| October 31, 2005 | Monday | Ramzan 26, 1426 |
Welcome quiet on the eastern front
A celebration of Chinese gunpowder
The birds
IT REMAINS serenely quiet on our perpetually-troubled eastern front. It has been like this since May 2003 when an 18-month-long deployment by India against Pakistan following an attack on its parliament in December 2001 ended.
Is Pakistan in a high seismic hazard zone?
LOCAL seismologists have recorded over 1,000 aftershocks since the disastrous 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir on October 8. However, according to the list of the latest earthquakes in the world maintained by the US Geological Survey in its website, some 297 earthquakes have shaken the quake-affected regions since October 8. It is worth mentioning here that the USGS only lists earthquakes of magnitude greater than 2.5 and it warns that the list may not be complete.
According to the information gleaned from the list, the number of tremors per day has gradually decreased from 120 on October 8 to one on October 29. But earthquakes during the past week are still touching the 5 magnitude on the Richter scale.
Eighty earthquakes, of magnitude greater than 2.5, were recorded on Oct 9; 31 on Oct 10; nine on Oct 11; 10 on Oct 12, seven on Oct 13; 12 on Oct 14; six on Oct 15; five on Oct 16; one on Oct 17; two on Oct 18; three on Oct 19; one each on Oct 21 and 22; three on Oct 23; one each on Oct 24 and 26; two on Oct 27; one each on Oct 28 and 29. (Note: the time of earthquakes stated in the USGS list is five hours less than the local time in Pakistan.)
Of the total 297 tremors, 47 were of magnitude 5 and above, including one of 7.6 and one of 6.4 occurred on Oct 8. Of the 47 quakes, 31 occurred on Oct 8, including the 7.6 and 6.4 magnitude ones, while four of them occurred on the second day (Oct 9).
The epicentres of these tremors have remained around latitude 34-35E and longitude 73-74N which is in northern Pakistan. The epicentre of the first earthquake measuring 7.6 magnitude was 105km NNE of Islamabad, but the distance of all the other epicentres from Islamabad range between 40km (3.7 magnitude quake on Oct 12) and 150km (4.6 magnitude quake on Oct 22).
The depth of these quakes vary between 7km and 288km, with most of them being 10km in depth. All the 120 quakes recorded on Oct 8 were of depth 10km with the exception of two, which were recorded at a depth of 26km and 73km. Two out of the 80 tremors on Oct 9 were of 7km depth while the rest were 10km. Of the 31 quakes recorded on Oct 10, 27 of them were of 35km depth, while there were one quake each of depth 44km and 47km (the remaining two were of 10km depth). Of the nine quakes on Oct 11, one was of depth 24km, two were of depth 35km, and one each of depth 45km, 56km and 77km (the remaining three were of 10km).
The single quake recorded on Oct 17 and 24 were of 35km depth. The quake with the greatest depth of all was recorded on Oct 22, i.e., 288.7km.
One surprising information was that two days before Oct 8, an earthquake was recorded in Pakistan which was very different from the earthquakes on and after Oct 8. The location of this lone quake, which occurred on Oct 6, was quite different: 32.57N and 70.03E, which is somewhere in South Waziristan. The magnitude was 4.4 and the depth was 57km.
Apart from the fact that the seismic activity recorded in the past three weeks is unprecedented in the history of Pakistan, two other unusual phenomena have also been noted simultaneously. One was the report from villagers of smoke and flames from the hilltop after Oct 8 in the quake-affected Alai tehsil in Battagram district in NWFP. Then there were reports about tremors in parts of Karachi which the authorities said were not earthquakes.
This is not the first time that people have claimed that they saw volcanic-like eruptions after an earthquake. After the November 1945 earthquake off the Makran coast which resulted in thousands of deaths from the subsequent tsunami, there were reports of “volcanic eruptions” in Balochistan.
