meethapani

Creative Protest Unpaid lady health workers, a slow investigation of a target killing, electricity breakdowns - regardless of the cause, the protests are usually all the same: burning  tyres or buses, pelting stones, closing main roads. The message is lost in the rioting and its management by the state. How do the silenced speak when there is none to speak for them? It requires creative thought to ensure the message is communicated. In the Bhutto era, when section 144 was imposed banning assembly of 5 or more people, the Lawyers took out an effective protest: 4 lawyers followed at a 20 ft distance by another 4  in a long procession along the road, not breaking any law, not stopping the traffic and yet having an impact. More recently the Fix It movement has been effective in getting the authorities to repair manholes. The poet Shelly wrote  The Mask of Anarchy in 1832, that may be  the first manifesto  of peaceful resistance,  asking protestors...

SHARING  CULTURES I came across someone in London who said he belonged to a group who used only Anglo Saxon words and refused to use ‘foreign’ words brought over during the 1066 French Norman invasion.  Stunned I thought, surely the Angles and the Saxons were of German origin, and 1066?  How long does it take for a culture to be assimilated? Ethnic identities are once again rising to the fore with Brexit and the new Trump era. Pakistan also has its own homegrown ethnic tensions.  Ethnic diversity and cultural diffusion have been the enrichers of human societies. Trade, especially the silk route travelling from Xian to Rome generated so much exchange of not just goods, but stories, language and customs. Wars also brought cultures into contact for years at a time, and in the pauses of active warfare, cultural exchanges took place, and many a friendship was forged, and knowledge exchanged. Migration, whether by choice or necessity, including the dark periods o...

The Transience of Architecture One thinks of architecture as designed  buildings intended to be, if not permanent, at least exist a long time, serving generations, defining cities, reflecting history. As Winston Churchill famously said, “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us”. And then an earthquake or flood or war or willful damage occurs, such as we have witnessed not just in Pakistan but across the ancient cities of Iraq and Syria.  It questions and undermines our authority over our lives, our ability to construct our futures. It makes our lives impermanent and fragile. A basti or riverbank in Karachi is suddenly bulldozed, a politician forces neighbours to vacate their homes at three day’s notice, a road expansion pays off homeowners to sell their collective family memories, a dispute over inheritance forces previous owners to see the painful dismantling of their childhood  paradise. The lofty quotes about designing architecture to last for ...

The Significance of small Things There was a month long strike by waste collectors in London during what came to be known as The   Winter of Discontent, 1978–79, when almost every union went on strike for better pays.  I saw the rubbish bags pile up on the streets till it became difficult for people to go to their offices. It made me realize that in any society, every role is equally important. One can imagine a society like an intricately patterned carpet where a missing thread renders the carpet worthless. 19 C Romantic Poetry  celebrated the “violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye”, the village blacksmith, village school master, or London’s chimney sweeps.  In the 20 th C it became Postman Pat and Thomas the Tank Engine, Steptoe and Son, cheerful characters who found joy in small things    We usually interpret this span from insignificant to splendid in the context of social injustice,  Marxism’s  rich poor divide...

Prison and Creativity “San Quentin, what good do you think you do? Do you think I'll be different when you're through? You bend my heart and mind and you warp my soul, And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.” Although Johnny Cash never went to prison, his iconic songs written for and performed in prisons, made prison reform authorities sit up. Prison is a strange institution. Punishment? Reform? Rehabilitation?  Through the ages, prisoners were always used for free labour – to build monuments, railways or work farms.  Sometime these  tasks were creative in nature, such as the mosaic floors of the Victoria and Albert Museum that were cut and assembled by women prisoners, or the ceramics or carpets made by prisoners in Pakistan.  With prison reform, vocational training was introduced and prisoners had the option of earning money.   It was seen as a way to offer options that could change lives of criminals upon release from ja...

DEMOCRATIZNG ART In the western world, it took a revolution  of great blood and gore to make art accessible to the common citizen. Today the quiet revolution of digital technology is opening up new ground not just making art more accessible but allowing more people to become artists. The Louvre Palace once home to kings, opened as a public art gallery during the French Revolution in 1793. Art that was commissioned by the Church or Royalty, became the heritage of all of society. The common man had the crafts, and folk music to aestheticize their lives. Art gradually filtered into everyday life. Art has always been quick to appropriate new technologies and new materials. From at least the 4 th C BC, artists have used devices such as the camera obscura , perspective frames, the camera lucida, availed of progress in science such as the development of synthetic colours for the textile industry, the invention of acrylic paints, the printing press, the still camera , the mo...

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN  Kanishka, The Headless Warrior, is the name given to a fragment of a stone relief from the 2 nd C AD depicting the Kushan  king. He is wearing a knee length tunic and trousers gathered at the ankle, new to a region where clothing was of unstitched cloth. Later years, especially after the arrival of Muslim dynasties, saw the evolution of a dazzling array of finely stitched clothing – the angharka, sherwani, peshwaz, farshi pajama, that reached its pinnacle in the Mughal courts. Men wore layers of embroidered silk garments, necklaces, bejeweled armbands, earrings and rings, intricately fashioned turbans and embroidered shoes.  Rural communities and tribes had their own distinct form of carefully classified styles of clothing and turbans. Not only did you recognize a man’s tribe by his turban, beard and moustache, but also the place he occupied in his tribe.  Clothing has been seen both as identity, or inclusion in a group of people, ...