| 26 July 2004 | Monday | 08 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
They made the deserts bloom
Flying friends
Peace between religion and state
Gender discrimination and sexual harassment have become a matter of concern in organizations where men and women work together. Many working women have complained about the behaviour of their colleagues and bosses which affects their performances in the office. Under such a situation, work environment becomes tense and uncomfortable for women.
Sexual harassment at workplace violates the fundamental rights of women. According to a research by an NGO, 80 to 90 per cent of working women face sexual harassment.
Narrating her ordeal, a 23-year-old nurse said a doctor followed her everywhere in the hospital at night when no senior doctor was on duty. He passed comments and at times even tried to touch her.
She said he also attempted to enter her hostel room. The girl was so frightened that she could not make an effort to report this indecent behaviour to the authorities. Ultimately, she was left with no option but to resign from her job.
Aliya, who worked in a bank, had to pass through a torturous experience. She said the bank manager often called her to his room and commented on her appearance and looks.
He also invited her for lunch and dinner which she always declined. When the situation worsened, she talked to the general manager, who instead of taking action against the manager, blamed her and terminated her services.
Maryia, a sales girl who worked in a pharmaceutical company for three years, while sharing her experience, said the first two years were peaceful. But then a sales boy joined them. She said she felt uncomfortable with him because he used vulgar language. The authorities turned a deaf ear to her protest and dismissed her from the job.
A similar story was reported by a female receptionist who worked in a hotel. She had to carry out her duty at night. A guest was staying in that hotel since one month.
The whole night he just sat in the lounge and gazed at her. One night he invited her to spend the night with him. This was the limit for her and she resigned from her job the very next day.
Razia, a maid, was assaulted by the owner of the house where she worked. There have been many cases where women, who have been victims of sexual harassment, refuse to share their experience with others.
In Pakistan, some private organizations and NGOs have raised their voice against this issue. They have included provisions in their policies regarding gender discrimination and have created awareness among the masses to deal with this issue seriously.
The government has emphasized on the implementation of code of conduct on gender justice in every organization. The code is formed on the principles of equal opportunity for men and women and their right to earn livelihood without fear of abuse and harassment.
This code adheres to the human rights declaration and United Nations convention for elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. The reality is that if people follow the principles of the Holy Quran, self-respect of women will remain secure and both men and women will work together in a cordial environment where dignity of each employee is ensured.
They made the deserts bloom
Muhammad Saeed (Maulvi Saeed of The Pakistan Times) wrote of many things in his book, Lahore: A Memoir. Today, I want to share with you his views on the Punjab Irrigation Department and the pioneering role it played in the conversion of the Punjab from a dusty wasteland into one of the most fertile provinces in British India.
Saeed opens his account thus: Just on the back of the market is a huge building, the Punjab Irrigation Secretariat. It was here that the vast and marvellous canal system of the Punjab was designed.
I happened to visit it off and on with my father. In 1929, I even did a little job in connection with which I had to go through an old record of water-gauging on the rivers of the Punjab.
I was amazed to see how early the recording began and how faithfully it had been preserved over more than a century now. It dated from the early 1850's. It seems that soon after the annexation of the Punjab, the British thought of taming its rivers as well.
In fact, few patches on the earth are as lucky as the Indus Valley in possessing so majestic a network of tributaries. In a way, these rivers form a most obliging lot lending themselves generously to be barraged, dammed or diverted.
Canals have always fascinated me; straight, curving, pouring down the 'falls', they are always rewarding to the eye. So to see the seat of the genius that conceived and ran them was a delightful experience, even for a raw mind.
Like all offices, this secretariat, too, had its quota of officers of amusing traits. A Superintendent Engineer, Bostalk, with unusually vegetated nostrils would lift his blank face every time his Head-clerk walked into his room and ask: "who, you? His memory for faces scarcely lasted half an hour.
Contrasted with him was another officer, H.W. Nicholson, who, when he saw an overseer of Khambranwala Rest House near Marala Headworks, asked him straight: 'Aren't you a Brahmin? They reply, to the amazement of all, was "Yes, Sir, I am"!
Nicholson was an officer of strange notions. While in Ludhiana, in 1918, he invited applications for the post of a draftsman. Within a week, a heap of applications was placed before him.
He went through them one by one and ultimately picked a candidate and asked his Head-clerk to send him the appointment letter. The Head-clerk was astonished at the choice, for the candidate had clearly mentioned that he was dismissed from his earlier service on charges of embezzlement.
Nicholson said: "This young man who admits his guilt so candidly, can't be basically a dishonest fellow. Call him".His surmise not only proved correct (for the charge turned out to be a conspiracy against the man) but added one of the finest daftsmen to the department-who was awarded a golden watch on the completion of the Sutlej Valley Project. He was Qazi Wali Mohammad.
