Highlights of the June 2006 issue
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Off Centre
By Zaffar Abbas
The name Murlidhar Reddy may not ring a bell in the ears of many Pakistanis. Even in Islamabad, where he spent the last six years as a correspondent for The Hindu, one of India’s top newspapers, few people outside the political and diplomatic circles know him. Well, that’s part of the occupational hazard Indian and Pakistani journalists posted in each other’s countries have to live with. But the few people who interacted with Murli during his stay in Pakistan will remember him as an extremely fine person, a great journalist and one of the biggest advocates of friendship between Pakistan and India. Indeed, he is one of those who can keep their sense of humour in the worst of situations.
To be fair to Murli’s predecessor Amit Baruah, he too is a great friend and fine journalist. The last I heard from him, he was struggling to write his memoirs about his stay in Pakistan. Well Amit, if the book has hit the stands in India, it has certainly not crossed the border into Pakistan. But returning to Murli, one can say without much scepticism that if chosen with care some journalists can perhaps be better ambassadors of peace than diplomats.
Between the Lines
By Idrees Bakhtiar
I first visited India about 15 years ago to cover the country’s elections and was overwhelmed with the opportunity to witness the polling process of the biggest democracy in the world. I was also meant to interact with fellow journalists who were working within a media set-up that had flourished in a democratic context since Partition. Indeed, I was nursing the idea of finding the Indian press up in arms against the government or at least reading papers aggressively pursuing an anti-government policy.
The idea was particularly fascinating because until then the press in Pakistan had been striving for its freedom. During the days of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the press had been gagged and ‘advices’ – phone calls or notifications from petty officers of the information ministry indicating whether a story could be carried or not – were the norm. For example, when Ayub Khan was attacked at a public meeting in Peshawar repeated advices were issued to play down the story.
Santa Claus is coming to town. At least that’s what it seems like given the flurry of announcements that have flooded the information technology (IT) sector in Pakistan. The latest development on the internet front comes as part of an announcement by Motorola to partner with Wateen Telecom for rolling out the largest WiMAX deployment the world has yet seen and that too in Pakistan. It finally seems as if the long-awaited, much-hyped wireless broadband service might actually be right around the corner.
For those not familiar with technical jargon, WiMAX is a wireless broadband solution for internet accessibility that is relatively new and has never been implemented on the scale that Wateen, a sister-concern of Warid Telecom, is proposing. According to an article published by C|Net Network’s News.com website, Wateen expects “an initial uptake of a million subscribers”. The article goes on to applaud this move as “a milestone in the spread of WiMAX.”
Pakistan’s elite were recently treated to a heavy dose of culture from across the border. First Shabana Azmi and Farooque Shaikh enthralled audiences with Tumhari Amrita and then there was Naseeruddin Shah and his troupe in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad with Ismat Apa Ke Naam. Both performances were to benefit the excellent work being done by The Citizens Foundation (TCF), a non-profit organisation that has embarked on an ambitious programme to build thousands of schools across Pakistan and provide quality education to the underprivileged.
Some call it the Magna Carta of Pakistan. Others say it is the ultimate formula for the separation of the state and the government. A few believe it may even form the basis for the final exit of the military from the country’s politics. And, of course, there are those in the government who would have us believe that the document released by the two exiled former prime ministers is some kind of a plan to cover up their past crimes and grab power.
Flashpoint Frontier
By Intikhab Amir
The increasing role of religion in public life in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has circles in the government, opposition and administration guessing about the future of the province. Some believe this trend will engulf the entire transIndus region in the event of an Islamic wave. Others maintain that it is just a passing phase which proper economic and political inputs can correct. Adherents of the latter view say that the problem is largely linked to the situation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and will disappear once the government’s writ is restored in Waziristan and Bajaur.
Research on language and the human brain tends to focus on studies that ask native speakers of English to engage in a variety of tasks using their mother tongue. It is often tempting to generalise the results for English and reach conclusions about laterality – the dominance of one hemisphere of the brain over the other – for language in general. Although much has been learnt in this way and many of the results obtained with English do in fact apply to many other languages, it is important to note that there are exceptions, especially in qualitative aspects of processing language. Understanding both the generality and variability in laterality across the world’s languages is essential to refine our theories about brain mechanisms that underlie our ability to understand the written word. More importantly, exploring such variability in bilingual populations may help diagnose and treat language disorders or post-surgical disorders.
www.crime.com.pk
By Huma Yusuf
The popular understanding of cyber crime comes equipped with a dramatic flourish inspired by the antics of attractive stars – Robert Redford and Sandra Bullock, no less – in titillating thrillers such as Sneakers, Avatar and The Net. Who, after all, can resist the transgressions via keyboard of hyperintellectuals gone wrong? Alternatively, one thinks of acne-afflicted teenagers hacking into their high school systems to alter their grades and occasionally hitting upon databases maintained by the Pentagon or a high-profile university. How sinister could the intentions of these tech prodigies be, one wonders, dismissing the potential threats posed by such security breaches. While the reality of cyber crime is comparatively mundane, it is dangerous at both personal and federal levels. Indeed, the anticipated increase in cyber attacks could become one of Pakistan’s major security nightmares.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Despite having spent over four decades in Pakistan, Stella Jafri remains decidedly – even stereotypically – English. She is punctual, outspoken, disciplined and prone to what she calls an “inadvertent puritanical sternness.” Habits she accrued as a child during World War II remain with her: she is “resource conscious” and religiously switches off all the lights before leaving a room. Her strong moral fibre is complemented with a love for the outdoors that city slickers from Karachi can not even pretend to understand. She regrets raising her children in an urban jungle instead of the countryside and still misses the seasons and the feeling of wind and rain on her face during a brisk walk. Gardening is her guilty pleasure and she finds her refusal to be a slave to social obligations such as weddings rather liberating. As a mother, Stella has never smothered her children and was in fact quite comfortable leaving three of them in the care of their aunt in England to sort out some paperwork while she returned to her demanding job in Karachi.
On seeing Ali Kazim’s latest exhibition Secret Lives, Sacred Souls held last month at Lahore’s Alhamra Art Gallery, one would not guess that the artist is only 26 years old. The themes are mature, the technique is different, even cutting-edge. As such, each piece exudes a bitter-sweet serenity which inscribes a meditative calm on the viewer.