meethapani

  At a Crossroads One of the positive impacts of the Covid 19 lockdowns has been what is called, the Great Human Pause. On the one hand, as human movement became limited, nature was able to breathe again, wild animals explored empty urban spaces, air quality improved.   Environmentalists have renewed their efforts to find an equitable balance between the needs of people and nature. Another, more unexpected, consequence has been the opportunity for people forced to stay indoors, to reexamine their own lives, values, and social relationships. Since it has affected all the nations of the world rather than just an obscure part of the world,    it allows a unique opportunity to decide on what fundamental changes can be made in a post-covid world.   The world is at a crossroads. It is easy to empathise with Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not taken” . He comes upon   “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/And sorry I could not travel both. He takes “the one less traveled by,/And that has

  When Words Fail There are seven universally recognized facial expressions   - Surprise, Fear, Disgust, Anger, Happiness, Sadness, and Contempt or Hate. We would not be wrong in assuming it is easy to communicate and understand each other, regardless of our cultural variations, age and gender differences or educational levels. We all know this is far from the truth. There is far more misunderstanding than understanding, more misrepresentation than representation. From wars to divorces, miscommunication is often the root cause. Approximately 6,500 languages are spoken in the world today. Nearly 130 million books have been published just in the modern era .   Dictionaries are compiled and revised, as we try to improve our understanding and communication.   And yet words fail us.   Vedic, Greek, Chinese, Islamic and modern scholars have extensively theorized human behavior.   Face reading, phrenology, psychology, astrology and all their variations, attempt to understand human natur

  The Art of Story Telling There is always someone in the family or one’s circle of friends who becomes the designated story teller. who possesses   the art of taking ordinary facts and enthralling the audience with suspense, humour or high drama.   As the old saying goes “ the truth is in the telling”. The ravi, the raconteur , the dastan goh were the centre of all social gatherings. A bazaar in Peshawer   is named after The Q issa Khwans   of Peshawar, who entertained travelers in cafes with stories.   Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani’s The T̤irāz al-ak̲h̲bār , was a manual for storytellers. The Daastaan e Amir Hamza has been told and retold in several versions including the   illustrated Hamzanama of Emperor Akbar.   Ghalib Lakhnawi   wrote in 1855 a “There are four things,in this dastan: battle, courtly assemblies, enchanted worlds and trickery (razm bazm t̤ilism aur ‘ayyārī ). Story telling is the oldest form of transmission of knowledge.   Visual story telling from cave paintings,

  The Truth Lies in the Telling There is always someone in the family or one’s circle of friends who becomes the designated story teller. They possess the art of taking ordinary facts and enthralling their audience with suspense, humour or high drama.   Story telling is the oldest form of transmission of knowledge.   Visual story telling from cave paintings, Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs, to contemporary narrative painting, photography and cinema. Oral histories and religious beliefs, moral fables and fairy tales and poetry were gradually preserved in written form. However, even in the written form, the voice of the narrator is always present. For every story there is a story teller, whether a scientific paper, an account of historical events or fiction writing, And where there is a story teller,   there is inevitably a point of view   determined by the context   of time, social values, and intention. Narration aims to influence the readers or listeners, to make them share the narr

  Awakening the Senses Our perception of the physical world is dependent on our sense of touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell Neurosurgeon, Don Katz,   proposes that in effect they are all one sense,   as the impressions gathered simultaneously combine in the brain to help us understand what is before us.   Not only do they combine, but often different senses cross over. For example, we can hear what we see - when we see   a photograph of   waves crashing on the beach, we also hear it in our imagination. Artists have always used this ability in the viewer to awaken many senses at the same time.   We can imagine the smell of the flowers in a painting, feel the texture of a rough piece of wood, visualize the galloping of horses in a musical composition. While sense of touch is an obvious aspect of a sculpture,   a two dimensional painting can also present an impression of texture by breaking up a flat surface with   brush strokes or   marks. Kandinsky systematically codified colours

  The Science of Elegance The city is noise, chaos. Speeding   cars, buses, motorbikes and rickshas weave through any available gap, determined to be   faster than everyone else, until slowed down by double and triple parked cars outside shops and schools.   Pedestrians navigate the city, avoiding open manholes and random rubbish heaps. And then the absolute stillness of bored shop keepers sitting behind counters, fruit and vegetable sellers waiting for customers as they flick flies off with a rag nailed to a piece of wood. A roadside tyre shop advertises its presence by slinging a couple of tyre tubes on a mangled branch of a mangled tree.   Its all expediency – clothes are functional, the city scape is functional, even parks are functional. There is not the slightest effort to view the city as an aesthetic or pleasing experience.   Step outside the city into a remote village in a desert or high up in the mountains and feel the harmony between people and nature. Houses fit into th

