Some doubts about Sharjah tournament: SWINGING DRIVES
ALL things considered, it was just as well that Sri Lanka opted not to tour Pakistan to play three One-day Internationals. At one stage it seemed likely that Sri Lanka would make a flying visit but security considerations or rather the perception of a lack of security had the final say. There must be some doubts about the Sharjah tournament though one sincerely hopes it will go ahead. These are nervous times in the region and while one admits that our minds are not focused on cricket, still a show of normalcy or the appearance of it would be welcome.
The South Africans are a difficult team to beat at the best of times but at home, they seem invincible as they demonstrated in the first match of the triangular against India. A score of 279 is virtually a winning one or at least it should be exceedingly difficult to overhaul. Yet the South Africans achieved it with two overs to spare. This is an indication of South Africa’s batting strength or, alternatively, it could be a reflection on the Indian bowling. It was a combination of both.
Both captains made mistakes. Shaun Pollock won the toss and put India in. He was calculating on the dew factor and preferred to bowl first. Had he chosen to consult the weather bureau, he would have been told that there was only a slight chance dew. India left out Harbhjahan Singh. India must play to its strength. There were two batsmen that the Indians were hoping would be among the runs. The first obviously was Sachin Tendulkar who had been out cricket for several weeks because of injury and the other was the Indian captain Saurav Ganguly who has been on a lean pitch for quite a while. Both got hundreds and they were involved in a tremendous opening partnership.
Ganguly was the more adventurous and took his chances. He was, in a sense, hitting his way back to form. Tendulkar, on the other hand, was more circumspect, feeling his way through. But his hundred is bad news for South Africa.
South Africa needed to make 280 but there was no panic when it batted. There was a measured briskness but both Gary Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs played correct cricket shots and there was no slogging. Their job was made easy by the Indian bowlers who bowled short and indeed bowled badly. Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad are not novices and have plenty of experience and should have been able to defend such a large total.
Still, there are plenty of matches to be played and for India’s sake, one hopes that the lessons have been learnt. But one of the joys of watching this tournament is the commentary of Navjot Sidhu. It is refreshing to the extent that he takes far more liberties with the English language than he took liberties when he was batting.
Thus, Jonty Rhodes is as fleet as a gazelle and runs like a hare, all in one sentence. My only regret is that I was never able to share the mike with him. I would have enjoyed it. I did have Bishen Singh Bedi as one of the experts and I enjoyed doing the commentary with him enormously. But most of the fun was when we were off the air. On the air, Bishen Bedi was run-of-the-mill compared to Sidhu who can scale great heights and plumb great depths.
Col Naushad Ali who is the match referee in Zimbabwe is having a busy time. There was first of all the matter of James Kirtley’s bowling which he considered to be suspect and appears to have gone public with his suspicion. I am not sure of the protocol. Was he right? Tim Lamb, who is the chief executive of the England Wales Cricket Board (ECB), has expressed his displeasure and has said that the whole thing hadn’t been particularly well handled.
Some years ago, Aamir Sohail was penalised by the match referee John Reid in Sri Lanka. Reid promptly went on television. I telephoned David Richards who was the chief executive of the ICC and asked him whether a match referee could go public. He told me that there was nothing in his job-description stopping him from doing so. I don’t know if the protocol has been changed.
Then Naushad has had to discipline Nasser Hussain, James Foster and Andy Flower “for bringing the game into disrepute.” When Flower was on 99, an appeal for caught-behind was turned down and Foster, the young wicket-keeper had a rush of blood and exchanged word with Flower. How and why Hussain got into the act is not very clear. All three have been reprimanded.
The one-day series between England and Zimbabwe is hopeless one-sided and one would have expected, at least, the England captain to keep his cool. Hussain is under the mistaken impression that to get excited and uptight is a sign of leadership. He should have been a calming influence on Foster rather than becoming a combatant.
One would have thought that the presence of a match referee would have ensured that a match would be played without incidents which are really childish. But apparently it has not. I think it for the respective boards to ensure that, at least, a captain does not get embroiled in verbals.
The captain, after all represents, the cricket board. If the captain himself sets a bad example, how can one expect the players to behave within the spirit of the game? I think Naushad should have handed out stiffer penalties. But it just goes to show that even a series which is by of a match-practice session for England can become competitive and nasty.