Back in the monsoon of 1924, I had the first glimpse of the dreaded H.W. Nicholson who was then constructing the Suleimanki Headworks. We were standing on the bank of the Sutlej to be transported across it.
Presently, a motor-boat came and we-Nicholson, his orderly Juma Khan, father and two sons-got into it. The little crowd that had assembled to see the 'Sahib' off felt visibly relieved.
After about 15 minutes of rolling and pitching the boat touched the other bank. The 'Sahib' and his orderly made haste to disembark and were gone amidst a chorus of salutations.
Nicholson was said to be a hard task-master who got rid of shirkers at the slightest evasion of duty. He relished inflicting moments of intense agony on his victims providing, very often at the end, a bright opening in the gloom.
Word reached him one day that a store-keeper indulged in pilfering and lived 'beyond his means'. On a surprise visit, soon after, Nicholson started making a round of the vast store-rooms.
The department where the store-items were missing, he intentionally avoided. The store-clerk trailed him like a cowering captive for two mortal hours in and out of the store-rooms.
Bringing him finally to the scene of embezzlement, Nicholson stopped and quickly turned round, looked deep into the terrified, listless eyes of his miserable prey, poked his protruding belly with the steel end of his stick and said: 'Don't fill it with dirt', and left the room.
The clerk had almost swooned. Within minutes the story travelled round the colony. And this was enough for the whole staff. One of his subordinates when promoted to a higher office went to thank him and get a piece of advice that would serve him as a guiding principle in his new career.
Nicholson told him: 'Keep a wary eye open to the tricks of the old man crouching by your chair and uttering an Urdu mumbojumbo to get the order that suits his transactions'. But despite this stern disposition he was capable of reacting pleasantly to the comicalities of his staff.
One morning, he received, among his officials files, a sheet of paper with a large OM written all over it. It was a ritual that the Hindu accountant of his office religiously performed before settling down to the day's work. He believed that the word had a magical power to keep the 'Sahib' in good humour.
Nicholson looked at the paper and picked up his red-ink pen to write in capital letters on top of the sheet. "KEEP IT AT ...." and then proceeded calmly to put 'H' in the beginning of each OM and 'E' at its end, to make the word HOME.
The accountant by that time had realised that he had acted with disastrous absentmindedness. The papers came back in due course and the mortified clerk was relieved to find that the magic of OM had really worked!In the Summer of 1935, Nicholson went to Simla as usual.
Though the weather was pleasant, something terrible was biting him persistently. Finding him in deep anguish one day, his life-long valet, Juma Khan enquired about the cause.
He told him that he was going to be operated upon that morning for appendicitis. He was taken to the hospital. The operation failed. When the end came, he clasped the hand of his wife and said: 'Darling, on Judgment Day we meet'.
Cemetries, a British journalist said, are "likely to be the most enduring of all the British Raj's memorials. I find the graves that we left behind us more poignant and more eloquent than other traces of our short occupancy of India-cemeteries lashed by monsoon rains, baked by ferocious suns, under so alien skies.
Or up here in Simla, on a quiet hillside. Many of the sahibs died young". Nicholson did not die young, yet he lies buried somewhere on a "quiet hillside". The separation was unbearable for his forlorn wife. She came back to Lahore to lead a life of sorrow and mourning.
So intense was the grief that she predicted an early death for herself. The prediction came true and before the winter was out, she, too, died. During her terminal illness, she called her servants, paid them 10 years salary in lumpsum for they were expected to live only that long, and died a serene, peaceful death.
The couple had no children. In moments of sadness, Nicholson would often say: "I am too nasty a creature to be permitted by Providence to raise a brood". Yet a marble slab on the left bank of the Sutlej at Suleimanki stands to this day to remind visitors that a dutiful officer worked here with devotion and diligence.
Standing by this slab one can see the Sutlej waters swerving round into the Sadiqia Canal to be led to the scorching sand dunes of Bahawalpur where now cotton fields and mango orchards bloom.
Passing one day through the main corridor of the Secretariat, my father introduced me to a middle-aged gentleman who patted me on my back. The two elders parted amidst exchange of pleasantries.
On our way home, father told me that Malik Sahib was the Superintendent of their office and had a brilliant son who was employed in a high post in the East India Railway. When in subsequent days we moved to Chohatta Mufti Baqir, in the heart of the town, we often saw the Malik Sahib emerging from the street opposite out house.
It was the famous Kucha Kakke Zayyan and the gentleman was father of a strong-willed bureaucrat who later rose to be the Governor-General of Pakistan. Sir Ghulam Muhammad, on his way to this seat of authority had served as Financial Adviser to East India Railway, the Tatas and the Nizam of Deccan.
