Na’at sung by Shamshad Begum

I have been reading with great interest about Master Madan in Dawn having grown up listening to his two famous Ghazals and knowing them by heart. We admired him as a child prodigy. Our admiration was tinged with sadness, as he had died so young. My father, Sajjad Sarwar Niazi, who was stationed at Delhi in All India Radio in the pre-partition days, happened, as far as I recall, to have recorded these two “ghazals”.

As for the Na’at Aya hai bullawa mujhay Darbar-e-Nabi sai, the words and the composition were my father’s and he had it sung by Shamshad Begum. She also sang his Ek bar phir kaho zara and a few other songs now lost to posterity.

I requested Khwaja Najm-ul-Hassan of the PTV World to revive this Na’at for the present generation and he earned my undying gratitude for eventually tracing out a cassette in Rawalpindi which had Shamshad’s original Na’at. Ms Nayyara Noor did justice to the Na’at and Mr Arshad Mahmood arranged it most commendably.

The articles published in Dawn on Suraiya made delightful reading. I request you to publish one on Shamshad Begum as well during her lifetime. We owe it to her to let the people know that she originally sang this famous Na’at which has become a matter of controversy.

MS NIAZI

Islamabad

Delay in crediting profit

I have a PLS account with the Habib Bank Ltd in which the profit for the six months ended on December 31, 2001, has not been credited despite a lapse of two weeks. It was a practice of banks to credit the profit immediately at the end of the six months, even when all such work was done manually.

Now when computers are being used, it is really shocking to see so much delay, which only shows a negligent attitude on the part of the bank staff.

Can the bank’s management explain the reasons for not crediting the profit on the last day of December in the first place and secondly, not doing so even after the lapse of two weeks.

MEHRUN NISA

Karachi

The next crucial step

BANNING jihadi groups is one thing. The second thing and the most crucial one is confiscating their weapons. The deweaponization was by and large a complete flop and the killings after this most trumpeted drive bear testimony to the fact that it was a total failure.

All the madaris must be rid of Taliban sympathizers. Even the so-called Afghan refugees must now be told emphatically that they have overstayed their welcome and must now return to Afghanistan to help rebuild it.

Our own political parties of all shades and colours must be made to surrender the weapons they have, forthwith. Pakistan should and must come first and the writ of the state must be established. Without any concrete and hard hitting follow up action as a sequel to General Musharraf’s speech, it would become another zero sum game.

SALIM D. DADABHOY

Karachi

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