', a really stupid idea that seems to have been promoted by idiots! You can alter the house to some extent, later, but what do you do to the corrupt political rep you've placed in power? To use another analogy, when you marry, do you choose a person because s/he is the lesser evil or the best possible match? Is there no difference?)

The manifestos (not all were easily available or, when found, even readable) had to be abandoned for another reason: They were being abandoned by the parties themselves! While coalitions between parties that think somewhat alike are fairly normal in politics, to see almost all the parties align themselves with any and everyone is nothing if not making a mockery of the voters. The PPP strikes a deal with PML(N) nationwide, but supports a PML(Q) candidate in Karachi. PML(N) - despite the ads put into newspapers today by PML(Q)'s Dirty Tricks Department - has decided to go with PPP, but how far? Asif Z has shown his willingness to work with Musharraf (who has been pointed more than one PPP finger at for possible complicity in Benazir's murder) and is anathema to Nawaz and company.

Even more confusing was the course MQM took: Having conveyed the impression, only a couple of days earlier, that they could be allied to the PPP - that's how the press interpreted the MQM statement that it could strike a deal with any secular party - chose to team up with Maulana Fazl-or-Rahman and his obviously secularly named Jamiaté Ulemaé Islam. So whose manifesto would I be voting for, regardless of which candidate I chose? A secular, working, middle class party or a Taleban-supporting mulla and his insatiable greed?

(Somewhere along the line my mind wandered off and I began wondering how supporters of Jamaaté Islami and Tehreeké Insaaf were supposed to perform their duty to vote, if their parties were boycotting the elections. And, if it is the citizens' duty to vote, shouldn't - by extension - boycotting the election also be considered dereliction of duty by a party?)

The biggest source of grief to me is seeing the ease with which the term "free and fair elections' has become acceptable to people. The election of a candidate, to me, implies a whole process and not just the transaction that takes place on the Election Day in a booth. As Muneer Malik explained clearly to his T2F audience, just yesterday, this involves the right people in positions of relevance (EC and other related institutions), an unbiased government, fair acceptance/rejection of candidates, easy and non-coercive access to voting, correct transmission of untampered ballot-boxes to the counting team, an honest count and announcement of results, and a just response to any objections that opponents may raise. If any of these processes are disrupted by someone with vested interests, it would be done with the intent of placing soeone else in the victor's seat than the person the voters had chosen. So, if the process is not 'free and fair', how is it an 'election', at all, and not a 'selection'?

An observation: Contrary to a view that seems to be popular among many, I believe that Elections are not the pre-cursor to Democracy. Elections have been held here before, and elsewhere, by Dictators and Despots ... with no sign of resulting Democracy except for a sham. It is Democracy that creates an environment which, in turn, makes Elections the method by which to place people's representatives at the helm of affairs.

Finally, I come back to the aspect of Voting being a Duty (Farz). Even assuming it is, there's something else to consider: Do the choices (of candidates) being offered really provide you the opportunity to make a satisfactory and sensible decision? Think: If you had to choose a travel companion and all you had to choose between were a murderer and a dacoit, would you not consider postponing the trip?

When duties are assigned, they are not unconditional. They are expected to be performed only if the conditions necessary for their performance are present ... or they can be safely ignored. After all, this applies even to duties assigned in the Qur'an: Surah 5 Ayat 6, for example, assigns Muslims the 'duty' of washing their 'hands' before prayers. Surely a man without arms (or with just one hand) would not be shunning his duties in not following it to the letter. 

Hmmm.

"There is no Compulsion in Religion", says the Qur'an ... so should there be one in Voting?

The Jalib Session at T2F

The Habib Jalib evening at T2F was not quite what I'd expected it to be. No, it wasn't bad. Everyone else seems to have enjoyed it a lot, with many people discovering him anew and suddenly wanting to get hold of ATJ (to use Adil Najam's tarkeeb).

The kulliyaat has been ordered by some, and everyone wants a CD or two with his recitations (the CDs will be available at T2F after Eed, folks!) ... Surprisingly, many have also asked for a copy of the video that was shown that evening.

From my point of view there were two problems: I felt a bit unsatiated at the end - since very little was really said about him that we did not all know: He was honest. He was committed. He recited well. He had a lovely voice. The few anecdotes that were recounted were the best part and provided greater insight into the man who was - though in a very different manner - the avaamiest poet after Nazeer Akbarabaadi.

The crowd, too, was not as large as it usually is at such events - but that's because NAPA (Is the 'K' silent?) was staging a play, there were two political meetings the same evening, and APMC was screening Dilli-based Yusuf Saeed's Khayal Darpan --- a well-made documentary on Pakistan's Classical Music performers.

I wish a representative of WAF had been there to talk about his strong and encouraging presence at the protests in Lahore during the dark Zia days.

Despite the fact that everyone wanted a copy, it was the video really put me off. The TV channel 'edit' that the co-host, Mujahid Barelvi, had brought along must be among the worst examples of editing I have seen lately. The DVD contained all the broadcast material (badvertisements and that overwhelming Mujahid bit that appears far too frequently in his Doosra Pehlu) - with (aaaargh!) the permissions to FF or REW removed. The main documentary shows extracts from Faris Kermani's documentary, made for BBC's Channel 4 TV. Aitzaz Ahsan and Tariq Ali are among those who appear in it. (I have seen the Faris film, before it was hacked into this gruesome shape. Titled 'Habib Jalib - Poetry of Defiance', it is well worth seeing and appears in various net searches.)

