The Organic brew; pakistan, photography, qawwali, poetry & a general acerbic sentiment.

About the hilarious new Afghan/Pakistan confrontation, from Dawn:

NOW this is an altogether curious affair. The Afghan government is reported to have objected to Pakistan naming missiles after Afghan heroes — Ghauri, for instance. An Afghan minister has said Pakistan has been asked “not to use the name of the great elders of Afghanistan on weapons of mass destruction or other war equipment”; it was welcome to use the names for peaceful things’ like memorials, monuments, etc. Why did Ghauri and Abdali and other warriors come marauding south? our foreign office should’ve replied. If they had stayed in Afghanistan, we wouldn’t have treated them as our heroes and been content to look around for indigenous heroes. This would’ve been a difficult, agonizing search.
Scratch our heads as much as we can, and we can’t come up with a really local hero for a Pakistani weapon. Our political and military leaders have been thoroughly discredited by one another. We can’t possibly name missiles after our mystics, poets and writers, who would turn in their graves at being associated with anything war-like. We could have a Musharraf missile or a rocket called Qazi I or Fazl II (hoping it wouldn’t fizzle out) or a tank dubbed Bhutto. But critics might say they have all proved to be rather loose canons and are best left untouched. We came up with Ghauri because India named one of its missiles Prithvi.

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“knock knock knocking on heaven’s door….”

It is not often that i happen accross something that is whacky enough to hold my attention for any great period of time. A notable exception however, is the confluence project.
This imaginative project aims to collect photographs as a memoento from all the confluences of lines of latitude and longitude on land.
Unsurpisingly, there are quite a few of these and so there are quite a few oppurtunitys for those who would find treking to sometimes remote lands in quest of imaginary lines gratifying- this is true particularly for pakistan, with only 9 so far completed. This rare breed of the confluence hunter in Pakistan seem to be a bizzare mix of people visiting their inlaws, cross country travellers and american army helicopter pilots.
An entertaining account of a back-and-beyond spot in Baluchistan is provided by this aforementioned helicoptor pilot here

Its seems like ages ago, I read Mukul Kesvan’s looking through glass, it was to be the first of many accounts of partition i since then read. It whetted my appettite for them, i remember enjoying the book when i read it- a kind of Carrollesque, dreamy narration of a man who emerges in a totally alien time and place (ie. 1942, in the thick of things with the sectarianistic climax of 1947 just getting into gear). Of what i can recall, it seems aptly named, with more than a subtle nod to through the looking glass.

A little obscure something by Mukul Kesvan i found today. Its utterly pointless, but ever so slightly witty.. it seems it may be worthwile revisiting his first book..

Summer By Degrees
My new year begins in mid-July and has done for 30 years, ever since I signed up to study history in Delhi University in the mid-1970s…

MUKUL KESVAN

My new year begins in mid-July and has done for 30 years, ever since I signed up to study history in Delhi University in the mid-1970s. Now I teach in Jamia Millia Islamia and I know it’s the new year when I find myself driving past Holy Family Hospital towards Jamia’s pink campus. Why pink? I’m not sure, but between the pink buildings and the occasional camels plodloping down the road that divides the campus into two, Jamia feels like a suburb of Jaipur.

Only Jamia’s too green to be Jaipur. A concrete statue of Ghalib stands on a pedestal at the centre of Jamia’s main court. Ghalib once applied for a position as a teacher in Delhi College, but left before the interview in a tremendous huff because the Principal hadn’t personally come to the door to receive him. I think he would have liked having a university at his feet and we’re proud to have him as our grey eminence, watching over us. It’s interesting that apart from Jamia, no other college or university in Delhi, affirms, as we do with the Ghalib statue, an intellectual ancestor who represents a pre-colonial literary tradition. This time of year, though, the great man seems overdressed, trapped in his tall cap and long coat in the muggy heat.

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coffee houses can be interesting places…

and no, no photoshop here.

There is this small couplet by Iqbal thats almost coming to me.. something about a bird that longs again for the days of freedom spent in the garden..

This angst ridden account of a PTCL subscriber’s woes almost made me laugh out loud.

If a telephone becomes dead all of a sudden, then no amount of dialling 18 and pressing this or that numeral in response to the voice emanating from a cybernetic device is going to help. Even 080044544, if it gets connected by sheer good luck, cannot render the promised assistance. Nor can the subscribers’ centre (phone 2629910) restore life to the dead telephone. Ultimately, the area lineman, if he can be got hold of, can do the trick by sleight of hand for a little “honorarium”, provided it does not turn out to be dreaded cable fault, which is more deadly than snake-bite. Bitten by this cobra, my phone (4937240) is likely to remain dead, perhaps, as long as I remain alive.