Tribute to a feminist
IT was really thoughtful of the Amnesty International Pakistan to devote an evening to the memory of Dr Rashid Jahan, the well-known progressive writer and campaigner for the rights of women, on the day it had earmarked to release its publication on “Torture and ill-treatment of women.”
Dr Rashid Jahan is a great name in the history of the Women’s Movement in northern sub-continent. She was the daughter of Shaikh Abdullah, pioneer of women’s education at Aligarh, who was instrumental in opening the first girls school in Aligarh which, later on, became the Aligarh Women’s College. Shaikh Abdullah was the scion of a Kashmiri family. His life-long devotion to the Aligarh Movement and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan coaxed him to move on to Aligarh. As is known Sir Syed, towards the fag-end of his life, had decided to take up women’s education from the platform of the All-India Mohammedan Educational Conference (AIMEC). A sub-committee on women’s education was formed during the last session of the AIMEC during his lifetime and it was in this sub-committee that women’s education was accorded due attention. This is a fact which is often ignored on purpose or bypassed to malign Sir Syed as an opponent of women’s education.
Poet-writer Shahid Naqvi presented his paper on Dr Rashid Jahan at the literary function of the AI.
Naqvi’s paper impressed the audience. He traced the emancipated atmosphere of Shaikh Abdullah’s family. Rashid Jahan’s mother also brought out a monthly journal, Khatoon, to further the cause of Muslim education the way Maulana Rashid-ul-Khairi and Mohammedi Begum had pursued it. The credit for bringing up Rashid Jahan as an emancipated, liberal, mentally agile and highly persuasive campaigner goes to Shaikh Abdullah who died at the age of 91, in 1965 - 13 years after the death of Dr Rashid Jahan. Dr Rashid Jahan did her matriculation in 1922 and her MBBS from Lady Harding College, Lucknow. She joined the UP Medical Service in 1929 and after having served her first stint of service in Buland Shahar was posted in Lucknow in 1931.
Dr Rashid Jahan was married to Sahibzada Mahmud-uz-Zafar and the couple was so popular in Lucknow and wherever it went - specially in Amritsar during Sahibzada’s principalship of Islamia College. Dr Rashid Jahan took great delight in organizing events, attracting brilliant youths to literary discussion and even expecting them to do everything in their power to work for the freedom of the country. She was a great devotee of “terrorists”like Bhagat Singh. It is not surprising, therefore, that the collection of short stories, Angarey, in which her story Dilli Ki Sair was also published along with Ahmed Ali, Sajjad Zaheer and Mehmud-uz-Zafar’s short stories, created an uproar in the traditional circles.
It is wrong to suggest that the Angarey group was an extension of the Premchand School of short-story writing. Far from that, it was a big departure. The Premchand School comprised writers such as Aazam Kuravi, Suhail Azimabadi, Ali Abbas Husaini and Sudarshan, and they didn’t touch the ‘forbidden zones’ such as sex or religion.
Dr Rashid Jahan’s short story Dilli Ki Sair and a drama in Angarey succeed in exposing the hypocrisy and exploitation of womenfolk in the north. It could be said of the rest of the sub-continent. Dr Rashid Jahan, Shahid Naqvi summed up in his brilliantly written pen-portrait of her, as one of those great souls whose contribution to the war against gender discrimination was so important that all that the present-day woman has started taking for granted should be treated as an unearned gift from Dr Rasheed Jahan and her fellow-campaigners. It is perhaps for personalities like her that Saqib Lucknawi penned the following couplet:
Duayain Dein Mere Baad Aane Wale Meri Wahshat Ko
Bahut Kante Nikal Aaye Mere Hamrah Manzil Ke
(I beseech all those following me to pray for me for the reason that it is due to Odyssey that many a thorn lying in the path of their destination had been removed.)
The PWA wanted Chaudhri Mohammed Ali Rudolvi to be the chairman of the reception committee of the 1936 PWA Conference. Everyone who went to Chaudhry Sahib failed. When Dr Rasheed Jahan came to know of her friends failure she came to their rescue, and said that she would undertake the responsibility of getting his consent and she did. Faiz Ahmed Faiz was not inclined to join the Progressive Movement, but he couldn’t say ‘No’ to Dr Rashid Jahan‘s ‘order.’ Yes the way she talked to Faiz, Sajjad Zaheer, Sibte Hasan, Sardar Jafri, Majaz and all other stalwarts of the Progressive Movement. There was so much affection and esteem in her ‘admonition’ that no one could stick to his or her position once Dr Rashid Jahan took the stand. She wrote only a few stories and dramas but proved to be a ‘guiding angel’ for many.