According to one Peter Martin-Kaye, who was stationed at Korangi Creek RAF Flying Boat base in 1945 when the earthquake occurred, he travelled on camel inland to investigate and on reaching the location of three active “mud volcanoes” (which he called Chandragup, Ranagup and Rajagup), surmised that the quake had released a quantity of gas at that location which had ignited in a fiery eruption giving rise to the stories of volcanic eruptions.
Another writer, V.P. Sondhi, also wrote in 1947 about the same “volcanic” phenomenon in the same area near the mouth of the Hingol River in Balochistan following the 1945 quake: the self-igniting plume of gas had erupted “with such great force that the flames leaped thousands of feet high into the sky”.
Mud volcanoes, according to Australian vulcanologist John Seach who runs a website on volcanoes, are not true volcanoes of the more common magmatic fiery, lava-spitting kind. They occur when mud and sand under the surface are squeezed upwards by compressive forces and expelled at the surface, particularly along zones of weakness or fractures in the Earth’s crust. The attendant phenomena of mud volcanoes include explosion, clouds of smoke, bubbling of water, outburst of mud, and the discharge and ignition of emitted gas (usually inert carbon dioxide or methane).
According to a German scientist, G. Delisle, who has researched extensively on mud volcanoes in Pakistan recently, there are two known groups of mud volcanoes. These are located onshore along the moderately seismic active Makran coast in Balochistan. They are known as the Chandragup mud volcanoes, which spewed gas that self-ignited following the 1945 quake, and the Jebel-u-Ghurab mud volcanoes nearby.
It has also been established that the Makran Coast offshore has a history of periodically rising mud volcanoes forming temporary islands that were later washed away by wave action. V.P. Sondhi in 1947 documented the emergence of three islands along the Makran coast during the earthquake in November 1945 but these were destroyed by wave action within months in early 1946. G. Delisle had described in 2002 the emergence of a new mud volcano island in March 1999 at about the same place, this time apparently not accompanied by an earthquake, but it was also destroyed by wave action a few months later.
The good news is that mud volcanoes are generally not considered to be dangerous, and in some countries like Azerbaijan where the gas eruptions from mud volcanoes are more frequent and violent than those in Pakistan, they are actually a tourist attraction. Since the local experts have ruled out the chance of any volcanic activity in Alai, could the phenomenon reported by villagers in Alai be akin to that of a mud volcano, although there does not seem to be any reported existence of mud volcanoes in northern Pakistan?
There are, however, thermal or hot springs in northern Pakistan, another surface manifestation of tectonic movements beneath the Earth. (Like mud volcanoes, hot springs have also become well known tourist attractions in many countries.)
According to a research paper by a scientist in the Geological Survey of Pakistan in 2000, hot springs are found in Gilgit, Hunza and Yasin valleys in northern Pakistan; in the vicinity of Karachi in the Mangopir area and in Dadu District in Sindh; as well as in Punjab in the Salt Range area and in Balochistan in the Chagai volcanic arc.
Given the above geothermal activity beneath different parts of the country and the phenomenon of mud volcanoes and gas discharge along fractures in the ground onshore or offshore the Pakistani coast, it may not be surprising that some associated attendant phenomena like rumbling, explosion and tremors are sometimes felt. Could this perhaps explain the tremors felt recently in parts of Karachi which the authorities have ruled out as earthquakes?
Hot springs and mud volcanoes may be relatively harmless as compared to earthquakes and volcanoes, but their existence are nevertheless strong reminders of the moving plates beneath the country and how this movement may cause considerable devastation when the tension beneath is released through earthquakes.
The failure to find any signs of volcanic threat in Alai does not justify closing the book on volcanic studies and research in Pakistan. We had already done that with earthquakes, and look what happened with us on Oct 8. Besides, we need to find out what is really happening under the ground in Alai, and why people there are still constantly feeling tremors accompanied by rumbling sounds, three weeks after the disastrous quake. Do the events of the past three weeks herald Pakistan’s entry into the club of highly active seismic countries?
For too long now, Pakistan has been ignoring the risks of disasters caused by earthquakes, or any other disaster for that matter. No doubt there is no instrument in the world that can predict the precise date, day and time of an earthquake, but this does not mean that we just sit idly by and wait for earthquakes to happen.
