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Archive for July, 2011

A lifetime encounter with Sain Zahoor~Part 1


Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. ~Confucius

I had read this quote very many times, but had never realised the real essence of it until I met Sain Zahoor.
Little did I know that the two days of my interaction with him would be like a refresher course on Bulleh Shah and would make me so enamoured by his simplicity that all starstudded concerts or hi fi music orchestras, would appear meaningless.

It was the annual RBC Mosaic Festival 2011, in Mississauga. I was given the task to look after the VIP lounge for the artists and other VIPs. I skimmed through the likely VIP list—just one name was enough for me to feel elated–Sain Zahoor. The excited preteen in me actually waited with impatience the moment when I would interact with him.

He arrived on the Gala opening of the festival with his entourage of four modest men. Instantly all the designer clad guests, the ministers, the VVIPS lost their shimmer. All heads turned to see this barely five feet few inches tall, clad in shimmery robe, black turban, a bunch of turquoises and agates around his neck. The aura of his simplicity was mesmerising. His eyes had a mystical depth and serenity in them.

The next evening, before the performance, he walked on the stage, modestly with folded hands, amidst a roar of applause from the spectators, who had come to watch him, sing live, from far flung locales of Ontario.
He began, most humbly, “ I am neither an artist nor a star, I am a faqir (devotee) like my master, Hazrat Hazur Baba Bulleh Shah and I sing to please Allah and to spread the message of peace.”

The instrument he held was the simplest that a musical instrument could be- with a single string, and hence the name Ektara.His ektara is uniquely festooned with mutlicolored tassels of wool, which remind of the memories of back home. And not to forget, he had adorned a bunch of ghungroos ( ankle bells) , which jingled during his whirling and swinging during the performance.

His orchestra, exemplifying simplicity, comprised of four of the most basic instruments —a chimta ( metal tong), a dholak (a desi double headed hand drum) a table( a set of two drums) and a harmonium( a desi accordion). One could hardly believe before he began that this brief ensemble of ‘desi’ instruments would be more than enough to wreck a havoc on the psyches of the listeners.

Needless to say of Bulleh Shah’s poetry that flowed through his intense voice, simply pouring magic into the air. No sooner had he begun that the listeners were transcended into the heights of ecstasy.
As remarked by one of my friends who drove 2 hours to listen to him, “It appears more of a mystical call, than a mere singing of a sufi song.”

We all lost our sense of time, song after song, a span of three hours seemed to have flown in three moments. The magnetised audience did not let him stop. Nor did one notice any fatigue in his voice or spirit, and he went on.

Sain Zahoor’s reverence to his master Baba Bulleh Shah was glaringly obvious through the life he brings to the verses and also by the effort he takes each time to refer to him with a complete “Hazrat Hazur Baba Bulleh Shah.”

With so much of love and devotion, why would he not have that aura and mysticism in his eyes, I told myself.

[To those who do not know him: Sain Zahoor or Saeen Zahur Ahmad is a Sufi singer from Pakistan. He spent his life singing in the Sufi shrines, and had not cut a record until 2006, when he was nominated for the BBC World Music awards based on word of mouth. He emerged as the “best BBC voice of the year 2006”]
Contd…Part 2

Sain Zahoor – BBC 2006 World Music Award – Allah Hoo

Category:

CULTURE, Indo-Pak, International, Music, Poetry

Revisiting the First man on moon.


With July 20, 2011 comes the 42nd anniversary of the first time man landed on Moon.

After nerve wrecking moments, for the scientists sitting in the NASA observation room and 30 billion USDollars of investment at stake, finally Apollo11 mission landed on Moon on July 20, 1969 with just a few seconds of fuel left.

The mission sent message from the spaceship to Earth:
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The nervous scientists took a sigh of relief replying:
“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again.”

Finally Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and went down in history as the first man to step his foot on moon. And came those famous words:
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It indeed was a giant leap for the mankind, but more so for the anxious Americans, who were extremely nervous that the Communist Soviet Union had left them behind in the space race with the launching in space for the first time of Sputnik 1, on October 1957. It had come as a bolt in the blue for the Americans.

