meethapani

  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 ...

  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   "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...

  In 1953, the artist Willem de Kooning agreed to give his fellow artist, Robert Rauschenberg, a drawing to erase. Rauschenberg worked on the drawing for over a month using a variety of erasers. Despite all efforts, traces of the original drawing remained. In 2010, digital imaging revealed much of the original drawing. This act of erasure symbolises attempts to erase histories, whether individual or collective. Neuroscientist, Charan Ranganath, finds that within 20 minutes people forget 40% of what they learn and after a few days only 20% is remembered.   Since the past is over, why should we remember? It helps in making sense of the present and making better choices for the future.   Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, says memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living. In reality memory is selective and may be far from accurate. Some memories are preserved in diaries and letters, or in autobiographies, but even the most meticulous ...

  Style is a refinement in behaviour and the cultivation of poise. Style is expressed in the way a person walks or converses, by the cadence of language, by the spaces we choose to live in. Style shows confidence, presence, personal power, often communicated without the need for words.  Unlike brute force, style cannot be fought with or overcome. It is a quiet challenge that does not seek a reaction. While it can be mocked, it cannot be destroyed. It is the result of a cultivated intentionality that becomes part of a personality. Style is like the softest notes of a piano or violin that the listener knows can build up to a powerful intensity that will make hearts tremble. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in February this year, and the  Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Abbas Araghchi, through all the warmongering rhetoric, impressed the world with their soft spoken manner with the slight smile of the wise dealing with the foolish. No angry fist shaking. Instead we witn...

  In Ireland a candle placed in the window signaled to travelling priests that the home was a safe haven for Catholics, persecuted in Britain from 1534 to the 1800s.The phrase became a symbol for hope, an incentive to keep going. As people search alternate news sources to make sense of the seismic changes that threaten to affect everyday lives, some sharing guidelines to survive a nuclear attack, others identifying DIY methods to generate electricity, they feel like sitting ducks in the crossfire of petulant, warring oligarchs. "Karayn tau kiya karaen" ( if we act what could we do?) is on everyone’s minds. Massive street protests, parliamentary debates, impassioned Security Council speeches, International Court of Justice rulings – all seem to fall on deaf ears.     And then we see images of Palestinian youths smiling as they are taken to the gallows, after Israeli parliament voted last month for the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Those smiles carry the ...

  Rumpelstiltskin, a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, tells the story of a poor miller’s daughter who was locked up each night to turn straw into gold until the King found her worthy of becoming his bride. The only way she achieved this was with the help of a dubious character, Rumpelstiltskin, but this help came at a price: first for her necklace, then her ring and then the promise of her first born child. It is tempting to see the King as the exploitative nations, the miller and his daughter as the exploited and enslaved, and Rumpelstiltskin as the international agencies that offer loans forcing countries into the trap of eternal debt servicing.   The miller’s daughter escapes from her debt to Rumpelstiltskin by identifying his hidden name. The world, too, is finally exposing the well-guarded truths, the identities of hidden forces, that have enslaved nations largely by controlling the narrative.   The lofty edifices that filled the world with awe and wonder, pro...

  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 truth of thing...

  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 150 years. ...

  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.    Europe deve...

  @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, with sarcastic laughter,...

  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 August 14, 1...

  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...

  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 achievements, seeing nature only as...

  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 flow. At a more subtle l...

  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 1917, has vanishe...

  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 were caught in a whirlpool o...