Saturday, 3 August 2013
Jinnah's abode: No. 35, Russell Road
So when, during the course of research for my MA dissertation, I read the following sentence in Stanley Wolpert’s biography of Quaid-e-Azam, I thought it might help me feel a little more rooted in London, to allow me to feel as if I could have a foot in both my Pakistani and British worlds: “His father deposited money enough to his account in a British bank to allow Jinnah to live in London for three years. There is no record of precisely how many hotel rooms or ‘bed and breakfast’ stops he rented before moving into the modest three-story house at 35 Russell Road in Kensington…”
He was seventeen when he first arrived in London in 1893 to study law, and still Mohammed Ali Jinnahbhai. It was from this address that he sent a letter to Lincoln’s Inn requesting that his surname be shortened to just ‘Jinnah’, according to Maddy Wall, a spokesperson for the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, also known as English Heritage.
In 1955, the London County Council received a request to install a blue heritage plaque on the house, denoting the historic significance of the site. According to Wall, 35 Russell Road is now a private property, and a quick search online reveals that while the 14-bedroom house was up for sale in 2003, the Pakistani High Commission was unable to rustle up the asking price of 1.25 million pounds. This place, I thought, could show you another side to Jinnah — the young lawyer in London, as opposed to Jinnah the iconic, mythical leader (who is perfectly preserved in a somber portrait at Lincoln’s Inn).
A short walk from Kensington Olympia tube station, past the Irani cornershops and Lahore Karhai restaurant, the house lies at the intersection of Russell Road and Holland Gardens and has been divided into two sections, with seven flats in each section. (There are no rules preventing the restructuring or renovation of these private properties, despite their historic status). Were it not for the ink-blue circular plaque that lies between what is now Nos 35-A and 35-B, you would have never guessed that ‘Quaid i Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah founder of Pakistan stayed here in 1895’.
I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but the house, with its row of silver garbage cans lining the front porch, a lime green tennis ball among the plants and the whine of construction taking place in No 35-A did not conjure any particularly patriotic feelings. I’d read that the house’s banister had been painted green and the halls inside festooned with paper flags, a Pakistani flag draped over the window and Jinnah’s chair, wardrobe and some mirrors preserved in the first-floor room he had occupied. But there was no answer when I buzzed the intercom for the seven flats (at this point I was pretty determined to feel something, even if it meant dealing with a cranky tenant). The blinds on all the windows remained firmly pulled down.
And so my friend and I gave up, walked down the street towards a Japanese restaurant where we ate duck pancakes as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga played on the music system.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 21st, 2013.
The Mango Tree of Kund Malir (Balochistan)
I forced my shuddering sedan up the slanted rock face. The hill looked over an untouched beach and sand dunes. We had postponed dinner to do this, choosing instead to get a look at the Buzi Pass around 40km further west on the Makran Coastal Highway before retreating to the village for the night. Our host Mir served fish gravy that we thankfully and hurriedly devoured. Later, his son brought us a finger bowl and a slice of lemon.
Once fed, I ventured out to shake off the long hours of stressed driving. A chilly but pleasant breeze drifted head-on. The stars and moon glittered above and their reflections did a stunning dance on the waves about 150 feet below. The night sky’s splendour is amplified by the fact that this part of the country has no electricity and is thus unspoiled by “light pollution”. As inconvenient for the locals as that might be, it is heavenly for Karachi-based astronomers hunting for “dark sky” sites.
I stood in the darkness, by the highway, which is the only major development this area has received and now serves as a lifeline for the locals. After watching the occasional truck seemingly crawl by, I headed back with a craving for some Kehva.
Over the hot sweet drink, Mir regaled us with the myths and folklore from the area. According to him, a long time ago, a freshwater well irrigated a lush green orchard of dates and mangoes besides the crystal clear sea. The tides came and went in peace and the garden flourished and became known for its fruit. It was a small wonder in itself that mango trees grew right besides the beach in this otherwise arid area, for this is no tropical island. This land is said to carry the curse of Sassui, whose heart was broken by its princes when they kidnapped her beloved Punho, their brother, from Bhambore.
