| March, 20 2005 | Sunday | 09 Safar 1426 |
East meets west
Bazm-i-Fikr-o-Khayal revived
Just before sunset at the DHA Phase-IV graveyard, the legendary Omar Kureishi was to be laid to rest. There was the intense personal sorrow and a sense of loss that one was agonized by.
Here came the disturbing statement from a friend (in the army) that his pocket had been picked, and he had lost his wallet, defence ID card, the national ID card, credit cards, money etc. Someone said that a few others had also had their pockets picked at the funeral. That is the face of funeral culture, says a Karachiite.
Having said this, one realizes that the canvass of moods and themes is somewhat diverse, if not congruous. So be it. That is reality. One lives, and lives between the realms of personal grief and collective misfortune. This is the kind of mood that I find myself in. I find myself treading on themes relating to death, and graveyard, crime, theft, and how it is shaping our lives in this city that seems to me to be in a grey mood, most of the time.
The palette of colours I have here is rather limited in a sense. What does one say of a city or a society where even at funerals now citizens (in a state of mourning and often driven by deep emotional trauma), find that they are victims of crime. Men can have their pockets picked when they are in the funeral procession; women can lose precious handbags when they are either in tears or while they are reciting Quran. It is futile to say when and how, and who strikes. But thefts do take place, and it is now increasingly common to hear of this vulnerability, this helplessness and how organized gangs operate.
This graveyard in upper class Defence, I noticed again, is swiftly filling up. I overheard someone wonder aloud whether there would be space for him when his turn would come. In fact, many Karachiites wonder about the city’s shortage of graveyards, and of course the unfortunate, pathetic state they are in a way symbolic of the psychological state we are in. Disorganised! Why can’t we keep our graveyards clean? one wonders in vain.
But one also wonders about the way in which this particular graveyard is naturally inclined. Instead of growing horizontally, this graveyard has expanded vertically, like a terraced graveyard; someone remarked somewhat sarcastically. The problem with this is that the elderly folks cannot climb up all those stairs to reach the graves of their family members. I heard this complaint that evening also. But that is the life in Karachi.
Strange Karachi — a growingly nonchalant city as it urbanizes and individuals keep changing masks as if to combat the challenges, the frustrations and the sorrows of the day. That is the impression one gets from the stories, the conversations, the news reports of the average citizen (especially if he has no contacts and connections) suffering crime. The easy victim that Karachiites now appear to be when it comes to being held up at gunpoint. On the street, in the bus, on the pavement, outside the home, office, inside these places, and on and on .... It has become a routine to hear, for instance, that someone has been robbed at gunpoint of a mobile phone. Keep in mind that the use of mobile phones is growing and will keep growing; and so is phone snatching. What is not surprising is that the victims are reluctant to inform an equally hesitant police. A news report in this daily during the week said that at times the victims had argued that “the police, too, was a party to the crime”. This has been a familiar and long standing perception of public that the police are responsible for many of these big and small crimes. It makes one wonder about the efforts that have been made about bridging the police-public divide.
Mobile phones (and therefore other valuables also in the process) are being snatched at gunpoint in the most unlikely places, it seems. Making this situation worse is that the mobile phone companies and the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority have failed to provide either help or hope that it is coming. There is indication that a policy on mobile phone thefts is being considered, the details of which are being worked out, and are going to be user-friendly. One fears that dealers of stolen cell phones are also going to be under the protective umbrella that is going to be created. But why it is taking that long, and why have cell phone operators, new and old, have not paid due attention to the crime is something that one fails to understand.
One also fails to understand the reasons or the factors of why the Lyari “gang-war” has continued to defy solution for so long. It is also beyond comprehension, why there isn’t demonstrated or perceived the kind of concern and interest in the miseries of people who live in that troubled part of Karachi. In fact, that part of the Sindh capital is in a way, very close to what one could call the heart of the city. Lyari is not in our suburbs, and residents of that locality work in all parts of this city. I wonder whether we realize what is going on in their insecure lives. Do we understand the meaning of what lies behind the headline “one more killed in Lyari gang-war”? Did someone say that a hundred people have lost their lives in a year in that part of Karachi?
Yes, Lyari is a part of Karachi, and it is wounded. Do we feel the pain? I wrote of Lyari some months ago, and focused not just on the gang-war, the crime; but, the overall quality of life, lamenting that somehow we don’t seem to be conscious of the need to do something about the people who reside there. People who have, it seems, refused to move out of the locality and go elsewhere in the town. Whether that is the result of an inability to do so, for socio-economic reasons, or whether they have hope that one day Lyari will change its season, is a matter to pontificate about.
