5- 10- 2008

The fun that one missed on Eidul Fitr

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

After reports that Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Palestine and Europe had celebrated Eidul Fitr on September 30, people in NWFP and the rest of the country naturally expected that they would very likely have their festival on the following day. However, the silence after sundown was deafening, to say the least.

Glued to their television sets, the faithful switched from one to the other channel. The tickers that occasionally rolled on the screens only said that the moon-sighting body with an impressive Arabic name, the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee (RHC), comprising about a dozen of religious scholars picked carefully from all the four provinces was in session in Karachi's Baitul Hujjaj.

During the four-hour-long session, RHC chief Mufti Munibur Rahman left his colleagues twice and emerged on television to tell the media persons not to make any announcement regarding the moon-sighting without RHC's permission. Viewers understandably ran out of patience. So much so that the RHC's zonal office realised the situation and in an apparent bid to end the suspense announced that the Eid moon had not been sighted.

Meanwhile, several persons converged on the centrally-located Qasim Ali Khan Mosque off the historical Qissa Khwani Bazaar and offered evidence that they had sighted the moon. Similar reports poured in from Karak, Lakki Marwat, Bannu and D I Khan. Exercising his discretion, Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour drove up to Qasim Ali Khan Mosque and after personally evaluating the available evidences, told media persons that in view of the evidences NWFP government had decided to celebrate Eid on October 1.

In between the whole 'wait-and-see' ordeal, a section of the visual media made a passing reference to the fact that RHC's members from the majority province were probably underrating, if not altogether ignoring the evidences from NWFP. Bilour's announcement was variously being hailed and assailed. In charge of RHC's zonal office said that not being a member of the RHC, Bilour had no right to make such an announcement.

In Karachi, the members of RHC and other related officials weighed the pros and cons of ignoring the evidence received from various parts of NWFP. Some of them frankly said that such an approach would be divisive. When all this was going on, a visibly flustered RHC chief Mufti Munibur Rahman peered out of television screens and after a long-winded apology-cum-explanation told viewers that the Eid moon had been sighted.

Referring to the experts from SUPARCO and the Meteorological Department, who offered scientific expertise to the Ruet body, Mufti Munib said that the opinion of the experts was that if there were even remote chances of sighting the moon, these were possibly in Talhar and Badin in lower Sindh. The announcement from the top Ruet body scholar came at 10-50pm which was sudden and abrupt for some sections of society.

Women for example had put off the buying of bangles and getting their hands dyed with henna imprints up to the last Ramazan night so lovingly called the 'chand raat'. So with mixed feelings of delight and exasperation, these women invaded the relevant shops in city's Meena Bazaar and in Saddar. The shopkeepers too were not fully prepared for the sudden rush. However, the Eidul Fitr was celebrated on one and the same day by the entire nation thus displaying a unique sense of unity and oneness.

No expression of integrity and cohesion could match the spectacle of the whole nation offering Eid prayers on a unanimously declared single day. Of course, the rush on Eid 'melas' (fairs) was not as great as it used to be on previous occasions due probably to the warning given officially to the public by government agencies to stay away from crowded places on Eid as these could be the favourite targets of the saboteurs and suicide bombers.

Not that everyone in Peshawar stayed indoors but the attack inside the 'Hujra' of ANP leader Asfandyar Wali Khan had created a sense of fear, insecurity and anxiety among the public and the majority of the people went with families on long drives or whatever. Restaurants, located on the busy University Road between Tambwan bus stop and University Town police station, were packed to the capacity. A few of them stopped booking dinner tables as early as midday offering regrets to the customers for the family halls being already booked in advance.

Cinemas used to screen newly-released romantic films on the occasion of Eid but in Peshawar this social trend came to a grinding halt when some cinemas started showing substandard or outright vulgar stuff to the cine-goers. Families now prefer to watch new films of their choice either on home video systems or through cable television.

Eid 'milan' parties used to continue long after Eid was gone but now this social event too seems to have disappeared thanks partly to the galloping inflation and partly to the xenophobia created by the suicide bombers. Parents were especially in a fix as to where to take their children to siphon off their extra energy after breakfasting on the traditional dish of vermicelli.

Army Stadium, Chacha Yunus Park and other attractions for children were clearly less crowded this time. Lucky Irani Circus used to be a magnetising jargon for the entertainment-starved children. The wild animals tamed by the ring master used to fascinate the kids. The man who sped in the 'death well' on a noisy motorbike thrilled the youngsters.

Shaken to amazement, they used to look down into the wooden structure and wonder at the driving skills of the man below especially when the motorbike spun around on its own and the motorcyclist took his hands off the handle. Some of the unsuspecting spectators used to be so deeply moved by the motorcyclist that they would secretly reach for their Eid money given by avuncular figures in the family and shower it generously on the motorcyclist when he ultimately brought his two-wheeler to a grinding halt and looked up for praise and admiration. Let us hope the usual attractions for the children will get restored in due course of time.

29- 9- 2008

Remembering Professor Ralph Russell

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Among the British teachers of Peshawar's historical Edwardes College, Professor Ralph Russell was a household name.

In the universities of Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, Aligarh and elsewhere on the Indo-Pak subcontinent, he was probably the most well-known Orientalist. Students and teachers of Urdu language and literature were familiar with his Anglicised accent. On television talk shows, viewers sat up to listen to his enlightening conversation.

He was so well-read that even highbrow academics and heads of departments were jittery and careful in answering his questions or posing any to him. By the time he learnt Urdu, he had already read various English-language books containing the history of Urdu literature.

After noticing the glaring professional shortcomings in those books, Russell wrote a long critical essay titled 'How not to write a history of Urdu literature!' Critics in India, Pakistan and elsewhere were taken aback when various magazines or anthologies of critical essays carried the Russell tirade in original or translation.

When the Oxford University Press published 'A History of Urdu Literature' by the otherwise scholarly professor of English literature in Lahore, Dr Muhammad Sadiq, an elaborate critical review of the book appeared in which Russell pointed out the handicaps and limitations of Dr Sadiq's attempt.

Years later, Dr Sadiq suffered a massive heart attack and died in the studios of Lahore Television Centre which was doing a profile of the writer with Naeem Bokhari as host.  

By his own account, he was born on May 21, 1918 in Homerton (UK) into a poor household. Having witnessed the horrors of the Second World War, he stood up to fight the forces of fascism.

He believed that capitalism was the cause of the World War.

He was probably the youngest Englishman to become a member of the Communist Party. From 1937 to 1940, he first studied classics and later geography at St. John's College, Cambridge University in Britain. He took his degree within days of the fall of France in June 1940. He was immediately called up and spent six years in British army. Out of this, three and a half years - from March 1942 to August 1945 - were spent in the undivided India.

In part one of his highly readable autobiography 'Findings Keepings', Russell wrote that Urdu was the language of the army.

He instilled awareness into soldiers under him but they were apolitical village boys. His task became more difficult as army did not recruit anyone who showed signs of political awareness.

Despite problems, he persisted in his passion. By the end of his time in India, he had a group of them who read progressive literature and out of their meagre salaries even contributed money to the Communist Party of India.

At this Victor Kiernan, who won repute by translating into English the poetry of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, wrote to Russell: "You deserve praise for what you did in India. I could not have done it".

During these army days, Russell could not truly make acquaintance with Urdu literature. This he acquired from 1946 onwards when he was awarded a studentship at University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He took his degree in Urdu with Sanskrit as subsidiary subject in 1949. It was here that he was immediately offered a lectureship which he accepted.

On study leave for almost a year - from November 1949 to October 1950 - Russell was in India where he spent most of his time at Aligarh Muslim University but also visited other centres of Urdu both in India and Pakistan.

The study leave also marked the beginning of Russell's 40-year-long friendship and collaboration with Khurshidul Islam who joined him at SOAS as 'overseas lecturer' from 1953 to 1956.

They decided to jointly produce a series of books which should introduce the best of Urdu literature to the English-speaking world through translation or interpretative studies.