This place, called Makran for centuries, extends all along the Arabian Sea from the eastern coastal edge of present-day Iran almost up to Miani Hor Lagoon. And just as the land’s face has been sculpted by the elements over time, so has its name. It is believed to have morphed from the original “Mahikhoran” or Fish-Eaters. In Persian, “mahi” means fish, as in the Urdu word “mahi-geer” for fishermen. “Khore” refers to “eater”, as in Urdu’s “Adam-Khore” or “man-eater”. Interestingly, Alexander’s officer Nearchus calls Makranis “Ichthyophagi” which is Greek for fish-eaters!
Mercantile incentives fuelled the growth of Arab maritime skills and Makran’s coast was charted. Every small peninsula or cape came to carry the prefix of Ras, such as Ras Al Khaimah on the Arab side of the Gulf of Oman to Ras Gawadar and Ras Malan on the Makran coast right up to “Ras” Mauri near Karachi, or “Cape” Monze as we know it today. Every lagoon or inland bay ended with the suffix of Khor (Arabic for bay or lagoon), such as Kalmatt Khor and Miani Khor, which later came to be known as Miani Hor.(L) The ‘Sphinx’ sculpture on the drive to Buzi Pass, (R) Cars racing down the Buzi Pass and (bottom) The Princess of Hope, Sassui waiting. PHOTOS: ADIL MULKI
According to Mir, the Arabs established tiny settlements on the coast. Some old graves, said to be theirs, still reportedly exist around Singhar Hill in Gawadar, that is now adorned by a five-star hotel. Gawadar itself was purchased from the Sultanate of Oman in 1958.
With the Arab expeditions came their families and their slaves, who were mostly of African origin. Their descendants are referred to as “Sheedis” probably as a derivation of “Sayyiddi”, a title sometimes used to address their masters.
At the orchard-village, the Arabs left after a clash with a clan leader. In their haste they left behind only a few graves and a little boy. A mysterious old man in Arab clothing is often seen lurking around the site of the old graveyard and he often scolds anyone sleeping around the village in the open! At this point, my friend Farhan and I exchanged meaningful smiles as the motivation for our host’s history lesson became clear. He wanted to make us stay the night at his guestroom while we had preferred to either camp on the beach or park next to the old dhaba by the highway, before our departure at dawn.
We mischievously asked what happened of the little boy and were told that he was raised by the clan leader as his own son and that the progeny of this boy are still called Bidu-zai (clan of the Bedouin) in this area.
The clan leader, a pious man, had saintly insights, and had predicted that a day would come when a “black path” would be built by his garden and that his labour of love, the orchard, would be consumed by sands which the sea would regurgitate. The setting of this legend is called Kund Malir beach.
It is located a stone’s throw from the rocky hills and is flanked by sand dunes. Today, the marvel of engineering called the Makran Coastal Highway runs alongside it and Arab hunting parties whiz by in their powerful 4×4 vehicles. One of them has built a beautiful mosque and a rest house on top of a hill. Kund Malir is where I once had the pleasure of swimming besides dolphins and learned from fishermen how to land a heavy boat onto high ground. The orchard’s story was difficult for me to digest.
We thought that the entire legend of the Arab spirit, graves, the left-behind boy, the orchard and the clan leader’s predictions were concocted by our Scheherazade of a host.
If the clan leader had ever lived, hoping for a future highway nearby would be a natural desire. An oasis on any caravan route would be a profitable enterprise. It was hard to also believe in the mango orchards as they don’t do well in sand and that too besides the sea. Like any dry area with a little water deep underground, the only vegetation that subsists here are some date trees along with desert shrubs.
At dawn, after getting a few hours of rest, as we waited for a boat that would take us to a nearby mud-volcanic island, we walked around the dunes that seemed to have been pushed out from the sea towards the land. Wavy patterns on their golden sands created a mesmerizing play of light and shade under the rising sun.
Surrounded by large dunes, and partially buried under their sand we came across a swathe of hard dirt exposed by the winds. It was covered with salt flakes like the thor-effected lands of Thattha. It had green vegetation, mostly weeds, and was littered with pieces of old wood which had been withered by salinity such that the fibers underneath the bark could easily be torn apart. From here, we took a short cut to the shack that was our “hotel” by the highway. And there I stopped in my tracks.
