Muhammad Hanif Ramay – A MAN OF MASSES

MUHAMMAD MAHTAB BASHIR
Islamabad
mahtabbashir@gmail.com

The year 2006 begins on the sad note of the demise of a renowned politician and connoisseur of art and literature, Muhammad Hanif Ramay (1930-2006). He was a man of multi-faceted talents. His presence illuminated our minds and spirits, as his formal and informal conversations impressed and influenced people from every sphere of life.

Hanif Ramay was an accomplished calligraphic artist and painter. He was the first to employ the techniques of modern art in Islamic calligraphy to promote the ideology of Islamic socialism on this soil. His artwork fusing Eastern and Western aesthetics gave calligraphy a new dimension. He was an exception in the field of calligraphy, amalgamating abstract with Muslim art; he created a diction of his own that was subtle and legible even to an ordinary person. Ramay was inspired by the works of Abdul Rahman Chughtai and Master Allah Bux and created some masterpieces. He brought colour to calligraphy. However, he was involved in so many other activities that he was never able to market himself as a writer and artist. His painting, “Adam and Eve” was appreciated by everyone who knows something of what art is all about. Ramay’s work indeed was of high calibre and of admirable quality.

In his last years, Hanif suffered from back problems and kept away from active politics. However he went back to his real passion of writing and painting. He calligraphed Allah’s and Muhammad’s (PBUH) 99 names in his own unique style. Along with this came one of the best pieces of prose I’ve read in my lifetime so far: Islam ki Ruhani Kadrain -- Zindagi nahi Maut (The Spiritual Values of Islam — Life, not Death), in which he pointed out how today’s Muslim is in a state of dilemma over maintaining a balance between the first and second part of his life. His contributions in the domain of politics as a former Chief Minister of Punjab are worth mentioning too. He authored a book, Punjab Ka Muqaddama, which propagated the cause of the province and thus produced massive controversy among the people at that time. His emotional dedication to the interests of Punjab many years later culminated in this book in the mid-1980s in the aftermath of a violent political movement in Sindh. Punjab Ka Muqaddama argued the thesis that the bureaucracy at the Centre, and not Punjab, was responsible for depriving the smaller provinces of their due rights.

As Chief Minister of Punjab, he also founded Arts Councils in all the major cities of the province, which exist to date to promote and preserve the arts and culture of the country. He removed innumerable bureaucratic hurdles in building the Alhamra Arts Complex. It was his final wish to be buried in the premises of the same complex, but this was tragically turned down by the Punjab government.

Ramay’s independent and unprecedented theories on how to progress as a nation still impress everyone. However, he could not balance his conflicting interests and was forced out of office by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He then joined Mustafa Khar and tried to form a new political party, but eventually joined the faction of Pakistan Muslim League led by Pir Pagara. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto threw Ramay into one of the cells of the Lahore Fort and a tribunal sentenced him to four and half years imprisonment.

When General Zia came to power, the Lahore High Court released Mr. Ramay, who then went away to the US and stayed there to teach at the University of California, Berkeley for more than six years. On his return to Pakistan, he again tried to jump into his old field of politics. This time he managed to form a new political party named Musawaat, with the slogan of ‘Rub, Roti aur Lok Raj’. But this did not take off and so he merged it with a new party led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, called National People’s Party, but left it soon after. In the 1990s, when Benazir Bhutto came into politics, Ramay returned to the Pakistan People’s Party. Benazir Bhutto welcomed this and elevated him to the coveted position of Speaker of the Punjab Assembly in 1993.

Muhammad Hanif Ramay was amongst the few intellectuals who led the movement of enlightened Islam into the 1960s and was the first gentleman from the lower/middle class to become an elected Chief Minister Punjab. He was a prominent proponent of modernist Islam and his work influenced a whole generation in a decade spanning the 1950s and 1960s. The journal Nusrat was a harbinger of his thoughts and feelings. The literary community was then broadly divided into two wings, progressive (Leftist) and Islamists (Rightist). Ramay joined Muhammad Hassan Askari, Intezar Hussain, Salim Ahmad and Nasir Kazmi’s school of thought to express his ideas on the promotion of Pakistan’s identity and ideology. He, without an iota of doubt, was a man who played a pivotal role as a journalist in spreading the message of Islamic Socialism taken up by Z.A Bhutto.

