“Of Spaces and Substance”, An exciting exhibition of beautiful photographs, the art work of a talented IVSAA graduate (2004), Sara Hashim opened yesterday for public at the Unicorn Art Gallery, Clifton.

To experience exhibition and enjoy the artwork do give this Gallery a visit, as the entrance is absolutely free without any discrimination of class or social status.

Note: Timings From Noon till 8 Pm (Except Sunday) - Exhibition continues till 25th July 2008. 

Unicorn Gallery,

Unicorn House, MCF 1-5, Shahrah-e-Iran, Clifton ( Near British Consulate), Karachi.
Phone: +92-21-5831200, 5877625,5877632.
Web : www.unicorngallery.com

 ”When Dr Shershah Syed is not in his doctor’s gown or sitting with friends or off on a marathon or cycling, or even writing short stories, he’s busy taking the government to task and speaking his mind on the high level of maternal mortality, writes Zofeen T. Ebrahim ” The Review - Dawn.

Dr Shershah Syed is a savior, a man who has dedicated his life to helping the underprivileged and oppressed women of the society, providing them health care and educating them to lead a healthy life and raise children in a healthy environment. But his work simply doesn’t end here his concerns include human rights, women’s health and social issues, child development and health issues and children’s rights and the rights of the animal as well. (more…)

While browsing through the internet a few days back I came across a picture of a 36 year old poor women with 9 children, another 25 year old had 5, population is on the rise, so is inflation and the crime rate too.

 Yesterday we experienced three episodes of load shedding, the power was out for a total of six hours for today the episodes were five and the total hours of load shedding was nine. We are out of power, food supplies, water, health care facilities and education.         

Every week hundreds of new cars come out on our streets, running us out of fresh air and adding to the city’s rising pollution, trees are being chopped off and new ones are not coming at the required rate, and the only green our newspaper boasts of is growing on the filthy sewage sludge gathered in a nullah with a warning that flood threats persists if the clogged drains are not cleared before the monsoon spell unleashes upon us. 

And what do I do about it ? Nothing besides punching a few keys, scribbling a few notes and bracing my self for this and the worst that may come.

 I had no sleep the night day before yesterday as KESC kept flipping the electric supply on and off all night long, yesterday KESC was a bit merciful as the total duration of the load shedding did not exceed the six hour mark but today we experienced a three hour long power outage in the morning then an hour long in the evening and a five hour long load shedding from 10:30 pm to 3:30 am bring the total to an exact nine hours of load shedding. The long hours of load shedding has slowed down everyone’s progress, it has an impact on peoples output, small industries are facing hardships and students have turned to the oil lamps to study for their exams. 

Around ten days back when we had moved our clocks an hour ahead we thought, for all the confusion the Day light Saving Time may cause at least there will be a relief in the hours of load shedding but it turned out that the shortage of electricity we are facing today was far beyond anyone’s expectations and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this time around next year we get no more then four hours of electricity for the whole 24 hours in a day. 

We have food crises, people are waiting for several hours under the baking sun in queues for a single sac of flour, rice is beyond a poor man’s reach, so is flour. Inflation is hitting the common man hard while there wages remain almost the same, people don’t have money to feed them selves let alone educate their children. Can a nation prosper in such circumstances? I am afraid not and if our policy makers don’t realize the seriousness of the situation soon and proper steps are not taken to control it and if these downward trends continue in the same fashion I am afraid our coming generations will be carving tools out of stones and will be living in caves. 

I usually prefer Saturday afternoon for our occasional shopping trips to Supermarkets because at this hour of the day there are usually not too many shoppers and one can move freely through the narrow alleys and shop peacefully, but peace was the least I was to get while shopping yesterday.

I entered the superstore, rolled out a shopping cart and took out the shopping list which we had carefully decided upon at home so to make the most out of our limited financial resources, and I am supposed to strictly follow it.

I pushed my cart towards insecticides, the first item on my list and as soon as I added an aerosol car of a famous insect killer a lady approached me and introduced me to another one of the more powerful but similar product from the same company. I was glad to be informed of a better choice and I opt for the newer and better type of their product But when I approached the other shelve for some soap,  another lady quickly started convincing me to buy one of her companies brand instead. I politely refused, but I only when I had moved to the very next shelve for a bottle of shampoo there was another convincing me to buy a shampoo of her choice. By now I was totally annoyed but I knew she was just doing her job, so I kept my cool and politely told her that I wouldn’t change my mind.