To be fair, the 'mauled' video does feature a sprinkling of choice Jalib pieces recorded at a London gathering, with Zehra [Nigah] Apa presiding. Reciting to a theatre-style seated audience was not Jalib's style. It seemed too formal and incongruous to those of us who have heard him at his best when he recited at the Karachi Press Club, or at mushaeraas and protests that had thousands of attendees, many only coming to the event because he was going to be there.

One of my favourite pieces, Musheer, is included in the video - but I much prefer his very first recitation of it at a mushaaerah held in remembrance of poet Nazar Hyderabadi, with Faiz sahab presiding, while Ayub Khan was lording over Pakistan. My recording, made at that event - on a small portable spool recorder (remember those?) - may not be as good in quality as the professionally recorded version in London, but it does capture the electric atmosphere that Jalib always created with his presence. Incidently, the musheer in question is none other than Ayub's adviser (and author of our National Anthem), poet Hafeez Jalandhari - a loathsome man - who had threatened to 'report' Jalib to the authorities if he did not stop his critical writings against that Dictator-President.

The session ended with Shaeri's answer to Zakir Naik - Wajid Jawad, blogger Jamash (left), and myself reciting selections.

Come March 2008 I will organize another event around Habib Jalib's death anniversary at T2F. If any of you knew him well and can be present to share some insights and stories (or even email them to me - with a short audio/video bit, if possible - it'd be just great!).

Meanwhile, if you wish to hear another great Jalib piece - one that is probably the nazm he was most asked to recite - visit an earlier post of mine where I have begun to add the promised links for some of the poets mentioned in it.

Ghalib: Still creating controversy :-)

The two sessions on Ghalib at T2F had gone delightfully well. A true celebration of that genius, with anecdotes, humour, wit, and song that evoked the spirit of Mirza sahab perfectly. EGO, the boutique on ZamZama (a shopping area in Karachi), decided to join in the fun and commemorate the events with a new tee-shirt, displayed on a mannequin placed just after the entrance. The figure looked kinda irreverently funny, in a white underwear and turquoise tee.

All went well until a local TV channel decided to shoot a talk show series there. After the first couple of episodes were shot, I was surprised to walk into another day of shooting and see a pair of trousers being put on the mannequin. I thought they were just trying to be funny but was taken aback when I was told that their censor-advisor had said they could be contravening some broadcasting code by showing a man in just an underwear. Man? He's an effing 'Manny', yaar. What's the matter with everyone in this country?

"Hello, world. Er-r ... we're an enlightened and moderate people who, er-r, just happened to get turned on by inanimate plastic figures." Guess if Alan Abel had perpetrated his hoax in Pakistan, he'd have gotten a huge following.

For those who haven't seen the tee, up close, here's what it says (and you can enlarge the thing to a poster-print, if you click on the image):

The tee-shirt passed muster with all who attended the two sessions - and that means a total of over 150 people, among them Ghalib aficionados and lovers, old and young. I'd say the crowd was evenly spread, age-wise, and included - at the extreme ends - a couple of high-school students, O-Level Math books in hand, and an 80-year old educationist who is also a Ghalib scholar.

However, last week, as I was settling my bill at the counter, a young man walked up and passed me a small neatly-folded slip of paper and rushed out, without waiting for me to read it, much less respond. I wish he'd stayed - for Sabeen's venture is all about conversation and dialogue. A point of view, however different from mine, would - therefore - have been wonderful to hear and discuss. Anyway, this is what he had written:

Now, of course, he has a right to his view ... and it is, indeed, heartening to see that his objection is to what he considers 'disrespect' for Mirza Ghalib. Nothing could be further from the minds of those of us who wear the tees, those at T2F who chose to display & sell them, and those at EGO who designed and manufactured them. The 2 sessions - I am not sure if he was among the audience on either - paid Mirza Ghalib much loving respect and made him, as later reactions from many of the younger people indicated, more accessible to many.

The word 'hippie', to this young man, probably has the connotations that the establishment of the time had managed to imbue it with: a good-for-nothing, unkempt, drop-out. Skip Stone's The Way of the Hippie offers this:

"... let’s see what defines a hippie. Some say it’s the way people dress, and behave, a lifestyle. Others classify drug users and rock 'n' roll fans or those with certain radical political views as hippies. The dictionary defines a hippie as one who doesn’t conform to society’s standards and advocates a liberal attitude and lifestyle."

Ghalib was, by all reckoning, a non-conformist ... and as great an advocate of the liberal attitude as any. And so, dear young man, Mirza sahab is truly worthy of being called the original hippie (pre-dating , as he did, the 'movement' by over a century). And I - a very strong believer in the hippie philosophy, myself - am proud of having him linked to the movement that began in the 60s and continues to live - in various forms - even today.

If Ghalib were to hear of all this, he'd just smile and say:

Gar ke hae kis kis buraaee say, valay baa eeñ hamah
Zikr mayraa müjh say behtar hae keh, 'T2F' meñ hae!

Karachi - Come back!

Neruda's line echoes in our minds



Irfan Sattar's poem about October 18th says it well.




We need to reclaim our city
Join our peaceful efforts!

Are we condemned?

After my recent post, featuring MAD, and my modified MAD cover that one reader called 'eerily prophetic', I added a preview of an illutration I had also made around the same time (the link is in the Comments section of that post).

Since then a few people have asked me to produce more such modified covers. Praise feels good, but even if I wanted to repeat the act, I am not sure I am equal to it. And certainly not in the mood I am in, these days.

Meanwhile, since the requests (and some comments) came from young people, a generation or more after mine, I thought I could at least thrill them and others with an un-retouched scan of a MAD cover (soon to be displayed at T2F).