President Kennedy could not hold his anxiety and had ‘inspired’ the American public by a speech in the Congress in May 25 , 1961:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

Neil Armstrong and his companion Buzz Aldrin strolled on the moon for two hours and 31 minutes. They has already unfurled an American flag on landing which they were leaving behind along with a plaque which read:

“Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

How I wish that this was all they had left. But on their first journey to the moon, like we have done on Earth, they littered it too. To lighten their load they threw off their moon boots, a camera, urine bags and some backpacks. And this trash is to sit there for all times to come, to mark the arrival on man(un)kind on the moon.

Interestingly, 42 years on still conspiracy theories are afloat that the whole mission was a hoax. It began with a book published in 1974 called ‘We never went on moon…”. The author Bill Kaysing published some sensational arguments which caught the interest of public like wild fire. It was a spicy topic of science fiction for the common man to indulge in.

In 1978 came a film “Capricorn One” which talked of a fake journey to Mars. The spaceship in the film bore a stark resemblance to Apollo 11 of the Moon mission. Hence the hot saucy news loving people immediately saw connections between this fiction and the fake moon landing.
There are more than a dozen, supposedly, logical arguments against the moon landing, mostly based on the information from the photos.

A couple of them being: the background sky is pitch dark with no stars visible, and that the flag which was unfurled was waving as if there was air on moon.

There is even the conspiracy theory that the rock samples they brought had been collected from Antarctica, by the director of NASA who led a scientific expedition there to collect the samples of Moon rocks. Apparently some rocks separated from the moon had fallen in Antarctica as meteors millions of years ago.

Most of their ‘scientific’ arguments have been ruled and logically explained by the scientists. There is also third party evidences from the Russians themselves, Japanese Satellites pictures and certain other reliable sources, that the Moon mission was real.

However, in a poll in 1999, about 15 million(6%) Americans still continued to believed that the moon mission was a hoax.
The theories that have been propounded for the reasons of the fraud : either to show to the Soviets that we can do it too, or to grab a huge budget for NASA, in the pretext of this mission.

The conspiracy theory of Moon mission as hoax lives on and the way we think, it will probably not lose its spark for a long time to come.

The reason? It lies within the human mind: no matter what amount of evidence is presented, the sceptics shall always refute it because of a phenomenon called Cognitive Dissonance, by virtue of which people have a bias to consider them self righteous despite the presence of a contrary evidence.

Category:

Uncategorized

“O God, to those who have hunger, give bread, and to us who have bread, give the hunger for justice.” ~ Prayer from Latin America


A PLEDGE:
Let us make this Ramadan,
special,
by making our Iftars,
simple,
So that we may,
share
with the hungry and the poor
some food
and loads of love.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

“Eating alone is a disappointment.
But not eating matter more,
is hollow and green,
has thorns like a chain of fish hooks,
trailing from the heart,
clawing at your insides.
Hunger feels like pincers,
like the bite of crabs;
it burns, burns,
and has no fur.
Let us sit down soon to eat
with all those who haven’t eaten;
let us spread great tablecloths,
put salt in lakes of the world,
set up planetary bakeries,
tables with strawberries in snow,
and a plate like the moon itself
from which we can all eat.
For now I ask no more than the justice of eating.”
~ Pablo Neruda, Chilean Poet

“A hundred years from now
it will not matter
what your bank account was,
the sort of house you lived in,
or the kind of clothes you wore,
but the world may be much different
because you were important
in the life of a hungry child.”
~ Author Unknown

“To a man with an empty stomach food is God” — Gandhi

Category:

Food, General, India, Indo-Pak, International, MOVIE, My world, Pakistan, Peace

Mr Edhi, I know what you mean.


I am really perplexed at the naivety of some of us interpreting Edhi’s statement.

