FIRST to recap the atrocious bit of news as the world read or saw it recently. A poster showing Bombay movie star Amitabh Bachchan against a backdrop of the Pakistani flag was banned in Karachi. The poster was an advert for a telephone quiz contest based on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? programme that Bachchan hosted in India. The contest was to start on Pakistan’s Independence Day.

Bachchan’s picture alongside the flag was an “objectionable act”, said a Karachi official, according to a wire agency. A place alongside the flag “is reserved only for our own heroes. We have already started disassociating Bachchan’s picture from the national flag. It was a mistake.”

The incident seemed as silly as the one involving Indian diplomats in Dubai in the mid-1980s when they pointlessly browbeat Indian movie comedian Mehmood in their nefarious quest for a narrow nationalist agenda. The actor was visiting Sharjah where Indian and Pakistani teams were locked in a grim cricket contest, which in itself is a contradiction of sorts. But Mehmood’s presence in the pavilion had evidently helped ease the prevailing high tension. It was probably a match in which Javed Miandad had hit a last ball six to get Pakistan an unbelievable victory over India.

The next day’s Khaleej Times published a picture of Mehmood waving the Pakistani flag in the company of Pakistani school-children who had sneaked in to watch the players and the movie stars who were a fixture there. There is a myth that Indian Muslims cheer for Pakistan in sports contests but I know more Hindus than Muslims who clap for Pakistan in a cricket match. Be that as it may, who can forget the presence of the fugitive Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, relaxing in the Sharjah VIP pavilion in the company of senior diplomats, Indian movie stars and cricket officials from both countries? A Muslim, Dawood had never even once publicly cheered for Pakistan. So much for the myth. On the contrary, he was trying to fix things all the time to support the Indian team. On one occasion he is said to have promised the players a new Japanese car if they beat Pakistan.

Indian officials were obviously so miffed by the Mehmood picture which showed him merrily waving the “enemy flag” that they descended on him like a ton of bricks. They willy-nilly got him to pose with the Indian flag this time and seemed to have enough contacts in the newspaper to ensure that the pathetic composition was published the next day. I said pathetic because it was forced on the poor fellow like some kind of an urgent correction that newspapers issue only in emergencies.

Sharjah was the venue of another heart-rending tragedy in the realm of culture which again seemed so avoidable. This relates to a conversation I had with the late Malika Pukhraj when she was visiting the Gulf state for a concert with her daughter Tahira Syed. We noticed that Malika would take off her shoes before walking on the stage in apparent respect for a widely appreciated tradition, not so her daughter.

After the concert Malika Pukhraj spoke to me about her early beginnings with Indian classical music. Was it correct to describe it as Pakistani music and mask its Indian origins? My question had a background, for it was even truer in those days that some Pakistanis disliked India so badly that they had even thought of changing the name of the Indian Ocean to something else. The “Indian subcontinent” has already become “South Asian subcontinent” due to this quibbling.

Malika Pukhraj responded to the query in the only way she knew -– by being completely forthright. “You cannot sing the musical notes in Urdu. It has to be Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni whether it is in India or Pakistan. Those notes according to me are in Hindi. It cannot be Alif Bey Pey Tey Tay Sey,” she stressed, referring to the different alphabets of Hindi and Urdu. Ergo, there could not be a South Asian classical music, it had to be Hindustani, Indian or Carnatic genre. This much was firmly established in the interview. And since that was the Zia-ul-Haq era of narrow nationalism Malika Pukhraj was banished from the state-run radio for goodness knows how many months or years.

But coming back to the original question: whether it was fair to ban Amitabh Bachchan from the Pakistan posters merely because of the flag controversy? Yes, but only to the extent that the Indian diplomats were right in issuing a “corrected” picture of Mehmood in the Khaleej Times. Both the foolish controversies would seem to have been engineered not so much by nationalist zealot but by those who stood to benefit commercially from the controversy. Your guess is as good as mine. It is always useful to trigger a national controversy about a book or a movie or a play, which is otherwise not likely to sell too well, to improve its commercial chances. The rule should ideally apply to every sphere of profit not just a TV quiz.