It is strange that the AI book Stop Violence - Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds was taken up as a theme by Dr Rasheed Jahan in her story Dilli Ki Sair. Dr Rasheed Jahan’s story springs from the premise that “Torture of women is rooted in a global culture which denies women equal rights with men, and which legitimizes the violent appropriation of women’s bodies for individual gratification or political ends ... Pervasive discrimination continues to deny women full political and economic equality with men...”
It was in July 1952 when it was suspected that cancer had spread its tentacles in her body. She was flown to Moscow for treatment but came back as a dead body after a few weeks.
Her first death anniversary meeting on 13 August 1953 in Ganga Parshad Hall, Lucknow, was a great event.
Her last recorded message was: “I won’t like to die in a country where women are tortured on different pretexts.”
Shahid Naqvi’s prose was as moving as it could to match the charisma of a moving personality like Dr Rasheed Jahan. He intends to write pen-portraits of all the stalwarts before he says goodbye to this world.
The sprightly brass bands of Lahore
IT is marriage season in the city. A large number of marriages are celebrated in Lahore from October to the end of February, creating a great demand for decorators, caterers and musicians to add to the colour and gaiety of the festivities. The most sought-after elements of festivities are the sprightly brass bands, which are booked months in advance of a wedding date.
Almost every old city in the world boasts of creating enduring cultural traditions, which have so far withstood the pressure of change. Lahore is among these historic cities, some of whose cultural traditions have withstood the vicissitudes of time.
One of these traditions is the use of sprightly brass bands with marriage processions. Although the invention of modern electrophonic musical devices, and the consequential emergence of numerous banks of pop singers, did put a small dent in the customary use of brass bands, this resilient tradition has tenaciously resisted the onslaught of modern fads.
A majority of the inhabitants of Lahore, especially from the Walled City, still avails the services of brass bands, which are engaged to spearhead wedding processions. They are followed by elegantly attired grooms on horseback or seated in cars. For many citizens, wedding processions without brass bands are cheerless, insipid and dull.
Brass bands became vogue in the sub-continent when the British introduced them for use on festive occasions. Their customary use, resulted from numerous contacts among Western, Hindu and Muslim civilizations, gradually took root in local culture during the past 250 years. Social interaction among different communities created in the people an awareness that the varied forms of their cultures hinged together in a complex system of affinities and opposites, which existed consciously or otherwise, and in their attraction and repulsion, which metamorphosed into an organized world of a new synthetic culture.
Even before the introduction of Western brass bands, groups of professional musicians adorned marriage processions and private receptions of the affluent. A part of this old tradition is still perpetuated during receptions and festivities connected with the marriages of their offspring held at private residences.
The groups, which were placed at the head of marriage processions in years bygone, consisted usually of strong percussion instruments, a number of shehnais and a few varieties of woodwind family of musical instruments. It was after the arrival of the British that local professional musicians introduced brass bands and several other Western musical instruments in local festivities.
In the beginning, members of the brass bands did not wear any uniforms. They were usually attired in local raiments of all sorts, but gradually colourful uniforms were used, which added significantly to their gaiety. It was due to the well-directed efforts of their founders that members of various brass bands of Lahore acquired a disciplined look, which was spawned by the use of new uniforms designed for them. The uniforms showed avidity on the part of the band leaders.
For some odd reason, all Lahore brass bands of any significance were owned and run by Muslim musicians. A few attempts, however, were made by several non-Muslim musicians, who tried to set up their own bands but failed. A few of them remained in business for a while, but never made a name for themselves.
Brass bands consist of trumpets, horns, trombones and tubas. These instruments are indispensable for melody, sustained harmony, rhythmic accent and the weight of their massed tone. These bands are led by seasoned clarinetists, who play the main melody and the rest of the band instruments repeat the lyrical stanzas, sonically projecting the refrains of particular songs.
