| 11 April 2005 | Monday | 01 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426 |
Papal visit
IT IS India versus Pakistan. A Paki has just got himself out. Your telly takes a break. In comes a particularly unattractive girl. She wants to sell a soft drink. And to show how wonderful the drinks is. So, out of that drink she takes a sip or two and goes stark, raving crazy. I am so sad at the fall of that wicket I want to give up the ghost. I need an undertaker, or what they also call a mortician. But it will be a while before I meet my Maker so I promise myself I’ll never buy that soft drink, until my last dying day.
Similarly, some realtors are touting property in Gwadar. The choicest piece of land there ever was. Some of the housing projects are named after the father of the nation and a holy city in Saudi Arabia. I do not know enough about holy cities but I am sure it is against the law to use the name of the Quaid for commercial purposes. But who is there to stop people from misusing his name? By the way, property prices have soared so dramatically over the past few months that the house in which I live is worth a cool fifty million but I am not selling because I know if I do that I will have to buy another house in which to live. And where is the guarantee that the place I want won’t be worth 75 million? Therefore, I am not selling and my advice to all house owners is to do likewise. One house in Township is worth twenty yards in Defence. Its not a question to take it or leave it. Just leave it. Count your blessings or whatever goes for blessings. And if you are living in a rented house, be grateful your landlord is God-fearing. Otherwise, he would by now have thrown you out manji-bistra and all or upped the ante ten times your capacity to pay, your job, your double job and all.
* * * *
I READ somewhere the other day that if you frown, 43 muscles of your body come into play. But if you smile, their number falls dramatically to just 17. Why not, therefore, save on your muscle power? So if you want to sack your secretary, why not say it with a smile? And if you don’t want to do something for me, just smile me out of it.
* * * *
ON Friday, I saw the Pope’s funeral in Rome. It was by far the largest crowd I have seen in my life. All roads for once led to Rome and the whole world, it appeared, had converged on the Italian capital. There were as many Poles as ever left their country on and for a single occasion. Pope John Paul II was, as you know, also a Pole. All faiths were represented, Christians of all denominations, Muslims and Jews and even non-believers were all there to bid farewell to the departed leader of the Catholic Church. It was all truly amazing.
On Friday also, I saw Brian Charles Lara score a memorable hundred for the West Indies against South Africa. In the process, he surpassed Garfield Sobers’ record of 26 centuries for his country. Two batsmen belonging to two different generations can’t really be compared. But if comparisons have to be made to choose the greatest left-handed bastman in the world, my vote will certainly go to Sir Garfield. Apart from being a superb batsman, he was also a bowler good enough to take more than 200 wickets in Test matches.
Lara, it is said, has the highest back-lift in the world. He brings the bat down at lightning speed like a sledge hammer to drive or pull. Sobers, on the other hand, was an artist. He played you off his legs like no one has done it before or since. When Sobers batted, the angels sang hymns. When Lara bats, the angels behave as if they are at a soccer match. Lara has all the records to his credit. But Sobers gave the cricketing world its soul.
The question was asked during the Test match as to which ten batsmen would you like to see in action more than the others. My answer is simple. They would be Sobers seven times and Lara thrice. I do not know the other eight nor do I want to. Mortals like Tendulkar, Ponting, Hayden, Inzamam and the rest can go kiss their grand-mothers. And Bradman? Well, I never saw him.
* * * *
PRADEEP RAO of the Delhi Policy Group was here last year. We made friends immediately. I told him that I had been writing on Sir Ganga Ram and could he get me a photograph of the great man. He promised to do his best in this regard. Some months ago, I received a short note from him plus a Ganga Ram portrait.
Saadat Hasan Manto once wrote a short story on communal riots in Lahore. It was about a mob garlanding the Ganga Ram statue with a string of old shoes and smearing his face with tar. During the riot, one of the Muslim mischief mongers is injured and guess where is he taken? To the Ganga Ram Hospital. Thanks to Pradeep Rao, you can see how the great son of the soil looked like.
The death of Pope John Paul II, the third longest-reigning pontiff in the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church, two weeks ago revived memories of his visit to Karachi on Feb 16, 1981.
Cameras clicked as John Paul II, the first pope to enter a mosque and a synagogue, kissed Pakistani soil after alighting from a special plane which flew the papal flag. Receiving a 21-gun salute, he held brief talks with President Ziaul Haq before moving to the National Stadium to attend the Eucharist.
