It was an Iftar party, in fact the first of the season of VIP genre, and was hosted by chairman of Shell Pakistan, Farooq Rahmatullah, and his wife with a good many oil men and top bankers as guests.
The talk naturally turned towards foreign investment and foreign investors. Added reason was the presence of Moin Fudda of Commercial Union who is the president of the Overseas Investors Chamber and its Urdu-poetry loving Secretary General, Zahid Zaheer, who was not versifying at that moment.
With all those headlines about foreign investment coming from the US and Japan following the end of the double-layer sanctions against Pakistan, suddenly everyone wanted to know how much foreign investment would really be coming and how soon?
The consensus was more investment would be coming in the oil and gas sectors as the investors are finding them profitable, though not some who had been coming up with dry wells. They even saw China as really interested in playing a role there.
Of course, there were the big questions without answers. Will the gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan really come through? And will the other gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and possibly to India as well become a reality? Too many there were hedging their bets.
Former chairman of Shell Pakistan and current chairman of Sui Southern Gas, A. Shahbaz, was there as also Shahid K. Haq of Pak-Arab Refinery. Shell rival, PSO chief, Tariq Kirmani, was there talking of how the Oil Companies’ Advisory Committee has been reducing oil prices steadily.
Engro Chemical’s Zafar A. Khan, who heads an employees-owned company which has been expanding steadily, was there as also Kamran Mirza, head of Abbots Ltd, who has been president of the American Business Council more than once. He had an experience of American checks on visitors after he flew into the US from Hawaii, where he had attended Abbots’ conference.
Azhar Hamid of Standard Chartered Bank and Zakir Mahmud of Habib Bank were among the bankers waiting for foreign investment to come and swell their deposits and increase their business.
Former ICP chief, Assadullah Khawaja, and his wife were there on return from the US and after living with his son who stays close to the fallen World Trade Centre and seeing all the action there.
Pakistan Colours
These days, when retired bureaucrats, in droves, are writing articles galore on contentious issues, such as the political future of the country, Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations and the Afghan imbroglio, one senior bureaucrat is contemplating the beauty of Pakistan. In fact, he has produced a book bringing before us the beauty of its landscape, the loveliness of its mountains and the charm of its seascape.
Athar Tahir, who describes himself as “one of the last commissioners of Lahore,” may be offended when dubbed a bureaucrat. He is a published poet of considerable merit. A Certain Season was published by the Oxford University Press in 2000. A highly-educated official, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he studied English language and literature and then a Rotary International Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied comparative religions and Muslim architecture.
Athar Tahir is in love with not only the lovely landscapes of Pakistan, but also with those who are in love with them and have painted them. His first book was on the work of Pakistan’s leading landscape painter, Khalid Iqbal. That portfolio was followed by Lahore Colours, a volume on the city as rendered in paintings during the last 50 years. Now comes the larger Pakistan Colours, subsidized by the Allied Bank.
Ameena Saiyid of OUP had Sindh Governor, Mohammedmian Soomro, to launch the book after art critics Marjorie Hussian and Durriya Kazi, who is the head of the Fine Arts Department of Karachi University, commended the book warmly and described it as a gift to the artists of Pakistan.
Ameena spoke of the major problem of piracy which serious publishers in Pakistan confronted. As a result, she said, publishers lost income, the government lost revenues and the writers, their royalty. She also spoke of the virtual monopoly of the official textbook board which resulted in poor textbooks and shoddy publications.
Athar Tahir spoke of his association with leading painters, particularly Sadequain, while he was painting the ceiling of the Lahore Museum and with the late Bashir Mirza, and wanted their works to be preserved as national treasuries.
After the ceremony, Ameena left for Islamabad where she played host at a well-attended dinner for Prof Noam Chomsky, for which she had sent invitations for many in Karachi as well. Many of the OUP authors and Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar, attended the dinner.
