Magnifying Glass

I remember when i used to do this little magic of burning a piece of paper in sunlight using a magnifying glass. Imagine, it’s the same sunlight coming from the sun and spreading in our universe, but nothing is catching fire. But when we use a magnifying glass, and focus the light at one given point, it burns everything in its way.

So maybe we never focused. May be our attentions were dispersed and that is why none of the efforts had ever made a difference. As the famous saying goes, "What a human brain can think, can achieve". May be just the magnifying glass is missing.

A tribute to the Legendry Iqbal Bano

dasht-e-tanhaai mein, ai jaan-e-jahaan, larzaan hain
In the desert of my solitude, oh love of my life, quiver
teri avaaz ke saaye,
the shadows of your voice,
tere honthon ke saraab
the mirage of your lips

dasht-e-tanhaai mein,
In the desert of my solitude,
duri ke khas-o-khaak tale
beneath the dust and ashes of distance
khil rahe hain tere pehlu ke saman aur gulaab
bloom the jasmines and roses of your proximity

uht rahi hai kahin qurbat se
From somewhere very close,
teri saans ki aanch
rises the warmth of your breath
apani khushbuu mein sulagti hui
smouldering in its own aroma,
maddham maddham
slowly, bit by bit.

dur ufaq par chamakati hui
far away, across the horizon, glistens
qatra qatra
drop by drop
gir rahi hai teri dil daar nazar ki shabnam
the falling dew of your beguiling glance

is qadar pyaar se hai jaan-e jahaan rakkhaa hai
With such tenderness, O love of my life,
dil ke rukhsaar pe
on the cheek of my heart,
is vaqt teri yaad ne haath
has your memory placed its hand right now

yun guman hota hai
that it looks as if
garche hai abhi subah-e-firaaq
(though it's still the dawn of adieu)
dhal gaya hijr ka din
the sun of separation has set
aa bhi gaye vasl ki raat
and the night of union has arrived.

Iqbal Bano, was one of the most renowned and most acknowledged and personally my favorite semi classical singer of Pakistan. We lost another asset of Pakistani music, her contribution to the industry of music will always be cherished and remembered deep down in the core of our hearts. No matter how modern and technologically we grow we can never get back such artist of this stature. God has quit making such people as the world today probably does not deserve to have such gems, I wonder if my kids will ever be able to relate to this level of music in their lives. I guess not.

There are still a few of them left with us, like Madan Farida Khanum, Mehdi Hassan (Who is seriously very ill and needs a lot of our prayers) and a few more...

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r7pIisj5oI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvTxMSx8G-M&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5N9s8lI3a0&feature=related

What Wikipedia has to say about her:

Bano was brought up and raised in Rohtak,India. She was musically talented, with a sweet and appealing voice. From a young age, Bano developed a love for music. It was a crucial moment of her life when her friend's father came forward as a votary. He told her father, "My daughters do sing reasonably well, but Iqbal is blessed in singing. She will become a big name if you begin her training." Because of Bano's love of music and persuasion from others, her father allowed her to study music.

In Delhi, she studied under Ustad Chaand Khan of the Delhi Gharana, an expert in all kinds of pure classical and light classical forms of vocal music. He instructed her in pure classical music and light classical music within the framework of classical forms of thumri and dadra. She was duly initiated Gaandaabandh shagird of her Ustad. He forwarded her to All India Radio, Delhi, where she sang on the radio.

In 1952, a zamindaar from Pakistan married seventeen-year-old Iqbal Bano with a promise that he would never stop her music, but try to promote her. Her fulfilled his promise until his death in 1980. After her husband passed away, Bano moved to Garden Town, Lahore. It was observed that her temperament was particularly suited to vocal genres like thumri, dadra and ghazal.

Career

Iqbal Bano was invited by Radio Pakistan for performances, she being an accomplished artist. Her debut public concert was in 1957, at Lahore Arts Council, before an elite crowd. Music lovers feted her beyond imagination. With each recital, she generated more and more public appeal. She was considered a specialist in singing the works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. She has given such musical relevance to the ghazals of Faiz, that Bano and Faiz are apparently inseparable in popular imagination. Because of Faiz's imprisonment and hatred of the Pakistani Government towards him, Bano roused a strong crowd of 50,000 people in Lahore by singing his passionate Urdu nazm, "Hum Dekhenge."