As I write, I have in mind a Lyari resident, who has lived there all his life. He is in his early fifties, and I have seen him for over three decades now. He is not willing to leave Lyari despite the fears that he lives with on a daily basis. He appears to know well what is happening. He talks of what the police are doing and what they should do. He does not sound optimistic. I have seen people from the working class in this city changing their lives for the better, almost to a U-turn. This Lyari resident, a driver otherwise, has been unable to improve his life or that of his family and his children. He appears old, at times, weary and it makes me feel that his mind and heart must be wrinkled with time. He appears older than his age and sometimes when I see citizens like him, I feel guilty. I, too, have failed to do enough for people like him.
Is there anyone who will change the lives of the people of Lyari for the better? As a first step, stop that killing, please.
The arrival in Lahore of the East Punjab Chief Minister Maharaja Amarinder Singh last Monday took the city — and schoolchildren — by storm. The latter were made to line up early in the morning along the road from Wagah to the State Guest House on Upper Mall — a distance of 20-odd kilometres. The day was rather warm even by March standards, and the guest was not to arrive until around noon.
While Lahoris approved of the elaborate welcome arrangements made by the Punjab government — many from the older generation were seen chuckling as they struggled with their rustic knowledge of Gurmukhi trying to read the welcome banners — road closures irked many others. But once Mr Singh’s motorcade passed by, all was soon forgotten and great haste was made by whoever was going wherever. As they say, some things never change. It was just another crazy day on city roads.
If there is any truth in the saying that Lahore never ceases to charm Punjabis from across the border, it was to be seen in the starry-eyed countenance of the maharaja from Patiala and his entourage. They were seen marvelling at the grandeur of the city which was once the capital of the only Sikh kingdom that ever was. The only thing missing from otherwise ostentatious dinner tables was the old beverage served in the proverbial Patiala measure.
But the guests visits to the Lahore Fort and later to Anarkali’s tomb inside the Punjab secretariat building, where records of the Sikh era are kept by the archives department, must have somewhat made up for the absence of cocktails. The trigger to the impromptu visit to Anarkali’s tomb must have been the performance the previous night of a mime-based play entitled Anarkali, which the guests enjoyed at the Jahangir quadrangle of the fort.
Those who saw the performance said it was not a patch on the original Anarkali, immortalized by Imtiaz Ali Taj’s screenplay, which had taken the Kolkata stage to finer heights back in the 1930s. Many others, mainly youngsters, who had no recollection of the original praised the show.
Back at the Punjab archives at Anarkali’s tomb, Mr Singh expressed the wish to send over Indian research scholars to Lahore with a view to compiling an authoritative Sikh history, using original documents kept at the archives. This will serve the cause of historians well on both sides of the border.
Attempts should also be made to induct a couple of Pakistani historians in the Indian project so that an authoritative historical account of the Sikh period can emerge. The need for this is greater at our end where the Sikh period has at best remained shrouded in mystery and at worst fallen victim to prejudice and bias.
Maharaja Amarinder Singh also extended an invitation to Pakistani agriculturists to visit East Punjab and benefit from ground-breaking research done in that field since the success of the ‘green revolution’ there. There was also some talk of trading agricultural inputs. The Indian chief minister visited the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry to convince local entrepreneurs, traders and industrialists that their businesses and products would not suffer as a result of the lowering of trade barriers between India and Pakistan. As always, the takers of the view were fewer than its detractors.
The Pakistan Academy of Letters this week announced in Lahore its life-time achievement (Kamal-i-Fan) awards. The winners were Munir Niazi and Intizar Husain for their lifelong contribution to poetry and prose writing, respectively. Both the awards are well deserved even though recognition of the two has taken a long time coming. It is perhaps a coincidence that both writers are Lahore-based, and for once Lahoris cannot whine about that aspect.
It was refreshing to hear the thoughts of the academy’s director-general, poet and writer Iftikhar Arif on the occasion. He requested the Punjab governor, chief guest of the ceremony, to open a provincial chapter of the academy in Lahore. More pertinently, Mr Arif went on to say that similar academies should be formed for the promotion of literature being produced in Punjabi, Sindhi, Seraiki, Pashto, Balochi and other regional languages. The suggestion must come as music to the ears of those who have been struggling for such a development all these years.
To many cynics, however, it would perhaps mean that we are running out of writers and poets of calibre writing in the national language. If true, this would then mean that in the years to come the Academy of Letters would have very little left to do with its time and resources besides praying for the birth of good writers. The setting up of academies at the provincial level and assigning them the task of promoting and documenting regional literature could also keep the national academy busy. If nothing else, the latter could start presiding over translations into Urdu of regional literature.
If that indeed is the objective, then one wonders what has stopped the academy from undertaking such endeavours more seriously so far. Translations from regional languages aside, the academy has in its mandate the authority to judge and commission Urdu translations of contemporary world literature too. Unfortunately, barring a few exceptions, not much has been done in this important area by the academy.
