meethapani

  Midday Moments A couple of weeks ago, a midday poetry reading session was held. Literary aficionados, Bari Mian and Wajid Jawad read out a selection of poems, with members of the audience contributing their own favourites. In the midst of the mayhem of war, there was something restorative and moving about these two speakers, each with a small well-thumbed pocket sized notebook bursting with paper bookmarks marking the poems to be read. Most cultural events are held in the evenings, often extending well into the night. This was different. A couple of hours in the middle of the day. A hiatus between the busyness of the morning and what may well be a fraught evening. It was not a rest, a siesta, but a secret energizing, a waking of the soul when many in the city were bent over desks, reconciling accounts. Midday is seen as a powerful time of the day, when the sun is at its zenith, creating no shadow.   A time of sharp clarity, intensity, perfect illumination, exposing the...

  War or Peace? War is presented as an integral part of human society. There are wars for territorial expansion, wars of resistance, punitive or wars of revenge, wars for liberation. Some wars are fierce, aimed at annihilation of the enemy. Some are wars of attrition, much like the sieges of the past, aimed to exhaust the adversary's capability to fight, depleting resources and morale. Wars seem easy to start, but few know how to negotiate the peace. While there have been many truces, there have been very few successful peace treaties. The oldest surviving peace treaty was the Treaty of Kadesh, signed around 1259–1269 BC between Egypt and the Hittites to end a war that lasted two centuries to gain mastery over the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The treaty was honoured until the end of the Hittite empire 80 years later. In Europe the Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648, ended over 100 years of wars, and established borders of sovereign states. The treaty lasted for over...

  Taming the Populace Human society began with small isolated groups typically of 20-30 individuals, that self-organised by developing individual and group skills and responsibilities to ensure survival. As societies became more complex so too did the ways of organizing and managing them. A few took upon themselves or were nominated by the many to take decisions that ensure the prosperity of all. Today the governments of China and India each manage the affairs of over a billion people, and most countries count their populations in the millions. How are such large populations managed as a single political entity? How do governments succeed in inspiring its populations to have a shared identity and collective aspirations? India and China reinvented themselves after centuries of deflection of their traditional systems by colonial adventurism. To put it simplistically, India does it by recalling its ancient civilizational achievements, China by gathering around Confucianism. ...

  A Theatre of the Absurd @maraybhai100 uploads reels that resemble no other in the prolific world of Pakistani memes. Pakistani memes, like their Indian cousins, are brilliant nuggets of self-reflective humour, reaching their true genius during the recent skirmish between India and Pakistan. Maray Bhai’s reels have more in common with the existential Theatre of the Absurd than the usual amusing reels.    They are off-the-wall, pure chaos beginning in a calm pseudo-scientific tone using Google Maps, and the Solar Smash app, as if about to offer a solution to regional crises. They soon derail into an existential distraction, as the lines he draws over countries, turn into doodles of animals or people. Behind the levity there is the shadow of real regional issues and the existential threat of war and nuclear annihilation.   The Theatre of the Absurd describes plays written in the aftermath of WWII that reflected a chaotic, and illogical world, where one accepts, ...

  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...

  In The Same Boat   The Titanic was a magnificent luxury passenger ship that sank in 1912 , after hitting an iceberg. The First Class had luxurious suites, servants, French cuisine, private decks and a ballroom with an orchestra.   The second class was comfortable but not luxurious. While the third class, most of whom were seeking a new life in America, were housed on the lowest level, with simple food and shared cabins. Yet, they all faced the same fear and the same death in the icy waters of the Atlantic. The Titanic has since become a metaphor for human society. Some see it as an indictment of human hubris, others reflect on the class divisions and the unequal value of human lives between the privileged and the poor. One can move the telescope further away and look at the inequality of nations - divided between the highly developed and those much lower down the rung. Yet every so often nature makes short work of such differences. Celebrity homes were gutted al...

  Signs and Miracles A whale shark was pulled ashore onto a beach in Gaza on October 17, amid great cheers. Raed Elwan, one of the fishermen who helped bring the creature to shore, said “We felt the sea sent us a great blessing, as people in the camps had nothing to eat”. Whale sharks are only found in tropical waters and it is speculated it may have entered the Mediterranean from the Red Sea via the Suez canal.     The Gazan fisherman saw it as help from Allah, and soon parallels were made with the Expedition of Fish which took place in another October in 629 AD. The Muslim forces were suffering from famine, forced to eat leaves to survive, until a whale came ashore that fed them for several days. Signs and miracles are a part of all religions, a reassurance of divine presence. This is especially true of Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam: the parting of the Red Sea, Moses striking a rock to cause 12 springs to gush forth, Jesus multiplying loave...

  Degrees of Detachment   The Sumud Flotilla of some 40 boats with 500 people on board from 47 countries, including Pakistan, attempted to get to Gaza in a symbolic gesture to highlight the need to get aid to besieged Palestinians. “When the World Stays Silent, We Set Sail” states the Sumud website. The participants were everyday people—organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy and lawyers. Sumud is a Palestinian term for steadfastness. This was the latest and largest of several flotillas from 2010, during which many lost their lives, were imprisoned or deported by Israeli authorities. The heroic nature of sailing fragile boats across the Mediterranean Sea to save a people in impossible conditions, is not lost given the legendary history of this sea traversed by heroes like Odysseus, Theseus and Jason with his Argonauts.   Is this a new generation of the Sea Peoples of 1177 BC that brought down the powerful empires of the Bronze Age? Fanciful speculation...

  Occupying No Man’s Land No Man’s Land is a monograph of Amin Gulgee – a sculptor, a performance artist and a curator. That should be a comprehensive description, but it’s not. The more one hears and reads about Amin Gulgee the more the mystery deepens. No Man’s Land suggests that in between space of uneasy peace in a zone of conflict, a space in which Amin gathers the fragmented, the wounded and the heroic.   Sometimes he is Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People and sometimes his space becomes Théodore Géricault’s Raft of Medusa. The book has twelve essays by a wide range of curators, novelists, artists, academics, critics from Pakistan and across the globe. Amin asked the contributors to consider the book an invitation to a party. They could write whatever they felt like. A good place to start is in the middle with the interview by Maryam Ekhtiar, curator at the Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her neutral prompts offer an un...

  Listening to Nature Environmentalist Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring, warned the world of impending disasters, launching the environmental movement. The few lone voices raising the alarm has grown into universal concern.   2025 has shocked the people of the world across continents as they struggle to put out wild fires, succumb to flash floods,   pull bodies from under the rubble of buildings in the aftermath of earthquakes, take shelter from tornadoes, and hurricanes. Just as Pakistanis were coming to terms with impending drought, excessive rains have flooded the whole country. Voltaire said “Men argue. Nature Acts” – or perhaps reacts. Humanity may just be caught in Earth’s natural reset. However, many hold human hubris responsible, and indifference to the calls of nature.   While nature adapts and renews itself, humans remain rigidly intractable waiting for nature to bend to their ways. Mountains are cut, rivers are straightened, narrowed and da...