DR NAJMA NAJAM, the Vice-Chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, Rawalpindi, loves to watch movies. “I am a film fan, the older the movie, the better; black-and-white Pakistani, Indian, English, Japanese, Chinese, anything as long as the theme is powerful, it is well directed and has good acting, good cinematography. I even love to watch Johnny Woo films!”
Ask her to recommend one, and she is lost in thoughts because there are many that are on her list of favourites and which have left an impression on her, such as Farewell My Concubine, Casablanca, The Sixth Sense, My Fair Lady, Green Mansions, Gigot and so many others. “Among the new ones, I just love Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but I just cannot stand movies where they show endless bashing of cars,” she admits frankly.
The same sense of variety marks her choice in terms of music which, by her own admission, she listens “anywhere, anytime”, in the car, in company, alone, depending on the music and the time of the day.
There is a wide variation in music that she likes ranging from all kinds — westerns, classics, oldies, pop to the traditional eastern classical, ghazals, and on to the latest bands and singers like Fuzon and Noori! However, there is a limit to it and she confesses she cannot stand rap music, and refuses to place it in that category although her children differ strongly on this.
An avid reader, Dr Najma Najam’s passion for reading developed in early childhood. Looking back, she remembers reading “anything and everything” she could lay her hands on. “If something interesting caught my eye in the old newspapers lining kitchen shelves, I would be absorbed reading it, totally forgetting why I was sent to the kitchen!”
She remembers reading Shaukat Thanvi’s Maulana when she was only nine, “hiding under my mother’s bed, as she was rather concerned about the literature we read.” She finished most of the works of Bernard Shaw when she was in her early teens, She Stoops To Conquer being her favourite.
She also likes to read a wide range of books/journals/magazines/newspapers, and having read a good book, she likes to revisit it a few years later to enjoy it again.
Talking about the last book she has read, Dr Najam says, “I usually don’t like travelogues, but this one is different as it is a diary and record kept meticulously by Lord Dunmore of Scotland on his travels through Kashmir, Tibet, China, Northern Areas and upper Punjab, in 1896 and early 1900s.”
The descriptions of some of the landscapes, she says, are breathtaking, as are his adventures. “The description of human and animal behaviour is not just remarkable in prose, but in capturing of the psyche as well. He writes of ducks who, ‘quacked the quack of derision’ at human intrusion! Of dancers who ‘moved around in circles in loads of heavy clothing,’ till they stopped. It was not known that some had babies tied to their backs.”
To name one of her favourites was not an easy task as there are many, authors and books both, that have been memorable. In Urdu, she names Dasht-e-Soos, Tairhi Lakeer and Raja Gidh. In terms of writers, she loves to read anything by Quratul Ain Hyder, Ismat Chughtai and Manto “again and again”.
In English, she enjoys Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham, and has also read Harry Potter, and many others that she cannot recount. “I would have to go and stand in front of my book shelves to give you what I have,” she says, finding it hard to name just a few. She seemed very pleased with herself over a bunch of books bought in a throwaway sale which she says, “are as old as early 1800s along with the musty smell of old books!”
So, then, what is her idea of relaxation? “Given a chance and if I can do it, I would rather do all three at the same time! Unless it is a movie like The Sixth Sense which requires fullest concentration to understand it and you cannot afford to miss a single dialogue.”
DR NAJMA NAJAM, the Vice-Chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, Rawalpindi, loves to watch movies. “I am a film fan, the older the movie, the better; black-and-white Pakistani, Indian, English, Japanese, Chinese, anything as long as the theme is powerful, it is well directed and has good acting, good cinematography. I even love to watch Johnny Woo films!”