A selfless politician, a pragmatic intellectual, a committed journalist, an artist par excellence, and a broadminded scholar, this is the life-story of Muhammad Hanif Ramay. He tried to combine modernity and traditional values in all the roles he played. There is no exaggeration in saying that personalities like him are very rarely found and the vacuum his death created, can never be filled.

Published in daily Pakistan Observer 4th March, 2006 & The Post 8th April, 2006

MUHAMMAD MAHTAB BASHIR

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@yahoo.com

UNTITLED...

This and the preceding overseas letter to the editor of the Peshawar, Pakistan FRONTIER POST are intended to help inform readers at this time of our Congressional elections as to what is happening overseas and how dangerous the Islamo-Fascist terrorists are to us all.

Today is:November 07, 2006 Tuesday 14 Shawwal, 1427 A.H.

US didn?t attack the Bajaur seminary
George L. Singleton USA
GSingle556@aol.com

The Nov. 5, 2006 letter to editor of The Frontier Post ?An open invitation? by Muhammad Mahtab Bashir of Islamabad makes a false statement about US predators being used in the recent attack in fact carried out by Pakistani armed forces. The world is complicated enough without people making up falsehoods to blame their problems on others. The fact is that too many Madrassahs are used to brainwash and train young Pakistani boys to become Taliban terrorist fighters, sending them straight into Afghanistan in the hundreds of late. The missing alternative, which I do blame the Govern-ment of Pakistan for, is the lack of free, therefore affordable public schools in all parts of Pakistan. That need for free public schools in the NWFP and PAK is particularly acute. All moderate and rational Pakistanis need to stand up to such falsehoods. And, my friends at The Frontier Post know such wild stories are untrue and should not act like the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER to sell newspapers at the expense of the truth.

George Singleton USA
9:53AM on Nov 8th 2006

GET YOUR SHOULDER ALWAYS READY!

MUHAMMAD MAHTAB BASHIR
mahtabbashir@gmail.com
Islamabad

Argument- to me is the inimitable yet simplest philosophy of learning things around. They say argument leads to ignorance but to me, in a larger extent the only way one can learn is to keep nudging others mentally and keep absorbing the gut-feelings of one's intellectual rival.

Remember, you can not explore new avenues of knowledge unless or until you show contrasting approach of a person next to you. But let not allow those arguments switch into a verbal duel followed by a physical brawl. One can not broaden his mental horizon agreeing upon others merely using the words … yes, exactly, you are right. So to me, clash of mind is one of the blessings that facilitate us to think beyond our rational thoughts.

My cousin Nomi is a person to whom I'm engrossed all the time with exchange of my limited thoughts and ideas. Fortunately, we both have the patience and knowledge to counter each other aspirations and dreams ranging from socio-economic to religio-politcal aspects to disseminate with tete a tete. And I am with no pang in admitting, Nomi is one of my inspiration in life, not because of his dedicated contribution and laudable services when Moazzam bhai was on his death bed but I find this gentle boy every time with selflessness at its extreme in the herd of selfish people. Moazzam bhai had a strange reverence for this soft spoken lad, always calling him… Nomi bhai. With the sudden death of Moazzam bhai, Nomi quite a lot of time questioned me in melancholic gesture, "Is there anyone NOW, who can call me.. NOMI BHAI?" with tears in his eyes. And every time he found no reply from my side. Nomi remained quite literally a shadow of Moazzam bhai during those 14 months. One day bhai wrote in his diary….

Aye dost mein to dasht-e-tamanna ka phool hoon
Girnay ka mujhko darr nahi teri kitaab say

Nomi used to ask me, "What is the most important part of your body"? Through the ages I would take a guess at what I thought was the correct answer. When I was in my teens, I thought sound was very important to us as a human being, so I promptly replied, "my ears". He said, "No, many people are deaf on this planet". But you keep thinking about it & I will ask you soon about the same. Several months passed by before he asked me the same question. Since making my first attempt, I had contemplated the correct answer. So this time, I told him, "yar, sight is very important to every individual, so it must be our eyes". Nomi looked into my eyes and smilingly said, "Nahi Mahtab..You are learning fast but still far away because there are so many people who have no judge of colors, they are blind." Stumped again, however I continue my quest of knowledge. Over the months, Nomi asked this question couple more times and always his counter reply to me was, "No.., but you are getting smarter every month, my brother".