Between a clump of date trees, surrounded by the sand dunes that the old man in the story had predicted, by the highway the old man had spoken of, was a live mango tree. Perhaps malnourished and neglected — like the Bedu-zai — abandoned and forgotten, but alive and green.
The author can be reached at vagabonds.odyssey@gmail.com
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 21st, 2013.
Our inability to discuss religion(Published on Express Tribune)
By M Bilal Lakhani Published: August 2, 2013
Pakistan, with its predictable need to be at the centre of the world’s attention, is arguably the most critical battleground where the future of faith, as a religious and political force, will be determined. And yet, Pakistan’s national discourse avoids any meaningful discussion on religion and the role it should play in our personal and public life.
Instead of meaningful conversations on religion, we have larger than life Ramazan talk shows with grandiose sets that hand out gifts in the name of charity to an audience eager to display their knowledge of Islamic trivia. These iftar time television transmissions are Pakistan’s answer to American Idol. The American dream involves propelling half decent talent onto a world of rock stardom and an obscene amount of wealth. The Pakistani dream involves an overt display of religiosity, with the local bourgeoisie celebrating their ‘charitable spirit’ by trying to improve the lives of underprivileged families on national television.
Nowhere is our inability to discuss religion more appalling than in the curious case of Malala Yousufzai. To put it politely, Malala’s supporters are using ‘female education’ as an euphemism to discuss a difference in religious worldviews with extremists. Opposition to female education is a symptom of a larger problem, i.e., a distorted understanding of religion, which should be at the centre of our national conversation. Instead of calling a spade a spade, even in our most celebrated moments of courage, the Pakistani people are unable to have an adult conversation about religion. Even our storied ‘liberal fascists’ have to beat around the bush by framing a discussion about differences in religious worldviews under the garb of more publicly acceptable language, such as ‘female education’.
I’m not arguing for or against a particular interpretation of religion but I would like to make the case for a more open debate on religion and the role it should play in Pakistani society. We’re a nation that will fight for religion, die for religion but not discuss religion and what it really means to us. We have substituted morality with religiosity and lost our soul in the process. None of this has happened in a vacuum. In fact, one could even argue that our collective inability to define religion’s role in public life is premised on our inability to decide what role religion should play in our personal lives.
Beyond fasting, praying and visiting the mosque every Friday, what does it really mean to be a Pakistani Muslim in the 21st century? The answer to that question, quite frankly, is that most of us don’t have the time in our busy lives to think about religion and how strongly we feel about the role it plays in society. In the absence of critical thinking on this subject, the abstract notion of faith being a ‘complete way of life’ has entrenched itself in a significant proportion of the Pakistani populace. Extremists take advantage of this notion to build common ground with the Pakistani people by arguing that they share a similar objective, i.e., adopting Islam as a way of life. When the Pakistani people show their disgust at the violent means used by extremists to pursue their objective, the extremists use anti-imperialistic rhetoric to regain their sympathies. This vicious cycle, fuelled by our inability to talk about religion like adults, is proving to be our collective undoing. Some of us mistakenly believe that the Pakistani state is tacitly tolerating the presence of extremists in our midst. Unfortunately, it’s those who believe the exact opposite that are closer to the truth: with their proven ability to attack when and where they want, it’s the extremists who are barely tolerating the Pakistani state and not the other way around.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 3rd, 2013.
Shoukat Yousafzai removed as K-P Information Minister(Source Express Tribune)
PESHAWAR: According to a notification issued by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government on Friday evening, the portfolio of provincial spokesperson has been withdrawn from Shoukat Yousafzai.
Yousafzai though remains as the provincial minister for health.
On the other hand, on the directives of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, the K-P Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak has handed the portfolio of information ministry to Provincial minister Shah Farman.
Farman is the incumbent minister for Public Health Engineering.
In addition, MPA Ishtiaq Urmar has been appointed as the provincial spokesperson of PTI.
Doors of UK closed for Dabang Khan
Salman Khan can not go to United Kingdom because of cancelled visa on ongoing case in India
For More Details Please Click on the Link Below
Doors of UK closed for Dabang Khan
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