Its got this very… surrealistic, somewhat fantastic prespective. The last line is sheer genius.

Read the complete letter at DAWN

No one wants a bad penny

The Whitehouse cries wolf.

The news that Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary and neo-conservative hawk, is a leading contender to head the World Bank has sent a frisson of fear down the spines of development experts across the globe.

So great is the predicted backlash that one might almost suspect he is only there to secure Europe’s acquiescence to a rival candidate.

There is certainly a danger of establishing a worrying trend. Wolfowitz would not be first Pentagon alumnus to go from bombing bridges to building them. In 1968 Robert McNamara, Lyndon B. Johnson’s defence secretary, went straight from spearheading the Vietnam conflict to a lengthy stint as bank president.

There are, of course, those carpers who feel that Wolfowitz is not necessarily the ideal candidate. For them his “weaknesses” would include his views, his pivotal role in the Iraq conflict, the hostility of European board members and his singular lack of experience in running a large organisation. To these quibblers he would be a conservative hardliner brought in to neuter the bank.

But surely this is to take the job specifications too literally. When one digs deeper Wolfowitz emerges as a far more attractive candidate. He has been a strong proponent of debt relief, although admittedly mainly for Iraq.

The time has also clearly come for the bank to lash out in some bold new directions. Outgoing president James Wolfensohn saw how political and institutional corruption undermines so many aid efforts.

But after years of trying and failing to alter the approach of some of the world’s most corrupt rulers, think how refreshing it would be to simply topple them. There is the thorny issue of whether the World Bank’s charter precludes such direct political action as, say, invasion, but no doubt Alberto Gonzales, the US attorney-general, would declare it legal as long as the interventions are classified as “coercive aid projects” rather that combat operations.

Some will fear that Wolfowitz’s ideology could bring the bank into conflict with its most important client, China, but then again, it does not seem to have harmed US/Sino relations unduly. After all, it is not as if Beijing is an outpost of tyranny or anything.

There will understandably be concerns that environmentalists and many NGOs might find themselves shut out. They may commission scathing reports and leak them to the press, but publish and be dammed is a fine motto.

Off the menue.

Beware news of India’s high-tech miracle. Saurabh Singh, 17, was feted as a national hero after announcing he had won Nasa’s International Scientist Discovery examination.

The Uttar Pradesh state government awarded him aprize of Rs500,000 rupee ($11,500) and more than 100 members of the state’s upper house each donated a day’s salary to him.

He was even granted an audience with the Indian president. Just as he was waiting, however, came news from Nasa that there was no such exam.
[Source: FT]

So what is it then?
A plausible lie or a half truth?

Before refrigerator trucks were invented, slaughtered animals had to be eviscerated before transport. Leftover bits of internal organs - especially hepatic tissue - greatly increased the chance of the meat spoiling. On the other hand, a properly gutted and cleaned animal could be kept in dry linen for almost a day (depending on the weather, of course), and transported to its destination unspoiled. Hence the word “deliver”.

I dont know the answer, and frankly knowing perhaps is really the point- what really stupefies me is how this guys was creative enough to come up with this on the fly, just after reading a posting at a blog..
Cool stuff.
Check the Kottke.org post for more

Original image from http://www.mindlesspleasures.com/India/Calcutta/Calcutta5.htm - it was just asking to be photoshopped!
Ps. you might need a calibrated TFT to be able to appreciate this one..

Doing the chores..

In a frenzy of artistic creativity, an as-yet little known artist, who signs himself plainly as ‘varun the artist’ sent a vast array of artwork drawn with a unique pen, and a persepctive few could share.
The ecelectic collection that i had the pleasure to recivie (sp) on MSN last night [he insists on using the messenger ‘draw’ function as the sole medium] varies from profane political opinions to self portraits and caricutures. One of the less controversial works is attached, which is apparently a likelyhood of the author of this blog. No wonder i thought the hooves looked familiar.

Insaan aur ghada: about the series
I’v often though that photos de-odourise their subjects. Sometimes, this is a good thing, mostly, its not.
And since im not particularly a good photographer, capturing the commotion that seems to surround almost everything in Pakistan is often impossible. The Insaan aur ghada theme, funnily enough brings a grungy, gritty interpretation of some of my photographs, in a way i guess better describing my feelings as i took the pictures. Which is probably an illustration of my failings as a photgrapher, but its interesting nonetheless.
So look out for more in the series..

This picture, came out of a discussion about Rabrindanath Tagore that I was recently having, particularly about some of his almost sufiana lines. This one in particular struck me, and it reminded me of a this photograph I once took in a random street in karachi.