At the beginning of 2008 when Moazzam Bhai breathed his last, Nomi was the first person to whom I hugged in my darkest moment of life with the words, "Tum bhi kuch nahi kar sakay, yar" and he replied with watered eyes, "mein kuch nahi kar saka, may nakaam ho gia hoon, Mahtab, may nakaam ho gia hoon".

Everybody was devastated. Nomi looked at me and repeated the same question, "Do you know the most important body part yet, my dear"? I was shocked when he asked me this question as I thought it was a game between me and him. He saw the confusion on my face and told me this question is very important, Mahtab. It shows that you have really lived in your life. For every body part you gave me in the past, I considered wrong and given you example, why? But today is the moment; you need to learn this important lesson, he stared at me gently as only he can. I saw his eyes well up with tears as he continued to whisper, "My dear, the most important body part is your shoulder". I swiftly questioned, is it because it holds up my head"? "No, it is because it can hold the head of a friend, relative or a loved one when they cry. Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on when you really need it." Nomi concluded.

Then and there I knew the most important part of body is not a selfish. A shoulder is a symbol of sympathy against the pain of others. People will forget what you say, people will forget what you do, but people will NEVER forget how you made them feel. True or not, you have all the rights to argue. But this piece of writing makes you pause and think. Be blessed. Be a blessing. Get your shoulder always ready.

Allow me to hum few lines from the glorious ABBA:

Chiquitita, tell me the truth
I'm a shoulder you can cry on
Your best friend, I'm the one you must rely on
You were always sure of yourself
Now I see you've broken a feather
I hope you can patch it up together.



For more ... please click on these links...

http://mahtabbashir.blogspot.com/2008/05/if-i-could-work-miracles.html
http://mahtabbashir.blogspot.com/2008/04/tere-bina-xindagi-bhi-laikin.html
http://mahtabbashir.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-brother-walking-lexicon-walks-away.html
http://mahtabbashir.blogspot.com/2008/03/in-memory-of-my-brother_06.html

Farhat from Islamabad emails':
Mar 31, 2008 4:27 PM
that is excellent mehtaab..
Farhat Akram
Assistant Research Officer
Islamabad Policy Research Institute
House no 2, Street 15,
Main Marglla Road ,F 7/2 ,
Islamabad 44000 Pakistan

GIVE ME JUSTICE

By: Muhammad Mahtab Bashir
Islamabad
mahtabbashir@gmail.com

Unrest, fraud, killing and terrorist activities are not unprecedented in this country called the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Killing spree based on ethnicity and rivalry has been carried out regularly, but the government has always failed to arrest the murderers. These occurrences have reached such a level that even police officers were recently gunned down by unidentified persons in Lahore. This type of incident surely develops anxiety and fretfulness within a common man and he starts thinking, “If police officers’ lives are at stake, how can a common man like me expect the smooth flow of my life?”

According to Aristotle and Plato, the primary responsibility of the state is to implement law and order and justice should be provided to all. Unfortunately, it has never been observed in this country since its inception. The responsibility of the state is also to provide food and shelter to its citizens, failing which causes social abnormality. Social conflict and social deviance is the outcome of injustice and injustice persuades the individual to record his protest. In a way to satisfy his inner needs and to shed his frustration, he opts to use unfair means. The ultimate question arises, how can one improve the deteriorating law and order situation?

In the new set up, the district council has the authority to create a public safety commission to ensure that police personnel are not used inappropriately as well as to look after the welfare of the police cadre. Offices of the ombudsman are to be set up at the district level to redress complaints against maladministration. The ombudsman will be appointed by the district council. A citizen tribunal is also being established at the union council level. Concerted efforts from law enforcing agencies are required at every level, without discrimination as the first step.

