By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
PAKISTAN has a rich art heritage. Masters such as Chughtai, Sadequain, Shakir Ali, and others are recognised internationally. But the misfortune of this country has been that visual art has not enjoyed the public appreciation it merits for the simple reason that it does not have the exposure art must have if people are to understand and derive pleasure from it – and be able to distinguish good art from bad.
Continue reading Whither National Art Gallery?
By Zubeida Mustafa
Do you remember the attractive little child with a charming smile and a lovely voice who appeared with Suhail Rana on television for a children’s musical programme, “Sang sang challein”, week after week in the seventies?
Mothers whose kids were young three decades ago would recall Afshan Ahmad for she was the heart- throb of every child who watched TV in those days – as well as of their mothers. Well, Afshan Ahmad is now a young lady with the same charming smile and lovely voice. She has two children of her own. She still remains the heart-throb of children though she doesn’t appear on TV any more. She runs a Montessori school and knows how to charm the young ones who come to her.
I find Afshan an extraordinary person. She has talent and a very pleasing personality. But popularity and fame have not gone to her head. What distinguishes her more than that is her tremendous love for children. She was complaining the other day that as a society we do not care for children and I agree with her fully.
Afshan would love to revive her weekly musical programme for children, but no one seems to be interested. “No finances”, the television channels proclaim and move on to the loud, horrendous pop music you get to hear today. No more are children listening to songs such as “Dosti aisa naata/Jo sonay say bhee mehnga”. Or do you remember “Sang sang chaltay rahna/Hans kay har dukh sehna” or the perennially popular “Daak babu daak babu mera khat lay jao/Nani Amman ko day aao”. My children learnt their Urdu alphabets sitting before the TV singing “Yaad karein hum sub mil kay/Jaldi say apni alif, bay, pay” with Afshan on the mini screen.
Afshan says she would love to record an album of songs for children but sponsors are generally not interested. She has recorded one album for a food company. Otherwise those who finance such things feel it is not a project worth investing in. As a result, children who have a natural love for music and rhythm are entertaining themselves with songs which are hardly the sort they should be singing.
In the process they are being robbed of their childish innocence. Or may be things such as the “Daak Babu” is something unfamiliar to them today. They would know more about the e-mail and the webmaster rather than the postmaster! But Nani Ammans are still around and friendship and love are values still to be cherished. Above all children still love music.
Why is it that as a society we neglect our children, though on an individual level we tend to indulge in them turning out thoroughly spoilt brats in the process? The fact is that on a collective level, anything which concerns children does not receive the attention it deserves. May be because children cannot protest as adults can. And adults have so many problems of their own that they forget their child’s needs.
Why have our schools been allowed to be reduced to such a pathetic condition that parents don’t want to send their children there any more? Just look at the falling enrolment in government schools. Why can’t we have more parks and playgrounds for the little ones to run around and play their cricket in without being endangered by a speeding car or endangering pedestrians on the roadside?
It is not just the poor who bear the brunt of this negligence. At a workshop on mental health it was pointed out that children in school – even the high brow elite schools – have no provision for counselling on their personal problems. In today’s competitive and consumerist world children are exposed to greater stress than they were ever before. Starting from the race for school admissions, private tuitions (more as a status symbol than any thing else), the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, the excessive exposure to television and the lack of exercise and games to help them let out their pent-up youthful energies, how can any one believe that children are not under severe mental and emotional stress.
You just have to look around to see what is happening. A young girl who got admission in one of the good A-levels schools after passing her O-levels was agonizing on how her parents would pay Rs 85,000 they were expected to produce in a couple of days if they didn’t want their daughter’s admission to be cancelled. Another young boy committed suicide when he failed his exams because he felt he had let down his parents who were investing their lifetime’s savings to educate him.
Yet schools – sometimes they themselves are the source of stress — don’t think much about the problems children have to grapple with. Why should they reduce their profit margins by employing counsellors to help children cope with the stress in their life? Their senior teachers act as counsellors. I asked one of them what they advised the children about. “The problem they face in their studies,” she promptly replied. Some are counselling them about the foreign universities they should seek admission to and so on.
A Montessori directress who is training Montessori teachers, the only one in Pakistan qualified to do so – of course we have many pseudo trainers around – said a number of her students are poring out their personal problems before her. She says she just has to give them a sympathetic hearing and it works wonders with them. All that is wanted is someone who has the time to listen.