They just choose to pick up the punch line of “killing the politicians” and preferred to ignore the other valid statements he made in which he said, “Political parties are in the opposition or in power, both of which are sides of the same coin. They have been involved in killing thousands of citizens.”
“All tax thieves and zakat thieves live freely in the country. All killers are free, 95 percent of Pakistanis are living in miserable conditions,”

He even made clear, that he has no ambition to come into politics or power, but he would continue to serve the people of Pakistan.

Whatever little I know of Edhi, he is a simple man who knows no mincing of words. He is neither a diplomat with polished demeanour nor is he a politician with twists and turns. Neither does he have any hidden agenda in life. His life is an open book. And above all he has nothing to fear.

It is needless to narrate, but I shall to remind ourselves how noble yet down to earth the man Edhi is.

In a country infested with apathy, he is a man who keeps oceans of empathy for the common man. I stress on the word “common man’. He is the one who has gives shelter to the homeless. He and his wife are the ones who receive illegitimate abandoned new born kids with open hands.

He is a man who does not vie for any foreign funds, or high positions in the pretext of philanthropy. He does not call for press conferences or photo shoots when he launches any project for the poor and the needy. If you ever happen to visit his place on Rashid Minhas road, Karachi, you would find him sitting outside with the drivers, in his simple attire. Anyone unaware of the man would not be able to pick him out from the group sitting there.

The point that I want to make with all this is that if such harsh words come from a man with these above credentials, then there must be some plausible explanation behind it. Anyone with an iota of common sense knows that what he said is undoable.

These words simply reverberate the pulse of the common man, with whom Edhi deals with 24X7. It is his ambulances who reach the site of a blast and keep the unknown bodies for days and months in his morgue. It is he who shelters the orphans from the families whose father dies in the blast or target killings. It is he who shelters the women, young or old, who are left helpless when their husbands, sons, or brothers get killed. He actually witnesses every day what it means when a nameless and faceless poorest of the poor is killed. Most of us just hear it as a statistic on the TV sets. He is a man who is more in touch with the ground realities and common man than even the smallest of politicians.

His words should not be taken in the literal sense. Nor should they be flouted or ignored as insane. These harsh words are the wails of all the dead who fell prey to the violence and of those alive who lead a life worse than death . This is the voice of the pain, frustration and helplessness of the 95% of the people he mentions, who see no hope and respite from the corruption, lawlessness and the injustice.

His words are a red flag for the current situation prevailing in the whole of Pakistan. They speak volumes of the impatience that the masses now have against the corrupt politicians. It signals the lava that is boiling in the volcanoes within each Pakistani.

In fact, this is his simple way to caution the politicians to mend their ways, or else it will be too late. He chooses such cacophony because he knows very well that any words less acrid than this would fall on deaf ears.

I am afraid, Mr Edhi, even these harsh words would fall on deaf ears too.

Reference: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/07/kill-all-politicians-edhi-demands-of-kayani/

Category:

Pakistan, Peace, Politics, Social Issues

I love Red, for Red is Me.


I love red,
For red is me.

Red is the embarrassment
I bring to your face, mother,
By the news of my arrival
Putting  at stake your survival.

Red is the blood that is spilled,
When my dreams are killed,
As I am returned to my tomb
While still asleep in the womb.

Red is the roaring rage
That gets out of cage,
By my sins that bring, father,
A shame to your ‘honour’.

Red is the anger that
Descends in your eyes, brother
When I whisper for my rights
Or spread my wings for a flight

Red is the bundled bride I am,
When passed off as a parcel
From one man, my father
To another, my life partner.

Red is the dot of vermillion
Stamped on my forehead,
That is  for the world to see,
That my man, you own me.

Red is the blush on my cheeks,
A million words of my candor it shrieks
My man when your lust you quench
While in the fantasy of love I drench

Red is the fire set ablaze,
When a truck load of dowry
Fails to fill, my master
The castle of your greed.

Red are the bruises that scream
Of my battered self-esteem,
From the circle of abuse, my protector
You inflict on my being.

