meethapani

  Courage and Cowardice On April 28, 1967 the boxer, Muhammad Ali (Clay), publically refused to join the war in Vietnam announcing “I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.”   Stripped of his heavyweight champion title, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000, his boxing license revoked, and banned from boxing for three years, it was a heavy price to pay for the 25 year old, and took great moral courage. Courage is commonly associated with war or battle. Warrior heroes were immortalized in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,    Firdausi’s Rustum and Sohrab, Mir Anees’s account of the heroism at Karbala. Joan of Arc, Noor Inayat Khan, Major Aziz Bhatti, Flight Officer Rashid Minhas, and countless others whose stories of courage have earned them distinction. While courage displayed by warriors is accompanied by hours of arduous training, there are daily e...

    Nostalgia Nostalgia was once seen as a medical condition – the pain felt by those who could not return to their homeland. Today it reflects the longing for a past life seen as better than the present. Edoardo Campanella and Marta Dassù suggest Europe and America are in the grip of an Age of Nostalgia. Most of their citizens believe life was better and more manageable 50 years ago. This is evidenced by Brexit, Trump’s “Lets make America great again” slogan, and the growth of far right parties in Europe, unable to accept the social change generated by immigration. There is nostalgia for a lost Empire, of being the foremost economic power, and having undisputed global hegemony. Nostalgia, the authors say, is a coping strategy, especially for an aging population, for dealing with “deep uncertainty and radical discontinuity” that restores self-confidence by recalling the more familiar past. Nostalgia has a different role in countries that were once colonized or torn b...

  Café Culture Most Pakistanis assume coffee is a western beverage and tea is Pakistani. In fact the opposite is true. Coffee was introduced by the Arab Muslims, and tea was introduced to South Asia by the British. A young Ethiopian herder called Kaldi noticed his herd was acting frisky after eating berries from a bush   in the Kaffa region. Others claim coffee was discovered in Yemen . It soon became associated with Sufis who drank coffee to stay awake during the long hours of dhikr.   James Grierson’s The History of Coffee , claims the first coffee houses were established in Makkah- public places where Muslims could socialize and discuss religious matters. As Islam spread, so did the love of coffee – to Turkey, Syria and Egypt and across the Mediterranean. . Legend has it that a pilgrim, Baba Budan, smuggled coffee beans out of Makkah, to his home in Mysore where he successfully cultivated coffee plants. In the 17 th Century, the Dutch smuggled a coffee plant...

      Art Awaiting Patronage The greatest legacy of the Mughal Empire is their contribution to the culture of South Asia with exquisite paintings, textiles, jewelry, ornaments, clothing, music, dance, poetry, cuisine, architecture and garden design. It was the age of elegance, and the tone was set by the emperors.   Royalty the world over has surrounded itself with sumptuous luxury. What distinguished the Mughal empire was the personal nurturing of the arts by the emperors themselves, creating, inventing and refining them in state sponsored Karkhanas   or workshops established within the palace and its surroundings. Artists and artisans were paid a salary, raw materials were provided and an administrative staff saw to their needs and maintained jama kharch records.   The karkhanas produced everything the court needed from furniture, carpets, tents, horse saddles, weaponry and coinage, to clothing   jewelry and perfume – and of course art and ar...