In part two of his autobiography 'Losses Gains', Russell describes how Khurshid took pains in jointly producing the very first book, 'Three Mughal Poets'. In order to select the best of Mir Taqi Mir's poetry, Khurshid had to peruse well over 2, 000 pages contained by a standard edition of Mir's collected verse. Slightly less painstaking was the work in the case of 'Ghalib: Life and Letters'. In collaboration with Iftikhar Ahmad Adani, Russell translated the poetry of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, with the former taking care of the Persian and the latter of Urdu portion. In 1980-82, Russell published 'A New Course in Urdu and Spoken Hindi'.

Over the same period, he also published 'A Primer of Urdu Verse Metre'. Due to ill health, when Khurshid returned from London to Aligarh, Dr Khalid Hassan Qadri picked up the thread from where Khurshid had left it and started assisting Russell especially the incomplete work of reviewing the Urdu-English Dictionary of Platts.

When Faiz Ahmad Faiz was the head of 'Idara-i-Yadgar-i-Ghalib', Karachi, Russell visited the Sindh metropolis and liked the documentary film on Ghalib prepared by Khalique Ibrahim.

In 1981, Russell took an early retirement from SOAS in order to meet the needs of 'non-university audience'. He somehow felt that Urdu teaching being provided then was horrifyingly inadequate. So in order to teach courses he went, among other places, to Waltham Forest, Birmingham, Blackburn, Chorley and Sheffield.

In his impressions about the Englishman, broadcaster Asif Jilani of BBC's Urdu service noted that Russell spoke Urdu in a Pushto accent. This linguistic peculiarity dated back to the days when he learnt Urdu from a Pushto-speaking 'munshi' (teacher).

It was in the same Pushto accent that many years ago while appearing as guest on the popular television show 'Neelam Ghar', he read out on host Tariq Aziz's request the entire 'ghazal' piece of poet Mir Taqi Mir. Viewers had the first-hand idea of how deeply Russell understood the nuances of Urdu poetry when he delivered the concluding lines: "Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ko, kia poochtay ho, ke uss ne to; Qashqa khaincha, dair main baitha, kab ka tark Islam kia!"

22- 9- 2008

Caught up in the Marriott hangover

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

After breaking their fast in the capital's five-star Marriot Hotel, the tiny crowd of well-dressed women guests formed ranks on the lush green lawns and went down on their knees for the 'Maghreb' (evening) prayers. By the time they stood up straight again, the federal capital had witnessed the biggest explosion of the country's 61-year-old history.

Apparently carrying bricks, a six-wheeler dumper truck full of 600 kilogrammes of RDX, TNT, phosphorus and aluminum powder roared into the main gate and detonated the explosive material. The sniffer dogs barked themselves hoarse and security guards scampered for their lives.

The truck exploded with a powerful bang that was heard in a radius of 17 kilometres or more. The explosion set the five-story hotel ablaze and the impact of the explosion smashed the window panes of the nearby high security buildings including the Parliament House, Presidency, Prime Minister's House and the Judges' Colony.  Some trees broke down the middle of their trunks and came crumbling on to the road crushing the cars underneath out of shape. The suicide attack left 53 persons dead, 11 of them foreigners, and 266 injured. At least 11 of the dead were foreigners with four each from the USA and Saudi Arabia and one each from Britain, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Midway between their Iftar dinners and the patient wait for the 'Taraveeh' prayers, the people in Peshawar randomly noticed a tucker that rolled on their television screens.  The single line brief tucker said that the sound of an explosion was heard in Islamabad. Some people initially felt slightly amused that in the federal capital even the sound of an explosion is news item while in NWFP the displacement of about 300,000 women and children from Bajaur Agency does not get mentioned in a quick ticker.

However, the amusement soon evaporated and was replaced by the most unusual kind of seriousness when the television networks started showing the blood-stained bodies and the ambulance sirens that wailed around the hotel. As the expensive building in the federal capital's red security zone went up in flames, Sadruddin Hashwani, the owner of the Marriott Hotel, looked at the fire stoically and spoke to media persons: "Property's loss is not a matter of concern for me. Property can come and property can go but the human lives do matter. I feel sorry for the people who came to dine and relax in my hotel but had to leave on stretchers and ambulances. I feel pained at the death of my security guards who moments ago skipped about the main gate".

Incidentally, some of the guards went missing and did not return home even after 24 hours of the explosion. Depicting the pain of an agonised mother of a security guard, columnist and television anchor Hamid Mir read out a heart-rending poem written by Ikraam Basra "Mera baita kisi ne dekha hai?" Hamid Mir said that most of the dead were the security guards, waiters and private drivers of those who dined inside the hotel.

The only high profile guest that died was the ambassador of Czechoslovakia Ivo Zdarek. With him died a friendly woman from Vietnam. Television anchor Syed Talat Hussain reported that the Czech diplomat and his female companion were alive after the explosion and kept waving through a hotel window for help but no one came to their rescue. They died subsequently of smoke, suffocation and heat. Newsmen said the room temperature later went up as high as 400 degree Centigrades, enough for iron to melt. Apart from the Czech envoy, the Danish diplomat was also said to be missing. One could argue with him on his perception of the tragedy but giving his impressions of the Islamabad disaster, journalist Najam Sethi said that it was the 9/11 of Pakistan. They might have had their internal and external compulsions but hours after the incident, President Asif Ali Zardari flew off to the United States of America to attend the session of the United Nations' General Assembly while Prime Minister went away to Lahore. Some observers in TV talk shows said that these visits could be re-adjusted, if not postponed. The president and the prime minister could have brainstormed on the issue of suicide bombing with fellow politicians now sitting on the opposition benches. However, Najam Sethi insisted that Asif Ali Zardari was justified in flying off to the United States of America as Pakistan needed its monetary help to put its economy back on track. It also needed its good will in combating the dangers posed to its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Najam Sethi rejected the theory of India settling scores with Pakistan by retaliating to the seven blasts in Delhi a few days back.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Lahore and Senior Advisor on Home Affairs Rehman Malik in Islamabad spoke to media persons. Prime minister explained that since a lot of construction work was going on in the federal capital, the Islamabad administration normally allowed the truck drivers to carry sand, cement, bricks and iron bars into various sectors. It was for this reason that the suicide bomber succeeded in reaching the Marriott unchecked and unhindered. The PM believed that the 315-room hotel was the target of the saboteurs while the advisor thought the Parliament House was the target. The newsmen variously felt amused and annoyed at the contradictions found in the statements and the versions of the prime minister and the busy-body senior advisor.

Surprisingly, no religious or extremist militant group claimed responsibility for the Marriott blast. Without pinpointing the responsibility on any group or individual, journalist Rahimullah Yousufzai saw it as a change in the modus operandi of the Taliban.

He noted the fact that Mulla Umar had meaningfully been silent for the last few weeks. His phones had not been functioning and the religious figure might well have been in hot waters due to the military operations going on in Bajaur, Swat and Darra Adamkhel.

15- 9- 2008

Living through Regi Lalma standoff

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

With an armed personnel carrier (APC) in commando print parked at the northern tip of the runway at the Tambwano bus stop, a machine gun-wielding Rangers' jawan taking position behind a pile of sandbags near the consulate of the United States of America and with police commandoes at every road hump peering nervously out of Toyota and Datsun patrolling vans, Peshawar almost appears to be a city at war.

The government writ is there but nobody is sure of himself. Big departmental stores have hired the services of private guards who try to be more vigilant. Taxi-cab drivers who used to earn a few extra bucks by working late night now feel scared and prefer to drive home early.

On the night between Saturday and Sunday, as the new date emerged on the watch, ticker rolled on the screen of a private television channel.

It said that some armed militants had been seen patrolling the area in Regi Lalma, a lawless wilderness located in the north-west of Peshawar, where the provincial government is planning to construct the well-advertised Regi Model Town.

TV crew promptly took the Superintendent of Police Dr Muhammad Suleman on camera.

The police officer said that 15 to 20 militants (the given number of militants varied from channel to channel and newspaper to newspaper) had entered the under-construction building of the City Development and Municipal Department (CDMD) in Regi Lalma and reportedly the Nasir Bagh telephone exchange as well and made hostage some eight or nine employees of PTCL and CDMD.

