Darwaish

Some of you must be thinking that this is a private home or a tourist hotel somewhere in northern areas. Nah, you are wrong. Yes, it is a famous place so I am sure may of ATP readers will guess it easily but some might find it difficult specially those who have never been to this place. So let’s see how many of you can guess what is this thing and exactly where? Happy guessing

Maryam Chaudhry

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, renowned nuclear physicist and disarmament activist, who teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, recently visited the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and delivered a talk, the title of which was: Sacred Terror -Theirs and Ours. I was fortunate enough to find out about this and actually attend the lecture. I will attempt to summarize what Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy said, since I thought most of our Pakistaniat readers would like to know what he had to say on the extremely divisive subject of global terrorism, which has become extremely important after 9/11.
Dr. Hoodbhoy started the talk by giving the audience a definition of terrorism.

‘Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of non-combatants with the intention to kill or wound.’

If this, indeed, is the definition of terrorism, then it leads us to re-examine some of the events that took place some time ago, but which have all had an impact on history. While much has been written about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have not really ever been referred to as acts of terrorism. In 1971, when the West Pakistani Army slaughtered close to 100,000 Bengalis, Dr. Hoodbhoy thinks that sort of brutality can also be seen as terrorism, but of course as we all know, history has not recognized it as such.

Zakintosh

The last two or three performances by Fareeda Khanum that I attended had saddened me at the rapid downhill slide in this great artiste’s abilities. Shortness of breath – and the unusual brevity of the pieces she sang – left me wondering whether one should continue attending her performances as a respectful duty of an old fan or stop and remember her only as she was at her peak. At the last APMC Annual Conference in Karachi I recall saying to Khalid Ahmad: yaar – lütf haasil karnay kay liyay quvvaté sama’at say ziyaadah to müjhay yaad-daasht say kaam layna pa? rahaa haé! So, when someone invited Nuzhat and me to a concert by her last night, I admit to accepting it with some trepidation.

As the evening began, the fear of what could turn out to be a horrible night – and from which one could not escape, because our hostess (Ameena Saiyid) was sitting right behind us – began to be exemplified, given that the huge and impressive-looking sound system turned out to be faulty. A short test-run by brothers Ustad Idrees Hussain (harmonium) and the scintillating Ustad Khursheed Hussain (tabla), had gone well (despite the high audience-noise) … so who was to guess that the microphone for one of our most respectable artistes would have been left unchecked and necessitate three replacements during the course of her performance. Maybe the recording team thought the hosts were called Saaz OR Awaz!