This is exactly why I love red,
For every shade of red is me.

Foot note: Dedicate these scribbled verses to millions who face gender discrimination from the day their birth is mourned, to millions more lost through Female feticide, honor killings, victims of violence against women, rape, and any or every form of abuse endured merely for being born a woman. 

 

 

Category:

CULTURE, MY POETRY, Women

Dreaming of a world without hatred


The day for me, yesterday, began with the news of Mumbai blasts. Being an Indian origin who migrated after having married a Pakistani 20 years ago, first thing that occurred to me on hearing the blasts was that again the Indo-Pak peace talks shall be stalled and the same cascade of blame game, public statements from both sides, mudslinging, demanding ‘do more’ shall start. All it will serve to do is to reset the peace talks from the scratch. Spurts of cortisol laden with anxiety were rushing through my veins. As the mound of dead in the blasts were piling up, so was my fear in me, that a statement would come blaming Pakistan directly or implying of some group trained there. I knew it would be a sleepless night for me, following every minute of the TV coverage.

Later in the evening, Mumbai incident instantly vanished. There was an instant focus on the venomous words wagged by a rabid tongue. What was tragic was the cascade of events that took place, not just on land but on the walls of various Face Book friends.

It was not just the streets and the vehicles which were torched in anger, but many of the FB friends came out in the open, on their walls, in agreement with these insane words and splattered their share of fuel to the fire, against a whole community.

Within a couple of hours, one could see virtual borders drawn between the various ethnic groups, on a borderless virtual world of Face Book.

The frenzy of mindless hate did not spare me either. As I heard the statement, there was a severe convulsion of the ethnic Urdu speaking aka Muhajir in me. As if all of a sudden a sleeping immigrant woke up overpowering the ‘me’ in me, who till a moment ago took pride in rising above all kinds of differences. I never felt so much rage in me as at that moment. The hate in me wanted to avenge him.
I could sense the positivity drained out of me and replaced by an intense negative feeling of hate and loathing for this man. I would be lying if I would say that my mind did not wander trying to attempt hate for the community to which this mad man belonged. But thankfully, I still had intact memories of wonderful friends and great personalities from the same community and they kept my hateful sentiments in check. However hateful thoughts of this man kept jolting my head. I wanted him and all the ‘virtual’ friends on FB, who agreed with him, to be taught a ‘real’ lesson.
As if commenting on their walls wasn’t enough, I wanted to burn down their walls. In a couple of hours there was so much of energy drained out of me that instead of having spent this night in insomnia ( which is generally the rule when anything like the Mumbai blasts occurs) that I lay listless, and did not realise when was I lost into sleep. It was a restless sleep with visions of fire and blood splattered all over , on streets, on the FB walls. For a change these images did not make me sick. It did not make me feel good either, but it certainly wasn’t a sick feeling.

As I woke up in the morning, I reflected on my thoughts. I did not feel myself. This certainly was not me,.The monster of hate had engulfed me, last night.
After ages, I wept like a child. I cried how 25 years of my upbringing by staunchly secular parents and the rest 20 years of my own strong conviction in humanity as one were undone in a fraction of a second by the blurting of thoughtless statements by an insane man. I could see clearly now that it was a racist slur by a singular man not a community. I was grateful to my conscience, that the ‘me’ in me , who is blind to any color or creed, is taking control of me again.

I now realise exactly of what we read in history, of how passions go out of control, when incited with hateful words.

I also know now, first hand, how the feeling of intense loathing weakens a person physically and mentally in contrast to the strength of soul one gets in loving the whole humanity.

I also know now, first hand, how much of a sense of right vs wrong is blurred when one is overwhelmed with hatred.

I know now that my dream of a world without borders and a world without wars, on which I grew up, shall only be realised if we dream of a world without hatred.

I know exactly what do Pakistanis need, they need to shun hatred of all sorts.