The last post stood him in good stead as Finance Minister of Pakistan to tide over the worst crisis in the financial history of the country. When denied her share of the Partition funds by India, Pakistan was driven to the brink of collapse.
Its treasury contained only a few stamps. Ghulam Mohammad got from the Nizam a sum of 200 million rupees, brought the money to Karachi and disbursed the accumulated salaries of the State staff.
Ghulam Mohammad, a formidable man of diverse and even dangerous proclivities veered between the brilliant and the absymal. He could at times be a financial wizard, a stiff-necked bureaucrat, and a jester. Few escaped his invective and fewer his vindictiveness.
A story is told of him how one morning in Delhi he and his friend, Prof. A.S. Bokhari-equally sharp and theatrical-donned the robes of village bards and went to the countryside. Bokhari played on the guitar and Ghulam Mohammad sang rustic songs,-the reverse may be equally credible.
The show, anyhow, went off remarkably well and the bards returned to their princely abodes in the evening with their pockets jingling with coins. Ghulam Mohammad knew the art of wangling money whether through treatise, entereaties; taxes or song and dance.
Flying friends
Most people must have seen flocks of pigeons on the roundabout between the Sindh High Court and the Sindh Secretariat/ Sindh Assembly. But do you know that they are not wild birds but pet ones? They belong to some pigeon lovers residing on nearby Burnes Road who have trained them to fly in flocks at a particular time, land at the roundabout, where water and grain await them, and after some time return to their dovecotes inside spacious cages on the roofs of buildings.
Karachi has many pigeon lovers, with each keeping dozens of birds and allowing them to fly at least two times a day, once in the morning and then in the evening, determining their direction by shouting and waving flags.
Those living in the same area sometimes allow their flocks to mingle in the air. During the mingling, a pigeon may lose its bearings and instead of joining its own flock, may become part of the other and end up landing on the latter's roof. Traditionally, such a pigeon is deemed to have been won by the owner of the house and his rival does not claim it.
The kabootar-baaz, as the pigeon-keepers are locally called, also organize annual competitions during which the flock which spends more time in the air wins the tournament, organized twice a year, once in February and then in October.
The day of a kabootar-baaz begins at his rooftop with his cherished birdies. There he takes breakfast and fondly tends his flock. Whatever his job, he tries to return home before sunset so that he can spend more time with his winged friends. More often it is a family hobby as the sons or brothers of a kabootar-baaz also assist him in taking care of his flock.
But it is an expensive and time-consuming hobby. One has to spend quite a lot of money to acquire pigeons of a good breed. Then come the expense on their food and occasional medication. One has to have a roof big enough to house the pigeons' cages. If life becomes more difficult and fast-paced, this tradition may also die out.
City with a view
A drive along the main North Nazimabad Road after sunset presents you with one of Karachi's finest sights - brilliantly-lit marriage halls on both sides for several kilometres.
As the evening wears on, more colour is added as flashy cars and glitzy begums transform the scene into an extravaganza of glitter to take us to the mirage of a non-existing affluence. A tourist would hardly believe this is the city that hits world headlines regularly for murderous bomb blasts, ambushes and arson.
The tragedy is that all that is positive about Karachi goes unreported. It is deviation from the normal that sends news hounds scurrying to the spot where there is death and destruction.
The denigrators of Pakistan do not know perhaps that even in all this mayhem in Karachi there are countless literary sittings, art shows, plays and marches for such causes as a cleaner environment or a city free of polythene bags.
Professional women go to their places of work even during strikes, and lady doctors and nurses, women in the print and electronic media, and policewomen at police stations and airports, do their duty at night. All that the western media does is to report only on what strengthens the stereotype - fiery mullahs and women in burqa.
If Karachi were ever to be truly normal, it is not the golden beaches alone that will draw tourists from the world. There are other sights, too - like the city's view from the Hill Park or the drive through the "marriage hall district".
Korangi killers
It seems that police are powerless to check the large fast-moving buses that ply between Korangi and Saddar, often crushing unsuspecting pedestrians to death. Not common in other localities, these 60-seater buses, carrying more than 150 passengers at a time, travel at breakneck speed, even during the rush hour.
Eager to get home as early as possible, reckless commuters climb on to the roof and stay precariously perched as the overloaded vehicle tears past traffic on the road.
There have been instances where motorists have been run over because the bus went out of control or could not stop in time, simply because the driver was speeding. Only in May there were over 20 deaths on this route due to accidents involving buses.
Design changes
At the point where the Sea View promenade starts in Defence Housing Society stands an extremely beautiful mosque. Its architecture is unusual and, it seems, the architect has taken full advantage of the location to give the mosque a style not common in Pakistan.