We could have saved tens of thousands of lives and billions of rupees had we had better planning in earthquake management. It is time we change our mindset and learn from those countries which possess advanced techniques/technologies in monitoring seismic activity and in earthquake engineering.
The eastern front has been the arena of any number of border confrontations like the so-called 1951 Flap and the two wars of 1965 and 1971. The 1951 crisis was initiated by then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and won a riposte in kind from prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan.
Nehru had overreacted against the infiltration of ‘jehadi’ forces into Kashmir. Liaquat brandished his famous ‘clenched fist’ — to end the border crisis without any apparent exertion by either side. The prevailing quiet along the eastern border is therefore a positive departure from our warring history.
President Pervez Musharraf’s famous handshake with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in January 2003 at the Saarc conference in Kathmandu might have been the first step on what looked like a 1000-mile journey. The handshake paved the way for the end of the stand-off of 2001-2003, the longest and potentially the most ominous between the two neighbours. The year 2004 opened on an encouraging fraternal note, bringing the two countries in a close and what appears to be a lasting embrace through a process of a composite dialogue.
A key feature of the composite dialogue is the resolve on either side to keep it going and discuss everything under the sun without relegating the core issue to secondary status. The Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting in Islamabad in January 2004 followed by the Musharraf-Manmohan meetings in New Delhi and New York stamped the process with an honest and firm guarantee yet to be formally underwritten.
Now, the earthquake disaster of 2005, despite a less-than-full response from India, has underscored the endurance of the composite dialogue and the mutual resolve to keep it on course. A natural cataclysm holds the potential of acting as a catalyst for peace, if handled sympathetically and far-sightedly. Along with the rest of the world, India responded promptly to help Pakistan. However, its response has been somewhat niggardly. To Pakistan’s offer of throwing the LoC open to Kashmiris on both sides to allow those on the other side to help in relief and rehabilitation, India’s response initially was somewhat tentative, even evasive.
By the time these lines appear, it is hoped traffic will be through at a number of agreed crossing points of the LoC.
Reportedly, the issue was first discussed between the Indian authorities and visiting US under-secretary Nick Burns before India would agree to the partial re-opening of the LoC — a rather peculiar and not too dignified a way of involving a third country in a patently bilateral matter. President Musharraf’s plea to make the LoC ‘irrelevant’ appears to be tellingly close to its present reality and configuration. Where and in what shape the LoC exactly will be after the earthquake’s huge landslides and the collapse of the mountains around is difficult to ascertain.
The earthquake has been a great leveller of the physical landscape. After a catastrophe of such epic proportions, only lines and coordinates stay on operational maps. To General Musharraf’s offer of a free flow of the affected Kashmiris across the LoC, Indian defence minister Pranab Mukherjee’s response was testy. Like someone callously unaware of the scale of the disaster on both sides, he opposed the “unchecked” flow of people across the LoC.
He said: “The earthquake cannot alter the history of the last 50 years and I am putting it very candidly.” Mr Mukherjee might well be thinking in terms of the ‘enemy’ or the ‘adverse hypotheses’, a standard procedure and an essential part of war planning. The exercise examines all the foreseeable and possible options available to the ‘enemy’ in the case of an armed conflict or a state of high tension leading to one. It’s unfortunate that despite the longest and the most enduring composite dialogue under way, the ‘enemy’ image should still remain a part of our psyche, and of military and political thinking on both sides of the border.
Coming as it did from no less a person than the Indian defence minister, reference to the 50 years of rivalry can hardly be dismissed by the Pakistani general staff. As it is, the Pakistan Army is thinly stretched on the ground. Easily one-fourth of its total strength (about half a million men) are deployed — from the tribal areas of the NWFP to Balochistan up in Gilgit (in aid of civil authority) and along the LoC. The bulk of it is fully engaged in providing relief and succour to the earthquake victims.