Ilmana Fasih
July 14, 2011

Category:

My world, Pakistan, Peace, Personal, Social Issues, Uncategorized

Que sera sera~Music without borders


When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty, will I be rich
Here’s what she said to me.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

When I was young, I fell in love
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead
Will we have rainbows, day after day
Here’s what my sweetheart said.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be
Will I be handsome, will I be rich
I tell them tenderly.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Category:

Uncategorized

On the Seashore from Gitanjali ~Rabindranath Tagore


On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous.
On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep.
Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets.
Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle.
The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Category:

Uncategorized

When kids teach us lessons.


I know not what the name of this boy is or how old is he. But this picture, speaks a million words about his dreams and aspirations.

The comment along with this pic on Facebook, apparently written by his father, said:
Load shedding Schedule in Lahore: 01:00 am to 02:00 am 09:00 am to 10:00 am 02:00 pm to 4:00 pm 08:00 pm to 10:00 pm.

My son wrote this without any assignment. No one asked him to write but he expressed his feelings. He didn’t know that the power is a federal issue…oh! May be he’s right after 18th amendment. This phenomenon of electricity is leaving a deep and darkened effect on a child’s psychology. They can’t have sound sleep. Especially when they used to come back from school at 2:00 pm there is no electricity so they can’t have their lunch properly and same is at night when it goes from 8:00pm to 10:00pm. It also cut down somewhere in midnight in very hot conditions. From poverty to terrorism & economy to education it’s a root cause of many ills & evils but the stone heart leadership is silent on every public issue.

Perhaps good news and Pakistan aren’t friends any more.

The hope-hopelessness curve keeps convulsing with its aberrant spikes and dips in every heart .

After reading the note,jotted by these tender hands, the flame of hope rekindles. Kids are simply amazing. They teach us a million lessons of endurance and hope amidst adversity.

It is their aspirations and faith in their future which is perhaps the only flicker of hope left for us.

Syed Sher Ali’s (the boy in the picture, aged 8 years and a 4th grader–I come to know later) scribbling screams aloud the optimism, that millions of other kids like him whisper each moment.

I just wish that he remains as firm and steadfast in his resolve for all times to come. Let the whip of time not corrupt him, like it has corrupted us. Let the lashes of life not make him a pessimist, like it has made many of us.

Havent we, the grown ups, let them down by what world, what environment and what history we have offered to them?

What have we given them?
Nothing but misery and suffering.

And what do they give us?
Nothing but hope, hope for a better tomorrow.

The picture reminds me of the first half of Kahlil Gibran’s poem on Children:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

Category:

Pakistan, Peace, Personal

Voices of Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb


Ganga-Jamni tehzeeb ( गंगा जमुनी तहज़ीब, گنگا جمنی تهزیب,    Ganges-Yamuna Culture) is a  euphemism for the mutually participatory co-existence of  Hindu and Muslim  culture of through the fusion of Hindi and Urdu. (Wikepedia) .

 

 

First example  is a Bhajan sung by Farid Ayaz  & group  (I wonder if it’s MeeraBai’s) sung in a Qawwali form is an excellent example of that Ganga Jamni Tehzeeb.

It was the first time a Muslim Pakistani singer sang a Hindi Bhajan inside a temple in Montreal, during  Kabir Festival in 2008.

Farid Ayaz and  entourage never fail to amaze listeners. Farid Ayaz is  a magician  more than a musician and this passionate rendition is no less than a magic spell…

 

 

Not behind in this tradition of cross culture reverence, Shanker Shambhu brothers sang  in praise of Allah, Prophet Muhammed and Imam Ali.

They were known to be singing with their souls pouring out in their voices and was hard to miss their reverence to the kalaam, said those who saw them sing live.

One of their master piece is the Mun Kunto Maula, sung by many others but this one has it’s own charm, and best of all, I have been listening to this since I can remember….

 

 

These  are but two true examples of music beyond beliefs and borders.

Category:

Farid Ayaz ka Jadoo, Hindi Poetry, India, Pakistan, Peace, RELIGION