The brown bricks used in the facade, as well as the rectangular minarets, give the mosque a modern look, which has been appreciated not only by those who visit it to say their prayers but also by excursionists.
But the minarets have been modified and topped with traditional round domed structures. These have spoiled the original aesthetic look of the mosque. Two more pre-made minarets - which are usually found at nurseries and are used at temporary mosque sites - have also been planted in the mosque.
When asked, the head of the mosque said that this was done because the previous architecture of the mosque was deemed not to be Islamic enough by Pakistani standards. But even if domes had to be provided, they could have been built in harmony with the mosque's overall design.
Summer schools
The concept of summer schools has really caught on. Instead of wasting their time at home, nowadays most children join summer schools to improve their competitive edge. A number of local hotels offer summer school packages, which range between Rs3,000 and Rs8,000. Some hotels offer discounts to schools.
Apparently, a lot goes on in these classes - from sports and cooking to painting and dancing. Here children get a chance to brush up their communication skills and learn how to interact with one another.
At some summer camps children are also trained to play cricket and develop sportsmanship. In others, stress is laid on language skills and children find themselves augmenting their vocabulary, especially of the English language, while having loads of fun.
Children belonging to religious minorities also go to community centres where different parishes and panchaiyats arrange activities for children, enabling them to develop interpersonal skills and get to know one another well.
Though the children do not spend their summer vacations as indolently as their parents had done in the past, but their time at summer schools is time well spent.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.
Peace between religion and state
A lebanese-born expert on Islamic theology, Professor Ridwan Al Sayyid, who was in Karachi on a lecture tour last week, has added a new dimension to the on-going debate on the need to reform Islamic thinking and practice by emphasizing the need for democratising governments in Muslim countries and determining the relationship between state and religion.
Professor Ridwan, who went to Al Azhar University in Cairo and later secured a Ph.D in Islamic studies from the University of Tubingen, Germany, brought with him what sounded like enlightened views on the on-going debate on the need for reforming Islam and the conflict between Muslim countries and the West, primarily with the US.
Recognizing that there existed a conflict of interests between Muslims and the Americans, Professor Ridwan, who is also editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based al Ijtehad, put part of the blame on governments in Islamic countries, terming them unrepresentative.
Elucidating the Mediterranean view on the issue, Professor Ridwan's contention was that despite the fact that there was tension because of the war on terrorism in the post-9/11 period, the occupation of Iraq, and the conflicts in Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Chechnya, the Muslims were also to be blamed because they had never invested in human development.
They had simply not been able to attain the capability to defend themselves in the face of military or economic threats and domination. Author of "Azmat al Fikr as Siyasi al-Arabi", the visiting professor did not agree with the perception that the current bitterness between the West and Muslim countries represented any clash of civilization; he said it was driven by political and economic interests.
Professor Ridwan's advice was for moderation and for adopting a strategy whereby the West was deterred from waging a war against any Muslim country. In this context, he emphasized that "we should not allow people to attack the Americans or their interests in such a manner that would invite a violent reaction on America's part."
Prof Ridwan, who has also written a book in German, "Die Revolte des Ibn al-Ash'ath und die Koranleser", claimed that radical Islam was isolating Muslims from the rest of the modern world.
"So we have to decide how to reform these radical elements in the process of Islamic revivalism and also decide as to how to reorganize the relationship between Islam and the state. What we need now, and what our main concern should be, is peace between religion and state", he advised.
Dilating on what should be the modern approach to building bridges, he called for giving serious thought to the content of an Islamic dialogue and its relation to the community, its understanding of the beliefs of the community and handling its affairs in the wake of revivalism and radicalism which did not accept the traditional means and methods of handling relations with the world.
"All these aspects of religious thinking and practice need reform, whether or not the Americans want it. The Americans are interested only in one thing and that is not to be attacked," said Prof. Ridwan.
Asked whether only Islamic society needed to be reformed or the West was also required to change its perception and attitude towards Islam and the Muslim world, the Lebanese scholar said that the problems of Palestine and Iraq were not the doings of Islam or of Islamists because Islamists were not in power in these countries. These problems with the West and the Americans were political and economic problems.
Prof Ridwan articulated the state of governance in Muslim countries when he said that "the politics they are following are not our politics. Their goal is not our goal.
We have a right to have representative governments. So we have to make reforms through elections, through reforming our constitutions, so that we have a representative government which can reflect the aspirations of the people while trying to solve their problems."
He asked the Muslims to learn from the experience of Malaysia and Turkey. Malaysia not toeing the American line had developed an economic and political system that enabled it to raise its exports to $22 billion. Turkey was playing an important role in Islamic integration and economic and political revival without alienating the West.