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A season for charity
EJAZ Ahed and his wife, Tayeba, have strong diplomatic connections. He has designed, redesigned and supervized the construction of several consulates in the city, including German and Russian. This time, they were playing hosts of Werner Zerr, former chief of Sandoz in Pakistan and his wife, Gisela, who had come from Switzerland. The Aheds had an impressive list of consuls-general. The guests included the US Consul-General, John Bauman; France’s Georges Dupuis, the new South Korean Consul-General, In Pil Chun, and the Swiss Consul-General. Hanif Adamjee was there, and there was some talk of the future of Adamjee Insurance which the Supreme Court has to decide. Rafiq Habib, whose interests vary from banking to making Toyota cars, was there from the neighbourhood with wife, Jameela. Deputy governor, Tawfiq Husain, of the State Bank of Pakistan was there talking to foreign business executives. S.K. Parvez of Alstorm was there with his German wife. In fact, the Zerrs were staying with the Pervezs. Former Wyeth chief, Aijaz Khan and wife, Khanum, were also there. Former governor of the Rotary Club, A.M.A. Mohsin, was there discussing the political issues of the times. Barrister Qader Sayeed was there with wife, Zehra. Former chief of Sandoz, Saleem Majeedullah, was there with his wife, Yasmeena. Merck Marker’s Juergen Koenig was there on return from a business visit to China. He is trying to export his products there. He was telling some of the guests that this was the best time for making investment in Pakistan. He says the Markers are investing their profits from the company into the company again to expand its capacity. He could not understand why the Pakistanis are so hesitant. John Bauman said his consulate was reducing the number of jobs. The post of information chief was being abolished and he would have to look after public relations work as well. He will have only a consul to assist him. A number of Pakistani members of the staff would also lose their jobs. He was sorry for them. The decision was taken in Washington. The efforts to relocate the consulate has not been a success. Washington was taking its own time to take decision in view of the conditions here. Anwar Saleh Mohammed is a city businessman who looks much younger than his years, and is the Honorary Consul of Chile. He is popular among the diplomats, and so is his wife who runs popular cooking courses and has published several books on cookery. They love to entertain their friends, but they are so many that they had to divide them into two groups and invite them on separate Sundays. The younger crowd came over first and then the seniors, including the UAE Consul-General, Abdullah Amir Al Falasi and the South Korean Consul-General and his wife. He is on his fifth foreign posting here after Vancouver, Canada, Texas and Iran. He was deputy chief of protocol in President Roh’s office in Seoul before he came here after 20 years of diplomatic service. Earlier, he had seven years of military service. Guests at the lunch included former federal minister, Shahida Jamil and her husband, Yusuf Talpur, and younger brother, Ghani Talpur, who have been elected PPP MNAs. Masood Noorani of Jubilee Insurance, Akbar Hashwani and wife and Ijaz Khan, former chairman of Wyeth Laboratories, were there. Majyd Aziz of Hustler suits was holding court and telling a string lively stories.
ONE would presume the increasing number of golf courses would consume a great deal of water in a city marked for water scarcity. “No,” says Moinuddin Haider, the former interior minister. All of them use recycled water, he asserts, with no one to deny him. He was the chief guest at the dinner of Ijara Financing Inc, a leasing company in which M.A.G. Beg is the executive director and Farruk Ansari, managing director. Moinuddin Haider’s assertion was good news for the guests who had deplored the use of scarce water for developing too many golf courses. Col Beg, who was earlier with Mackinnon Mackenzie and later with a textile company, is a Chinese language specialist. The army had sent him to China to learn the language where had spent some years. Ijara financing combines an Islamic approach to lending money with modern style. But how truly Islamic is the Islamic mode of financing in Pakistan continues to be matter of debate. Does interest by any other name become Islamic and cheaper or more expensive?
THE Mohatta Palace is taking a breather between the just-concluded mammoth Sadequain exhibition and the Jamil Naqsh retrospective to come. It has, meanwhile, come up with sketches, drawings and prints of Pakistan as it was for a hundred years — between 1830 and 1930 — that their collector calls a very crucial period in the life of Pakistan before its political birth. You see Pakistan between the Manasarowar Lake in the northern regions and Manora in Karachi before the fumes, kutchi abadis and over-building disfigured most of the areas. Fakir Aijazuddin has collected the prints over a long period, and finally, from a book shop in London, accidentally. You see Afghanistan before the big guns and heroin ravaged its lovely spots, and places such as the Sindh Club, Grammar School and cathedrals in the city in their pristine beauty. Of course, things can’t remain the same when a city of 0.35 million people becomes a metropolis of 14 million or more, marked for its lawlessness. It is a show better appreciated in the form of a book whose pages can be contemplated at leisure. But the exhibition is the outcome of a tremendous effort made by him and his wife, Shahnaz, also a writer.
WITH the exploding number of galleries in the city making demands on her paintings, Naheed did not have time for a one-person show for at least three years, she says. But recently, she came up with a show of 41 paintings that show her maturity and consolidation of talent. Though still preoccupied with women, she is letting the canvases speak instead of giving titles, showing the sorry state of women in Pakistan. There is a new clarity in her work. The outlines are stronger and the colours are cleaner, instead of being rather smudged. There are clear reds and bright blues that add to the appeal of her work, and the browns are stronger than before. There is no story-telling through her canvases this time and instead, she lets her art speak. It is time she breaks out of her theme of women wronged, that she has exposed for long and looks for new horizons for which she is now prepared, as the show at Zenaini Gallery shows. What she needs is an upward movement and not a side-ward shifting, and make use of her talents to make clearer statements than she has been doing. She has also priced her paintings moderately and those who bought them were the gainers for that. She has talent, and should use it in full. | ||
WITH Ramazan not coming in the middle of the brief, cold weather, there has been a long string of merry charity balls to raise funds for helping the ailing poor. It all started with the mega Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre ball with a high ticket and ended with the resounding LRBT (Layton Rahmatullah Benevolent Trust) ball, with the AURA (Al-Umeed Rehabilitation Association) ball and the Karawan-i-Hayat ball in the middle, along with other galas.|
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