KARACHI: To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of the great Muslim mystic Jalaluddin Rumi, UNESCO has declared 2007 the Year of Rumi. It is therefore entirely apt that the grand finale of the Hamara Karachi festival was an enchanting Whirling Dervish sema.

The venue for this mesmerising spiritual ritual were the spacious lawns of the newly renovated and beautifully-lit 75-year-old Karachi Municipal Corporation building.

Here an overflow of audience sat enraptured as Turkish musicians played their haunting music and a troupe of Whirling Dervishes twirled to the chanting of Rumi’s ecstatic poems.

Even if Rumi’s profoundly mystical Farsi verses were incomprehensible to the majority, the audio and visual impact of the performance was spectacular.

Congratulations and thanks are due to Naib Nazim Nasreen Jalil and the CDGK and of course -- for providing the citizens of Karachi with a memorable Mevlavi Sema, or whirling ritual of the dervishes from Turkey.