The city district and Punjab governments hit a snarl in the implementation of their public transport schemes following a Supreme Court ruling earlier, restraining them from approving franchise-based transport system. The court had held that the system was in violation of the government’s free route-permit policy.
What this means for commuters is anybody’s guess. Some 60 routes in Lahore alone will have to be re-specified by the CDG and the Punjab government. Going by the pace of the working of officialdom in these matters of ‘grave public concern,’ Lahore commuters, it seems, will be taken for a long ride without a trace of destination in sight.
How badly one wishes one were wrong in making such a grim assessment of the situation.
The week’s death toll in various accidents and crimes in the city was 14. Four people were gunned down in armed robberies; a nine-year-old boy lost his life to a speeding bus; another was killed chasing a stray kite; a woman was burnt to death by her drug-addict neighbour; another committed suicide; two young men were electrocuted after a cloudburst on Thursday; a lance naik’s mutilated body was found near the Ravi; a man was poisoned to death by swindlers; a policeman was hit and killed by a truck, and an under-trial prisoner died a mysterious death in the Kot Lakhpat prison.
Robberies, thefts and cash-snatching at gunpoint were reported almost on a daily basis. There is no doubt in the public mind as to who seems to be winning the battle between the cops and robbers in Lahore.
The week ended with a bit of a nip returning to fading March evenings, which had started playing host to mosquitoes. A thunderstorm on Thursday and intermittent rain on Friday flooded many low-lying and some not-so-low-lying areas. There was a time when fans were not meant to be used until after Nauroze (March 21), but last week also saw the running of air conditioners. Global warming, they say, is to blame.— Observer
(This column is being resumed on a weekly basis.)
Soon after shifting from Sargodha to Lahore, the blind professor of English, Dr Sheikh Muhammad Iqbal, resumed his old activities. He has already set up a school for the blind in Township and revived the Bazm-i-Fikr-o-Khayal founded by him in Sargodha.
A poet of distinction, he had been holding its monthly sittings for more than 20 years. It was last month that he held its first sitting in Lahore which ended with a mushaira presided over by Group Capt Niaz A. Soofi (retired).
The second sitting of the bazm was held this month. Since it coincided with Dr Iqbal’s 60th birthday, people gathered to pay tributes to him for his achievements in life despite the loss of sight. This function also turned into a mushaira which was presided over by Brig Tariq Mahmood (retired) who has translated Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz and other prominent poets into English. The former director health, Dr S. Anwaar Bagvi, was the chief guest on the occasion. It was an enjoyable session with many prominent poets presenting their verse.
Only a day after the Bazm-i-Fikr-o-Khayal function was the second-Monday-of-the-month sitting of Adab Serai. It was held at the residence of its secretary, the ex-banker, Shahid Bukhari. Since Dr Muhammad Iqbal also happened to be there, Shahid made sure to have a birthday cake cut by him to the accompaniment of claps. Luckily, there was a full house during the session and even the reclusive Razi Tirmizi had turned up only to be forced into the presidential seat. A visitor from the United States and a poet, Shagufta Tabassum, somehow made it to the venue. She was received enthusiastically. Other prominent persons at the session were Sardar Soz, Abdul Ali Shaukat, Karamat Bukhari and Shahnaz Muzammil.
The annual award distribution ceremony of the Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) was held this week at the Governor’s House. It was strange to note that Dr Javed Iqbal had been invited to be the chief guest on the occasion and to deliver a talk. That was hardly an occasion for that.
The PAL chairman, Iftikhar Arif, pleaded for official advertisements for literary journals as most of them were facing financial hardship and even closure. Speaking in the end, Governor Khalid Maqbool lamented that the prose and poetry being produced today had little reference to the prevailing conditions in the country. He exhorted the writers to get closer to the issues of the day and the problems faced by the multitude. Literature today, he said, “should be given a new dimension.”
As many as 55 writers received awards of different categories while the lifetime achievement awards went to Munir Niazi and Intezar Husain. The programme was ably conducted by Kazy Javed, the local director of the PAL.
The monthly readings programme of the Lahore Arts Forum (LEAF) was not as wholesome as last time but was savoury enough. As usual, it started on time something which organizers of literary functions have not learnt from LEAF. To begin with, a multidimensional presentation was made by Rana Rashid, one of our respected younger artists. Displaying and explaining his original work, he made it clear that there was a significant intellectual content in his visually strong and creative work. He was handling the arts capsule, an essential part of every readings session. Rana Rashid’s presentation showed that the thought processes in a visual artist were similar to those in poets and writers when they were in the throes of their own creative endeavour.
Next to speak was the veteran writer, Parveen Atif. She read out a long story so effectively that the audience heard it with rapt attention. Then came the verse of Najm Hosain Syed. He never appears in mushairas. Six of his kafis were presented by his accomplished wife and daughter to the accompaniment of music by professionals.
— Ashfaque Naqvi