Shabana Mir's blog: Koonj – the crane
a blog about culture, religion, gender, and academic life
“Hit it with a stick and it won’t die” – An article by Christopher Lee.
The Urdu English relationship in Pakistan – an article by Harris Khalique
Both articles are in the Annual of Urdu Studies. All articles in the internet edition are available for viewing online.
From a 2005 trip tracing my footsteps there from a decade ago.
From a road trip in autumn last year.
A beautiful evocative piece by Asad Raza.
Excerpt:
“Lahore is the conservatory of a lost world whose traces have been largely erased from more touristic destinations, like Delhi and Agra – I will come to the reasons for this below. The world in general has few cities that interweave so seamlessly a great vitality today (the city is about the twenty-fifth largest on the globe) with an unbroken and luxurious history (spanning the last two millennia). …
“In Lahore, by contrast, you can see what tourists can only imagine at the Red Fort or the Taj Mahal: the dense, complex, and still vital operations of an inner city bursting with markets, shrines, mosques, food, dancing girls, riotous children. That’s what makes Lahore different: its history is sometimes worn on its sleeve and sometimes hidden within, but never is it advertised or reified. It’s lived.”
Tonight the 15th of Sha’ban starts, a night of worship and prayer. Two weeks remain for the start of Ramadan. Here are some 15th of Sha’ban recommended observances.
Regular readers know that I was invited to participate in a lecture program at the International Islamic University this summer.
Here are a few photos of the architecture. There are several blocks of buildings, in similar style, with very pretty courtyards at the center. Apologies for my amateur photography and the lack of panoramic view. Anyone sufficiently frustrated with my photography who wants to send me a Digital SLR camera, let me know, and I’ll put it on my Amazon wishlist.
A view of the hills surrounding Islamabad:
A doorway:
Doorways at the center of each building open to courtyards, a refreshing surprise to the eyes:
A truncated view of the courtyard (whenever you can get that SLR in the mail …) with a flavour of lush summer foliage.
A bit of detail glinting in the afternoon sun:
For those of you wondering what the big deal is about the building, remember this university was where I first started teaching, so the nostalgic value for me is huge. Also, the building I taught in was this nondescript, somewhat run-down residential house (rented by the university for the women’s classes) opposite Jinnah Supermarket in F-7:
<<<<<<<SPOILER ALERT>>>>>>>
Svend and I are hopelessly behind in our movie-watching, so we don’t even try to keep up with them as they come out. Still, I try to regularly expose my own inability to keep up with cultural developments by providing rough and ready reviews of books and movies. If you wish to avoid spoilers, – well, don’t read the reviews.
*PAN’S LABYRINTH: This was the best movie I’ve seen in a while. It’s set in Franco’s Spain, and involves the rebel forces and some military skirmishes, but a young girl of about 10 is the central character. She is immersed in the world of books and fairytales, many of them quite dark and somber, and they become her reality in a dark and yet hopeful way. Do not watch this with children, and if you have a sensitive heart or weak stomach, keep the remote handy throughout. There are some very sudden violent scenes in this movie, which are very regrettable. Without them, it could easily have been a great movie for adults and kids. The violence could not only have been veiled, it could have been less gruesome. Except for that, it’s a deeply moving movie for lovers of fantasy and non-fantasy. Spanish with English subtitles.
*THE TRANSPORTER 2: With embarrassment I admit that I’m an occasional lover of action. I have watched Die Hard many times and when faced with a choice, will pick an action-thriller over a romance or comedy or drama ANY day. Readers may judge me as shallow for this, but I do not approach movies to give me a “slice of life.” Life is sufficient for that purpose. So yes, I enjoyed “The Transporter.” I like Jason Statham’s poker face and his cool, professional, generally unemotional demeanour in that movie. So it was with high hopes that I ordered the sequel on netflix. Big mistake to have hopes of a sequel. In my book, it’s a dud. It screams implausible. Yes, movies are not supposed to be, strictly speaking, “realistic.” But the viewer and the producer have a deal: don’t make it so far away from “realistic” as to insult the viewer’s intelligence. The action, the plot, the characters are implausible. Statham’s character is mawkish from the very start. Not only is he driving a cutesy little kid around (I do NOT sound like a mother, I know) but he is a little too cutesy, and not particularly childlike – he is constantly chattering with the kid, making him promises and telling him to trust him like Amitabh out of the 80’s Bollywood movies. Quite unnecessary, and disappointing for the character. Not just that – but the kid’s mother, within 5 minutes of the movie, appears, and the romantic and sexual tension causes the viewer to depart with her barf-bag in disgust. The Transporter, in other words, has left the building. The worst feature of the movie is the vamp, who does most of the fighting on the part of the unpleasant villain – unpleasant not in an Alan Rickman as terrorist sense, but in an “ew, you’re not watchable on the screen” sense. Rickman as Hans the terrorist is eminently watchable. The villain in this movie is not. The vamp is created for an adolescent audience. She never appears unless she is either naked or dressed in the trashiest Victoria’s Secret has to offer. She fights, runs and jumps in 6″ stilettoes, bras and little boyshorts. It’s uncomfortable to watch, and though probably appealing to a 14 year old boy, reduces everyone else to tears and nausea.