Dr Suleman showed his determination to get vacated the offices occupied by the militants. Meanwhile, the TV cameras showed jawans of police, Frontier Constabulary and the Frontier Corps being transported to the area. The reporting team said it expected a cleanup operation any time.

From villages of Lakkarai and Palosai off Agricultural University to Phase-VI in Hayatabad, phones in every home rang incessantly.

Relatives, friends and even acquaintances phoned up to know whether everything was ok and asked if any help was needed. That being a weekend, the children who stood awake stopped watching the cartoons and switched over to 'naat khwani' sessions for spiritual relief. Women recited the best portions of their choice from the holy Quran to seek deliverance from the ordeal.

Men with a panicky temperament felt like fleeing the place and even went into the garages and porches to check the fuel in their automobiles but whispered out unprintable profanities when told that roads had been barricaded and nobody could move out just for joy rides.

As the standoff prolonged, the tired, the elderly and the sick viewers dozed off with TV remote slipping out of their loosening grip.

The editors in newspaper offices anxiously looked at their watches and wondered if the paper was getting late for printing.

They scanned the details to see if the police-militants standoff in a dangerous Peshawar suburb had the makings of possibly the lead story for local editions. Printing press workers, who are normally used to the sensational newspaper life, watched the unfolding story from a distance and nodded quietly.

Those with a quick eye for the incongruous were least bothered. They searched the archives of their jokes about police and militants and shared these via cellular phones with friends who wanted to have a comic relief out of the psychological trauma created in the middle of the night by what to some appeared to be the media hype.

They wanted to drown their anxiety into some sort of fun and subdued laughter.

Fun and laughter were, however, in plenty when at the end of night-long standoff it was told that the hostages had been successfully retrieved but taking advantage of the darkness the militants escaped one by one through the back door.

One does not mean disrespect to anyone but the Regi Lalma standoff briefly brought to mind another standoff that Frontier police staged at a village tube-well outside Mardan some years back not with 15 to 20 militants but with a solitary, one-eyed, battle-hardened warrior named Abdul Manaf.

Lying straight into a cemented drain meant to pass the tube-well water on to agricultural farms and crops, Abdul Manaf brought to ground a jawan of the police force with every bullet that he fired out of his limited stock. When he realised that police was narrowing down the circle around him, he quietly crawled into a nearby mud-built room.

An apparently brave DSP climbed on to the rooftop to take stock of the situation. Judging by the sound of the footsteps of the officer above him, Abdul Manaf took a careful aim from inside the room and with the barrel of his Kalashnikov gun pointed upwards to the soft, thatched, makeshift, straw roof, pulled the trigger with the confidence and precision of a seasoned fighter.

Holding their breath from their positions, as the police jawans watched and monitored the body language of their officer, the DSP staggered for a while and fell dead to the ground.

In the hazy dusk that gradually descended on the fertile Mardan soil, the one-eyed warrior saw the policemen retreating gingerly from their positions. At last he also took advantage of the darkness and slid into the thick sugar-cane plantations never to be found or seen again.

Some politicians satirically commented on the Mardan standoff by saying that the Afghan war had drawn to a close and many more 'Abdul Manafs' were still waiting in the wings to stage their come-backs.

If one fighter with a single gun and a few bullets could engage a huge contingent of police force for almost a day and walk away unhurt without so much as a bruise on his face at the end, one could imagine the tough time that all Abdul Manafs put together could give to the law enforcing agencies in future.

Much water has flowed under the Indus Bridge ever since. The present-day militants appear to be the advanced versions of the old-time fighters. It is time we equip our state machinery with an equal, if not greater, potential.

1- 9- 2008

Death of eternally romantic Ahmad Faraz

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

The man who was lowered into a freshly-dug grave in Islamabad’s H/8 Sector last week was probably the most passionately-loved poet in the country. During his 77-year-long life, whenever he presided over a literary event, the hall nearly always got filled to capacity by glamorously dressed, attractive women of all ages. Male members of the audience did not mind standing by the walls, getting squeezed into the aisles or even squatting on the stairs.

The last such scene that one can recall in Peshawar with late Ahmad Faraz was in Peshawar University's Agha Khan Auditorium near the Pashto Academy, where Urdu Department was holding an All-Pakistan mushaira session.

The auditorium was jam-packed with female students from the adjoining girls' hostels located on the campus. Faraz wanted to read out his freshly-written ghazal piece with political undertones "Aa gai ab to shab-o-roze azabon wallay" but the girls stood up to say that they wanted to have "Suna hai log ussay aankh bhar ke dekhtay hain!" With a typically familiar sparkle in his eyes, Faraz agreed.

Born as Ahmad Shah into the Hindko-speaking family of Agha Mohammad Shah Barq Kohati on January 14, 1931, Faraz started his career from Radio Pakistan Karachi as script writer.

Later, he switched back to the NWFP metropolis where for sometime he taught in Peshawar University's Islamia College. In the last week of August, it was the same Peshawar where literary organisations like the Academy of Letters, Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq and Takhleeq International arranged in their own peculiar style condolence meetings for the beloved poet.

In an open letter to Faraz, carried on the back cover of the August 2008 issue of National Language Authority, Islamabad's monthly "Akhbar-i-Urdu", Kishwar Naheed recalled an event in 1970s when Faraz read out to a crowd in Islamabad his eternally banned satirical poem "Pak fauj ko salam" written in the backdrop of army action in the former East Pakistan.

According to Faraz's own version, Siddiq Salik and Colonel Mohammad Khan took the poem's original script and went away. One day while returning from the Shalimar Recording Company, as Saif-ud-Din Saif and Faraz emerged from their car, a military jeep intercepted them and after blindfolding Faraz took him away. Some friends through Abid Hassan Manto (advocate) told Justice Zullah of Lahore High Court that Faraz had been missing for 15 days.

Kishwar further recalled that she literally wept when two days later she saw a lean and pale Faraz being produced in court by men in uniform. From Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi to Saif-ud-Din Saif, majority of Lahore's poets were in court to see Faraz. The poet told his friends in Lahore that during his captivity in Rawalpindi, he was kept in a dark and dingy basement where food was given to him on a metallic dish by a hand. He could not see or hear the fellow.

In her interesting letter, Kishwar said that she somehow came to know that the arrest of Faraz was not without the consent of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB).

She, therefore, spoke to Begum Nusrat Bhutto to do something. Begum Bhutto first agreed but later backed out of her commitment.

As the coincidence would have it, singer Noor Jehan was an admirer of Faraz. She was a friend of the "Black Queen's" who according to Kishwar was close to ZAB. So Masood Ashar (then editor Imroze, Multan) and Kishwar went to Noor Jehan and thus, to cut the matter short, secured the release of Faraz.

Temperamentally blunt and outspoken, Faraz loved to break taboos which often landed him into controversies.

He once wrote a ‘naat’ item in which he grumbled against happening all around in the country.

Religious figures like Maulana Kausar Niazi happened to be in the National Assembly where the issue of terminating the services of Faraz was raised. It was Pir Ali Mohammad Rashdi who came to Faraz's rescue by citing lines from the poetry of Persian writers like Hafiz and Rumi.

Love-hate relationship between Kausar Niazi and Faraz dated back to the early 1970s when ZAB appointed Niazi as the federal minister first for information and later religious affairs. Faraz was resident director of Pakistan National Centre, Peshawar.

As the coincidence would have it, Niazi brought out a collection of poetry which was named "Deeda-war", an oblique tribute to ZAB’s talent.

The book-launching ceremony was held in Peshawar and Faraz was also one of the speakers. Faraz believed that the publication of the book was an attempt at sycophancy.

Faraz had the audacity to say things that could cost him jobs or win him powerful foes. Taking his turn, Faraz stunned everyone by saying that a quick look at the book's contents showed that its author was probably a non-poet!

Like with Kausar Niazi, Faraz also came into conflict with Syed Safwanullah, again a federal minister in the cabinet of Shaukat Aziz, holding the portfolio of housing.

When Faraz was on a visit to Britain, the minister ordered his men to get the bungalow in Islamabad's F-6/3 Sector allotted to Faraz vacated with immediate effect. More loyal than the king, the ministry officials complied and threw the belongings of Faraz out on the road. Some sections of the press alleged that the housing minister wanted to allot the bungalow to the sister of the fellow federal minister for ports Babar Ghauri.