You'll need to click on the image to see it in it's full glory and necessary detail. And to be surprised. (Oh, it's large and may be slow to load. But it's worth it!)

Maybe this cover and reading another recent post of mine will convince you that George Santayana was right when he said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

When I am frustrated, I get MAD ...

From my collection, I mean. Especially one of the old copies from way back when MAD was not a magazine (it became one in 1956, my final year of school) but a good old 10¢ Comic Book. (See if you can find out what a US $ was worth in Pak Rupees then.)

MAD started at the time when that giant of delightful insanity, reponsible more than anyone else for the success of the comics industry - William M Gaines, Jr. - was in charge of Entertaining Comics, notorious for its crime and horror publications that angered many. It was believed (and especially by Gaines) that the Comics Code was aimed, underhandedly, at his publications.

Harvey Kurtzman and, later, Al Feldstein spearheaded MAD, which now boasts a 3-generation old continuing readership. Kurtzman, who - along with the underground artist, Robert Crumb - was one of my great idols, launched a lot of other very interesting and hilarious ventures after leaving MAD. These included the short-lived Help! magazine which, long before the creation of Monty Python, provided a platform for John Cleese and Terry Gilliam.

MAD had, by far, the most amazing cartoonists and illustraters of the time,among them Will Elder, Don Martin, Antonio Prohias, Dave Berg, Al Jafee, Sergio Aragonés, and Mort Drucker. If you are an illustrater or a comics fan, look them up! Primarily a drawing-based publication, MAD's writers, too, were brilliant and far ahead of anything that has existed in the USA since ... with the exception of National Lampoon & The Onion, both of which, I suspect, owe a lot to MAD.

The ultimate example of MAD writers' wit that I can give is that they managed to spoof Ogden Nash. No mean feat, as anyone who has read Nash will tell you. It's like trying to make a slapstick parody of Charlie Chaplin. I mean, what more can you do to the grandmasters of the genres?

Here - if you'll pardon the digression - are a few of examples for those who, unfortunately, missed out on Nash. His rhymes were not merely funny, they were exceedingly clever and contained side-splitting twists and modified spellings that were sure to make you roar. And his lines spoofed the very blank verse in which he wrote his poems in ways that I have rarely seen done elsewhere.

(Urdu readers: The two blank verse pieces - Billiaañ and Kharraatay -by Shafiqur Rahman are just as good, as is the two-liner on the Camel by S M Jafri. More about them, in another post, some day. I will be quoting them on the Humourous Urdu Verse evening at T2F, soon.)

Haañ ... to Nash ki baat ho rahee thee. From the stark simplicity of

A bit of talcum

Is always walcum

to the twisted complexity of

What would you do if you were up a dark alley with Caesar Borgia

And he was coming torgia...

and back, again, to the simplicity of 7 words, spread over 4 lines, in a poem titled

Breaking the Ice

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker

Nash was the king of mad versification ... and MAD spoofed him, in a poem with a wonderfully Ogdenian title:

A Poem That Doesn't Do Anything But Rhyme ... One Time!

Abraham Lincoln really backed himself into a corner for if you begin a speech with "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...",
What do you do for a sequal?

**********

Ok ... Ok ... so what has all this got to do with the my frustration at being locked indoors - as must be a zillion others trying desperately to get to where they need to be (home, workplace, emergency ward)? For those abroad and oblivious to why we are locked in, Ms Benazir Bhutto, has arrived and is now taking the [projected] 18-hour ride from the Airport to Bilawal House (usually a 30-minute route) - a ride that is fraught with dangers for her and the city. Even the president has acknowledged the danger by advising caution - after his initial request to delay her arrival was turned down.

So, as I said, umpteen lines ago, I often fight my frustrations with reading old issues of MAD. Today I went through loads of them to relish my favourite Harvey Kurtzman covers and came across one that I just had to modify! The original classic can be seen at Wikipedia's Kurtzman entry.

Here's mine (you can see a larger version if you click on it):

Coincidences

Links:
The Devil's Cup
Sabizak
•
Sabeen
The Second Floor

Update: The eCrime Bill Videos are ALL uploaded!

The proposed eCrime Bill is the subject of several blogs (including a couple of posts on this blog). It affects everyone. It needs your understanding and input.

This is the ~90 minute presentation that Lawyer Zahid Jamil made at T2F. It's been broken into under 30~minute chunks for convenience.

Part 1 - http://tinyurl.com/3ymfz3

Part 2 - http://tinyurl.com/3bde7e

Part 3 - http://tinyurl.com/2wfhbh

The brief follow-up one-to-one Q&As that cover a few specific situations are a good starting point, if you do not want to watch the longer videos right way - http://tinyurl.com/ynn753

Please circulate these links widely. Thanks.

T2F Q&A: CyberCrime Bill - Flaws and Dangers

Ok ... Until a permanent and larger space is found for all the stuff, I am running some clips on this post. Also, for those in Karachi who missed the session, the 2 hours or so of videos will be available on a CD for the nominal cost of Rs. 30 at T2F from next week. It's a bit large to post on the 'Net and breaking it into 10-min chunks (as now required by YouTube) is not a pleasant solution. However, I believe that the clips you see below will do more than enough to get you thinking and participating, since they deal with YOU!

Lawyer Zahid Jamil is seen responding to the questions in all of the videos hosted here.

If you are just a citizen who uses Computers and wants a law to deal with cybercrime you may find that you have no protection against such a law if it is misused.



* * Dentists




* Doctors




* Photographers/Bloggers




* Marketeers/Programmers




* Educators/Researchers




* ISPs (Does the Government think it means Inadvertent Service Providers?)