After making a few more stops for coffee, tea, pet food and avoiding another attempt to influence my choice of brand at the dairy section finally I reached the section for edible oil where again a representative for a yet another famous brand was waiting to haunt me, at first she tried convincing me to buy a brand of her choice just this once but when I told her I wouldn’t go for anything but the imported one she asked me why. At this point I was totally in a mood to place an argument, I told her it was the quality and the oil of their brand turns to gel after expiring or exposing to heat, I also told her other reasons, the smell, viscosity, and taste which gives me good reasons not to trust this local brand but when she still wanted me to try a smaller pack of their product I had to tell her sorry in a bit stern tone. 

By the time I reached the checkout counter, I was tired not of all the shopping but of all the annoyance, confusion and arguing for the choices on brands I made.  These companies have literally started pushing their products down our throats and they may not know it but it is really nerve wrecking to argue for every choice we make on the local brands. Being responsible citizens and the targeted consumer it is our responsibility and right to lodge our complaints and voice our concerns to the  respective companies not against those poor marketing representatives the brand conveniently puts on the spot but against such marketing campaigns, when they get too close for comfort.

Corporate Citizenship in Pakistan is finally catching on and is finally becoming something more than a redundant concept taught in business schools. One such company that is going to set an example for others to follow is a management consultant company, Navitus.

Navitus, with the support of organizations from Pakistan’s corporate sector, is organizing the first of its kind event in Pakistan, Inspiratourium. According to one of the organizers from Navitus, the name is short for Inspirational Tour in an Auditorium. The details for the event are as follows:

Date: 30th May, 2008
Venue: Bahria Auditorium
Tickets Available at: Costa Coffee, The 2nd Floor, Agha’s, and Naheed

So what exactly is Inspiratourium?

Inspiratourium is Pakistan’s first motivational & inspirational event of its kind that combines thought provoking content with a creative blend of up-lifting talks, artistically supported through the magical power of performance – all designed to engage the mind & soul. This deeply moving & energizing occasion promises to awaken aspiring individuals to a deep realization of the unlimited human potential each of us is blessed with & leverage on it to make a positive & lasting impact.

(more…)

Chairman CBR Abdullah Yusuf

I was going through my regular G-reading when this news took my attention. Its about a blogger being Jailed for undermining the prestige of the state and weakening national morale. It is not the first time that I have heard such a news. I then did a minor search for such cases over the internet and what I find is astonishing. Russia, Bahrain, Malaysia you name it! all are in the list.

We say what we want to and write what we want to and we feel like it is our right to be able to speak up our minds. We debate on politics, criticize the government, comment on the hopeless laws and anything and everything. Not just that we speak on every aspect of life where we live whether its good or bad, fun or frustration.

What I’m wondering is from a perspective of a third person. Imagine yourself in a place where I was when I read the news. Did you notice that the Location of the accused is the first word of the heading of the news? First thing I came to know was that it’s something in Syria, then it’s a Jailed blogger and the last was the name of the person that appears in the last paragraph. I’m thinking! and thinking hard that the laws in the country, the watch on people is strict enough and good enough that they actually care about someone badmouthing about them. They are even tackling the situation in a decent lawful manner rather than blocking every blog across the country!

Sentenced to jail, is something we can’t even imagine in Karachi or Pakistan, do you think we (citizens and the politicians both) have enough “Prestige and National Moral”? Forget about national moral, does a single man have a moral or are we just typing out our guts in order to “expose” everything and prove we are free? Don’t say that the country and us are two different things, it is one thing. If you (we) don’t exist, Pakistan don’t exist and if Pakistan don’t exist we are no one from no where! Everything is related to one and other. The reason for saying this is that we are writing about ourselves whatever we write. In our “social” circle we may be recognized as us, but on a global scale we are only “Bloggers from Karachi, Pakistan”

My point is simple, the “outsiders” reading the blogs would be having what sort of a perception about us and our nation? For instance, if something happens in Karachi, I get tired of explaining the situation to the people abroad. They seem to be under an impression that we are all ‘dying’ here, how can I tell them that only 10 to 20 percent of the city is affected and the “rest is fine”! That is because they hear what the media tells them. The media tells them right or wrong is not of a concern, the concern is that the media can never report on every street situation of a the entire city where the riots emerge - it can never report a hundred percent.

