18-D Fateh Hall, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF)

University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (Old Campus)

18-D Fateh Hall, Univ. of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF)

For Mazhar Ali, who does not say much but whose “silence is wonderful to listen to“, to quote Thomas Hardy.

I arrived in Faisalabad (formerly Lyallpur) towards the end of 1986, in December if I am not wrong. I was one of the two or three candidates from Quetta City to qualify for an agricultural engineering seat at the famed university. I arrived later than the other successful candidates from the province. The reason for that delay was some bungling on the part of the staff of the then Director General of Agriculture (DGA) in Balochistan, the late Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali. The DGA office was responsible for the selection of candidates in the different fields of agricultural sciences in the two or three state universities in the country that offered degree courses in those fields. What had happened was that although I had passed the test and the interview and had the required score, my name had been suddenly dropped from the list of successful candidates and somebody else’s name inserted. This was a person I knew personally and who was not eligible because of his lower score in the post matriculation tests called Pre-Engineering Intermediate College Examinations in the Pakistani education system. There were only limited seats allocated for candidates from Quetta City and for the province as a whole in the professional categories, particularly in the fields of medicine and engineering, at the state universities in the country. These were called “quota” seats or the “quota system” then. Anyway, after I challenged the wrongful decision for which the DGA was either directly or indirectly responsible, my name was hastily reinserted in the list, but as a “special case”, so I was told. Obviously, I was not happy about it and threatened legal action against the department, but my friends and family suggested that I not take that long and costly route, and instead avail the "special" seat and leave for Faisalabad without delay since all the other candidates had already left. I eventually relented and arrived in Faisalabad in December 1986. I was registered in the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology and was allotted the registration number 86-ag-728.

I was received, as were many others from Quetta city and the province, by a couple of senior students from Quetta, in my case namely Mazhar Ali and Irfan Ali Bakhtiari, neither of whom I had met before. Among students from Balochistan, it was a tradition to help students from your part of the province or your city settle in the university. There was even a student organization to which most, if not all, students from the province belonged: Balochistan Student Association (BSA). Mazhar was then living in Fateh Hall, room 18D. Fateh Hall was on the extreme end of the row of residential hostels that stretched from one of the two entrance gates of the university. So, from Fateh Hall it was a long walk to the main gate that led to the Gobindpura area and further onto the city which we often visited in the evenings and on weekends. Like every big university in Pakistan, our university also had small cafes and restaurants (often called hotels in Pakistan) and the shabby chai (tea) stalls just outside the Gobindpura main gate, in addition to other small businesses that mostly depended on the students for their survival and success. These chai stalls were always teeming with students in the evenings, especially when the weather was fine and not too cold or hot. Cold, maybe not but hot, oh yes! Faisalabad is one of the hottest places in Pakistan, with the mercury shooting up to 42degC and above. Until I arrived there, I had never experienced that kind of heat and humidity in my whole life. It was the same for most of us from dry and cold Balochistan, except maybe for those who came from Sibi, another place in the country that resembles a hell chamber! As fate would have it, it was Sibi to which I would be posted upon joining the agriculture department six years later.

Faculty of Agricultural Engineering

Both Mazhar and Irfan (Bakitiari) were engineering students. They helped me settle down in the new place. I have clear memories of running back and forth the length of the mile long campus corridor with Irfan to get all the admission paperwork done. To this day, Irfan and I recall those days and as we do we cannot help but laugh: Irfan walking briskly ahead of me and I, in my blue smuggled Iranian sweater totally lost in a new and unfamiliar environment, trying to keep pace with him while holding my dirty, yellow file folder with all my documents in it behind me. Mazhar, not an outspoken or very social person---and in that sense the exact opposite of Irfan who got nods, smiles and waves from every second person on campus irrespective of their department or faculty-----introduced me to the rather fastidious dean of the faculty, Sheikh Sahib. I think his name was Sheikh Sarwar. He was a short man with piercing dark eyes that shone with a kind of intelligence that can be termed uncanny only because it was tinged with a certain degree of frustration, even anger. Years later I would come to understand fully the source of that frustration in such individuals: in a country where the cult of mediocrity is pervasive, and even actively celebrated and promoted, any intelligent person is bound to get frustrated, if not angry. No wonder, Pakistan is among the top “least developed” or “developing” countries that have high rates of brain-drain. To get back to our story, at first, the strict dean was reluctant to accept me in the faculty since I had arrived late and also because there were many irregularities (typos and all) in my papers that were prepared by the clumsy DGA clerks back home. Eventually, he signed my papers with the pre-condition that I would score a GPA of at least 3.0 at the end of the first semester; after all that I had gone through until that point, my admission to the faculty was made conditional! And as the dean said that to us, he smiled at me but gave Mazhar the eye (Mazhar, who is undoubtedly a great human being, a wise man in every other respect, was not really one of the brightest students in the engineering faculty, especially not in strictly theoretical physics and math based subjects!) Not to boast but to mention here for the record (!), I did manage to make it to the 3.0 mark at the end of the first semester (it was 3.31 to be exact).