In the pre-composite dialogue situation of high tension and war-like deployment, the Indian army could take advantage of the over-extended deployment of Pakistan army even by merely posing a threat without physically invoking it. Theoretically and in terms of the ‘enemy hypotheses’, such a contingency cannot be completely ruled out even now.
Now a word about the unfortunate helicopter controversy: While the sensitivities of both are evenly balanced on that score, India should have taken a larger view of the matter. Pakistan’s ‘no’ to have Indian pilots flying over some of the country’s most sensitive areas was understandable. However, it might have been better to have flatly declined the Indian offer at the very outset. To accept the military helicopters without their pilots made little sense.
No country, least of all India, will place its military equipment at the disposal of Pakistani military pilots. Most importantly, Pakistan would have shouldered the responsibility for the safety and security of the Indian hardware under the command of its own men. Any accident could have touched off a major crisis.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.
A celebration of Chinese gunpowder
A COUPLE OF DAYS before the weekend serial blasts shook Delhi, India’s reputed tycoon Mukesh Ambani was holding forth on his country’s imminent triumph over China, possibly in the next two years. However, irony was pointing to a different likelihood.
Barely a week before he spoke, Hindus and Muslims of Mau in Uttar Pradesh were mindlessly lunging at each other’s jugular over some minor issue linked with the Hindu festival of Dussehra. The bloody scuffle was grabbing the headlines in India’s national media at precisely the time when two Chinese astronauts, almost surreptitiously, were soaring towards a landmark space odyssey.
Part of the lore of Diwali and in a way of Eid, the way it is celebrated in north India, may relate to the unspoken awe with which we regard China. Sometimes this came as mixed blessing. While their scriptures counselled early Muslims to travel to China if necessary to acquire ‘ilm’ or the treasure trove of knowledge, they acquired gunpowder from China instead. And it was thus that the Mughals conquered with relative ease a veritably unarmed people, including Rajput and Turko-Afghan chieftains who had ruled the region around Delhi by turn with the help of archaic weaponry.
It is not clear what role, if any, Diwali shops that were selling Chinese made firecrackers in Sarojini Nagar and Paharganj markets may have played as possible ‘force multipliers’ in Saturday’s tragedy. But the fact is that many of us north Indian types actually believe that celebrating Diwali with the loudest firecracker, a less potent Indian variety of which were hitherto assembled by poorly paid child workers of Sivakasi, is somehow mandated by the sages from the Vedicera.
The stereotype of Hindu aplomb amid a burst of crackers, highlighted with the luminous mushrooming of colourful ‘anaars’, even before gunpowder was discovered, has been fuelled and nurtured by the media, our very own well-honed and effective myth-makers. Remember Dara Singh the wrestler-cum-movie hero as Sikandar–i-Azam in the 1970’s film on Prince Alexander of Macedonia? He of course spoke chaste Urdu throughout the film since all foreigners, including Greeks in this case, are considered to be better off speaking a supposedly alien language. By contrast the brave Hindu King Puru went dancing and singing, in purified Hindi, praises of Bharat ‘where each branch of every tree forms a perch for birds of gold’. Try translating ‘sone ki chidiya’ any other way.
So it is the birds of gold, quite possibly a latter day baniya romance, which, amid the resonance of conch shells and the bursting of ‘anaars’, we mistake for a display of an ancient Hindu culture. Very often the notion of this supposedly ancient tradition surpasses its own mythology, much like the calendar art that mutates into something more garish with each calendar year.
The gunpowder is thus China’s contribution to India’s seasonal pollution and perennial myth-making that harks to a technologically superior past. From Homi Wadia of Sampurna Ramayana fame to the more recent contributions by Ramanand Sagar and B.R. Chopra, film-makers have eulogized India’s past with the help of an intoxicating ingredient -– one that has proved to be far more integral to the story-line than playing the role of a mere prop — the gunpowder.
