It took eighteen years to locate a friend. Much like a star, the moon, a constellation and an ancient river my friend R has been mercurial, moody and elusive. Hiding one day and emerging the other week, and missing for years.

It is for the technology that enabled me to get reconnected. There is so much to ask and years to tell. A long night of oblivion that was – blissful ignorance but somewhere an image lingered, a memory refused to fade and a star never slept. Our meeting this year will be an unpaid debt to ourselves. We parted in such a hurry and matter-of-fact-ness. Little did I know that it would take eighteen years.

I am amazed at how strongly I have felt in the recent days – it has to do with nostalgia and the slowly diminishing youth..Adulthood has phases that can only be described through experience.

I will be there soon. In the city of neems, pipals and crazy auto-rickshaws.

R, please do not go away..

In response to my article on Lahore’s vanishing trees, a reader reminded me of one of my favourite poems in Urdu composed by the lesser known genius, Majeed Amjad. I am posting this poem though I am not sure if everyone will be able to read the Urdu script. I am taking a chance at translating the opening lines:

For twenty years, these trees stood at the doorstep of a singing canal

Gallant guards at the borders of swaying fields

Shady, enticing, blossoming chatnars

All were sold for a mere twenty thousand rupees

In the last stanza, after all the trees have been chopped, the poet cries

Now I stand by the singing canal and muse

In this murderous environment, only my thought sways

Adam’s descendants ought to chop me, why not? (more…)

A poem by Cecil Rajendra

Any religion
that sidelines
excludes
any one.

Any religion
that does not
open doors to
every one.

Any religion
that targets
fingerpoints
some one.

Any religion
that claims
it’s “the one
and only one”.

Any religion
whose language
is “we” / “they”
and not “us”.

All such religions
run against God
who is Oneness
& abhors divisions. (more…)

My friend Annie’s post on Mumbai is a remarkable piece of writing. I am cross-posting it here:

The other day, I went shopping for veggies at the nearest supermarket, and found it almost empty. The girls employed there were kidding around with each other. I heard the word ‘terrorist’. One girl told another she’d set the terrorists after her friend. The other one alleged that she was one herself. Light laughter. Odd, somehow. Perhaps, necessary, somehow.

Yesterday, I’d stepped out with my own bag and a laptop, boarded a train and opened a book. My station arrived, I got off and ten seconds later, wondered why my shoulder felt light. I’d forgotten the laptop in the Ladies compartment.

In a mad rush, I turned back. I had no way of tracking down that same train even if I did follow it in the right direction. The train had started moving by then, so I jumped into the nearest compartment. I almost fell. A stranger reached out and grabbed me at the door, pulled me inside. Others asked me to sit down, catch my breath, relax. I was too worried to step away from the door. (more…)

I was quoted in this NYT article on Lahore

Still, Raza Rumi, a writer and blogger who takes great pride in his city, insisted that “Islamic extremism has had very little appeal here.” The cultural life of Lahore goes on, as it has for centuries.

He said that a recent stage play, “Hotel Moenjodaro,” whose theme was against religious fundamentalism, drew a packed audience. “It was very encouraging,” Mr. Rumi said.

Nonetheless, he said, the Hall Road incident and the juice store blasts were alarming. “If the traders, the merchant class, which forms the bulk of the middle class of Lahore, becomes Talibanized, then the whole complexion of the city will change,” he said. “That’s a fear amongst the secular intelligentsia and elite of Lahore.”

Full story here

What jihad, what Islam and what kind of Muslims these butchers are – they kill innocent people, the underclass outside a posh hotel in Islamabad and think that they are serving some cause. And, this is the month of Ramzan when the Satan is apparently locked up….

The numbers of dead and injured are mounting – there is blood everywhere and a commentator has termed it Pakistan’s 9/11.

About time Pakistani government weeds them out and saves us all from this menace.

Horrific. Barbarity at its worst.

www.chinaview.cn

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) — A blast occurred outside Marriott hotel in the center of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Saturday evening, leaving at least 30 dead and scores of people injured, said the Pakistani Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik. (more…)

A few quotes from this article in the Hindustan Times – incidentally it also includes what I rambled….