The admirers of Faraz have on their fingertips the names of his 14 poetic collections.

Books which took the readers by storm included "Tanha Tanha", "Dard Ashob", "Shabkhoon", "Nayaft", "Meray khwab raiza raiza", "Be-awaz gali koochon main" (written during self-exile in Britain), "Nabeena shehr main aieena", "Pas andaz mausam", "Sab awazain meri hain", "Khwab-i-gul pareshan hai", "Modlak", "Ghazal bahana karo", "Janaan Janaan" and "Ey ishq-i-junoon pasha". A couple of years before his death his 'kuliyat' landed on the bookstores under the predictable title "Shehr-i-sukhan araasta hai" which included most of his published work.

Faraz enjoyed a wide range of admirers. They all loved him intensely and Faraz knew it. He made a passing reference to the fact in the lines below: "Aur Faraz chahiyain kitni mohabatain tujhe; Maaon ne teray naam per, bachon ke naam rakh deaye!" In a romantic strain, he could narrate the most sophisticated levels of love in his poetry.

For instance, look at these lines and imagine the loss to love poetry that his death has caused: "Woh apnay zo'm main tha, be-khabar raha mujh se; Ussay pata hi na tha, main nahin raha uss ka!"

Of a Fata seminar, entry test and Pesco woes

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Even if belated, the realisation of ground realities by former NWFP governor Lieutenant-General (Retd) Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai seems adequately refreshing. Speaking in the second seminar on Fata at the Pakistan Academy of Rural Development, he said that peace and normalcy could never return to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and the settled districts of the province as long as the US and Nato forces were there in Afghanistan.

Organised by the Benazir Democracy Institute, a wing of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Shaheed Foundation, the seminar focused on central Fata, comprising Orakzai Agency, Kurram Agency and the Frontier Regions of Peshawar district. The former military governor claimed that he had told the US policy planners and their 40 allies that Afghanistan would not see peace as long as they continued military operations in that war-ravaged country.

The audience was slightly surprised to see that the retired General was ultimately offering the same solution – of holding peaceful negotiations with the local warriors and bringing about economic development in the area – which the progressive parties like PPP and ANP had all along been offering. As the irony of fate would have it, the economic activity appears to have come to a grinding halt. Peaceful negotiations with the warring factions are mysteriously torpedoed by the hidden hands.

General Aurakzai was of the opinion that the West should stop equating the Frontier region with a stretch of land where lawlessness prevailed and where only drug smugglers, war lords and gun-runners lived. Referring to his participation in a security-related seminar in Germany, he said that everyone in the West thought that if another incident of 9/11 type occurred it would very likely originate from the tribal region which, according to them, was known for bomb explosions, religious extremists or suicide bombers. The Western powers thought that Fata was home to Al-Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden, Aiman al-Zwahiri and others of their jihadi coordinators. The former governor said that the West needed a break with the past so that a new beginning should be made.

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Students who qualify for appearing in entry tests are normally studious characters who do not believe in using unfair means, accepting false props or looking forward to buying fake or real question papers that have been leaked before time. This was one reason why they felt disinterested in listening to the news that on Sunday morning the Capital City Police (CCP) arrested a group of fraudulent individuals who were busy selling copies of prematurely leaked question papers. A press release issued by the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Peshawar said that copies taken into custody from the arrested group were of fake question papers.

The vital triangle of teachers, students and parents often feels amazed at the fact that before all important BISE exams, copies of question papers (later declared as fake) are secretly and quietly sold out to 'trustworthy' students who on the strength of their parental wealth, influence and social pressure appear determined to take admissions to medical colleges of the province and by becoming messiahs turn into the usual money-minting machines. Police detectives do not make public their revealing probes but it is especially and exclusively for the future money-minting classes that question papers are prematurely leaked. However, when big guns stand the risk of getting exposed, various skin-saving devices are used.

In entry tests the maximum rush is on medical colleges and this explains the incidence of leakage of either the entire question papers or just the important questions. Almost every year police rounds up some individuals or the organised gangs who thrive on the sale or purchase of question papers. However, no follow-up story appears in any of the papers as to who were the beneficiaries of the whole leakage scandal. Why are only the sellers of question papers arrested? Why should the buyers after all go scot free? The simple law of economics is that if there is no demand for a certain product, its supply will be automatically stopped.

* * *

By now every Pakistani knows of the fact that the country suffers from an acute kind of power shortage. However, every Pakistani also knows that various rules apply to various localities in coping with the crisis. For instance, Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) had announced that in 24 hours it would resort to a total of six hours of load-shedding or, what it prefers to call, load management after appropriate intervals.

However, PESCO is not abiding to its commitment and in some areas in and around City it is resorting to a load management of 10 to 12 hours. Prolonged power breakdowns or interludes of load-shedding have adversely been affecting their ways of life. If lights go off for 10 to 12 hours a day, housewives cannot keep cooked or even uncooked meat or vegetables in refrigerators.

Salesmen at city's major filling stations bear it out that much of their petrol is being sold out to users of power generators at home, in offices or industrial units. However, every household cannot afford to buy a power generating device. The other day a member of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry flayed the PESCO management for adopting wrong policies.

For instance, the PESCO announced that for two days there would be prolonged power breakdowns in the Hayatabad Industrial Estate probably for necessary repair work in the concerned grid station and on high power transmission lines. The owners of industrial units took the PESCO announcement seriously and told the labour not to report for duty on the given two days.

However, the PESCO later changed its mind and there were no prolonged power breakdowns. The result was that the poor labourers went without two days' wages, the factories did not go into production for two days and suffered financial loss. Many of the investors have become so fed up with the faulty power supply schedules that they have either withdrawn their investment or moved to Dubai, Kuwait or Abu Dhabi.

Blow on, O winds of change!

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Television newsreaders have suddenly started appearing more certain of their scripts. Anchor persons peer into teleprompters more confidently.

Familiar political analysts make predictions with a greater sense of finality and authoritativeness. News editors see to it that the headlines on top of their exclusive stories are adequately hard-hitting. Even if temporarily, the suffocating inhibitions seem to have gone. Smiles on the faces of apologetic spokespersons from the rival camp seem insipid and laboured. The winds of change have been blowing across the country's political horizon. The common man looks at his television screen and wonders.

The change is not restricted to the Margalla Hills. It can be seen, smelt, heard, touched and almost tasted, by employing all the five senses in the whole evaluation process. Impeachment, trial, safe exit and other options are being incessantly debated on television talk shows. The president may resign; the president may not resign. The media organs are trying to strike a balance. The US ambassador Ann Peterson and Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz have been testing waters in Zardari House and the Raiwind Farms, the new centres of powers.

Polarisation on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the country's independence was understandably unnerving, painful and even staggering. From October 12, 1999 to August 18, 2008, the country has been through spills and thrills. There had been a specific team at the helm of affairs. Administrative machinery and some sort of security apparatus had obviously been in place. Without having a soft corner for any wrong-doer at the national level, one might say that it would be naïve to oversimplifying things and look for a traditional scapegoat just in one individual. But one could hardly undo the pattern that got in place over the last 61 years and guided or misguided the political establishment right from 1947.

* * *

Depending on the social status and the geographical location, the 61st anniversary of country's independence had its ecstasies and agonies. As the residents of Peshawar danced to the tune of melodious and inspiring national songs on the occasion, displaced persons (DPs) from Bajaur and Mohmand tribal agencies crossed the makeshift Michni Bridge into settled areas. Accompanied by tired and hungry children, some of the purdah-observing and publicity-shy tribal women agreed to briefly talk to media persons. The tribal women said that their men folks worked as common labourers in Karachi and they had become 'refugees' on their own soil.

The refugees from Bajaur and Mohmand agencies said that wealthy and resourceful families had moved out in taxi-cabs and private cars whereas the poor and less privileged people were travelling by foot. The Taliban were in control of the local public transport and the common people had hardly any access to buses and vans. The dilemma of refugees was that political administration in Bajaur and Mohmand agencies was trying to turn them out whereas the Taliban militants wanted them to stay put.