Iqbal Bano can sing Persian ghazals with the same fluency as Urdu. She is always applauded in Iran and Afghanistan for her Persian ghazals. The Iranians and Afghans thronged to her shows in large numbers to hear her ghazals in their mother tongue. Once she said in an interview, that she had a collection of 72 beautiful Persian ghazals. Before 1979, there was a festival of culture called Jashn-e-Kabul every year in Afghanistan. Iqbal Bano regularly received a warm invitation to this annual event. She was known for singing a new Persian ghazal each time she appeared. The King of Afghanistan liked her recital very much. Once, on such an occasion, the king was so pleased with her ghazals that he presented her with a golden vase in appreciation of her music.

Music lovers have noted some similarities between Bano and Begum Akhtar, especially some marked resemblances in their styles of singing. Iqbal Bano does not consider the contemporary ghazals as ghazals at all. Her recitals stick to the old classical style that lays more stress on the raag purity. Basically a ghazal singer, Iqbal Bano has also sung many memorable Pakistani film songs. She has provided soundtrack songs for famous Urdu films like Gumnaam (1954), Qatil (1955), Inteqaam (1955), Sarfarosh (1956), Ishq-e-Laila (1957), and Nagin (1959). She won the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (Pride of Performance) medal in 1974 for her contributions to the world of Pakistani music.

Iqbal Bano passed away in Lahore after short illness on 21 April 2009.

Are we in denial about terrorism?

Friday, April 10, 2009
Shafqat Mahmood

A fundamental debate is on among the intelligentsia of our country regarding terrorism. The way it plays itself out will determine whether we win or lose. A consensus will help put all our energies towards winning. Discord or confusion will certainly lead to defeat.

One set, perhaps a majority, believes that we have no inherent problem of terrorism. It is only a reaction to American presence in Afghanistan. The attacks on our cities are explained away and sometimes condoned as a punishment for our support to the American war effort.

When confronted with evidence regarding presence of armed and dangerous foreigners in our tribal territory, the explanation is ingenious. They came here in the eighties, we are told, because the Pakistani government, with American help, invited them to fight the Soviets. After the Afghan war was over, meaning after the Taliban victory, they were living peacefully here until the Americans invaded Afghanistan.

The first part is true as far as Arabs are concerned. They indeed came here in the eighties motivated by jihad against the infidel Soviets. And they were facilitated by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, which was managing the Afghan war on behalf of the Americans. But it is factually incorrect that they continued to live here peacefully after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, whose members were living in FATA, had claimed responsibility for the attack on the American navy ship Cole in Yemen and on American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama bin Laden later also took credit for the 9/11 attacks in the United States. One of his accomplices, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, has confessed to his role and given details of how the attack was planned and carried out.

But no heed is paid to these accepted facts. The last part, particularly, is greeted with incredulity because, does not everyone know that 9/11 was an American intelligence operation launched with the help of the Israeli Mossad!

Leaving aside whether the Americans were attacked from Pakistani territory or not, the bare fact that these Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, Afghans and even Chinese Turks are illegal aliens in our country is of no concern to the "all because of America" cabal. Any activity on the part of the Pakistani government to apprehend these people is thus treated with ridicule and condemned.

Little note is taken, if indeed it registers, that "our best friends in the world," the Chinese, have formally complained to the government that their dissidents have established headquarters in FATA. Other countries, including many in Europe and the Middle East, have also expressed fears that attacks on their territory may emanate from here. President Obama has actually said as much.

This almost unanimous concern in the West and the United States is brushed aside and seen through a conspiracy lens. These people are out to get us because we are a nuclear power. They are creating circumstances, we are told, to invade and defang us. Remember, Baitullah Mehsud is their agent. We gave them his coordinates, yet he was not killed. Indeed, this entire insurgency in FATA has been engineered by the Americans aided by the Indians. The Indians, particularly, have a special role in training the Taliban. This Maulvi Fazalullah is probably working for them, and so on.

