PRESIDENT Fazal Elahi Chaudhry remained a bachelor till his death. Though he died at a ripe old age, a bachelor President is always eligible whether young or old. However, to his dismay, his residence in Rawalpindi where he lived alone now has women everywhere. The majestic white building of the presidency is now a campus of the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University and stands tall on Mall Road, Rawalpindi. If memory serves me right, some three decades ago the morchas armed with guards now stand vacant. However, the building still enjoys the grandeur and splendour of striking Victorian architecture once built by two famous Sikh brothers. It caught the eye of the powers to be when the decision to establish the first women’s university was made some five years back.
“Yes, I know we inherited a beautiful building but that was about it,” says Dr Najma Najam, the vibrant FJWU Vice-Chancellor. “When I joined, the building was vacant. There were just two of us — the chowkidar and me.” The young VC shared the details of how she started from scratch and rebuilt everything slowly and gradually. The university has in these years made a place for itself and is now a part and parcel of the cultural life of the twin cities.
In the morning, the corridors and classrooms sing tunes of all sorts of vocalists, the fine tuning of melody now being done by Khawaja Najamul Hasan, General Manager, PTV Islamabad, who arranges melodious evening in the lush green gardens of the campus. “We wanted to pay homage to the legendary singers of the subcontinent and came up with the musical programme, Dunya Meri Jawan Hai. The 90-minute programme will rediscover voices such as Surraiya, Khursheed, Shamshad Begum, Amir Bai Karnataka, Zohrabai Ambaley Wali, Noor Jehan and non-filmi ones such as Malika Pukhraj, Mukhtar Begum and Begum Akhtar. The programme last week was dedicated to Malika Pukhraj and gave the people a chance to listen to the glorious numbers of the legendary singer, along with visuals of the original songs.
A musical evening away from PTV studios was a breath of fresh air. The building provided an excellent backdrop that gelled well with the era the audience was transformed into. The anchor person along with Tauseeq Haider was none other than Tahira Syed, who also shared her experiences and the “domination of mummy” on the entire household. S.M. Zafar, her son-in-law, Ahmed Faraz, Professor Aliya Imam and Agha Nasir spoke of their encounter with Malika Pukhraj in personal and professional life, besides highlighting the unique facets of the singing excellence of “a perfectionist, who would not compromise on anything but the best.” Incidents quoted from her life also gave details of how and where she learnt and performed. Malika, as a young singer, also sang in the court of Raja Ghulab Singh Dogra, the Raja of Jammu and Kashmir and was paid Rs500 per month (an amount worth Rs500,000 today). Tina Sani, along with Tahira Syed, sang some of her popular numbers.
“The 13-episode programme is basically going down memory lane for our age group,” says Najam. Besides details on the singer’s life and people’s views, it will have some of her original songs and the popular numbers re-enacted by contemporary performers. Najam believes that from an archival point of view, it will be a researched piece of information. “My aim was to record this as a documentation of Muslim female singers. A hundred years from now, this work will be of great value.”
SCANDAL IN THE CAPITAL
Numerous scandals keep sprouting in the Capital from time to time and spread like wildfire, not only because it’s a small city but because everybody knows everybody here. The latest one concerns a committee party in which at the time of payment, the woman organizer (committees in Isloo are mostly run by females) refused to acknowledge that she even ran a committee. The contribution amount of a committee normally ranges between Rs1,000 to Rs10,000 per month per person, and keeping the diplomatic status of the Capital there are some committees which are in US dollars!
The conventional ones start from the organizer’s house who gets the first one and moves on to other members, who throw lunches or high teas at monthly draws. Committees with large amounts (running in lacs) also get auctioned. For example, the lucky winner of the draw can sell her committee to someone more in need (read desperate) on a profit of one to five per cent.
In the afore-mentioned incident, the committee of US$3,000 per person, per month, the organizer simply refused to admit that she ever collected the amount. Although the angry and furious committee members registered their complaints at the local police station, according to a lawyer “not a single member pursued the case as it would have meant disclosing many details, besides sources of income!”
PRESIDENT Fazal Elahi Chaudhry remained a bachelor till his death. Though he died at a ripe old age, a bachelor President is always eligible whether young or old. However, to his dismay, his residence in Rawalpindi where he lived alone now has women everywhere. The majestic white building of the presidency is now a campus of the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University and stands tall on Mall Road, Rawalpindi. If memory serves me right, some three decades ago the morchas armed with guards now stand vacant. However, the building still enjoys the grandeur and splendour of striking Victorian architecture once built by two famous Sikh brothers. It caught the eye of the powers to be when the decision to establish the first women’s university was made some five years back.