* IT Professionals and Companies that receive outsourced work




Everyone is going to be affected. So, spread the word. Write to Newspapers. Question this on TV Channels. Write to the Ministry. Apply all the pressure you can.

Download the 3 PDF files that are recommended reading.

Another Draconian Law In The Offing!

PLEASE DO YOUR BIT TO PUT A STOP TO THIS!

Death penalty proposed for cyber terrorism!
Leghari says e-crimes bill to be enacted soon!

Friday, August 24, 2007
ISLAMABAD: The Electronic Crimes Bill 2007 has already been approved in principle by the federal cabinet and will be enacted soon through an act or an ordinance.

Addressing a news conference here on Thursday, Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunications, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari said under the porposed legislation the FIA would probe the e-crimes.

The minister said the e-crime law would require the internet companies to maintain their traffic data for at least six months to enable the agencies to investigate cases involving data stored by them.

Illegal interception in electronic communication like e-mail of another person will get five-year imprisonment or a fine of Rs 500,000. Whoever commits the offence of cyber terrorism and causes death of any person shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life, he added.

Leghari said anyone involved in attempt to obtain confidential information of any other through electronic device like network system or router will get up to two-year imprisonment or a fine of Rs 300,000.

An imprisonment for three years will be awarded for data damage crime like illegally manipulating the financial record or other important information of an organisation.

Similarly three-year imprisonment will be awarded in case of misuse of electronic system or electronic device in which a person develops a software or hardware with trap door for manipulation.

Persons involved in unauthorised access to codes will get three-year imprisonment, the minister said.

Such misuse of encryption and using malicious code will invite imprisonment of five years, while a person involved in cyber stalking will get seven-year imprisonment and/or a fine of Rs 300,000.

Answering a question, he said the government had followed a thorough consultative process, including study of similar laws being practiced in 42 countries.

Responding to a question, Leghari said illegal use of name of political parties for issuance of press material would also be a punishable crime.

Those of you who missed the above news report may be excused for not panicking. And those who did, too, may be excused for thinking that we certainly need to prevent the upsurge in cyber crimes, so - other than the matter of one's personal opinion on Capital Punishment - the idea and concept seem ok ... Why make a fuss?

Well --- here's what one blogger has to say after the first session on the bill was held at T2F: For two hours yesterday, Barrister Zahid Jamil scared the living daylights out of everyone who showed up at T2F for the session on the E-Crime Bill 2007. We had heard rumors about this draconian Bill but it wasn’t until all the arcane legalese was presented in “normal” language, that we actually “got it”. Read the rest, too. A post on The Lootmar Blog on the subject is well worth a read.

Breakfast at Dawn had IT industry's Omniprotestant Jehan Ara and Lawyer Zahid Jamil as guests. Watch the video (which will also going to be posted on YouTube, soon)!

Think again ... and "Be Really Scared!" (which was the theme of second session held at T2F).

"Surely, CyberStalkers should be punished - they are a menace and a danger", you say. Absolutely! But don't we need to be really clear about what is CyberStalking to know what actions would be covered by the definition? Spamming, for example, is a hideous and annoying offence, and should carry a penalty - perhaps even equal to that proposed for CyberStalking, in the opinion of some. But it is NOT CyberStalking, so it cannot (and should not) be covered by that portion of the law. It requires a separate definition and a separate clause for a charge to be correctly made.

And this lack of clarity is one of the many problems with this Bill becoming a Law (and through an Ordninace, at that)! Experience and record shows that when Laws are vague, the only ones that take advantage of the loopholes are hardened criminals and the government (many would find that redundant). Honest citizens can get entrapped into a rigmarole - on grounds of someone's political opposition or personal vendetta - for long and un-affordable periods, with great personal losses, financial and emotional, that they cannot ever recuperate ... as Faisal Chohan learnt, sadly.

The definition of CyberTerrorism - for which a death penalty has been proposed - is not just vague, it's outright wrong! Shouldn't depriving a person of his life through carelessly and stupidly put-together laws be punishable, too?

Watch this space for more news and info on this bill that threatens the freedom of everyone who uses a computer or a cellphone.

More T2F evenings

The hall was packed for 3 recent sessions at T2F: Ardeshir Cowasjee, Ayesha Siddiqa, and Javid Iqbal (Retired Chief Justice and the youngest son of Allama Iqbal), whose session was preceded by a documentary called Beyond Partition.

Ardeshir's session has been covered well (like most things) on Jehan Ara's blog. And his advice to young Pakistanis ("Leave. Or suffer.") made the Indian press - quoting the Daily Times (where it made the Karachi Edition, only!) - just hours after he uttered these words.

***

Ayesha Siddiqa & the Oxford University Press, as many of you know, had trouble launching her book (Military, Inc.) in Islamabad. While no 'ban' was placed upon it, pressure from the powers that be prevented them from organizing the event at almost every place they tried. The book, for days, was sold almost under the counter by stores that carried it, for fear of offending the unnameable. T2F was unofficially told by the co-organizers at the time of the event that that there were "no guarantees" that it would not get into trouble. Often, such threats - like virus hoaxes that flood our eMail boxes - are more in the minds of the people. But, as the saying goes: "Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean they are not out to get you!"

Ms. Siddiqa, while a good conversationalist, with a very pleasant personality, had very little to add to what her study has already revealed. She certainly did not venture into providing more revelations - though she did fill in some details. Her response to many questions was that the questioner read the book first. This was by no means a cheap way to promote her book (already OUP's biggest/fastest seller to date, not counting their reference books). People seemed to constantly ask questions about parts they thought (gathered through hearsay) were in the book - while, often, the view she had expounded in it was quite the opposite of what she was being lumped with.