By creating the above openings under the decentralised policy framework, the government has recognised that all reforms need to have a rights based approach and human rights in all sectors and perspectives need to be protected. The state of human rights and law and order can never be improved unless (a) judicial systems are robust in providing access to justice to the communities, (b) improving law and order and (c) creating social and civic awareness about human rights, its issues and situation in the country. A stringent implementation regime will lead to improvements in its efficacy and consequently stimulate economic growth and encourage private investment, both domestic and foreign, which will directly and indirectly lead to alleviating poverty, thus be a major tool for improving not only the law and order situation but also human rights.

Police should handle the law and order situation with professionalism and refrain from illegal actions like extra-judicial killings, torture or fake encounters. “The duty of police officers ranges from prevention and detection of crime to behaving with members of the public with due decorum and courtesy.” Guiding and assisting members of the public, particularly the poor, the disabled and the physically weak helps in promoting amity. Police should not interfere in matters involving civil disputes. Police should advise the person coming to them for registration of cases in civil matters to approach the concerned court. Police officers should do everything to meet the call of their duty, complete investigation and submit challans in court within time. This will greatly contribute to the improvement of administration of justice. The policemen should maintain idealism in life and never lose patience, objectivity and human values. A police officer must enter the profession with a commitment and zeal to bring a change, a pleasant change.

In spite of all its tall claims, the government has failed to reform the country’s police. Police stations remain torture cells. Police personnel have been found involved in dacoities. Recently several persons in police custody have been tortured to death. Rape cases of innocent young girls belonging to poor families have taken place in these police stations. If the government itself orders the police to raid students’ hostels at night, and resort to violence against teachers, women and students, how then does it hope to reform it?

Instead of sincere and serious efforts to remove people’s hardships, the government merely depends upon superfluous tactics. At times, people are invited on the phone to talk directly to the prime minister, and at times, the drama of open public kachehri is arranged. Neither the government will gain anything nor problems of the public would be solved through such useless activities.

Published in daily The Post, 23 May, 2007

Muhammad Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

JOY IS MY LEGACY: Art Buchwald

Muhammad Mahtab Bashir
Islamabad
mahtabbashir@gmail.com

He poked fun at the idiocy of the rich, the famed and the influential for half a century as the most widely read newspaper humourist of his time. His column, syndicated to more than 550 newspapers at one point, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982. In 1986 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He began writing columns, later syndicated, for The Washington Post in the late 1960s. The humourist authored 33 books, including two memoirs, Leaving Home (1993) and I’ll Always Have Paris (1996). He also wrote: Paris After Dark (1950), Son of the Great Society (1961), Washington is Leaking (1976) and While Reagan Slept (1983).

The last year didn’t start well for the writer. In February, he entered Washington Home and Community Hospices, which he described as “a place where you go when you want to go”. But by July, despite his physicians’ predictions, he left the hospice. He finished his last book, Too Soon To Say Goodbye there and it was published in November 2006. He kept his sense of humour until he slipped into unconsciousness just before he died. He was a columnist who delighted in the absurd. He was Art Buchwald.

Arthur Buchwald was born with rickets in New York on October 20, 1925 in Mount Vernon N.Y to struggling parents. His father, Joseph, Austrian-born, was a drape installer and mother Helen was a victim of chronic depression. Shortly after his birth, his mother was institutionalised. She lived for another 35 years but virtually never saw her son again. “I preferred the mother I had invented to the one I would find in the hospital,” Buchwald wrote in a 1994 memoir, Leaving Home. With the outbreak of World War II Buchwald, a Jew who was in high school then, ran away to join the Marines, hitchhiking to North Carolina. “The Marine Corps was the first father figure I had ever known,” he wrote. Assigned to the Fourth Marine Air Wing, he spent most of his tour on a Pacific island cleaning aircraft guns and editing his squadron’s newsletter while earning a sergeant’s stripes.

After the war, Buchwald went to the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles under the G.I. Bill and became managing editor of the campus humour magazine. But he neglected to tell USC that he had not finished high school. When officials found out, they told him that he could continue to take courses but that he could not be considered for a degree. (Thirty-three years later, the University gave him an honorary doctorate.) At 23, he sailed to Paris on a converted troop ship and enrolled at the Alliance Française, also under the G.I. Bill. Soon he talked his way into a job with The Herald Tribune’s Paris-based European edition, writing a column about entertainment and restaurants for $ 25 a week. In his 14 years in Paris, Buchwald became as much a celebrity as those whose names he dropped in his columns. But it was in Washington where he moved in 1962 that he stole the limelight. By 1972 his column was appearing three times a week in about 400 newspapers in the US and in 100 other countries.