Is that what Indian actor Feroz Khan tried to do in Lahore when he made nasty comments about the Pakistani film industry? Or was he being genuinely obnoxious? Or was he just too drunk to really know what he was saying? Is it possible that by berating its Pakistani audiences Feroz Khan may have tried, eventually in vain, to sell his brother’s film to an audience of hard-line Indian nationalists back home? Whatever he was trying to do, it was in bad taste.

Two of Indian film industry’s secular icons are Dilip Kumar and A.K. Hangal, one a Muslim originally from Peshawar and the other a Kashmiri Brahmin. Dilip Kumar’s life was made miserable by Bombay’s Hindu fanatics just because he was awarded Pakistan’s high civilian honour for his acting abilities. Instead of rejoicing, India’s most loved actor for more than 60 years was branded a traitor by the Shiv Sena. Hangal played the role of a peace-loving Muslim cleric in the blockbuster ‘Sholay’ — one who was also willing to fight a decent fight for his fellow villagers. That was enough to make the octogenarian Hangal a legend in his own life. Instead he was called a traitor because he visited the Pakistan Consulate in Bombay to attend their National Day function. Hangal’s films were banned and he was made to forgo roles in movies he had signed contracts for.

So what does one do to get out of the trap woven by warped minds on both sides of the cultural divide? I would say follow Allan Faqeer’s prescription. The late mystic singer from Sindh was visiting India during Prime Minister Gujral’s brief rule around 1998. If a stranger were to meet Allan Faqeer on a dark desolate road he would run for cover. The Pakistani singer had an intimidating way of looking you directly in the eye. The impact was heightened by the thick bushy eyebrows and an unkempt beard and a mouth reeking of the previous night’s excesses. The neck often had hundreds of colourful beads strung around it.

It was brave of Allan Faqeer to walk into Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, all by himself. He had no visa to be in Agra. Naturally a curious cop got attracted to this weird looking visitor. What followed was a minor inquisition, enough to throw an ordinary Pakistani off balance. But Allan Faqeer was a different kettle of fish. “I am a guest of your prime minister. Why should I need a visa?” he thundered at the bewildered cops. Was Allan Faqeer the Indian prime minister’s personal guest? The question was to soon become vestigial. By the time the checks were carried out with the prime minister’s office, Allan Faqeer had crooned his way out of the police station, in time to catch the next train to Delhi. That’s the way forward for India-Pakistan cultural ties. It requires a bit of wit, a bit of self-service.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

KARACHI: As predicted, we did get more of God’s blessing from the heavens and all hell broke loose in Karachi, again. When the sun rose over Karachi on Friday morning, the scene resembled the aftermath of a high velocity tornado, cyclone or tsunami. But none of these calamities had visited us. It was only rain.

Rain of three hours or so does not create so much havoc in cities which boast of modern infrastructure. But Karachi, which is proudly quoted by its leaders as being one of the largest cities of the world, for the second time in three weeks submerged in accumulated rain water which turned it into an undeveloped hamlet in a matter of minutes. And this was no unexpected rain. The Met office had repeatedly given warnings of another imminent thunderstorm since the last spell on July 31.

At the peak calamity hour when total chaos had rendered the city paralysed, our City Nazim Mustafa Kamal was heard saying that a city as large as Karachi could never have a proper contingency plan for a situation like this. And with regards to the six-hour long gridlock on the roads, DIG Traffic Karachi, Falak Khursheed, stated that “it is not the responsibility of my team but (the responsibility) of the city nazim.”

These eminent officials have finally thrown in the towel it seems by giving their official denials of responsibility. The higher authorities of the DHA and Clifton Cantonment Board, however, have not even bothered to issue a disclaimer, even though it was the Defence, Clifton and Bath Island locations that once again submerged under rain and sewerage water. All the dumps where garbage had continued to pile up after the last deluge, became displaced from their resting ground clogging street openings and nearby nullahs, leaving the citizens to deal with the emergency ensuing from floating refuse, rain and sewerage water in and around their houses.