Even in those comparatively peaceful days, John Paul II’s visit did not pass off without incident. As his cavalcade drove towards the National Stadium, “three suspicious characters” — to quote a press statement issued by the government — tried to enter the venue with a home-made bomb. The security staff tried to stop them and in the scuffle that followed the bomb went off, killing the man carrying it.
Undeterred, John Paul II came to the jam-packed National Stadium and delivered his sermon. Later that day, John Paul II flew to the Philippines where, according to analysts, his visit was to inspire the movement that subsequently ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Homecoming
Zulfiqar Ali Bukhari, who is rightly credited with making Radio Pakistan an independent institution, liked to court controversy. His memoirs, titled “Sarguzisht” and serialized by Fakhr Matri in “Hurriyet,” contain a chapter on Ustad Bare Ghulam Ali in which Mr Bukhari gives a blow-by-blow account of the music maestro’s gradual disenchantment with the Pakistani government, emigration to neighbouring India and eventual “fall from grace.”
But old-time buffs of classical music maintain that Ustad Ghulam Ali left Pakistan for India — in the years shortly after partition, it was considered a cardinal sin — only when he fell out with Mr Bukhari, who wielded limitless influence as director-general of Radio Pakistan.
“Our family feels that you drove us out of Pakistan,” said Ustad Raza Ali Khan, Ustad Ghulam Ali’s paternal grandson, at a private lunch the other day. Karachi-born Ustad Raza, who lives in Kolkata, is considered a worthy exponent of the Kasur-Patiala Gharana, well known for singing thumris and khayals. (It is a shame that Ustad Ghulam Ali’s maternal grandson, Sajjad Ali, forsook classical music for plastic pop. Cynics should be excused for concluding that Ustad Raza might have opted for the same path if he had not left his birthplace along with his father, Ustad Munawwar Ali Khan.)
“But I am overwhelmed by the response I received at the function organized by the All Pakistan Music Conference in Karachi. And let me also tell you that Ustad Bashir Khan, who accompanied me on the tabla at the function, is one of the finest players of the percussion instrument in the subcontinent. At least, he is one of the best musicians I have performed with,” he said.
Ustad Raza hoped that with the peace process between India and Pakistan gaining strength he would be able to come here more frequently — he last visited Pakistan in 1981.
New CJ
Human rights activists have cause to rejoice: founding HRCP member Justice Sabihuddin Ahmad has become chief justice of the Sindh High Court. He served the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan from 1987 to 1990 as its vice-president. He also became an elected member of the international advisory council of the International Centre for Promotion of Human Rights.
Born in 1949 in Hyderabad, Justice Ahmad took a master’s degree in English from Punjab University in 1969 and did his LLB from Karachi University in 1972. He had practised at the bar successfully for 23 years before he was elevated to the bench of the Sindh High Court on Jan 11, 1997. And many remember him for often going out of his way to help the poor and the needy.
Speaking at a reference held in his honour the other day, Justice Ahmad did well to advise lawyers against taking up frivolous litigation. But another method of serving the cause of justice would be to bring the Sindh High Court to its sanctioned strength of 28. With such a huge backlog of cases, there is no reason why the court should currently do without eight judges.
Good sports
A newly opened school in the Korangi industrial area held its first annual sports day some time back. It was an exciting event for the students of the school who come from the surrounding area. And to have Fatima Surraiya Bajiya as chief guest was another big thing. Still the day happened not before many painstaking practice sessions when the children didn’t even know how to skip or march.
“If you had been there during our practice sessions, you would have sworn that these children were incapable of learning how to do all these things but look at them now. They are just amazing,” said one of the teachers. And amazing they were in all the 34 events. Upon the teachers’ insistence each and every pupil of the school participated in some event or the other.
It would have been too tiresome for Bajiya to stand there in the sweltering heat giving away the 90 or so cups to the winners; so she only presented prizes to those who came first. But that started another problem as some of the parents whose children didn’t come first walked up to the judges to challenge their decision. But the children were too well disciplined to do such a thing. They accepted all decisions like good sports.
Bajiya too was a good sport as in spite of frail health, she graciously posed for photos with the children and their mothers while the fathers clicked the pictures. It was so funny to watch the two or so year old preschoolers get confused when they shook hands with the grand old lady and after taking their cup from her returned it to her thinking that they were not supposed to take their prizes with them, which made everyone including the chief guest laugh.
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com