According to late Babu Muhammad Din (June 1984), the then proprietor of Babu da Band of Lahore, his father, Malik Amir Khan, set up a band in the Rang Mahal area of the city in 1875, “when I was hardly ten”. It comprised only five musicians, including his father, and the members did not wear uniforms of any kind...”AT first, it presented a queer spectacle”, recalled the late centenarian musician. He explained that street urchins, even some elders, would follow and laugh at a band, when it passed through the narrow lanes of the Walled City”.
Among the 150-odd bands of Lahore and located at its periphery, only three earned public acclaim. Of these, Sohni da Band, until not too long ago, was considered one of the best dressed, best drilled and best performing bands. Established in 1934 by late the Master Sohni Khan, a inveterate clarinettist, who earlier on had worked with Babu da Band, it made a name for itself. Soon this band quickly gained reputation for being the most tuneful and attractively dressed group of musicians. By the early 1940s, it was already known all over the Punjab and the NWFP, and received bookings from places as far away as Delhi. From 1934 to 1973, when its founder died, this band remained crest high of popularity. Currently, it is managed by Nazir Sohni, the son of its founder, from its office in Kashmiri Bazaar.
The third band, which also won mass popularity, was the Jehangir Band, which currently operates from the Railway Road near the Gowalmandi Chowk. Clarinettist Jehangir Khan, the father of clarinet is Alamgir Khan founded this band in Amritsar around 1860. It migrated from Amritsar to Lahore in August, 1947, during the communal riots that followed the partition of the sub-continent. Like the founder of Sohni da Band, Alamgir Khan of the Jehangir Band was also a celebrated name before August, 1947. Besides his association with the Jehangir Band, he was known for his expertise, talent and skill in the rendition of classical ragas, which he had learnt from Sangeet Sagar Ustad Bhai Lal Muhammad Amritsari. After his death, the band was jointly managed by his sons Aurangzeb Khan and Shahjahan Khan, both of whom died within a short time of each other a few years ago. At present, it is being managed by Babar Khan, Jehangir Khan’s eldest son.
The oldest Church stands tall on the Mall
RAWALPINDI, Oct 9: Rawalpindi’s oldest Presbyterian St Paul Church, built in Victorian style about 125 years ago, appears untouched by the changing seasons and times.
The Church is located near the junction of Murree Road and the Mall in Rawalpindi Cantonment.
The spire of the church rises above the cluster of trees about 200 feet high. It is the most familiar landmark of the area.
The Church’s first brick was laid in 1876, at the peak of British power in the South Asian subcontinent. After the Sikhs had been vanquished by the British Raj in March 1849. Official date of construction of the Church is given as 1908.
The Rawalpindi Cantonment was then home to the Northern Command of the British army and considered as the last outpost of the Empire. British troops used to come to the Church for Sunday prayers.
The stone of the building was laid by Rev G J Chree BD. Until 1942, British pastors reigned supreme. It was in 1943, that the first native, Rev Peter was appointed as assistant pastor.
In 1947, the Church was handed over to the United Presbyterian Church run by the American missionaries.
Funds for the Church came mostly from the Christian Community as well as grant from the British Government. However, there is no available literature on the architect of St Paul’s Church.
The Church has not only its outside to be proud off, even the wooden furniture placed in the Prayer Room of the Church, seems to have been made yesterday, with no signs of wear and tear.
The stained glasses installed at the front and back of the Church has painted images of the Holy Christ and his four disciples - St Mathews, St Mark, St Luke and St John, which are the pride of the Church.
One set of stained glass depicts the scene of resurrection of the Holy Christ. When the sunlight falls on this the scene appears in all its glory. Glass works add to the beauty of the interior of the Church.
In the olden days Church attracted the Christian community and visitors to Rawalpindi because of its Gothic architecture.
Following the installation of Queen Victoria’s statue on the central pedestal of the Mall, the area attracted even more attention.
The statue was a marvellous piece of art and remained in its place even after Pakistan came into being. It was during a demonstration against the British attack on Suez Canal that a hand of the statue was damaged. Consequently it was sent to a godown and from there it was shifted to British High Commission, Islamabad.
The present pastor of St Paul’s Church is Rev Basharat David. In his opinion, the Church requires at least Rs six lakhs for construction of the boundary wall, white-washing, and slate- work repairs to the ceiling.
Asked about the garish colour of the Church building, he said that this was done before he took over. He said that many visitors have questioned him about it, and only answer to the problem is sand-blasting of the colour so as to bring back the original colour.