Source: Dawn
By Zubeida Mustafa
Mush
taq Gazdar is not the run-of-the-mill film producer/director. His forte is art films, which have won him international awards. One remembers his masterpiece. They are killing the horse, which portrayed the agony of a young girl suffering from mental stress. This along with Concert on the footpath, Songs of wishes and Muharram in Karachi are now available on a video cassette.
When Gazdar announced that his next project was a television drama serial, it naturally raised many expectations. He had dabbled in television before with the screening of his play Girastan, for PTV two years ago. His latest enterprise Dard Ka samandar, is based on a true love story and Gazdar has injected an innovative dimension in the 12 – episode drama.
The play has been handled with great sensitivity and its striking feature is its theme. Gazdar’s equally talented wife, writer Saeeda Gazdar, wrote the script. The couple have helped Rashida Patel’s Legal Aid Centre produce documentaries on women’s issues to create public awareness. Each woman they interviewed had a story to tell and one of the stories was very moving, which inspired them to make the serial. It has romance, mystery and social drama rolled in one.
When a young couple, Maryam (played by Mariam Yousuf) and Anwar Khan (Imam) fall in love they cannot tie the nuptial knot in normal circumstances because Anwar’s father, Nizam Khan, has other plans for his son. In the face of the opposition from their families, Anwar and Maryam seek the help of a Qazi to get their marriage solemnized. After that it is an uphill task. They encounter all kinds of obstacles ranging from the discriminatory laws of the land, a hostile police, unsympathetic courts and so on.
We do not know how the story ends. The premier at the P.A.C.C. last week was designed to give the journalists just a glimpse of the play. The second episode of 22 minutes and a scene or two from the first and third episodes were televised. It was, however, enough to give a feel of the play. As Saeeda said in her introductory speech, the play captures the heartache of romance, which knows no bounds, “Only one who has loved can understand that,” she remarked.
Dard ka samandar has beauty of its own as a work of art. It took Gazdar two years to produce. It initially started as a long play but expanded as it went along. Besides, it was self-financing venture, which meant, “diverting myself to the bread and butter assignments whenever the occasion demanded, “Gazdar said. With a massive cast of 42 – all newcomers to the world of show-biz except one – the film proved to be quite a challenge for its director. The scenes had to be repeated again and again for the artistes were novices and had to be trained while the shooting was taking place. Asma Ahmad of the PACC. selected many of them from her music and theatre classes.
Why the compulsion for new faces? Gazdar excels in filming real life in all its splendor and squalor. He is basically a masterly producer of documentaries which he skillfully featurizes to attract a bigger audience. Dard Ka samandar was to be shot outdoors at natural locations such as crowded shrines, marketplaces, and other public sites. Well-known film and TV artistes would have attracted too much attention for the filming to be done naturally. On the other hand the actors and actresses making their debut could mingle with the crowds without anyone ever knowing that a film was being shot.
In many places Gazdar encouraged characterization as he proceeded. Some characters are real life ones and were picked by the producer because they fitted their role so well. Thus the saintly figure at the shrine that performed the nikah in the film actually solemnizes marriages at a mazar. Gazdar told him what was required of him and he proceeded to enact his role delivering the dialogue in his own words. As a result the play is natural and has no artificiality about it.
The central message of the play was summed up beautifully by Huma Mir (the advocate in the play) at the premier in PACC. She appealed to the people not to obstruct the marriage of two people in love. It drives them to extreme measures, which can have grave consequences in our society. Huma has put it so aptly and Gazdar has filmed it touchingly.
Source: Dawn 23 May 1993
By Zubeida Mustafa
The women of Pakistan have received the best gift they could have wished for on the golden jubilee of the country’s independence. A commission headed by the Supreme Court judge, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, has presented a report to the government on the status of women. If its recommendations are accepted and implemented it would be like a dream come true. But will that happen?
By Zubeida Mustafa
As she lays out before you her rich treasure of teaching aids, you are struck by her deep fascination for them. Oblivious of your presence, she chatters on, speaking more to herself as a child would, explaining the use of the board games, flash cards, cubes and charts she has herself devised for her students. Crafted from little odds and ends one normally throws away — ice-cream sticks, milk cartons, strings and shoe boxes — these sturdy but inexpensive little kits open up a wondrous world of learning for young curious minds and restless fingers. Continue reading Remembrances of things past