Let us believe that a part of what they say is correct. The Americans, the Europeans, the Indians and sundry others are indeed fearful of our nuclear power and would, if they could, take control of our nuclear assets. And let us also assume that to achieve this nefarious end they want to destabilise the country and create so much chaos that they have grounds to intervene.

The question is, why should we make it easier for them by allowing our territory to be used for terror attacks in their countries? Would our fears not become self-fulfilling prophecies if we continue to give our adversaries a cause to get angry with us?

One reason why we fail to reach a rational conclusion is that the security fears of other countries are not acknowledged by us, at all. If the 9/11 attacks are rubbished as a CIA/Mossad operation, then it follows that the London train attacks or the Spanish bombing in which hundreds died were also internal operations carried out by the British and Spanish intelligence agencies. In a similar vein, the person who tried to blow up airplanes in the sky, the Shoe Bomber, must also be an agent, and so also everyone else who has been plotting planning or carrying out terror operations in the West.

This line of thinking is not complete if the rationality behind the conspiracy is not explained. Why would the Americans and others kill their own citizens in hundreds and thousands and create so much fear? That pet answer is that they needed an enemy because none was left to fight after the end of the Cold War.

In other words, it is being said, that they have killed their own people in large numbers, emptied their treasuries fighting wars, created massive security apparatus at great public inconvenience, curtailed their citizens' liberties through intrusive surveillances and done much else only as a decoy to create Islam as an enemy.

The absurdity of this argument is not obvious to the "we are a target" crowd. The sad part is that even others who aware of the world and have no particular prejudice against the West, get taken in. Paranoia lurks in recesses of the brain and when problems or difficulties are not easy to explain, it takes charge. Collective paranoia is particularly dangerous because it leads to irrationality and fascism. It happened in Germany and Italy and Spain. Why should we consider ourselves immune?

One way to overcome irrational fears is to look within carefully and identify what we can do to make things better. The conspiracy cabal will however take issue with everything that is proposed. To the argument that no one should be able to use our territory to launch attacks outside, and that it is our duty to prevent them, there is no logical answer. Yet, this does not deter them from diverting the topic and saying how nasty and offensive others are.

If told that if our territory is used to launch attacks outside it is just as much a breach of our sovereignty as the American drone strikes, there is outrage. How can drone assaults be put in the same category as alleged terror attacks emanating from here. The fact is there is a huge blind spot when it comes to our own culpability. And this by well-meaning people who are not extremists. Those who believe in the Taliban version of a state actually applaud such attacks.

It is time that we as a nation open our eyes and understand what is happening. District by district our territory is being taken over by the extremist. It was FATA and Swat yesterday now Buner, Dir, Hangu, Mansehra, and even Mardan and Charsadda, are under direct threat. We are being occupied and yet we cannot agree on who our enemy is.

The world is becoming increasingly concerned and is prepared to help, but only if we are ready to help ourselves. If we remain in denial, a terrible catastrophe awaits us.



Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=171733

Long Mad March

Before I start the story, I would like to give a brief description of something:
Madness in the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you, but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there.


---
A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank . Whoever drank that would go mad.

The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside from them alone, and which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them.

'When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

'In despair, the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: "Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then, we will be the same as them."

'And that was what they did: the king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?

'The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.
---

What happened in punjab on 16th march can somehow be related to the story given above. Although the reader of this story would most probably be mad as well so I would rather not explain that how the king on 16th march drank the water from the well and got himself registered into the row of the mad people, cuz if I will, I will be considered the mad man too. But since what so ever I will write or not write, I am considered mad man, I shall not stop saying it.

In this story the queen told the king to drink the water, instead here on 16th march, the queen did not let the king to drink it, but to pretend like them. I think it was a bright and clever move. I think that is what our nation is, they only listen to their mad so called runaway heroes, because its only them they can understand. But the ones with a little wisdom and vision are either murdered or being scandalized as our present king is being done nowadays.

Long live the king. Long live the bhuttos

Nothing is impossible in life…

Destiny.... Is it luck or hard work?


