ARTIST and one-time professional photographer, Rooha Ghaznavi claims that her concentration span is very high which enables her to sit through and watch almost any movie, other than violent ones. Her favourites keep changing, though. Sometimes, it becomes very difficult for her to decide which films would top her list of most memorable flicks. She claims they have varied over a period of time and have ranged from classics to romantic to war movies. Hence she prefers to speak about the films she’s seen in the recent past.
One of the movies that left an impression on her was Winonna Rider’s How to make an American Quilt which is about a group of friends — middle-aged women — sitting together, discussing their lives with one another and thrashing out misunderstandings and differences from their past that they had not really managed to put behind them. Rooha says, “The theme was so close to human nature that one could easily relate to it.”
The other film she recalls is The Other Sister about a mentally challenged girl wanting to live a normal life.
“It was so real that I felt I was part of the story and was weeping and laughing with the characters. Our problem is that we don’t know how to portray people who are handicapped, and wind up either making fun of them or projecting them as really pathetic. I think such films also help me think about myself and take me towards self-discovery,” she says
Life is not all he he hah hah by Meera Syal and Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins, also rank among her unforgettable movies.
Adds Ghaznavi, “I also watch a lot of television — in fact, anything and everything except Pakistani plays, which I find, by and large, a painful and heartbreaking exercise. I mean it’s hard to regularly look at the same faces in every play; heavy, incongruous make-up; terrible photography and sets; dead stories and insipid acting. I love to watch documentaries and enjoy Everyone loves Raymond.”
While Rooha claims she enjoys watching foreign films with sub-titles (though she doesn’t remember the names of any) she admits she hadn’t watched Indian movies for a long time, till recently she saw two — Kuch kuch hota hai and Chaltey Chaltey and fell in love with Shahrukh Khan.
However, she adds, “After that, whichever Indian movies I tried to see starring Shahrukh Khan, I found him to be identical in them and was so put off that I’ve decided no more Indian movies for me.”
One Indian film, though, that she does recall having seen a long time ago, which she had enjoyed was called Jogging Park.
She recalls, “It was about the relationship between an older man and a younger woman who meet in the park. The man fancies himself in love with the woman who he thinks reciprocates his affection, while she looks upon him as a friend. I enjoy films that are based on relationships.”
As for music, although Rooha Gaznavi is so fond of it that she had actually employed an ustad to teach her to sing, she admits, “I’m not in touch with the latest music, except what I hear at wedding functions and normally prefer to listen to my old cassettes. I still enjoy the old timers such as ghazal singers Farida Khanum, Reshma, Noor Jehan and Malika Pukhraj and Nusrat Fateh Ali. My sons can tune into anything new and enjoy it but it seems I don’t have their musical ears. I have to be familiar with the music to enjoy it. I love the old English singers too — Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Boney M. — and also enjoy old Pakistani film songs, especially Tarapna hamein ata, toh tarpana bhi ata hai.
Rooha Gaznavi recalls one experience in particular, when she heard music live and couldn’t control the tears running down her cheeks. Her eyes light up as she remembers, “The famous Indian ghazal singer Geeta Gangoli had come to my studio to get her photograph taken and I begged her to sing for me. In that closed room, she sang so loudly for me that her voice echoed everywhere. What a great voice. My hands shook so much that I couldn’t shoot any more pictures that day.”
As for reading, Rooha Gaznavi claims that she used to be a ‘books person’ — she doesn’t like the term ‘bookworm’ — and would read all the time, so much so that when she got married and her husband was posted to Dera Gazi Khan, where no books, magazines or newspapers in English were available, she became desperate enough to make do with reading literature on her make-up stuff, and instruction manuals, until her father mailed her reading material.
But, she admits, “Now there are big gaps in my reading. Last year I read a lot because I was reading whatever my son was reading. He’d finish with a book and I’d start it, so I read lots of Indian writers, as he was reading them. Arundhati Roy’s The god of small things was one of the books I enjoyed a lot, although I had to take breaks in reading because I would be crying so much. I’ve also read Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron and many books by John Grisham, and quite a few classics.”
For the last couple of years Rooha Ghaznavi says she’s been reading a lot of the Holy Quran and its translation, and finds it a clear-cut way to peace. “Every time I read it I find something new that I had missed earlier.” As for Urdu books, Gaznavi admits she doesn’t like to read books in the vernacular but her writer friend, Firdous Hyder, reads out Manto, Ghalib and Faiz to her from her collection and she says that she enjoys them thoroughly.
FAVOURITE MOVIE: Too many
FAVOURITE MUSIC: Vintage songs by evergreen singers
FAVOURITE BOOK: The god of small things by Arundhati Roy
ARTIST and one-time professional photographer, Rooha Ghaznavi claims that her concentration span is very high which enables her to sit through and watch almost any movie, other than violent ones. Her favourites keep changing, though. Sometimes, it becomes very difficult for her to decide which films would top her list of most memorable flicks. She claims they have varied over a period of time and have ranged from classics to romantic to war movies. Hence she prefers to speak about the films she’s seen in the recent past.