A memorial Iftar
IT is not often that a politician in Pakistan combines so much modesty with such dedicated service to his fellow beings and deviation to good causes as the late Shabbir Ahmad Shah, who died suddenly, recently. So Nisar Memon, formerly of IBM and later, president of the Reformers, held an Iftar party last week which turned into a memorial evening for the former MNA of Nawabshah, with a large attendance of Sindh leaders.
Syed Zafar Ali Shah, former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Mir Hazir Khan Bijrani, Makhdoom Khaliquzzaman, Qurban Ali Shah and finally Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi were among those who paid tributes. And since Shabbir Shah came from a family committed to promoting education in Nawabshah, Nisar Memon announced the institution of a scholarship for five years in his name for the medical education of a student from his town or Nawabshah District. It was Nisar’s contribution to remembering a good friend with great merits.
Speakers said Shabbir Shah never sought public office and when offered, recommended others who he deemed fit for the office.
As a big farmer, he helped other farmers with his expertise. When farmers were wringing their hands in distress as drought hit Sindh, he scolded them and suggested they should use some of the money they had made earlier from their lands and set up tube wells. He himself installed 55 tube wells on his farmlands.
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi spoke of Shabbir Shah’s expertise in farming and said he made him (Jatoi) interested in Reformers and associate himself with it.
Nisar Memon said that all he knew about politics and social pattern of Sindh, he had learnt from Shabbir Shah. He held many small parties but never printed an invitation card. It was all done over the phone.
Federal Minister, Omar Asghar Khan, and Food Minister, Khair Mohammad Junejo, were at the Iftar. So were ex-minister Ali Khan Junejo and Shafquat Jamote.
Shabbir Shah took the place of Khairbux Junejo as chief of agriculture in Reformers after Junejo became a minister. Nazim Haji, the new chief of Reformers, was there as also CPLC chief, Jamil Yusuf.
The younger brother of Shabbir Shah, Syed Bashir Ahmad Shah, was there listening to the tributes being paid to his elder brother.
Jimmy’s individualism
Jimmy Engineer, who has been making headlines for his long walk to Delhi, has always been an unusual kind of man, Parsi and artist. And in every field, he has made his mark.
“I was born in a Zorastrian family, but I have accepted all religions,” he says. He spoke of the late Sufi Barkat Ali as his spiritual mentor before he left Karachi to undertake a journey in which he will walk 20 kilometres a day. “I can walk up to 30 miles a day, but I want to interact with the people midway and urge them to join in the quest for peace between India and Pakistan,” he says.
As an artist who graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore, he has painted many of the scenes of the painful birth of Pakistan. His paintings of the crossing of tortured and looted refugees in what is described as “surgery without anaesthesia” in a new book, which he distributed to pressmen in Islamabad, are memorable. He is one of the few painters who have come up with such historic paintings and the only one who has done so many such paintings of bloodshed and mayhem. His commitment to Pakistan is absolute.
He says he does not want to sit in five-star hotels and talk of peace between India and Pakistan like many NGOs prefer to do. Instead, he wants to interact with the people of India and Pakistan.
His mission is impressive enough to make Sadruddin Hashwani offer his assistance and even walk some distance with him, initially.
Jimmy, who has been issued a special visa by India, will have a van of Tricon Ltd, owners of franchise pizza outlets here and in India follow him.
He had earlier walked from Peshawar to Karachi with excellent public reception. And now, he will be covering a distance of 1,000 kms from Wagah to Delhi, which may take him about 50 days.
Manzar Riaz of Tricon Ltd is excited about the visit and says he had been planning the visit for the last three months with Jimmy.
“Everyone is talking of peace. That shows peace is important and the people really want it. But peace will come only if you respect all religions,” he says.
The painter is becoming more and more of a peace-maker and the fact that he is a Parsi enables him to play the role better than others.
It was an Iftar party, in fact the first of the season of VIP genre, and was hosted by chairman of Shell Pakistan, Farooq Rahmatullah, and his wife with a good many oil men and top bankers as guests.