OBAMA PIC ------1987
21 years back at Grandma's place:

From one of the poorest family's chair to the most powerful chair in the world………….!

Jehad

In A.D. 622 the Prophet Mohammad and his community of Muslims left the persecution of Mecca and established the world's first Islamic political system in Madina. From this new position they fought three wars with the Meccans and many other skirmishes. The revelations of the Quran that were give to Mohammad during this time delineate the criteria for a permissible, or "just," war. This first verse reflects the more violent period in which it was received: "Permission (to fight) is given to those upon whom war is made because they are oppressed, and most surely Allah is well able to assist them." Clearly, war is justified when it is a defensive war. Additionally, this next verse is explicitly against aggressive warfare: "And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits."

Some of the verses dealing with war and violence during this time period seem to be more lenient as to when violence would be permitted and condoned. They are referred to as the "sword verses":

so when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie i wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

At first glance this verse seems to advocate violence against unbelievers. But its context is a specific battle in Madina occurring at the time of its revelation, a battle against idol worshippers, not people of the Book, not believers in monotheism. It commands that violence cease if the offenders repent. The second sword verse is as follows:

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

Although this verse may appear superficially problematical, a close reading shows that it does not advocate violence against people of the Book, only those who reject God and his teachings outright. (let us always be sensitive to the fact that the word "Allah" is simply the Arabic translation of the English word "God" or the Hebrew word "Jehovah". And as a later verse shows, the offenders should be fought only until they cease hostilities toward Muslims, implying that those not initiating hostilities cannot be targeted. And last, if an enemy requests peace, it must be given: "And if they incline to peace, then incline to it and trust Allah; surely He is the Hearing, the Knowing"

Courtesy: Reconciliation ISBN: 987-1-84737-273-4

A year without her

27th December, 2007. The worst day in the history of any nation. 

It was a cold day, nothing much happening, except for the worries that the practice of suicide bombings have touched Lahore as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, FIA building had been hit with a suicide bomber. Many people lost their lives in it. I had a meeting at the clients office, and we planned to go their at the end of the day. My house was quite close to the clients office and I totally forgot that after the meeting I could straightly go home. So rode in a colleagues car and left my car behind at the office. On my way I realized that I have proven to be stupid enough to leave the car behind, as there was extremely ridiculous rush on the roads. 

Some how the topic of politics came in, and the two people sitting with me in the car, obviously NOT her supporters were arguing and blaming everyone in this world for what shit is happening to themselves. I kept my tone low, and tried to explain what my thoughts are about. Anyways, who is going to understand, common sense is not common here.

At clients office the meeting went well. It was almost after 6:00PM when I got a call from my wife. She told me that Mohtarma was in liaqat bagh doing her speech and a bomb has exploded over there. She said she is hanging up to check out what actually happened. We finished the meeting and got out of the clients office. Just half a kilometer away, a colleague of mine got a call from her home. And she announced, Benazir is dead.

I could not believe it, and I couldn't hold it in myself, and i shouted loudly and all the bad words came out of my mouth for those bastards. YES THE ESTABLISHMENT bastards. They killedher, they killed her. But somewhere there was a hope in my heart that may be the news was wrong, may be it was a nightmare. My colleague said she is at hospital and probably no dead yet. It gave me so much hope, as if someone has once again poured the life in my body. But Alas! it was not wrong. She was no more, she was the Martyr.

A year has passed but the heart is still expecting that she might pop up at the TV screen live and say something. Say something to soothe this nation who has probably lost the final hope of a better life. Yesterday they were showing her on every channel, ever where she was there, haunting us with her memories. 

Today I feel helpless and ashamed of the fact that she being a woman sacrificed not only her's but her whole family, and left her kids and husband's life in danger, for whom? for Us. But what I did. Nothing!

I don't want to say big words for her, as everyone nowadays is saying that. All TV channels, even the people who once hated her, are faking but still appreciating the contribution of that larger than life human being. She was actually a super hero, she was more than any super hero.

Today I promise myself, that I will do something, something for the party. Something for the country. So that while she look down on the earth should not feel that she gave her life for nothing, it absolutely should worth it.

Rung laye ga shaheedoun ka lahoo...