Stories depicting an amazing arsenal of futuristic weapons that could trigger rain-storms and fireballs from the sky would of course remain colourless without China’s great if dubious invention, dubious because the perpetrators of the brutal massacre in Delhi made use of the same elements, to lethal effect. In many Muslim countries and parts of India too the breaking of the fast during Ramazan has come to be announced with the bellowing of cannon shot. In many north Indian regions young Muslim boys and girls have fun with fireworks during Eid and other festivities, importing a pointlessly new idea into a hitherto simple tradition.
So what would India’s religious soul look like without the advent of pyrotechnics that now come with Diwali and Eid, to name just two festivals? Two images come to mind from the idyllic village called Mustafabad. Perched in a remote corner of Rae Bareli, the dusty, sleepy village was part of Indira Gandhi’s constituency. Today it is represented by Sonia Gandhi, which of course has made no difference to its deep, deep slumber.
In this village in the 1960s lived Maula Halwai, a sweet-maker and a second generation convert to Islam. One of Maula Halwai’s feudal benefactors was Askari Mian, scion of the area’s landed gentry. Maula’s Hindu past never really left him completely. And so one day in between his Muslim ritual of fasting and praying at the local mosque, he was spotted by Askari Mian in front of a shivala, a small two-foot-high roadside temple to Lord Shiva. As Maula bowed in reverence for his three-second daily obeisance, Askari Mian, who was watching, tried hard not to chuckle. “I have seen you, you hypocrite,” Maula was admonished, not of course without a hint of that very special affection Askari Mian always had for him.
The tart rejoinder was delivered in chaste Avadhi, a colourful dialect from eastern Uttar Pradesh. “Ka kari, Mian? Musalmaan to aap humka banaiye liye ho, par baer ina hoo se theek nahi hai.” (What can I do, Sir? True you have made me a Muslim, and many thanks for that. But it is not wise to keep enmity with this one either.)
Then there was Zaheerun Bua, favourite cook and housekeeper assigned to Askari Mian’s oldest daughter who lived in Lucknow. Though Zaheerun Bua was a complete illiterate, was there a single day during Ramazan when she would not be seen ‘reading’ the Holy Quran, holding it with great affection for many long hours daily.
Her lips would move as though she was following every bit of Arabic. Zaheerun exuded respect for the learned maulvis who would visit her lady’s house on this or that religious occasion. But she had little to do with these men. They were far too learned for her liking and she treasured her own ideas on matters of faith.
Zaheerun Bua neither had a desire to go for Haj nor was she too impressed with China as a repository of wisdom, even though she was quite familiar with the edict concerning the acquisition of knowledge from that country. Was Zaheerun Bua a good Muslim? Does it matter? Was she a good Indian? Does it matter? To my mind that is how most Indians are — deeply religious, but almost always so in an unobtrusive personal way. Organized religion is beginning to erode this innate sagacity and quiet faith, bursting out loudly now and then like the intemperate firecrackers, sometimes with lethal effect.
PHILOSOPHER-NOVELIST Umberto Eco was in New Delhi last week. “Try to imagine this,” he told a small Delhi audience, sharing his critical insights about transcultural encounters. Imagine translating a sentence from Italian into English. In its English rendition, the sentence basically goes, I entered the bar, ordered a coffee, gulped it down in one second, and left. “An American could never understand that,” he exclaimed.
In turn, imagine translating the American’s caffeine experience, involving huge helpings and excessively high temperatures, to an Italian, said the professor of semiotics from the University of Bologna. An Italian, used to coffee cups barely an inch tall and espresso served at just above room temperature would be mystified upon hearing of his American friend spending half an hour sipping his coffee and thinking of this and that.
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When someone said that all manner of animals and birds – some threatened with extinction – could be bought at Empress Market, the proposition needed to be tested. So off a colleague went. The market is barely half a kilometre away from the Sindh Wildlife Department whose primary job is to protect wildlife, check poaching, illegal hunting and illicit trade in wildlife.
A shopkeeper suggested the colleague buy a pair of golden-feathered pheasants. “Are they really sold here?” wondered the colleague who had seen some of the best varieties at the Dhodial Pheasantry, Asia’s largest collection of pheasants. (He hopes it escaped damage and destruction in the Oct 8 earthquake.) “Yes, of course. You can buy them for Rs11,000,” the shopkeeper said.