Freedom means everything. But I’m not free. All these concepts are self-imposed imprisonments.—Roshan Seth, actor

Independence has provided me with a national identity but it hasn’t meant freedom. I find myself enslaved to narrow ideas of patriotism. I’m trying to break free. And writing a book on Delhi, the capital of the ‘enemy’ nation, is my first step.
—Raza Rumi, blogger

Personal freedom is crucial to my growth as an artist. ‘Independence Day’ is a distant celebration for me. Each year, as mid-August approaches I am conscious of a sense of loss — I wonder what could have been had the subcontinent not been splintered.
— Sehba Sarwar, poet

Being a (somewhat) responsible parent, I will share with my children the notion that today we remember our national heroes. And amidst the nationalistic pop nuggets being broadcast round the clock, I hope they hear Yeh watan tumhara hai, tum ho Pasban iss kay, yeh chaman tumhara hai, tum ho naghma khwan iss kay…
— Shandana Minhas, author

More here

These pithy Urdu verses by Nazeer Akbarabadi lament that all will be abandoned when the Banjara (gypsy), the headman or Naik in the folklore, [or at a general level the life-traveller] will leave his temporal abode. (more…)

My bright, young friend Imaduddin (left) has written this excellent, terse review of the engaging book White Mughals.

Yesterday when he emailed me this text, I was intrigued by his views as well as envious of his ability to say a lot in so few words. I enjoyed the book for the era it evoked with such craftsmanship and tenderness. However, Imaduddin says it all:

Quick and dirty impressions of White Mughals by William Dalrymple

Beautiful prose with a significant point brought out: that the British DID integrate in India prior to their discriminatory laws against mixed race progeny of the 1780s, the policy that East India Company servants would be older when they arrived in India, the arrival of white memsahibs and the arrival of condescending, colonial attitudes. Dalrymple finds that a third of Company servant wills bequeathed property to native wives, concubines and children until the afore mentioned advents, after which wills including native family dropped to almost none.

Vivid depictions of the court life and society of perhaps India’s most cultured city, Hyderabad, are brought out in this book, as are the enlightened, seeking attitudes of early British Company servants who integrated beautifully into Mughal society, as had the Portugese into Indian society earlier – as had every other foreigner invader into India, an India which had turned rugged Mughal warriors into artsy Rennaisance men.

The love story of Khair un Nissa, cousin to an ambitious minister in the Nizam’s court, and James Kirkpatrick, the Company’s Resident in Hyderabad, is the thread that brings all these themes together, but is unnecessarily long. If I were Dalyrymple’s editor, I’d have cut this 500 page book by a fifth – there is much repitition.

If you don’t have time to read love stories and are interested in historical commentary on India, read the first 57 pages. That will be enough.

This poem (or an excuse of a poem) was written in a flash for a friend who asked for advice whether to meet an old flame or not.

If you have to go to the North, my love
Why not take the first train
To gaze at the autumn sky

Feel the chilly air in your bones
Clear all the dust
A painting has gathered in years.

Stroke the love that is not lost
Even if for the few moments
when you look at the sky

When all the dust has been cleared
Alas, that will be the time to come back
It will be sad, as it was before

But the quivering moments stolen from life
will come back with thee
And, life shall not be all that empty

you will smile at the little treasure in
that wobbling and quavering,
overgrown suitcase of memories

Saw this story here a while ago

Christie’s South Asian modern and contemporary art sale here March 20 will feature works of leading 20th and 21st century artists from various countries in the region, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The sale will focus on prime examples of many different movements, styles and highlights and will include works from modern masters M.F. Husain, Francis Newton Souza, Tyeb Mehta, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Syed Haider Raza and Ram Kumar as well as works from leading contemporary artists including Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher and Jitish Kallat.

A 1981 untitled painting by Mehta, the lauded master of Indian Modernism, is one of the sale highlights and is estimated at $600,000-800,000. The painting depicts two female figures intermingled, demonstrating Mehta’s formal and psychological considerations, and the two forms suggest the tangled figures of his later “Mahisasura” series. (more…)