A large number of refugees had converged on Charsadda 'Adda' where the drivers and conductors collected money by shouting out appeals via hand-held megaphones. Social workers appealed to the government to provide shelter to the tribal refugees in educational institutions which stood closed due to summer vacation.

The problem with regard to educational institutions was that for proper permission to open the school buildings to tribal refugees, the headmasters needed a visible nod, a written approval from the government. As far as the private schools were concerned, the owners were afraid that refugees might spoil, misuse or damage the well-maintained buildings.

The government was already short of tents because the available tents had been used in providing relief to the flood-affected villagers on the outskirts of Peshawar. The authorities were trying to draw a line between the flood-affected people and the tribal refugees. The refugees and the flood-affected people, however, do not find any harm in getting mixed up.

Nazims and union council members have been making hurried estimates so that they can demand funds from the federal government to distribute among the refugees. Cynical observers fear that the aid money may not reach the deserving people just as it also happened in the case of the quake-hit people of Balakot and Azad Kashmir. The Edhi Trust and other humanitarian organisations can come forward to offer help.

* * *

Agha Sardar Mumtaz Ali Qazalbash was a lovable senior citizen. The 65-year-old Peshawari was the provincial chief and the former central deputy general secretary of Tehrik Nifaz Fiqh-i-Jafria (TNFJ). Those who visited the Haider Shah and Gul Badshah Jee Imambargahs knew that Sardar Mumtaz was a widely respected, senior 'nauha khwan' who usually came to the rostrum when every other 'soz khwan' and 'nauha khwan' had taken his turn.

On the morning of August 16 he, according to his routine, set out of his residence in Phase III of Hayatabad to go to city. Police had provided him with an armed security guard but he only allowed him to walk beside him when passing through narrow city lanes. On the fateful Saturday morning, as he leisurely walked towards the nearest bus stop, death treacherously waited for the elderly TNFJ leader.

Eyewitnesses said that as he prepared to board the bus, some unidentified attackers opened indiscriminate firing on him from behind. He staggered for a while and fell to the ground injuring his forehead. His dead body was immediately taken to Imambargah Haider Shah in Jehangirpura, where mourners started pouring in instantly.

Father of two sons and a daughter, Sardar Mumtaz was a highly sociable man. At the end of July, he felt greatly pleased to learn that an old-time friend Malik Sakhawat Ali Sakhi (former hockey coach of PAF team) had moved from Dhakki Munawar Shah in Ander Shehr to Phase II in Hayatabad. In fact he tried to occupy the upper portion of Malik's house but he was probably too late as it had already been occupied by a common friend, Dr Mudassar Bangash, a pediatrician at Hayatabad Medical Complex.

Remembering Professor Waheeda Ghafoor

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

With dreamy eyes and romantic fantasies, the boys and girls in Peshawar University's sprawling Urdu Department waited in the lecture room for their female chairperson.

Some of them imagined her figure and vaguely thought that she would very likely walk into the classroom with the familiar load of voluminous books. The students, however, blinked in disbelief when the well-built and tremendously confident chairperson arrived without a single piece of paper in hand. Any woman teacher in any of the university's numerous departments is keenly watched, meticulously observed and attentively heard. When someone from the students timidly asked as to which book the honourable lady would like to start with, the chairperson said: "Forget about the books, my children. Dragging you out of the bookish cobwebs, I would rather begin with something relating to the real-life world!"

The soft-spoken Professor Waheeda Ghafoor, who relished talking about the real-life world gradually, got fed up with her favourite subject. After a prolonged illness, she lost her battle with cancer on August 4, 2008 and decided to bow out. Her sudden death left the academic, literary, cultural and social circles of Peshawar in a still poorer state. She was selective in attending the social get-togethers in the city but when she finally showed up, her presence would almost always brighten up the event.

She normally stayed silent in the gathering. However, when someone from the organisers invited her to come to the rostrum and speak herself out, she would never mince matters. She was embarrassingly outspoken, annoyingly blunt and lovably straightforward. Spontaneous and truthful like an innocent child, she never beat about the bush and nearly always came straight to the point, stayed on course and hit the iron when it was hot.

For the last few years, she had not been keeping a good health. Bed-ridden and confined to home, her only contact with the outside world was her telephone set. The death some years back of her husband Professor Abdul Ghafoor, the principal of University Law College and later also the vice-chancellor of Peshawar University, was understandably like an emotional and psychological setback for her. With the passage of time, her trauma and alienation grew bitter and intense.

As the coincidence would have it, on August 3, just a day before her death, an Urdu newspaper in its section of classified advertisement, carried an appeal on Waheeda's behalf requesting all retired university teachers to converge on the Agha Khan Auditorium so that they should know about each other's wellbeing. Apart from Waheeda, the classified advertisement carried the names of two other well wishers along with their cell phone numbers. The announcement showed how lonely and melancholy Professor Waheeda had really started feeling in her last days.

Basically a social reformer, Waheeda carried out her mission through teaching. So committed and devoted was she to her profession that from an ordinary college teacher she rose to become one of the three eminent women academics - the other two being Mrs Munawar Rauf and Mrs Dur-i-Shahwar - who became chairperson of Urdu Department.

Ideologically, she clearly belonged to the progressive, forward-looking, liberal and, if one may say so, the secular group of intellectuals in the city. Come Zia-ul-Haq or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she drew the line from day one and up to her last moment resolutely stuck to just one school of thought, without any remorse or regret. Whether one liked it or not, she had little or no tolerance for hypocrisy.

After the assassination of Z A Bhutto, there was understandable anger and bitterness in her comments. Her residence on 27-Chinar Road, University Town was home to city's left-wing thinkers. Regular visitors to her place included poet Ahmad Faraz.

The lovable thing about Faraz was that whenever in conversation with his Peshawari friends like Waheeda Ghafoor, Khatir Ghaznavi or Mohsin Ehsan, he spoke Hindko. The jokes, the extempore remarks, the wit, the satire and even the profanities came in Hindko.

The visitors in those days generally felt sorry for the way a brilliant prime minister with a vision, was eliminated. Much of the exasperation that had its roots in the political repression of 1970s and persecution of 1980s found expression in the versified narratives included in Waheeda's tiny 1996 poetic collection so meaningfully titled "Khwab-i-Agahi". She never tried to put any inhibitions on her sons Sajid and Sarmad or her daughter Salma.

On hearing the news of Waheeda's death, several family friends living overseas tried to trace Salma in the United States to offer condolences. Visitors to her home remember that she never objected to her children's desire to learn or practice music. In her drawing room one often noticed a guitar or harmonium lying in one corner. Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq, Women Writers' Forum and Gandhara Adabi Board are active organisations but one has not heard any announcement from any of them to have a sitting in the memory of the late professor. Although Waheeda rarely attended the events arranged by the above-mentioned literary bodies yet they perhaps owe a courtesy to the woman professor.

Apart from being friendly to her female students, Waheeda often acted as the elder sister or the mother and often took interest in their personal problems. She never encouraged young girls to write poetry or short stories and for corrections go to male writers. She plainly told them to get married and rear children.

With a quick eye for the incongruous, Waheeda had a robust sense of humour that could send the others staggering out of their wits. In a social get-together arranged in Khana-i-Farhang-i-Iran, she once narrated how the classes in Urdu Department's early days used to be totally segregated. “A big sheet of cloth serving as curtain used to hang in the middle of the class separating boys from girls. However, students like Ahmad Faraz and Taha Khan did not approve of the segregation. With his cigarette butts, Faraz perforated the curtain to the extent that no one on either side of the emotional divide really felt segregated!”

Allowing chaotic storms to blow themselves over

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

As you switch on any of the three channels of PTV, the modestly dressed male and female vocalists sing out selected poetry soaked in patriotism. The national songs are well-worded, the orchestra that accompanies the songs is aptly responsive and innovative and the artists render the songs immaculately. The national songs create the right kind of political environment so essential to build up the traditional Independence Day hype.

As a nation we have completed 61 years of our independent life. However, when we turn to look back and attempt an assessment in retrospect, we tend to wonder if we are really independent in the political, economic and cultural context. Lately, we appear to be at war with ourselves. As the national radio and television tell the general public to celebrate the 14th of August in a befitting manner, full-fledged military operations are going on in Swat, Waziristan and Balochistan.

