meethapani

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Interior Stories

“If architecture is how we move through space, furniture is how we pause inside it”. Furniture can be viewed as a cultural narrative – a mirror of personal identities, social interaction and the diverse societies and strata within them. The layout of interiors determines how we walk, gather and transition through a space. Furniture is said to be where architecture meets the body. Furniture can hold memories: a parent’s or grandparent’s favourite chair, an heirloom, a childhood memory. Rooms are spaces to welcome others and create new stories. The way furniture is arranged, and how comfortable it is, can determines how people interact. Japanese minimalist interiors are intentionally designed as quiet sanctuaries that reduce sensory noise reflecting the Samurai code and controlled elegance. The Arab majlis rooms and the more elaborate Persian diwans traditionally feature wall-aligned floor or low seating around an open centre. Hand-woven carpets and cushions create a...

In Search of Family

In Search of Family There has been a surge in the number of people searching for their family ancestry, enabled by access to digitized records, DNA testing and genome mapping. While ancestry platforms are currently focused on Western societies, where migration data, birth and death registers have been maintained for centuries, other societies have long established written or oral traditions to honour family ancestry. Why does family history matter to so many? A Canadian university asked the question ‘Why do we derive satisfaction from knowing who our ancestors were?’ The responses mostly focused on a search for identity and being part of larger histories. ‘We can find things down to the nano level, but we can't find ourselves today’. Some just want to make connections with someone famous, others want to recognise the sacrifices and struggles of ancestors. Heritage tourism is a new phenomenon with visits to towns and villages of ancestors. The present 79...

In Search of Peace

Peace treaties almost always fail or are short-lived, despite the hype surrounding them. There have been numerous efforts to redirect humanity towards peace. One of the earliest and most influential was philosopher Immanuel Kant's 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, which later influenced the League of Nations (1920) and the United Nations (1945). It included in its recommendations a coalition of independent nations and the gradual dismantling of standing armies. Instead we see a 41 percent rise in global military expenditure over the past decade, reaching a record US$2.9 trillion according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Ukraine tops the world, spending 40% of its GDP on military expenditure. Increasingly destructive weapons continue to be invented, along with the less visible funding of propaganda and espionage. The United States remains the world's largest arms exporter by a wide margin, accounting for roughly 42 percent of all global arms exports. T...

Fluid Identities

The audience goes into raptures as Amir Khusro’s Chaap Tilak Sab Cheen Li fills the air. The qawwal Fareed Ayaz sings with great tenderness: “My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles on them, You have held my wrists tightly with just a glance.” The audience, and the all-male qawwals find nothing strange about a man singing personified as a woman. The Sufi path to pure love and devotion to God is often symbolised as a woman yearning for the Beloved. The feminine voice represents the journey from worldly or majazi love to Divine or haqiqi love expressed as yearning and surrender to God. Gender fluidity is a recurring theme in Pakistani cultural traditions. Few notice that the scriptwriters and song writers of early blockbuster Pakistani cinema were men, who seemed to understand the emotions, and desires of women. A ghazal written by a male poet sounds equally natural if sung by a man or a woman. The power of the poem lies in its emotional authenticity ...

Staying Alive

The now famous song by the Bee Gees, Staying Alive, ushered in the disco era. It was actually written in response to the desperation in the wake of the brutal economic and social breakdown of New York in the 70s. “Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’ and we are staying alive, staying alive!” the song was a social statement, a plea - ”somebody help me !”. Composed for the iconic film Saturday Night Fever, itself carrying a dark message of survival, it inspired young men across the world to strut down the street in white suits. The message of the film – giving up was not an option. Medical first responders are trained to use the song to get the rhythm of CPR to the 103 beats per minute, literally ensuring people stay alive. The Karachi of today shares with the New York of the 70s a city unravelling. That mix of glamour and urban decay, a primarily working class city facing economic desperation, crime and drugs. To Karachi one can add ripped up roads, a ra...

Knowledge and Knowing

Knowledge and Knowing "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day." — Lao Tzu. Knowledge is information acquired from external sources. Knowing, on the other hand, emerges from within and determines how facts are comprehended. Knowledge has no value without knowing while knowing can exist without knowledge. A child knows how to recognise parents, communicate and play without any formal instructions. Village wisdom knows the right time to sow plants, or cure with herbs, without knowledge of botany or biology, relying on collective memory and connection to nature. Most of us know how to change a light bulb or operate a computer without knowledge of how electricity if produced or how binary technology works. In Europe knowledge gained priority over knowing around the scientific revolution of the 17 th C establishing rational knowledge as superior to subjective experience. Other civilisations such as those of India or...