The session was rather limp, I thought - and not because the author was. Members of the packed audience kept asking her how we ("we the people") could stop the army swindles, what could be done to send the army back to the barracks, and more such stuff, as if writing this book had now made her the Oracle of Delphi. There were a couple of amusing energetic exchanges (with the energy generated being more Heat than Light) when certain people insisted upon being heard and the moderator, Tammy Haq, thought they were being irrelevant or delivering speeches, rather than asking questions during the Q&A.

I believe a discussion of the rumours that she and OUP had been threatened or were about to be sued would have added some fun ... (Digression: Mushtaq Yusufi says, "Pakistan is unique in that most rumours about it are true.") ... But such topics were not broached, for obvious reasons. Ardeshir, among the audience (he's a frequent T2F visitor) had his usual cynical interjections, which I enjoyed. What did come across from the session was that the most popular military personality among civvies was General Dissatisfaction.

***

Beyond Partition turned out to be a good example of a well-made garden variety documentary. It offered a collage of scenes from old and new films interspersed with interviews of Directors, including Shyam Benegal and Sabiha Sumar. Though not ground-breaking in terms of either the format or presentation, it nonetheless held the audience's attention, specially that of the rather large young shanaakht-searching group present who were not familiar with many of the movies discussed or quoted. I'd say, it was certainly worth a viewing.

Shyam Benegal's assertion near the end of the documentary that there are 3 Indias - the Geographical, the Cultural, and the National - may be true (as it would be for most large countries) ... but to state that the last-mentioned category included Pakistan and Bangladesh was, IMHO, way out of line. I would have accepted - within certain parameters - his view if he had placed the two neighbouring chips of the old block together in the second category.

The trouble is the widely-held Indian belief that the 2-Nation Theory failed after BD separated - and I come across this among a variety of people in my trips to India as well as among some Pakistanis - always seems to assume that its failure means we really were one nation. Sure, the 2-Nation Theory has many detractors and some questionable aspects accordin to them, but the formation of BD could equally well have proved that we are 3 or --- with the passage of time and the further inevitable break up of large groups of people into smaller ones --- even more nations. (Anyway, I am no one to speak of these matters since I do not accept ideas of nationhood and identity in the way they are promulgated, anyway.)

The session that followed --- and lasted well after the formal one (moderated by Mujahid Barelvi) was over --- started with Justice Javid Iqbal (JI, from now on) explaining in his still-youthful (at 81!) and passionate manner how Pakistan's current flirtation with Islamic Fundamentalism is a far cry from the view of the Muslim Reformationists (Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Dr. Allama Iqbal, to name two) who were the catalysts of the final ideas that led to Jinnah sahab's proposals. He also emphasised that the country came about because of Nehru's (and the Congress Party's) obstinacy and conspiracy, more than Jinnah's doings since Jinnah had been an apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity and would not have wanted to see India break up.

Much of what JI said, apart from the above - and the intermittent references to progressive Islam - was the stuff of books and the young members of the audience seemed less interested in it than they were in their own questions. Many were heavily critical of the people and ideas that earlier generations have held in official high esteem and never questioned. It seems that, despite our break-away from Hindu-dominated India, we have many more sacred cows here, which brings to mind Bhutto's classic quip when he trounced JI in the elections in their co-constituency in Lahore. "I have slaughtered the sacred calf", announced an exuberant ZAB.

Matters that he did not (or could not) tackle were those that questioned the vision - or the alleged lack of it - of the Founding Fathers and the inevitability of a feudal-run state when almost the entire leadership among the Muslims was beleaguered with Nawabzaadahs, Knights, Chaudharis, and Sardars. The very first comment that came from a young blogger attending the event stated that the 'leaders' had no 'connect' with the people they professed to lead and, like in Manto's famous Toba Tek Singh, many just became Pakistanis overnight in the interior of Punjab, without really knowing or understanding what Pakistan meant. Equally inevitable, it seemed to some, was the fundamentalist-leaning nature of a state created through a separation on the basis of communities that differed from each other primarily (if not solely) in religio-cultural practices. A secular Pakistan would most certainly have been a strange thing to carve out of a secular India. An activist wondered aloud whether the Hindu majority - had India been left undivided - could have really trounced or even ignored entirely a sizeable Muslim minority, given that the population of Muslims in India would have been 3 times its current figure with Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations added.

The most alarming remark that JI uttered was in response to the question that, though asked by one young person, echoed the thoughts of many: To what do we owe the mess that Pakistan is in? Without batting an eyelid, JI's odd - and totally ludicrous - retort was, "The young. Because they have strayed from the values and goals." C'mon, Sir. With apologies and reverence for your seniority, may I remind you that you have meted out Justice; You have been in a position that requires unemotional, cool, logical thinking before passing such sweeping judgements. Be willing to accept that your generation (and mine) passed little to the young in any form or shape worth keeping or being proud of. Corruption, nepotism, lawlessness, slavish boot-licking of foreign powers for personal gains, indecent politics, loot-maar, apathy, personal glorification, hypocrisy, hero-worship, martial-laws, horse-trading, continuing class wars, provincialism, the worst aspects of nationalism, sectarianism, ethnic and linguistic strife, destruction of institutions, and worse, is all they have seen while growing up. Fortunately for us (and them), there are a few people like Edhi still around (and like Akhtar Hameed Khan in the recent past) for them to understand that even one person can make things happen. This is what will keep their activism and spirits alive. These are the people whose biographies should replace those of trivial personalities in textbooks so that role models are established early.