In Kabal area of Swat, television channels showed images of the bitterly fought battle. TV cameras showed the shirt of a dead security man with metallic badge 'police' still shining on the shoulder flap. Dead body of an FC jawan was brought to Peshawar and laid to rest with formal salute by his colleagues in uniform. The Taliban militants had taken positions on the vintage mountain tops and television crew belonging to various channels was told to vacate the area. News reporters ducked and scampered for life to give way to overflying missiles and projectiles.

Television teams also focused on the military operation in Balochistan. By Sunday evening about 350 'miscreants', mostly young people, had been rounded up and dumped in crowded jails and lockups. The images disturbed the viewers who nervously monitored the worrying signals from Washington and Colombo. In Washington, our American friends wanted to know who was in the driving seat in Islamabad.

The 15th SAARC conference in Colombo became slightly embarrassing for us. Our Indian and Afghan friends were critical of our foreign policies. They thought that our agencies were probably getting too big for their shoes. The Pakistan delegation had to be almost on the defensive. If Islamabad has to face embarrassment at any level, the trickle-down effect does come to Peshawar, if also to Quetta, Karachi and Lahore.

Leaders of PPP in NWFP are understandably apologetic and on the defensive. They are eternally explaining away or clearing up the mess created by the 'hidden hand'.

On TV talk shows, they ask the general public to be more tolerant and give them some more time so that the storms of confusions blow themselves over. Political figures like Sheikh Rashid Ahmad and Pervaiz Elahi are proving to be the nastiest of rivals that one has seen in the living memory.

Some PPP leaders in NWFP are said to have given the proposal to their boss Asif Ali Zardari that Sardar Ali can probably be given the gubernatorial assignment in place of the soft-spoken Engineer Owais Ahmad Ghani. But has Sardar Ali the Salman Taseer magic in him?

* * *

Life has become very fast and most of the people suffer from timelessness. Much of the hassle is an outcome of the rapid industrialisation.

When poet Munir Niazi was alive, he never subscribed to the industrialisation theory. He always said that we only pretended to suffer from timelessness because there was no industrialisation as such in our society. In our case both the industrialisation and timelessness appeared fake. These were never intended to be genuine.

Whether fake or genuine, industrialisation has affected our age-old values in varying degrees. We are fully updated on the signs of life on Mars but are totally ignorant of the condition of our ailing neighbour.

It was in this context that former chairperson of Peshawar University's Urdu Department Professor Waheeda Ghafoor issued an appeal to her fellow academics. In a four-line announcement in the 'classified advertisement' (uniform rate Rs60 per line) section of an Urdu newspaper on Sunday, Professor Waheeda Ghafoor along with Mahmudul Haq Haqqani and Rasheed Ghori appealed to the retired university teachers to converge on Agha Khan auditorium at 6-30pm today (Monday) so that they could know about the welfare of one another.

Located between Urdu Department and Pashto Academy, Agha Khan Auditorium is often the venue of cultural activities organised by various departments of Peshawar University. Over the past few years, Waheeda Ghafoor has not been keeping a good health. Her illustrious husband Professor Ghafoor Ahmad, who variously served as the Principal of Law College and later as vice-chancellor of Peshawar University, died some time back adding to Professor Waheeda's emotional and psychological alienation.

While still at Peshawar University, we must not forget the ordeal of the present head of Urdu Department, Professor Nazeer Tabassum, who had to spend about seven days in hospital. On July 27, he was going from his new residence in Gulbahar to the city's only five-star hotel to read a paper in the book-launching ceremony of woman journalist Huma Baig's "Nukta-i-Nigah", when the rickshaw he was riding met an accident.

He was taken to the CMH where the X-ray report said he had got a leg fractured. Relatives, friends, colleagues, and students visited him in the hospital. When these lines appear in print, he will have left the hospital. Lines from his poetry sometimes portray the situation correctly: "Ye kis ne itni mohabbat se di mujhe awaz? Main zindagi ki taraf phir se laut aya hoon!"

* * *

Express News TV channel reported in its afternoon news bulletin on Sunday that on the request of his family, poet Ahmad Faraz was being flown back home. His doctors were of the opinion that the writer might take several months to recover from multiple ailments including kidney disorder, diabetes and paralysis. His son Shibli Faraz specially flew off to USA to attend to his ailing father. Author of about 27 poetic collections, Ahmad Faraz went to America to take part in a mushaira session which was part of the annual convention of the Association of Physicians of North America (APNA).

Of ailing Faraz, Hindko language and Wapda bills

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Literary circles in Peshawar and elsewhere will be saddened by the latest update on the health of the popular Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz. A statement from the hospital in Chicago, USA said that the 77-year-old poet had suffered a stroke of paralysis which had affected the right side of his body. Dr Rohail Tahir reportedly told the poet's son Shibli Faraz that even if his father survived the stroke, he might not be the same old Faraz again.

A panel of nine doctors, including two physicians of Pakistani origin - Dr Rohail Tahir and Dr Murtaza Arain - has been attending to the author of 27 poetic collections. Ahmad Faraz had flown to the United States of America to take part in a mushaira session organised by the Association of Physicians of North America (APNA) in its annual convention in Washington. When Faraz walked up to the rostrum, he felt a dizzying sickness.

As the hard luck would have it, he fell to the ground and badly hurt his knees. The knee injury later led to a complicated infection. On July 7, 2008 he was admitted to a hospital in Chicago, USA. Hardly had he spent a week in the hospital when one after the other the satellite television news channels started giving worrying updates on his health.

One of the channels initially reported that the poet had alternately been sinking into and emerging out of a state of coma. In order to save his life, the doctors put him on dialysis machines. A few days later, the State-controlled Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) 'broke the news' that sadly enough Ahmad Faraz had passed away.

The efficient and ever-ready staff of PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and that of Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani understandably issued the condolence messages. However, the news was promptly contradicted and it was said that Faraz was alive but his condition continued to be critical. In Pakistan the die-hard admirers of the poet simply refused to admit to the fact that the former director-general of National Book Foundation was ill at all. They argued that it was the rival camp of the poet that was spreading the whole 'disinformation'.

However, the myth of disinformation gradually exploded and literary circles started reconciling to the tragic situation. In a live television talk show, writer Kishwar Naheed was asked to give her impressions about the failing health of Faraz. In her typically tongue-in-cheek remarks she flayed the indifference of the government: "Look at Hussain Haqqani (Pakistan's newly appointed ambassador to the United States). He shows his aesthetic sense by reciting lines from our poetry but he could not find time to send even so much as a bouquet to the hospital although Pakistan has got its consulate in Chicago". The next day people heard the news that a bouquet had indeed landed into the hospital.

* * *

Literary organisation Gandhara Hindko Board has expressed its displeasure at the decision of PTV Peshawar Centre to abruptly discontinue the Hindko-language current affairs programme titled "Aj di gal".

People from various walks of life were invited to speak on different issues relating to people's interest and concern. It was an informative and instructive programme started at the longstanding demand of the Hindko-speaking community. The programme was started only two months back but was not allowed to complete the trimester permitted by the headquarters.

A press release issued by the GHB said that the matter would be taken up with the Federal Minister of Information Sherry Rehman on her return from the USA where she had gone with the prime minister. The GHB appealed to the new PTV chairman Dr Shahid Masood to take notice of the move. One is not sure but if past events are any guide, the disunity, mutual leg-pulling and myopic approach of Hindko writers have been some of the factors that have led to similar setbacks in the cultural context. Linguistic chauvinism may not be the actual reason behind the PTV decision, as the press release writers of the GHB tend to suspect.

* * *

The lovers of art and drama in Peshawar will be sorry to know that the versatile stage and television actor Malik Anokha passed away in Karachi's Remedial Hospital at the age of 65. His son Ali Imran told newsmen that Malik arrived home at 6pm on Saturday and fell unconscious. He was rushed to hospital where doctors said that cardiac arrest had taken the life of a lively performer. Malik was laid to rest in North Nazimabad on Sunday. Various television channels showed his burial and paid tributes to him by airing the impressions of fellow artists on his sudden and somewhat premature death.