The same way, we are ‘creating’ history of ourselves writing what we are writing. No matter its good or it is bad, it is what it is and the world is reading it. Now I am personally at the toughest of time to form a judgment about my observations and thoughts.

Should we again be blaming the “government” for not implementing proper laws, take us towards advancements, create a national moral and prestige? or Should we blame the writers for writing it all down for the world to read and laugh at us that these people have no “national moral” or prestige?

The events of 1971 were a part of the history long before I was born but even years later in the mid 80s as a primary school child I could smell the stench of the vicious broth we had cooked to suppress, degrade, demoralize, dominate and disgrace our very own people, the people of Bangladesh.

I remember being a student of class 4, one day I heard a fellow student use the term “Bhookay Bengali” as a derogatory remark to another fellow student of a slightly dark complexion. That day when I got back home I asked my mother why Bengalis are called hungry? And why the term Bengali is considered a derogatory remark ? It is when she told me how we over powered them used them to our advantage, made them work hard for us and paid them less then half of what they deserved and in terms of respect we gave them none.

It was this day this I first realized how in human we had been to these people. But as time passed and as I grew older historic events, stories and accounts of the events of 1971 kept coming to my knowledge. The picture kept becoming more and more gruesome, the scale went up to a level where it literally became a haunting scene. It painted an undeniable picture narrating the shear brutality we showed towards our Bengali sisters and brothers.

yesterday an evening of literary reading was held at t2f, a local café and the book which was read from was “Fault Lines” an anthology of stories of 1971 by noted authors from both Bangladesh and Pakistan and a few others from this same region, compiled and edited by Niaz Zaman and Asif Farrukhi, both of them eminent writers and noted literary figures from Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively, who were present for the evening along sides with noted writers Intizar Hussain, Asad Mohammad Khan and the editor Books and Reviews (DAWN) Saima Hussain to read out their contributions and share their stories, views and thoughts with the audience.

The event started with the Urdu version of “Fork Lift No. 352″ a story by Asad Mohammad Khan. Which followed by a thoughtfully placed question by Asif Farrukhi: “Do we yet have any competent “driver” for the faulty “fork lifts”, to run them smoothly, and how would we know if the drivers are competent or not ?”. We may blame the faulty fork lift or the driver for his incompetence to trace the fault in time, but form the damage that has already been done have we yet learned something or not ? Was the question which instantly popped up in my mind.

The event continued, Intizar Hussain shared his views of the time and Asif Farrukhi  read an excerpt of his writing from the book while Niaz Zaman followed by sharing her story of those years in history, and her views and expressed her grieve for the unjust sad and later much regretted events which effected the common people of both the sides. 

By looking at the whole picture specially with the prospective I hold, it was not too difficult to see that we had pushed the people of Bangladesh to a point where they were actually cornered and were left with not many options at their hand.

 It was Only three days back when I came across this link, a link which narrated an incident of a horrifying war crime committed against some innocent women. the people we deliberately rendered poor and helpless we victimized, just because we could and yesterday’s event left me with a heavy heart, I had always been ashamed to meet the eyes with any Bengali, although I was not a part of the brutality which was unleashed upon the innocent people to favor just a handful few but still I feel the guilt. For these Crimes and incidents I do not blame the army, I do not blame the foreign elements, I don’t blame anyone else but my self. Me, and the people who took advantage of them, who never stood-up for them, who never raised their voice against the unjust, We never talked to our children about it, we never told the stories we should have been telling. Was this not our responsibility ?

But it is yet not too late to began correcting what we have done wrong in the past and to start with we should first realize and accept our own faults and not to repeat them, We should also bring the stories which were either censored at the time or remained unpublished and unknown and for that matter this book “Fault Line” published in Dhaka and being distributed here locally by the Oxford University Press is an excellent progressive step and hopefully more such books and anthologies will follow. Also as Bloggers, writers and journalists it is time to use the mediums we have in our reach to bring out the true stories images and events of the history with a neutral stance. Not to derogate one another but to make our people realize of their mistakes and the best way to do it is to find our own faults.

In relation to the topic (As someone mentioned yesterday) a group has been formed on facebook to submit our apologies to the people of Bangladesh, I have joined this group and I would suggest that all of us should do so as it will help us sort out our deference’s on a more public level.

1971, was bitter year for both Pakistan and specially for what now is Bangladesh, but now lets take lessons from our own mistakes and try not repeating our selves with the same mistakes again and again in history.