If I see any hope, it is in the current set of 20-to-30-somethings who are sick and tired of all they have been short-changed by and who realise that setting this country right is not merely an abstract nationalist-crap-infested duty but a fight for survival for them. I have great faith in them ... and feel that the least we can do in supporting their last ditch efforts to set a new direction is to stop making it difficult, stop wrongly blaming them, and get out of their way. They have the energy, the will. They'll find a way. It's their world. Neither you nor I should have much say in it. Perhaps our role is one that the following couplet by my father explains best:

Ek hikaayat haeñ, keh iss raah say jaae nah koee,
Kyaa samajhtay ho keh kyaa haeñ meray qadmoñ ke nishaañ

Years ago I had met JI, That was soon after my CD-ROM, Faiz - Aaj Kay Naam, had been published and Hamdard U had suggested that I do one on the Allama. Though the project died with the dastardly assassination of Hakim Said, JI's recounting of the anecdotes of his father, the irreverent humour, and much else that we discussed had confirmed the fact for me that the Iqbal we knew through state propaganda was a much truncated and deformed version of the man - a strange case where the myth had actually made its hero a lesser being than he probably was.

I asked JI at his very enjoyable T2F session, in closing, how he felt about this distortion of his father's image. "Bardaasht karta hooñ aur gaaliyaañ bhi khaata hooñ" (I live with it and suffer verbal abuse for it), he said, laughing.

All in all, a wonderful evening. The debates that raged after he left will go on forever. But should the ghost of partition continue to haunt generation after generation? Do the young really want to inform their future with this past? I'd love their comments on this subject.

A T2F Events recap (as promised/threatened)

Don't blame me. YOU asked for it!



The Second Floor began its Events run with the first of its Mixed Bag series, hosting Saad Haroon's "Open Mic Night", an amalgam of standup-comedy, music, reading, music, and more music. It brought in an energetic young crowd for the most part, mainly friends and fans of Saad and the others who were performing. That's certainly more than T2F can seat. There were 90+ people at one point --- more than double its café style seating capacity --- which made the event more intimate and fun, as concerts should be. Some sat on the floor, some on hastily added chairs pulled in from neighbouring b.i.t.s., while some remained standing. A fun evening, for young and old alike, it opened with Saad's own hilariouspiece, Welcome to Dubai. He really is a brilliant performer and has a great presence. Here's the opening verse that should ensure your requesting him to perform it the next time you catch him onstage.

The crowd enjoyed every bit of the evening that featured a whole lot of young artists: Hassan Fancy, Khizer Diwan & Saad Choudhry, Maaz, Ali Alam & Miqdad Mohammad (from names list provided by Saad). Here are brief snatches from Auntie Disco Project and Humaira & Kenan, my favourites from that evening.

And then there was Bina Shah. There were doubts in some minds whether (because of the otherwise heavily music-laden evening) people would enjoy listening to a piece of prose. But, wow! She brought the house down with an excellent piece on getting a US Visa, written specially for the event. Her funny-dramatic delivery - she's a natural - added to the pleasure. In fact, T2F immediately decided to book her for an event of her own.

Following this kind of evening, what was planned next - an Urdu poetry reading in the series In Their Own Voice - raised several questions. Who would come to this venue for such an event? Is Urdu poetry (and, specifically, our first guest Zeeshan Sahil's) popular in the areas from where T2F is more easily accessible? Would people travel from the remoter parts of Karachi to attend this, something those associated with T2F really wanted to encourage?

We were sure that we'd get 40, anyway ... so packing in close to 75 on the actual day was a really pleasant surprise, as was the rapid sale of Zeeshan's books at the signing session that followed. Surprisingly delightful, too, was the fact that more Urdu editions were sold than the bi-lingual one with Tehmina's Ahmad's translations. Many buyers commented that they were glad to see the Urdu books section at T2F's small but thoughtfully stocked bookshop, without having to go all the way to Urdu Bazaar. The Urdu pre-selections, mainly by writers Asif Farrukhi and Ajmal Kamal, have helped a lot, as have later suggestions from visitors.

What can one say of Zeeshan and his poetry? Both exude sensitivity, affection, warmth. His poem, Jahaaz, as one member of the audience said, "imbues a machine with human emotions in an age where humans are becoming more like machines." For those who missed out on the evening: Do get a copy of one of his many books on your next visit to T2F. You'll love it. My recommendation: Try Email Aur Doosree Nazmayñ or Karachi Aur Doosree Nazmayñ for starters. We cannot thank him enough to travel so far and sit through such a long evening, in his wheelchair-ridden condition. He closed with a poem called Taliban.

In a complete shift of mood and tempo once again, T2F hosted an evening of Tee-M (Tariq Mirza) on tour of his hometown all the way from the USA. Held - coincidentally - on his birthday, it was nostalgic fun for me and a joy to meet a couple of old friends who turned up and thoroughly enjoyed the music. I discovered, too, that Tariq was the younger brother of two very old friends/classmates of mine: Farhat & Shahid - the latter, sadly, no longer with us. Obviously, Tariq was so much younger - he was probably born when I had nearly left school - that I have no recollection of him from back then. This discovery, in turn, led to a further interesting twist for me: Shahid's son, Taymur - who runs an IB school in Karachi - has been interacting with me without either of us being aware of our 'connection'. Only the most common of all clichés comes to mind, so I won't repeat it.

While I enjoyed Tee-M's evening overall, for me the peak fun moment was seeing Tee-M's elder cousin, Naeem Mirza, join in for an informal and rendition of Jamaica Farewell.