*BAGHBAN: Most readers of my blog know that I am a lover of old desi movies. I rarely watch modern desi stuff, and mostly I wonder if I’m really missing some gems. So I ordered “Baghban” on netflix. I was hard-pressed to think of an old movie that was so heavy-handed as this one. Amitabh and Hema Malini are a loving “elderly” couple, but their love is carried on and on and on to the point of nausea. Plus this movie is a nonstop opportunity for them to not only be the elderly objects of reverence for the younger generation, but also the hot kids on the dance floor. I remember at least 3 annoying numbers when the Hema tucked in her fancy silk sari and hit the floor, and Amitabh started jigging with 6 guys behind him – and they’re supposed to be 60+ with grownup married sons. The disrespectful and nasty treatment by the sons is overdone. The picture of benevolent patriarchy is, as was expected, perfect. And it is patriarchy. The father (Amitabh) is at the center of the storyline, and the mother sort of gets kicked around without getting much credit. The movie is also schizophrenic on its treatment of Western-style modernity. Hema/grandma disapproves of her young granddaughter going out with her boyfriend, yet the boy in America (Salman Khan) cavorts with a miniskirted girlfriend (and that’s all great, say the “parents:” as long as she’s pretty). There is a schizophrenic juxtaposition of dance scenes: badbad granddaughter bopping in a Western-style nightclub, and Amitabh (hero) celebrating Valentine’s Day with a team of youngsters dressed and dancing as if they were in a trashy MTV piece. One is bad, the other is good – and why one or the other? BTW that Valentine’s Day sequence with teddy bears and “will you be my valentine,” all set in an Indian cafe, is sad. The mistreated father becomes a famous Booker Prize winner author, gets hundreds of thousands of rupees, and doesn’t want to look at his sons again. Salman Khan is the growup orphan whose education was financed by the kindness of Amitabh: his canned filial piety is delivered with all the natural emotion of an axe-murderer. His perpetual worship (no exaggeration: he and his wife go for their morning prayers and address Amitabh and Hema’s photograph) weighs heavy upon the nerves: perhaps the heavy-handed unnaturalness of the devotion would be salvaged by a bit of humour, or other emotion.
The great author Qurratul Ain Hyder (whose father was Sajjad Hyder Yaldaram) passed away at the age of 80: see Indscribe’s post on the subject.
This may not be the most appetizing of subjects, but Raihana had a potty victory today. Svend gets all the credit. Today, August 21st at 8am, baby made her first potty in the potty. Svend took all the initiative (I had delivered a lecture on the subject the day before): he sat with her, reading “The velveteen rabbit” and the slide-and-seek “Shapes” book (which she loves) all the way through until she was done, and she did not get up until a potty had been done.
I suspect the key is to find her when she’s just a tiny bit groggy, when she’s disinclined to run around in circles and would rather just sit somewhere.
As the baby starts potty training, mother is on her way to reading glasses. When the optometrist took no interest in my complaints of poor reading vision, the realization slowly seeped into my mind that reading glasses were available without prescription, and that I’d just have to pick them off a rack, and that a doctor wouldn’t help me with that. It was one of those things that you don’t know, but you sort of gather by osmosis. And so I went for a follow-up eye exam, and realized on the chair that it was a rather wasted visit.
As the baby screamed in terror (freaked either the elderly optometrist or the machinery), the optometrist did make a quip about the big 4-0 though. I had always believed the adage “you’re only as old as you think,” but reading glasses really are not a matter of thought – (though I’m sure I could find some people who could persuade me that it was).
Almost-forty, peering at small print, raising a baby and jump-starting a career, – it isn’t exactly fabulous, but it could always be worse.
I know the title is needlessly sensationalistic, but last week, due to an intellectual growth spurt, I felt like Raihana had undergone the experience in the title. Suddenly my docile, sweet-natured, cooperative, gentle little baby girl had turned into a little girl with an ego, a possessive streak, an awareness of what she wanted, and a spark of really quite irresistible determination.
I miss the days when I could bark “No!” from a distance, and she would withdraw her hand from the knives in the dishwasher, the peaches on the table, or the laptop. If she wandered off to the kitchen, and I was in my study, I could call her by name if I got worried that she had been quiet too long, and within seconds she would come pattering along with a question-mark on her face. When she put a coin in her mouth, she did it slowly, with guilt painted large on her face, staring at me the while; as soon as I did “thhoo” (the Urdu version of ptooey), she would immediately spit out the coin on my palm.
No more. She sucks the coin for a good few seconds, with relish, before I stick my finger into her mouth and force her to surrender it. She focuses more closely on the offending task/object at hand than on my “no” and my disapproval.
This also means her eye is brighter, her posture is more erect somehow, she is more of an intrepid explorer, and she is more of an extrovert as well. She is also more sociable with other children – and with Bhalu (her teddy bear) with whom she holds long loving conversations lying in the crib.
I’m still not sure if this is merely a developmental stage, and if it’s a coincidence that it happened in the same week that she started daycare.
Her hugs are still sweet, and she runs to hug me still, but the hugs are just a tiny bit less frequent, and she is less inclined to be lovey-dovey with me if she is preoccupied with a toy or a book.
Shabana Mir's blog: Koonj - the crane 