meethapani

  House Full Pakistan once had 2,500 cinemas bringing romance, music, tragedy and action to both city and town, all but replaced today by a handful of multi screens in a few big cities, with ticket prices only a few can afford. As journalist Qaisar Kamran wrote, there was a time “when a ticket cost less than a meal” and “for a few hours, everyone could sit in the dark and disappear into a story”.   Movie reviewer, Muhammad Suhayb, takes us on a cinema-hopping journey of the past: to Empire Cinema near Civil Hospital where Pakistan’s first-ever film, Teri Yaad (1948) was screened, to Regal, now Regal Trade Center, where   Dilip Kumar and Noor Jehan’s Jugnu (1947) completed its Silver Jubilee. Naz (now Naz shopping center) and Nishat ( now a commercial building after it burnt down in 2012) were called Radha and Krishna after the names of the owner’s children. The central role of cinema is best understood by a story of Mehboob Khan’s Ailan, released all over India on A...

  Does Truth Matter? We are said to live in a “post truth” world. In 2016 the term was named Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries. While the immediate motivation for the term may have been a description of Donald Trump’s “war on truth”, in reality the subversion of truth has been a strategy used for millennia by rulers, their emissaries and their spies. From the Trojan Horse to the falsehood of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, certainty and doubt, trust and deception keep exchanging places, confusing the general populations.   History is riddled with double speak. While one hand is held out to help, the other is filling a pocket. Where the world sees genocide in Palestine, Zionists see the promised land. Artist Khalil Chishtee made a sculpture with plastic bags of two men embracing while each holds a gun behind his back.   Taking liberties with the truth is justified by advertisers, by politicians, and by defence lawyers.   It is considered acceptable be...

  Taking Care of the Little Things The American poet, Emily Dickinson, said “take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves”. The words seem timid in a time that urges big ideas, big conglomerates, and policies that are applied with a broad brush on a global canvas. Individual acts can grow into movements. Abdul Sattar Edhi, the award winning social worker of Pakistan, would be seen trundling a wheelbarrow through markets collecting funds for healthcare, ten rupees at a time, or standing with arms outstretched for donations in the middle of the traffic. The Edhi Foundation single handedly gave hope to a whole generation and established a methodology that others emulate. A.K.Khan, a horticulturist from Allahabad who migrated to Karachi, not only transformed a dusty city into a green oasis, but he introduced the concept of landscaping domestic gardens in the city, establishing it as a profession for others to follow. Societies focus on human ac...

  Controlled by Design Design is often considered a luxury, yet the reality is that nothing can be manufactured without first being designed. It can be as simple as an envelope or pencil, or as complex as a car or space rocket. While some designers such as Charles Eames, Milton Glaser, and Zaha Hadid, have become household names, the vast majority of products we use every day are anonymously designed down to the shape, colour and location of the tiniest screw on a laptop. No one knows the name of the first craftsperson who designed the stucco muqarnas of Nishapur, Iran in the 9 th Century, a style that spread across the Islamic world, or the very first woven paradise carpets or illuminated Qurans.      Design is the purposeful fashioning of something, usually products, architecture, or graphic design. It is also the design of systems, from the structure of how a bank functions, education systems, government structures or the design of roads to manage traffic flo...

  Dreaming Karachi Last Sunday a day long festival was held at the recently renovated Khalikdina Hall in the heart of the old city of Karachi. While Karachi’s public spaces are coming back to life as seen with the attendances at the Arts Council’s World Culture Festival, the performances at the National Academy of Performing Arts and the All Pakistan Music Conference, and new fringe cultural spaces like Nani Ghar, Meher Ghar and Kitab Ghar, seeing an abandoned heritage building once again milling with people of all ages from across Karachi, is a moving experience. The handsome portals of the Palladium building, for many years dark and silent, were filled with light and life as in the past. Arif Hasan, in his article, The Changing Face of Karachi, explains in great detail the circumstances that ‘orphaned’ the inner city. Karachi has awakened after three decades of fear. Much has changed in these decades. The culture of cinema which started with the Star Cinema on Bunder Road in ...

  Whispers Beneath the Sand Much like the waves of Karachi’s coastline – sometimes overwhelmed by Monsoon seas and sometimes stretched out alongside winter’s gentle ripple, the stories of this city appear and disappear with few traces. Who were the community of people whose flint tools from 2 million years ago were found on Mulri Hills opposite the University of Karachi, now buried under an apartment block? Why were stone megaliths erected in circles on the outskirts of Karachi? And more importantly, how have they survived for so long? Why was such a harbor so perfectly sheltered from the Arabian sea by the Manora peninsula not a thriving sea port in ancient times? Or was it? Mentions of what is today Karachi go back to at least the 3 rd C BC Krokola, Monrontobara, Kharacchi,   Rasal Karazi, Kaurashi, Karachar, Kalaiti Bunder, Ramaia, Kolachi, Kurrachee. But tantalizingly no more than names remains, except for the famous story of the seven sons of Aubhayo six of whom w...