Words fail as all superlatives have been used repeatedly to describe the nightmare on the streets of Karachi during the rain – twice! And while no one thought it was possible, the situation on the roads was worse during this second spell of rain. In Defence Society specially, the number of houses where rain water gushed in giant waves exceeded that of the last time.

The garbage from the dump in a street off Sunset Boulevard got dislodged and accumulated at the mouth of the street near the main Sunset Boulevard signal where over two feet of water had accumulated. And of course, Bath Island yet again turned into a multi-artery river, and passage for area residents is still impossible after five days have passed. In all other phases coming under the DHA and Clifton Cantonment Board, the situation is much the same.Nothing can disguise the inefficiency of the city government, the DHA and CCB and a high-level inquiry must be conducted for lack of pro-active and emergency measures on their part. The DHA, which taxes its residents heavily for water and property should either disband its outfit or pay the residents compensation for damages incurred. Never has the DHA fulfilled its duties and dues towards the residents. Particularly where water supply is concerned, there are many who will assert that despite regular payment of water taxes no water is supplied to their area and they have to incur a sizeable monthly expenditure for purchasing water through tankers.

While their golf clubs sport lush green acres and officer colonies thrive on uninterrupted water supply and clean sewerage system, why is it impossible to ensure basic services to its other landowners who pay taxes directly to them? And as for the rain emergency plan for DHA and CCB areas, despite repeated media reporting of the clogged gutters and sewerage lines, no contingency measures were made for a situation like Thursday’s to drain out water as it accumulated.

The city government is as much to blame regarding the issue of rain water drainage from the Clifton and DHA areas which were never so badly submerged in the heavy rainfalls of the past years. It is primarily the city government which has gone ahead with the land-filling of the vital, natural rain-water drain for commercial purposes, which is the Neher-i-Khayyam. Inspection of the Neher has shown that half of this Neher has already been sealed off/filled and a very narrow passageway has been allotted for sewerage/rain water disposal.

The available drain will not suffice for even half of the drainage needs of Clifton, Defence and Bath Island. But of course it is prime land and the city government perhaps feels that a sewer will not be a lucrative proposition whereas solid land surely will be. If the land-filling process is not reversed with immediate effect, many more long lasting repercussions will be felt by the area residents. The newer drains hastily being dug by the city government to compensate for the Neher-i-Khayyam’s land-filling will never answer the purpose instead raise more havoc.

When these civic agencies took a stock of the situation after the last rain fall what was their basic assessment and subsequent contingency plan? Since more rains were imminent, shouldn’t it have been a basic preparatory measure to install water pumping units at the junctions, which had earlier become heavily filled with rain water? More than 60 hours have passed and still water is not being removed by machines in submerged areas, and where an attempt is being made, mops and wipers are being used by sanitary workers.

The city government’s pathetic attempts would be laughable if the situation was less grave.

The city nazim had spoken of emergency services many times much before the rains came, but well past midnight on the day it rained, drivers were seen pushing their cars manually without any help at hand and exposed to the threat of marauders who come out in times like these like sewer rats. After the downpour ended, the least that could have been done was a taxi service of sorts to pick up stranded passengers around the city in four by four vehicles, ambulances or through the aegis of the fire brigade department. But while news reports were confirming the death toll in the city due to electrocution, the city leaders, as usual, were busy shifting responsibility, allowing people to wade through the dangerous waters on their own, oblivious of their duty to the citizens. While the blame of the havoc may be transferred to nature, what excuse is there for the incompetent post-calamity assistance?

Is Karachi a no man’s land, where only the writ of the thug will prevail? What has the Rs42 billion allotted to the present city government as an extraordinary package for Karachi’s uplift been spent on? Will the citizens be re-compensated with that money for all the damages incurred or will more money only go into beautifying Karachi’s façade to give the citizens more landmarks like the water fountain which lies shut for half the year?