With his trademark wit, Art Buchwald used his newspaper column to skewer politicians in the nation’s capital. Over the decades, millions of Americans began their morning by reading his unfolding chronicle of history writ small and satirical. At the end of his life, ill health gave him a new subject, his looming death, and he wrote a series of poignant dispatches from a hospice centre he later left after outliving his stay. At the height of his popularity, Buchwald was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, where he poked fun at the foibles of celebrities and politicians.

As he continued to write his column, he found material in his own survival. “So far things are going my way,” he wrote in March. “I am known in the hospice as ‘The man who wouldn’t die’. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don’t know where I’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren’t in a hospice. But in case you’re wondering, I’m having a swell time — the best time of my life”.

He continued writing, winning a Pulitzer for commentary in 1982. He also wrote books and plays and pitched a script to Paramount Pictures about an African prince visiting the US. But Paramount made the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America with the same storyline and said it wasn’t Buchwald’s plot. In 1990, a Superior Court in California ruled in his favour. His last book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, published in November, is a humorous account of how he moved into a hospice in Washington, D.C. last February, expecting to die within weeks and ended up having “the time of my life.”

In a 54-year career as a syndicated columnist, first in Paris, then in Washington, Buchwald was known for his wit, his cigars and his gentle political satire. In his 1993 memoir, Leaving Home, he revealed he was hospitalized twice — in 1963 and 1987 — for suicidal depression. Buchwald and his wife adopted three children. After nearly 40 years of marriage, the couple separated but reconciled while she was dying of cancer. (She died in 1994.)

Despite his popularity he never took on literary airs. His writing was not as stylish as Mark Twain’s but he was funny on deadline, decade after decade. He said he could write a 400-word column in less than an hour: “My craft is more sketching than writing; my column is almost a cartoon in words.” “What was difficult was him almost dying and then not,” his daughter Jennifer of Roxbury wrote in an online forum on the Washington Post’s website. “And then it was great for a year. Every day was a gift. That made it easier … to accept his death.” Mr. Buchwald had lived in Washington nearly 45 years, dividing his time between the capital and a summer home on Martha’s Vineyard for the past 35 years.

Shortly after he entered the hospice last year in February, he organised his last hurrah by calling up gossip columnists and radio talk show hosts to declare, “I’m still alive!” His March 7 column began, “I am writing this article from a hospice. But being in the hospice didn’t work out exactly the way I wanted it to. By all rights I should have finished my time here five or six weeks ago — at least that’s all Medicare would pay for.”

Buchwald reveled in the parade of famous visitors who came to see him and dealt publicly with more serious aspects of wrapping up one’s life. The existence of heaven and hell is possible, he decided, and if it provides comfort, people should believe in it. “I have no idea where I’m going but here’s the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?” In December, he told admirers at Wesley United Methodist Church in the district that he did not want to be remembered as dying after a long illness. “I want to die at 95 playing tennis against Agassi — because he couldn’t handle my serve,” he told the crowd. “I just don’t want to die the same day Castro dies,” Buchwald told his friends.

Before death and dying presented itself as a topic for his columns, politics was a favourite jumping-off point. As a long-running observer of the nation’s political scene, Buchwald said his favourite President was Richard Nixon, whose delusions made for rich satirical material. “I worship the very quicksand he walks on,” Buchwald quipped. Most of his books were collections of his columns which were syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and appeared in The Washington Post.

Two of his books Leaving Home (1993) and I’ll Always Have Paris! (1996) were memoirs. They told the story of his journey from a lonely, insolvent childhood lived largely in foster homes, to the salons of the famous. His entertaining, name-dropping memoirs — published in a period when some said his column was losing its edge — also won him new respect in the publishing world.