Malik had been associated with the showbiz for about 40 years. He shot to prominence after his performance in PTV drama 'Chalo Dubai Chalo'. He also performed in famous TV series including 'Karwan', 'Bamulahiza Hoshiyar', 'Waris' and many others. He performed in one Punjabi and 13 Sindhi films. Viewers laughed themselves out when in one of Lahore centre's dramas, Anokha copied the dialects and accents of several Punjab regions including Multan, Jhang, Sargodha and Rawalpindi.

* * *

Consumers of electricity who have got fed up with constantly receiving inflated or wrong bills and whose hue and cry has fallen on deaf ears may feel gratified to know that NWFP government has complained in writing to the National Power Regulatory Authority (NAPRA) against billing it wrongly or additionally to the tune of five million rupees per month and against declaring as many as 740 domestic connections as commercial ones. It has threatened to take the case to a court of law if NAPRA failed to bring about reconciliation between the provincial government and WAPDA.

In an application signed by Karamat Ali Rizvi, project director of the WAPDA cell working under the finance department, the provincial administration has complained that despite repeated reminders WAPDA has neither stopped sending wrong bills nor shown any willingness to hold talks on the issue.

The written complaint requested NAPRA to direct PESCO to initiate talks with the provincial government within a month failing which the government will feel justified in referring the case to a court.

Conflicting updates on the health of Ahmad Faraz

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Literary circles in Pakistan, India and elsewhere in the Urdu-speaking world were immensely shocked when the State-controlled Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) announced that one of the most popular poets on the Indo-Pak subcontinent Ahmad Faraz had passed away in a hospital in Chicago, the United States of America after remaining in a state of coma for about a week.

Immediately after that tragic news, television screens rolled out the condolence messages written promptly by the regular staff of the top leaders like Asif Ali Zardari, the PPP co-chairman, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani and others who are eternally on a lookout for ways to stay in the news. The text messages relating to the unfortunate update on the health of Ahmad Faraz clogged the servers of about half a dozen of cell phone companies in the country.

Hardly had all the recipients properly read the entire text messages that landed into their inboxes when the news pertaining to the death of the poet was sheepishly contradicted. It was said, for instance, that Ahmad Faraz was in a state of coma and the doctors were battling hard to save his life. Some four or five days before PTV erroneously announced the death of a living poet, an otherwise well-informed private television channel had told its viewers that Ahmad Faraz was seriously ill and had even briefly sunk into coma.

When the media persons contacted the brother of Ahmad Faraz, Barrister Masood Kausar in Peshawar, he said Faraz was in a critical condition and his well-wishers should pray to Almighty Allah for his early and full recovery. The prayers were partly answered by Almighty Allah and Faraz showed slight improvement in his condition.

By the time these lines appear in print, the update may sound oddly stale but on the evening of Thursday, July 17 one of the doctors (Murtaza Arain) attending to Ahmad Faraz spoke by phone to Hassan Mujtaba of BBC Radio's Urdu Service and said that Faraz could move his eyeballs, was able to recognise the visitors and his damaged memory seemed to be returning. However, that did not mean that the writer was out of danger.

Earlier, another physician treating Faraz (Dr Rohail Tahir) spoke to a private television channel and said that the poet was very much alive but his condition was serious. When the woman presenter of the channel asked about the nature of the poet's illness, the physician sounded somewhat secretive and said that it was purely a private affair of the writer and nobody should unnecessarily poke his nose into it.

However, the news bulletins said that the kidneys of Ahmad Faraz had not been functioning properly and the doctors had to put him on dialysis machines. Meanwhile, Dr Murtaza Arain was on record to have said that apart from kidney problem, Faraz had developed some other complications as well.

Faraz had gone to Washington DC to take part in a mushaira session organised by the Association of the Physicians of North America (APNA) in connection with its annual convention. It was in Washington DC that he fell to the floor and hurt his knees which later developed infection. He was admitted to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Chicago around July 8 for kidney problems but his blood pressure and heartbeat was reported alright. After getting some worrying updates on the father's health, his son Shibli Faraz also flew out to Chicago from Pakistan.

Having been the director-general of National Book Foundation in Islamabad during much of General Pervez Musharraf's government, the rebel in Faraz suddenly woke up and the poet decided to step aside when Islamabad ordered a military action in Balochistan. It was in this phase of his life that he wrote his famous lines: "Aa gai ab to shab-o-roze azabon walay!" (The days and nights full of torture have descended upon us). In most of the mushaira sessions between July 2007 and July 2008, Faraz preferred to read out these lines. Thus he intentionally avoided reading his all-time faourite lines: "Suna hai log usay aankh bhar ke dekhtay hain!"

As the coincidence would have it, when Faraz read out his rebellious lines in mushaira sessions abroad, a vindictive official in the federal ministry of housing in Islamabad ordered his staff to seek police help and get the official residence of Faraz vacated by force with immediate effect. The ministry staff obliged and threw out the bag and baggage that Faraz kept in the building.

At that time Faraz owned a sprawling personal bungalow of his own in a posh sector of the federal capital. However, the bungalow had been rented out to a foreign enterprise under a contract and the writer was not in a position to immediately vacate his official residence. While justifying the government action, the said official of the ministry spoke to BBC and painted Faraz as a habitual violator of law. The language and tone of the official left a bad taste in the mouth of even those belonging to the rival camp of Faraz.

One feels tremendously saddened at the realisation that writers who represented Peshawar at the national and international level have disappeared one after the other. Farigh Bokhari, Raza Hamdani and Khatir Ghaznavi have bowed out of the literary theatre. One prays for the health and long life of poets like Ahmad Faraz and Mohsin Ehsan. Mohsin too feels weak, frail and withdrawn from literary activities.

Quotable lines from the poetry of Ahmad Faraz come handy to anyone who wants to be choosy and selective. While each and every admirer of Faraz is all prayers for his health, one feels appropriate to end this piece with slightly self-adulatory lines from his poetry: "Aur Faraz chahiyain kitni mohabatain tujhe? Maaon ne teray naam per bachon ke naam rakh diyea!" (O Faraz, how much more love do you want from the people? Just see that mothers have named their children after you)!

Learning to live with dangers from all sides

City diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Sense of insecurity, fear and anxiety that descended on the city of gardens and fragrance has further tightened its grip. With mixed feelings of awe and exasperation, the residents of the provincial capital sat tuned to the satellite television channels that broke the news in their midday bulletins on Sunday that local Taliban militants handed down to the mediatory jirga the dead bodies of 17 jawans of Frontier Constabulary (FC) including the district commander of the paramilitary outfit Karim Jan Khattak.

The bodies were later dispatched to FC headquarters. The images of violence create panic among the masses. The statistics of mounting casualties disorient the law enforcing agencies and the general public feels unnerved. The peace deals are alternately being signed and breached. Apparently doing their duties to restore the writ of the government, the FC jawans were coming back in three vans from Shina-wari when their vehicles were ambushed and jawans shot dead in Zirgari area of Hangu. The FC contingent returned the fire in which two miscreants and five civilians were killed.

The people in Peshawar and the rest of NWFP have been listening to accounts of such encounters for the last three years or so. The trigger-happy gangs have been on a shooting spree killing the innocent and the guilty alike. Most of the tribal areas have been in a state of turmoil for quite some time. Early on Sunday morning fierce fighting raged between Mangal Bagh Afridi's Lashkar-i-Islam and second-in-command Izzatullah Hamkhayal's Ansar-ul-Islam. Later, a jirga of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) met the leadership of both the factions and by afternoon the same day the fighters were ready to cool down their weapons by agreeing to a ceasefire.

Just when the common people were trying to analyse the rising casualty figures, chief of Jamaat-i-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmad issued a call for unity against the threat of US interference in the region. Addressing media persons in the city, he referred to the arrival in the Persian Gulf of US warship 'Abraham Lincoln'. Statements from Washington and Tehran have lately been bellicose, provocative and fiery.