Read only if you're past 60:

Naeem - an old schoolmate - used to be among the best voices of our younger days and I still recall him and Adlynne Afzal's duet of A- You're Adorable on a Radio Pakistan(!) Show, where another friend, Ifti, also sang Granada in his beautiful baritone the same evening. (Bet you, Naeem, that you'd forgotten this yourself!).

Those were the days of Western Music programmes on Radio Pakistan! Hit Parades in the afternoons. Music Requests at night, with 'dedications' that often led to disasters - as Dr Irfan Mirza would know if he reads this. Still ringing in my mind are the popular voices of announcers-cum-newsreaders, Edward Carapiett and Khadija Naqvi.

Wonder if we can get some of the old folks together at T2F: Louis D'Cruz - known for his Country & Western bits - and Austin Freitas for some Operatic arias. Can anyone recall others and help?

Tammy Haq of Business Plus was, obviously, bowled over by Tee-M's performance (which, by the way, is part of T2F's Visitor's Nights, an occasional event that will host interesting people dropping into Karachi). So, Tammy decided to hold a TV Special that was shot at T2F, soon after. Sabeen was interviewed on the program, too. While the evening was enjoyable, the 'shoot' certainly took away from the spontaneity of Tee-M's first performance and those who only caught the latter on TV have no idea what fun his first T2F night was like.

Bina Shah's session was held next and drew a good-sized audience. She read out a poignant tale about the evil practice of Kari from her latest book - Blessings - a collection of short stories. The reading had a couple of members of the audience in near-tears.

Following up on the story, someone has suggested a whole evening dedicated to discussing the Kari scourge, its origins, and what can be done to stop it. Is anyone interested in taking this up and organising it at T2F???

On request, Bina next read her recent US Visa piece and, once again, had the audience in stitches. There's a review on KMB of her evening by Jamash (whose lovely photo of Bina is worth a dekko).

Oh ... I plead guilty to the less-than-great sound quality that evening. Sorry Bina. The usuual music system is not wired for mics and live feed, and the lo-fi PA equipment - obviously designed for roadside weddings, as we learnt the hard way - was hastily borrowed from (wait for it... ) Kauser Tent House, whom people now mockingly refer to as Zak's Media Partners. Alas, it did not do too well :-( but, I am afraid, it was all that a poor NGO could be expected to afford and muster in a last minute rush. T2F's own PA system was delayed and arrived just a day later. That's life! A simple but more than adequate dedicated sound system - put together by an old friend and hi-fi service wiz, Mohd. Mamsa* - worked very well at Pervez's event! So, folks, the next time Bina reads, she'll sound even better!

Pervez Hoodbhoy's presentation at the first Science Ka Adda has already been covered in the previous post, so there's no need to go into it, except to note that it has led to some exciting debates currently raging at T2F.

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*Tracking Mamsa down on 92-320-509-4651 is a chore-&-a-half, but he certainly knows his onions (and Quads, Revoxes, Thorens and other esoteric equipment). So if you want to get that old turntable out of the dusty cupboard and revive it for the sudden resurrecton of vinyl we are witnessing, he's your man. Now THIS is what I call a PLUG!

Abro & Attiya

Abro is one of the most amazing people I've encountered. A prolific artist, photographer, illustrator, graphics designer, calligrapher, cartoonist, and comic strip author, he had held several exhibitions even before he joined the NCA, in Lahore. Many of you may be more familiar with his works that appear in the magazine section of DAWN on Sunday, where he often illustrates articles.

Most of Abro's works are strongly political and his intent has always been to get the message out, with little interest in commercial successes. He even prices his works far more affordably than other, lesser-known artists so that the messages can be seen in more spaces. In the Zia period and, again, under the present regime, Abro has developed a large collection of works, in a variety of art forms, that depict the army's rule and rulers. His sensitivity to the plight of women, his desire for regional peace, all come across strongly. His eye for vibrant colours is as apparent in his photos as in his paintings.

He is extremely quiet, in contrast to his laughing and talkative wife. Which may be another reason (apart from their politics) why they are a perfect match. The story of their marriage, as retold by Attiya, never fails to drive audiences to fits of laughter. We captured it on video at T2F and will share it with all of you via a DVD that contains all the readings from that unforgettable evening. The DVD will initially only be sold at the T2F, since we currently lack modalities for international distribution, but I will work on that, too.

Here's Abro's depiction of Karachi - May 12, 2007



What's next? He spoke of his plans to launch his calligraphic series of Ghalib soon and was quick to add: "Real calligraphy, not what the Zia era turned it into!"

Attiya & Abro

The rains, the roads, the warning messages running on the strips that now take up more space than the video on TV screens, all made it difficult for many people to reach T2F for the event. Several phoned to ask for postponement, but there were enough in the audience and it would have been ridiculous to send back those who came despite the conditions. So we struck a deal with Attiya Dawood, who promised us another session very soon. Within the next 3-4 weeks, in fact. (Which is how long Abro's excellent canvases that complement Attiya;s poems, will also be on exhibit. (More about him in my next post as soon as I return from the SOL/YLC in Lahore).

A session with Attiya is always a treat. For first-timers, it holds a bundle of surprises. An outspoken and very powerful feminist poet, in Sindhi and Urdu, she is also a great raconteur and, unlike her passionate, fiercely sad poems, her retelling of her life is full of wit and an honest humour that is hard to capture in a report to those not present ... although the rebelliousness comes through in everthing she writes, says and does. Suffice to say, if you missed this time, do make it the next.

