A village set around the now dried up stream which used to flow some years ago, is buzzing with activity as people, carrying multicoloured flags and dallies, keep pouring in. This is the assembly of devotees gathered at Noorpur Shahan, to celebrate the five-day annual Urs of Sufi Saint Syed Abdul Latif Kazmi, known as Bari Imam.
Noorpur Shahan, a semi urban locality in the foothills of Margalla, is the resting place of Bari Imam. According to a legend, Bari Imam spent over 12 years standing in a stream worshipping Allah, near Neelam Botu village in Hazara district until reduced to a skeleton.
The Islamabad police has chalked out a foolproof security plan to tame the flow of traffic. As a precaution, Section 144 has been imposed in Noorpur Shahan to prohibit the use of narcotics, sale of both hard and soft drinks have been prohibited whereas heroine and hashish are allowed until caught.
The aroma of channa pulao and halwa puri diverts one’s attention towards the food stalls. Although there is no menu card, the item list is on the fingertips of the sellers and you can just go and opt for an item that suits your pocket and intensity of devotion — korma, nihari, haleem, and what not.
Women, clad in black from head to toe, coming out of sleek cars are generally the ones who have made a four-hour journey on the motorway. The ambience gives a festive look. It is not only the food market that is hot, vendors make money by selling bangles and bracelets so typical of Bari Imam urs, besides parandas and handloom materials.
As the night falls, the tempo builds up and devotees get into action, dancing to the tunes of the dhool and chimta all night long. The mehfils of qawwalis and qafis add to this mesmerizing scene. These spellbinding moments transform a visitor to another world. Every year the crowd seems to grow bigger and the arrangements more elaborate.
Humour and satire
An invitation to Islamabad Club gives an invitee a golden opportunity to rub shoulders with the who’s who and the power brokers that are. To be seen at the literary functions is also a requirement for survival in the Islamabad lifestyle. However, poetic justice is fairly done when PNCA organizes an evening, ‘Dialogue on Art’, a monthly feature. Though it is not easy to get the right people for the right dialogue, a few like Kishawar Naheeds and Iftikhar Arifs of the capital, with their presence make these evenings a worthwhile affair. The imported guest this month was no other than Mushtaq Ahmed Yousfi, a great author and humorist.
The physically frail ex-banker set the tone of the evening by commenting on the introductory remarks presented by the DG PNCA. “Although Chengez Sultan mentioned it to be an evening of living artists, the elaborate words of praise he expressed are usually reserved for the dead. I am grateful for his impatience!”
He narrated the ordeals of being a banker and a writer at the same time, and quoted remarks of Mirza Abdul Wudood, the well-known character of his books which kept generating bouts of laughter. Anticipating a question regarding the translation of his work, Yousfi saheb explained, humour cannot be translated in any other language just as many English words and sentences do not have any substitute in Urdu. He supported his argument by giving example of ‘I love you’, a sentence that does not have an Urdu equivalent. “It is a sentence you can say to your child, and you can say it to your elder too. And if you are a man of great guts, you can even say it to your wife,” he expressed.
The author of Aab-i-Gum stated that despite the advancement in technology, with CDs and DVDs flooding the bookshops, the printed word would continue to fascinate the reader, no matter how small their number might get.
As the title of the evening was ‘Dialogue on Art’, he had to speak on art itself. He shared his experience of studying Persian in Class Five. The confusion of Shud, shudi and shudum made him drop the language and take up drawing instead. Although he drew the ghara (a clay water pot) and the bunch of grapes many times, he said his drawing efforts never pleased his teacher.
A village set around the now dried up stream which used to flow some years ago, is buzzing with activity as people, carrying multicoloured flags and dallies, keep pouring in. This is the assembly of devotees gathered at Noorpur Shahan, to celebrate the five-day annual Urs of Sufi Saint Syed Abdul Latif Kazmi, known as Bari Imam.