The gunboat diplomacy does not appear to have intimidated Iran. Eminent columnist of New Yorker magazine Seymour M Hersh recently disclosed that US had sanctioned massive funds to de-stabilise Iran. In this connection, the personnel of its rapid task force penetrated into Iran through Iraq, picked leaders of Iran's elite commando force 'Pasdaraan' and interrogated them in Iraq. Prospects of peace in our part of the region seem to be bleak.

As if threats from Kabul and Washington were not enough, our eastern neighbour India has pointed an accusing finger to Pakistan with regard to the devastating bomb explosion at its embassy in the Afghan capital. To add fuel to the fire, the nine-year-long lull over the chronic Kashmir dispute, the media hype about 'jihad' in the occupied valley has suddenly been raised.

Probably to divert the attention of its public from the current coalition crisis (59 MPs belonging to the left-wing parties have decided to break away from the Manmohan Singh government), New Delhi is contemplating further strengthening of its presence in the valley by ordering more troops into it to suppress the re-emerging militancy there. Kashmiri leaders have been touring various cities of Pakistan and appearing on television talk shows.

The dilemma of the Kashmiri people is that the present generation of leaders – Yaseen Malik, Mir Waiz, Mehbooba Mufti and Umar Abdullah – appear to be too young to seriously lead their people towards any palpable freedom movement or to a pragmatic solution to the 60-year-old dispute. So the residents of Peshawar naturally feel the impact of all these dangers. They look forward to getting some sort of guidance or solace from their elected representatives and ministers.

Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, for instance, refused to be cowed down by the missile-carrying militants that seemed to dot the entire province. Interviewed by woman journalist Naseem Zehra on a private channel, the CM said that even civilised countries have witnessed militancy at various stages of their history. He said that when Irish Liberation Army was active, the security personnel in London could not freely walk about in the British capital in military uniforms.

Chief ministers's optimism was shared to some degree by the provincial chief of ANP Afrasiab Khan Khattak who said that the people would start noticing positive changes in the mode of his party's governance. Optimistic statements, however, fail to bring cheers to the faces of the downtrodden masses. The common people notice, for example, that some top businessmen have silently been shifting their business either to the Gulf States especially Dubai or to less hazardous places in other provinces.

Dealers in real estate say that over the last two or three months, there had been no customer who wanted to buy a new shop, house or even a plot of land. On the other hand, there was a beeline of people who wanted to dispose of their moveable and immoveable property. The property dealers, however, noticed that despite an environment of fear, anxiety and despair, the prices of vacant plots of land and houses had stayed the same.

The prices of real estate had neither registered any rise nor any fall. In the present uncertain conditions, the Capital City Police (CCP) needs to remain vigilant. The mobility of people from one to the other place often provides the anti-social elements with a chance to move the theatres of operation. Police should warn the guards and 'chowkidars' in various localities to remain vigilant about the people who change residence in the prevailing circumstances.

In the seven phases of Hayatabad, for instance, more than half of the available houses are occupied by people from other areas. Their exact whereabouts are not known even to their immediate neighbours, friends and acquaintances. Some retired government officials are running a loosely-knit security network with or without the knowledge of the area nazim. They charge Rs60 to 200 per house but have a small number of guards to stand vigil. The area police must have their particulars on its books.

Will PTV succeed in putting its drama back on rails?

City Diary

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Temperature in the conference room of Peshawar Television Centre was just tolerable. The early-July sun shone mercilessly on the western glass windows. However, the discussion, the interaction and the brainstorming session taking place inside the rectangular room motivated the participants to get so deeply engrossed that nobody was apparently bothered by the suffocating afternoon heat.

Right from mid-June, Peshawar Television Centre had quietly been expecting that the PTV headquarters in Islamabad would be magnanimous enough to send Sarmad Sehbai, in charge of drama, to Peshawar to meet the concerned people here and talk about the overall improvement of drama in various respects.

Nephew of famous Sialkot-born English language poet Taufiq Raffat, Sarmad Sehbai retired from PTV some time back and undertook foreign tours partly to shake off the drudgery and boredom that accumulated over the past quarter of a century in a heavily-controlled visual medium but chiefly to re-charge his energies and potential by exposing him to the essentially vibrant culture in the West.

Apart from being the author of a collection of poetry titled "Neeli ke saray rang", Sarmad has given PTV some of the finest of Urdu plays including "Children's Park". After the February 18 elections, the voters witnessed a change or to be more precise a re-affirmation of the status quo in a more theatrical manner. It was probably in the early glow of this mirage-like change that someone in the federal ministry of information thought of re-employing talented men like Shahid Mehmood Nadeem and Sarmad Sehbai.

After postponing his Peshawar visit once or twice, Sarmad finally decided to make it to an otherwise unattractive border town, which has perhaps never been very high on the list of priorities that Islamabad's highbrow cultural czars have chalked out for them. As the co-incidence would have it, Sarmad chose to bring along with him another top intellectual Faheem Jozi, who has never insisted on keeping a high profile. Apart from Sehbai and Jozi, the third member of the Islamabad team was the senior drama producer Tariq Mairaj, known also for his talented wife Naseem Tariq, who has long been a graceful PTV newsreader.

Addressing the guests, Sarmad Sehbai said that fortunately or unfortunately the concept of drama had been greatly vitiated by the soap operas being aired by various television channels. He said that these soap operas or drama serials were like the colour pages of the newspapers or to be more blunt and honest like glamorous calendar shows.

Just as the serious newspaper readers draw a quick, transitory visual satisfaction out of the colour pages and then hurriedly switch over to the inner pages which are tremendously rich in terms of contents, similarly the serious television viewers apparently pretend to enjoy the visual delight but for their aesthetic satisfaction they turn to other channels with more enlightened approach and viewpoint.

Sarmad said that from its very inception in 1964, PTV had evolved a peculiar identity of its own. So much so that even in July 2008, it continues to be described as a family channel because it has imposed upon itself and its artists a kind of self-discipline. He said that Pakistan had a rich culture of its own and it did not have the need to unnecessarily ape the alien cultures. The drama writers should base their stories and plots on indigenous culture.

In this connection, they should not be bothered whether their play or serial would get the proper sponsorship or not. The marketing business should not be the headache of writers. PTV had its own full-fledged, capable managers who took care of the marketing side. The playwrights should focus on teleplay and like in good English movies should write the dialogue when and where it becomes inevitable. For example, if the body language of an actor showed that he was tired and exhausted, the writer should not put into his mouth the words: "I feel bored!"

When asked to give his views on the topic, your diarist said that the drama writers were very much the part of this society. The writers lived in coup d'états, military operations, long marches, political assassinations, collapsing state institutions and carefully timed national reconciliation ordinances. His stories, poems and plays were bound to reflect the seamy side of the contemporary life. It was an irony of fate that the writer silently watched the breaking up of old values and the prospering of centrifugal forces. However, when PTV hired any writer for a play or a serial, he was expected to operate as the architect of national integration. According to writer Intizar Hussain, the creative pieces chosen to be shown on media are often the third-rate writings of an author. The media, especially in Pakistan, cannot digest even the second-rate pieces. The first-rate writings are naturally too biting, satiric and critical.

General manager Farmanullah Jan mostly remained on the defensive responding to the complaints of the guests. Programme manager Abdul Qayyum Hoti saw to it that no guest should go without tea and snacks. Senior script editor Majeedullah Khalil explained in a beautiful manner that intelligent writers could give good plays to television despite the traditional restrictions.

Nasir Ali Syed also put his complaints before the guests from Islamabad. Yunus Qayasi thanked the PTV headquarters for sending a drama team to Peshawar. Arbab Wakil and Inam Shah said that Peshawar Television Centre was not as encouraging to new writers as they expected it to be. The second and final round of the meeting was held in GM's office. Producers who attended both sessions of the meeting included Ejaz Niazi, Aziz Ejaz and Amjad Aziz.

The shows or serials of these three producers were scheduled to go on air in the immediate future.

Tariq Mairaj concluded the meeting by saying that the love-hate relationship between the writer and producer was a normal phenomenon and it should not be allowed to become an impediment in the way of creative and constructive work.

Sarmad Sehbai said that if any writer did not want to submit his writings directly to Peshawar Centre, he could send his manuscripts straight to him by email or by post.