Aziz Akhmad

While I am writing this, a young, attractive woman appears on the TV screen, on a Pakistani channel, her head partially covered in a headscarf and her wide eyes dyed in kohl. She looks into the camera and delivers the following message in Urdu to promote her own talk show:

”Khabar woh jo sachi, tabsara who jo khara, tajzia who jo haqeeqat ke qareeb-tar …” Roughly translated it would be: We present news that is true and views that are sound and based on facts …

How one wishes this were true!

Adil Najam

Here are a few things about Pakistan’s recent sports performance that I did not know. Maybe you did not either. The Pakistan Kabaddi team is currently on a five (some say six) Test tour of India. In the second (some say third) match of the series, held in Gopalpura, the Indian Kabadi team defeated Pakistan by an undisclosed score.

By the way, I also did not know that there was such a thing as the “Asian Beach Games”, that these were held a few weeks ago in Bali, Indonesia, or that they also featured Women’s Kabaddi (in which Pakistan did not participate, India won a gold and Thailand bagged the silver medal)!

Fawad

It was in my teens, almost 25 years ago, when I first heard Tufail Niazi singing “MeiN naiN jaaNa Kherian de naal” from Heer Waris Shah in that uniquely rustic and melodious but exceptionally virtuosic voice that has brought tears to my eyes many times over the years. (Picture shows Tufail Niazi singing at the 1981 K.L. Saigol Awards).

Of all the wonderful music I grew up with (mostly because it was what my parents played in the house) this song by Tufail Niazi alongwith K.L Saigal’s “Ik raje ka beta le kar urne wala ghora” and Begum Akhtar’s “Chaa rahi kali ghata, jiya mora lehrae hai” have a special place in my imagination. (The youtube link above does not include it but Saigal’s cackling laugh at the end of this recorded song on the LP is an enduring childhood memory). Every time I hear these pieces again they conjure up the same mesmerizing effect they had on me when I first heard them huddled around my father’s turntable or in later years, his various cassette players.