When the colleague said he could not afford to buy such an expensive bird, the shopkeeper suggested that he tried out guinea fowls. “What are guinea fowls?” “Well, they are fowls. I hope you know what fowls are,” said the shopkeeper. Enumerating the merits of guinea fowls – which are, by the way, known as ‘cheeney murgh’ in Urdu — the shopkeeper said that when the child became fed up with them, they could be cooked. “They taste great,” he said.
Since the idea of deriving gastronomical pleasure from a pet reared with love and affection offended the colleague’s aesthetic sensibility, he said he wanted to take a look at other birds. “You can buy ducks. All they demand from you is space to walk about. Or you can buy finches – they are nice but they make a lot of noise like parrots,” the shopkeeper rattled off the qualities of the birds he was selling.
As the colleague looked around, his glance fell upon a dour-looking falcon perched majestically on a wooden slab. “What a pity you cannot afford to buy this for your son!” said the shopkeeper before the friend could ask him the bird’s price. “But if you want, I can make it sit on you arm,” offered the shopkeeper. “Wouldn’t it bite?” asked the colleague apprehensively. “Of course, it would,” said the shopkeeper, “and which is why you would have to put on a pair of special gloves.”
“These birds are very expensive because they are usually bought by Arabs who employ them to hunt the houbara bustard, which is supposed to have aphrodisiac properties,” the shopkeeper pointed out.
By then, the colleague had become too confused to arrive at a decision. He thought that he would pay a visit at some other time or content himself with buying a pair of pigeons that he and his son could fly in the evening.
Broken underpass grating: a theory
Motorists using the KPT underpass quite regularly cannot help noticing the continuous repair work going on, on the steel gratings that run across the road near both of its openings. Half of the road is often blocked due to this.
The strange thing about this is that the gratings towards the Do Talwar side of the underpass need to be repaired again and again while the gratings on the Teen Talwar side are in good shape. One motorist has a theory about this phenomenon. According to him, the sun shines for most of the day on the Do Talwar side of the underpass which causes the metal grating to expand during daytime while at night, it contracts. The term for this is “thermal expansion/contraction”.
This thermal expansion/contraction causes the concrete which holds the grating in place to crack and split. The result is that the metal grating on the Do Talwar side is always loose. One can feel the two bumps when one’s car goes over it. This loose metal grating has so far been the cause of at least three accidents on the Do Talwar side.
Meanwhile the obvious reason behind the wellbeing of the Teen Talwar side is that the metal grating there is always in shade.
Railway tracks are also made of steel but railway people think of these problems and plan for them accordingly. Metal rails do expand and contract, but trains move over them all the time since there is always a slight gap between every few feet of the rail. If there is not a gap, then the rails overlap each other after every few feet or so.
Rising religiosity
Religion has emerged as an area in which there is money. One can make lucrative profits by cashing in on people’s religious sentiments if one has the ingenuity and the imagination to do so. Religiosity seems to be growing by the day and so are the avenues for big business to satisfy people’s spiritual needs – of course at a price.
There is the fast food chain which advertises its ware by showing the picture of a “tasbeeh” draped in the shape of the letter M. One can’t be certain if that has increased its clientele. The greeting cards manufacturers have caught up fast too. Ramazan Mubarak cards are now available every where and sell like hot cakes before the advent of the month of fasting as any one who has received them would testify to. Soon they will be competing with the Eid cards.
The latest innovation is the ring tone people are loading on their cellphones. When they receive a call, their phone plays a recording of a “naat”. Initially it can be confusing as one looks around for the source of the sound.
There are sceptics though who find it difficult to swallow this show of religiosity that is now interfering with the normal functioning of men and women. The principal of a private college complains that attendance in Ramazan falls drastically because students say they are fasting and there are occasions when they want to bunk their classes if they feel drained of energy. But now there are the students’ guardians who come and ask for ten days’ leave of absence for their wards because they have to go into “etekaf”.
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com