Although he had been elected in 1991 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he said in a 1996 interview that “people don’t take humourists seriously; they don’t even call them writers.” “It was those two books that made me a writer,” he said. “Now, I’m being reviewed seriously. That gives me great pleasure, because I want to be known as a writer, not a humourist. It’s one step up, and that’s the direction I want to be headed at this stage of my life.”

Buchwald also wrote about his bouts with mental disorders with a frankness that won him new fans around the country. He had been hospitalised for clinical depression in 1963 and for manic depression in 1987. Both episodes nearly drove him to suicide, he said; drugs and therapy were his salvation. He joked to friends that if he had a third bout of depression, “I will be inducted in the Bipolar Hall of Fame.”

His children, he said, were initially upset with his decision to turn down dialysis treatments last year, but he insisted that he preferred to control his last days, which lasted longer than even he expected. “I don’t know if this is true or not, but I think some people, not many, are starting to wonder why I’m still around,” he wrote while in the hospice. “In fact, a few are sending me get-well cards. These are the hard ones to answer.”

Buchwald, who wrote about 8,000 newspaper columns and 33 books, found a way to laugh about most everything. In the final year of a life filled with career highs and personal lows, he had become what he called “the poster boy for death”.

Buchwald suffered a stroke in 2000, and was plagued by kidney and circulation problems. Last year, he also suffered a series of setbacks to his health. When his kidneys started to fail, he refused dialysis and instead, prepared for his own death. Mike Wallace asked his friend about his legacy. “He virtually shouted it,” Wallace recounted. “Joy! That’s what I’m going to leave behind.”

Arthur Buchwald, who satirised the follies of the rich, the famous and the powerful for half a century as the most widely read newspaper humourist of his time, died in Washington on Wednesday evening, January 17, 2007. The columnist was 81. Early in February 2006, he entered the hospice care when his kidneys failed as a result of diabetes and doctors gave him just weeks to live. He left his hospice and survived for another 11 months.

Buchwald’s syndicated column was a staple for a generation or more of newspaper readers, not least the politicians and government leaders he squeezed so regularly. His life was a rich tale of bravery, calamity and hilarity, with chapters in Paris, Washington and places around the globe. His legacy is not to be measured but to be treasured.

The writer is a freelance columnist and a political analyst from Islamabad

Published in daily The Post, 14th Feb, 2007

Muhammad Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

PURPLE PATCH:

Letter to Russell —Will Durant

Dear Earl Russell,

Will you interrupt your busy life for a moment, and play the game of philosophy with me?
I am attempting to face, in my next book, a question that our generation, perhaps more than most, seems always ready to ask, and never able to answer — what is the meaning or worth of human life? Heretofore this question has been dealt with chiefly by theorists, from Ikhnaton and Lao-tse to Bergson and Spengler. The result has been a species of intellectual suicide: thought, by its very development, seems to have destroyed the value and significance of life. The growth and spread of knowledge, for which so many reformers and idealists prayed, appears to bring to its devotees — and, by contagion, to many others — a disillusionment which has almost broken the spirit of our race.

Astronomers have told us that human affairs constitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star; geologists have told us that civilization is a precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists have told us that all life is war, a struggle for existence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances, and species; historians have told us that ‘progress’ is a delusion, whose glory ends in inevitable decay; psychologists have told us that the will and the self are the helpless instruments of heredity and environment, and that the once incorruptible soul is only a transient incandescence of the brain. The Industrial Revolution has destroyed the home, and the discovery of contraceptives is destroying the family, the old morality, and perhaps (through the sterility of the intelligent) the race. Love is analysed into a physical congestion, and marriage becomes a temporary physiological convenience slightly superior to promiscuity. Democracy has disintegrated into such corruption as only Milo’s Rome knew; and our youthful dreams of a socialist utopia disappear as we see, day after day, the inexhaustible acquisitiveness of men. Every invention strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; every new mechanism displaces men, and multiplies the horrors of war. God, who was once the consolation of our brief life, and our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has apparently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no microscope discovers him. Life has become, in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and death — a sleep from which, it seems, there is no awakening.

We are driven to conclude that the greatest mistake in human history was the discovery of truth. It has not made us free, except from delusions that comforted us, and restraints that preserved us; it has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful, and did not deserve to be so passionately chased. As we look upon it now we wonder why we hurried so to find it. For it appears to have taken from us every reason for existing, except for the moment’s pleasure and tomorrow’s trivial hope.