    The Benefits of Fear John Lennon said “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer” The usual perception of   fear is that it leads to inaction – the pulling back from life that Lennon speaks of. Psychologists and self-help experts have filled pages to help us overcome fear   Fear is one of our most primal instincts. It is caused by a part of our brain called the amygdala and is our foremost self-preservation tool. If we did not fear we would not survive. What we call fearlessness is not the absence of fear, but the channeling of fears into action   One can propose that all development of human society springs from fear.   Fear of mortality lead to the invention of vaccines, cures, development of medical equipment. Fear of loss of property and life led to the architecture of castles, walled cities and houses. Banking systems protect one’s wealth. Fear of invasi

  Finding our Future in our Past The Turkish television series, Diliris:Ertugrul, has taken Pakistan by storm. Setting aside the impact of a gripping script, which is the staple of all TV series, what impresses is the meticulous research that would have gone into creating the sets, costumes and cultural etiquette of the times.   Feridun Emecan , a historical consultant, whose area of expertise is the Ottoman period was engaged . There has been talk of Mehmet Bozdag, the script writer of Ertugrul, wanting to do a project in Pakistan.   But where are the cultural references, the images the artifacts to be found? Our history is almost exclusively the history of war and politics and sceptics would agree with Napoleon Bonaparte who said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon”.    We see Pakistan as a static society divided into provinces and tribes, shaken by the two way migrations in 1947. We forget that since 2000 BC, this region has seen wave after wave of invasions and settlers from

  “The Caged Bird Sings” The recent protests in USA that erupted in reaction to the   killing of African American, George Floyd, by the police, have spread to UK and France , touching the raw nerve of race relations.   It has reawakened the legacy of slavery, abolished at the end of the 19 century. Yet, even after eight generations, black communities in these countries, are still seen through   the prism of slavery. The phrases used in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in USA   are not of anger but pain – “ we are tired”. Slavery existed in every nation. African, European, or Asian. The vast majority were captives taken during wars, and included all races.   Most nations assimilated descendants of slaves as equal citizens. The slaves of the Ottomans were trained as soldiers and statesmen, many attaining high positions as generals or managing the administration of the empire. Mulla Ali, an Abyssinian slave, became the Chief Judge, and the first black man in the imperial c

  Foolish Optimism or Wise Pessimism? As the news from across the world gets more grim : shut downs or their violations, predictions of looming economic depressions, political standoffs, riots after yet another African American dies of excessive police force,   a student who asks to be excused from an online class because her   aunt has just passed away   from Covid. All this against the backdrop of the abject poverty of some and the excessive wealth of others, conflict refugees struggling to survive, the millions of children without education or clean drinking water, the oppression of   Kashmiris, Palestinians, Rohingya, and Uyghurs.   Some respond with despair and pessimism, others look for signs of optimism.   All human endeavor appears to swing between these two approaches to life’s complexities. Nuances have evolved between these two extremes, with wise pessimism being considered the most realistic approach, especially since the 90s, when matters spiraled out of control with t

    Hidden Influencers   Socializing the young to uphold collective values and behaviour was once the responsibility of a family or tribe . While some communities still preserve traditional customs, such as the Pashtunwali code of hospitality in Afghanistan and North Pakistan, today that mantle has been wrested by the machinery of public communication – newspapers, television, cinema and social media. Our personal memories and impressions are interrupted by external influencers who tell us what to think and how to behave. In a consumer driven society, with its dizzying messages, it is easier to be told what to think as we silence our individuality with social inertia.   While history is full of individuals such as Abdullah  ibn Saba ' and Peter the Hermit,   who managed single handedly to create revolts or lead nations to war, today s ophisticated specialist organizations have stepped in. They manipulate our desires and fears using algorithms and big data to persuade us w

  The Creative Urge The artist Anwar Saeed , found himself alone all day at a friend’s house without a pencil or pen to be seen. Unable to subdue the creative urge, he began drawing with a spoon dipped in coffee. The artist Hanif Shahzad   made breathtakingly detailed   collages of a railway platform for his graduating show, with a palette of coloured papers from magazines, because he could not afford paints at the time. Iqbal Geoffrey calls his collages “NeuroFusions”   which he describes as   “Imagination + Oil and Odder mixed media” in perfect compositional balance. We inadvertently become creative when we rummage around for material to express an idea, and in the process   learn to see materials through the lens of an artist-   cardboard is the colour ochre , a bottle cap is a circle,   a button a red dot. While the pleasure of working with perfectly prepared artists’ materials cannot be denied, creativity is less in the materials than what the artist chooses to do with them. 3