The multifaceted Asif Farrukhi, writer of stories and poems in English and Urdu, has translated Attiya's Book, now sadly out of print --- (Good News: OUP will soon be releasing her autobiography. How soon? "As soon as it is released from Abro's clutches, " says Attiya.) --- Her recitations were occasionally followed by Asif reading from his wonderful translations.

Her personal favourite among her own poems is "To My Daughter" - which she recited in Urdu and Sindhi (at the request of Babar Ayaz). It is reproduced here, with Abro's painting that accompanied it in in the original publication. Click on the image to make it more readable. And here's Asif reading his own translation of the poem.}


Attiya's blood-curdling poem on the rape of a 2-year old child - "Baykaar Khilaunay" - is offered here in translation:

DISCARDED TOYS

Today in my courtyard
The setting sun is a spear’s distance away.
The earth, like my heart, is brandished metal.
Snatching the soother from my baby daughter’s lips,
Some monster has poured all the world’s horror into her life.

I had never waged battles against anybody:
Then why was the Karbala re-enacted for me?

The court is in session and the judge is
Listening to everybody’s statement.
A beast stands in the place marked for the accused,
I have cut my breasts and fed them to this beast.
All of you good souls who offer me sympathy,
Give me but a handful of words
So that my lips may utter a lullaby
To make this suckling infant wounded by the arrow of lust
Smile in her sleep once again.

When I kiss her as she lays asleep
She wakes up screaming.
What Hell has been unleashed on this innocent one
That even on her father’s chest,
In her mother’s arms,
She writhes like a chicken with its neck sliced?

Can the counterfeit coin of this country’s law
Ever buy for me a toy
Which I can use to appease
My little daughter
As she sleeps on the red-hot coals of pain?

O God of mine ...
When I will come to face you,
Holding my daughter’s discarded toys
And blood soaked underthings,
Tell me,
To balance the Scales of Justice
What will YOU put on the other side?

Is there anyone who is not struck numb by the power of her words?

Had it not been for the conversation that followed the readings, with Abro joining in and being his strong silent self except for a sentence or two that required industrial-strength coaxing (his view: "I speak only through my work."), we'd have gone back shaken to the core. Attiya's arrows hit home, everytime!

All of Attiya's writings, in Sindhi and Urdu, with English translations, are now on the Web.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, SuperStar

One problem of being associated with T2F is that I have been hesitant to blog about the events too frequently, lest it be seen as a 'plug' for Sabeen's café-plus-mind_share_space. but I guess it's ok as long as I stick to the event and make it anecdotal and talk less of the ambience. In fact, I think I'll try and recap some of the earlier events in my next few post[s], since there's an audience outside of Karachi that may enjoy hearing about them, too.

OK. So, this one's about the recent talk by Pervez Hoodbhoy, part of a monthly series to be hosted at T2F under the title Science ka Adda (SKA from now on on this blog). You can read more about the series at the site, so lemme move on.

The space, usually laid out café-style, seats 44 ... though events have always required creating more room by moving things around. Tee-M's 60's rock evening and Saad's OpenMic night shot the audience to around 100±. But that was to be expected. It's a 'Pop' world. However, Pervez Hoodbhoy's audience surpassed both evenings. While his youthful looks still draws sighs from young girls (I heard two that night!), the majority was there for the love of the subject.

You may wish to watch a small-sized QT-based slideshow featuring that evening's guests ... or prefer to click the image above to see the crowd, made up of young and old, artists, singers, dancers, architects, writers, conservative, rebellious, religious, atheists, fundos, freethinkers, doctors and students.

Wow!

Yes, Science can be fascinating, if the issues are seen in the context of our lives, away from the technical, jargon-filled research that most of us realize is essential but find incomprehensible. Like many who attended, I am certainly looking forward to hearing others - after PH's illuminating talk (From Quarks to Humans) on the Origins of the Universe and his 'attempts' to answer a range of questions. We need to have public discussions on Science and Ethics (questions of Stem-Cell research, Genetic Manipulation, Gender Manipulation, Euthanasia, GM Foods --- all are in the news these days) and a lot more.

BTW, when I said PH's attempts at answering questions, I was in no way implying that he was unable to do so for lack of knowledge. Some - on the more specific technical areas - required more time (and, a few were answered post-talk in small groups); others - such as those grounded purely on religious dogma - require an eternity and a more tolerant society.

For those who lingered on after the event for their own friendly discussions, over coffee and snacks, there was a special treat:

The fabulous Tina Sani decided to delight her self-confessed-fan Pervez and the rest with an impromptu rendition of Rabba Sachcheya - one of my favourites. The absence of any intrusive musical accompaniment made it all the more beautiful for me. I captured it on a small handheld recorder and sent the file to her last night, seeking permission to share it on my blog. This what she sent by SMS today: "Seriously? What Fun! It's Faiz ... Let it roll!"

Thanks, Tina.
Oh, and Sheema, since you are at these evenings often, don't forget to carry ghungroos in your purse the next time :-)

Kreative Kids

Thanks, Kids of Class IIIA, fBSS Hyderabad, for these really lovely gifts you've sent. They are cherished more than you imagine.























Click for an enlarged view.

Up & Running!

Photos: The b.i.t.s. Team

The wait is over!

Do drop in ...



You never know whom you'll meet there ...



Stars & Bloggers ...



Bankers and Media Persons ...



Publishers and Authors ...



Famous Dads and Daughters ...



Educators and ...


... Anti-Schoolers!



There's food for the body ...



and the soul.



And a whole lot more to chat about!

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NOW OPENS MAY 15TH DUE TO THE TRAGIC EVENTS IN KARACHI

Photos: The b.i.t.s. Team