This is the pass to which science and philosophy have brought us. I, who have loved philosophy for many years, turn from it now back to life itself, and ask you, as one who has lived as well as thought, to help me understand. Perhaps the verdict of those who have lived is different from that of those who have merely thought. Spare me a moment to tell me what meaning life has for you, what help — if any — religion gives you, what keeps you going, what are the sources of your inspiration and energy, what is the goal or motive-force of your toil; where you find your consolations and your happiness, where in the last resort your treasure lies. Write briefly if you must; write at leisure and at length if you possibly can; for every word from you will be precious to me.

Sincerely,
Will Durant

William James Durant (November 5, 1885 — November 7, 1981) was an American philosopher, historian, and writer. He is best known for writing, with his wife Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, an 11-volume work written between 1935 and 1975. The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977

ENJOY BASANT WITHOUT HURTING OTHERS

By: Muhammad Mahtab Bashir
Islamabad
mahtabbashir@yahoo.com

Pakistan is surely an entertainment starved country. There are hardly art and cultural related activities taking place. Frustration, anxiety and fretfulness are pet words of today. And almost everything related to fun is seen skeptically by our conservative community. However, it never stopped people to have fun and to engineer different modes of enjoyment. Illegal street racing on a two-wheeler among few privileged is getting popular. Knowing the fact that this kind of unsupervised activity has its price but can we blame the common mass?

Basant is perhaps the only national festival that has nothing to do with religion. In Islam, constructive activities and creative sports (those which develop one's abilities of intellect, power, stealth, combat, etc) are encouraged immensely. Islam never prohibits anyone to take part in games and enjoy the fruits of life but within limits and limits are set for both gender rather woman alone.

In my humble views, if people of Pakistan love to celebrate basant, let them do it and cash this festivity to attract tourists. Top hotels reported full booking during these days, a lot of people have their means of earning through this gala as it exerts a pull on millions of people not across the border but across the world. It is an event not to be missed. Lahore is undoubtedly the hub of basant celebrations but on basant day the entire country from Karachi to Peshawar rejoices with one voice.

Conversely, such a blissful fiesta has its dark side as hospitals invariably are packed with kite-flyers whop fell off roofs and children who are hit by vehicles as they run down the streets and roads with faces turn towards sky to watch the kites. Quarters of the city are plunged into darkness when razor-sharp kite cord rolled in powdered glass and metal cord cut throats and electricity wires respectively. The chemical and metal cord is banned but manufacturers are still report roaring trade.

On the other side of the picture, such festival does not suit a country where poor masses are deprived and openly realized their deprivation by mass fashion exhibits of material possessions. Kites and cords are not cheaper for a meager class. In a nutshell, safe kite flying, Yes. The pretentious way of exhibits, No.

There are rules and regulations for every sport. If one starts playing football on a busy road, people will start dieing. It doesn't mean playing football is bad as it kills a many but the venue and methodology needs to be regulated. I would hate to buy the idea that basant is a Hindu festival and I can argue about this. Practically, Pakistan is not an Islamic state as we commit a lot of things un-Islamic. We carry many traditional Hindu belongings; look at our marriage ceremonies for instance. Some people in Pakistan are determined that no one has the right to have fun whatsoever and thus they use the name of religion to advocate their point uselessly. I find this super-ridiculous.

To avoid casualties, my suggestion is to find a way to coax kite-flyers into cosmic playgrounds and vast stadiums. Organized kite-flying competitions with attractive cash prizes and lucrative gifts may lure professional kite-flyers out of their dens towards open grounds, where life is safer. Last but certainly not least, a lot many opines that festival of basant is a source of earnings to those who waited for whole year to come by. We must share our maximum finances to the manufacturers of kites, cords and related stuff makers but minimum to hospitals, doctors/ surgeons, blood banks and grave-diggers.

Published in daily The Post, 17 March, 2k8, THE NATION, 16th Mar 2008, Pakistan Observer, 28 Jan, 2007

MUHAMMAD MAHTAB BASHIR
ISLAMABAD.
mahtabbashir@yahoo.com