  Creative Self-isolation  In 1815, the earth’s biggest   volcanic eruption in 10,000 years,   tore apart Mount Tambora in Indonesia. By the following year , its ash had spread across Europe and America causing crop failure, famine and cold stormy weather, known as “the year without summer” . In a rented villa on Lake Geneva Mary Shelley, confined to the house with the poets Shelley and Lord Byron, responded to the mayhem with the creation of her famous story, Frankenstein.   500 kilometers away, Baron Karl Drais, invented the first bicycle, the Laufmaschine, or “running-machine” since most of the horses had perished. Imitations rapidly appeared in Britain and America.   One has to pay homage to the indomitable creative spirit in the face of disaster. Tinkering alone in home workshops created many novel ideas –   Graham Bell’s first long distance call in 1876, the Quadricyle, the first Ford car in 1896,   the first weekly radiobroadcast by Frank Conrad   in 1920, and Walt Disney’s

  Living With Death The tragic rows of wooden coffins in Italy, waiting for a lonely burial are images difficult to erase. Live data of deaths reduces lives to statistics. We are not unused to statistics from wars, plagues, pandemics. However, information unfolding before our eyes is a new phenomenon in a digitally connected society. One cannot claim ordinary people have never had to face the real possibility of dying, faced daily in Syria, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine. What has stunned many is that this pandemic, like T.S.Eliot’s yellow fog of ‘insidious intent’, has wrapped itself silently across all nations of the world, rich and poor, peaceful or war torn.   The fear we experience is not of illness, but of possible death. Death was once seen as a spiritual or theological inevitability. Plato believed the true attainment of pure knowledge, the wisdom we desire, is only possible once we quit our bodies. Belief in life after death, denied the finality of death. Ancient Egyptians

Quiet Voices The American painter Mary Cassatt moved to Paris in 1874 and after a visit to her studio   by the French artist, Edgar Degas, the two instantly recognized they had a shared sensibility. This began a lifelong association. Unlike sculptors Camille Claudel and Rodin, there was no romance or power play – just an equal meeting of the minds.   In 2014, the National Gallery of Art honoured this association with an exhibition “Degas/Cassatt”. More interesting than the similarities are the subtle differences in their works. While stylistically similar to Degas and other Impressionist artists, the subject matter of the work of Mary Cassatt is seen as ground breaking in the context of her time.   Susan Fillin Yeh notes Cassatt does not conform to male images of women. Her women are   shown absorbed in their own independent lives whether in domestic settings or outdoors. They read, sew , bathe their children, have tea with friends, pick fruit in the orchard or go to the ope

Portrayal of Women “Aurat ke sirf teen roop hotay hain – maan, biwi, aur tawaif”   A woman has only three identities – mother, wife, and prostitute. Having had the privilege of a genderless upbringing, we were amused when we heard   this dialogue in a Pakistani film of the 70s -   until we realized many endorsed this view. Today, while the strong word prostitute is not used, women are often reduced to a simplistic dichotomy of   haya and be hayai (modesty and shamelessness).   Once centred around the female body, modesty or shamelessness now expands to incorporate the female voice – modest silence or shamelessly speaking out.   Human society is commonly divided into men, women and children, of which the role of women has been subjected to the greatest vagaries over time. The visual representations of women over the years and in diverse cultures makes for a complex narrative. A predominance of female figurines found in ancient civilizations, assumed to be mother goddesses

Wanderlust Dépaysement , a French word whose literal meaning is “to be without a country”, describes the sense of disorientation in unfamiliar places. For adventure travelers it describes that combination of nervousness and exhilaration of being in countries whose customs and language are strange and new. Artists are familiar with the feeling, as each artwork is a step into the unknown. The Surrealists and later Conceptual artists, deliberately created dépaysement or disorientation, to present familiar objects in unfamiliar contexts. Since nomadic humans established agricultural societies and city life, a world of predictability and sameness emerged. While comforting for most, there have always been those who are restless, crave challenges and a life of adventure. Some, like travellers   Marco Polo and Ibn-e-Batutta, and the many explorers of history, thirsted for knowledge of distant lands. Others, such as the illegal migrants   making hazardous journeys, and the many