The Ganta Ghar (clocktower) in Faisalabad

Faisalabad was a very different place from Quetta then, and not only weather wise. It was definitely a bigger city but at the same time it never felt like a big city to me, say, like Karachi, Hyderabad or Lahore, cities that I had often visited and even lived in one of them for extended periods of time. It was called “a huge village” by its local residents then and its people were referred to as villagers, the pejorative term for which is “paindoo”, and not city dwellers proper. The entire city is designed around the main clock- tower called the Ganta Ghar, which stands tall at a central point where eight streets---bazaars---meet. Some say it is an architectural representation of the colonial era Union Jack, the flag of the imperial Raj. For us students, one of the sources of entertainment was roaming in these maze-like bazaars, treating ourselves to the steaming hot daal chaawal in Chiniot bazaar and the spicy murgh pulao in winters, or visiting the tea houses in and around Bhawana and Jhang Bazaars.

Going to the movies in the city’s many cinemas, especially to Minerva and Shabnam, was the most popular activity among many students, including those from Balochistan. At least once a month, we would watch a Punjabi movie at one of these theatres. It would be Mazhar, Irfan, Masood and Zubair, and sometimes Sajjad Foladi and Ishaq Ibrahim, too, with me tagging along. It was a time when Anjuman, the popular movie actress, reigned supreme in the world of Punjabi cinema. Since the queen must always have a king, so, that spot was filled by the one and only Sultan Rahi, the ghandhasa wielding, mustachioed Punjabi Jhat hero, whose kingdom was constantly challenged and was under threat by his great rival Mustafa Quershi, another loud action hero with even a bigger ghandhasa and more hair on his face and chest. Occasionally, we would watch a B-grade Hollywood movie. They were mostly low budget, low definition, gross and gory horror movies that were an insult to one’s aesthetic and artistic sensibilities. The theatres rarely showed good quality Urdu and English movies. It was a time when cinemas meant dusty, badly ventilated, smoke filled halls with dirty floors and rows of thinly cushioned folding-type chairs. Nothing like the new Multiplexes or Cineplexes with Dolby-NR, all-surround sound systems and HD quality screens that we see nowadays in the cities of Pakistan.

Minerva Cinema, Faisalabad

It didn’t take me time before I found out why going to the movies was so popular with the students. The movies themselves were not particularly interesting with almost all of them based on a typical, cliched formula: the same plots, same song and dance sequences---with at least one of them in the rain showing the plump heroin wearing a thin white dress----and same or similar fight scenes. For the viewers, the main attraction was what was known as the “tota”, meaning an extra piece of reel that was run somewhere within the main film. This “tota” was almost always rated stuff, meaning R 18+ or even soft core (western) pornography. It would appear suddenly and run for a few minutes before the operator would switch back to the main movie, the one advertised on the huge, garish poster boards outside. During the two or more hours of the movie, this would happen at least three or four times. The “tota” had a magical effect on the frustrated audience: the hall would suddenly go quiet and as soon as the projector would roll on to the main movie, the same hall would erupt with whistles, hooting and clapping. These “totas” were never openly advertised on the huge, colorful poster boards, but were spread through word of mouth. As to their timing, that in itself created suspense and excitement among many in the audience. Some had become so expert that they would predict the precise time of its launch with a margin of error anywhere between 5 and 10 seconds!

Back to Fateh Hall. I was allotted a bed and table in 18-D Fateh Hall soon after I got admitted. There were five of us in the room then: Mazhar, Munawar, Bashir Agha Jr., Zulfiqar and I. The occupants of this room before us, were Inam ul Haq, Rizwan ul Haq, Mazhar Ali and Bashir Agha Sr., I believe. While Inam was still there doing his masters in plant breeding and genetics, Rizwan and Bashir, both engineers, had already left after graduating by the time I arrived. I met them later in life. This particular room had a history with students from Balochistan. It had changed hands for many years, from one batch of Balochistanis to other and this tradition continued until I graduated and left in 1991. That is when the young, chatty Muhammad Ali Agha and others moved in. In the early evenings most students from the province and some from NWFP (now KP) would gather at the canteen and there would be Quetta-style “bandaar” over chai from the canteen. In addition to the greasy parathas, French toasts, and omelets for breakfast, the canteen also served afternoon chai and biscuits, or snacks. The place was run by a slender nay, emaciated, guy named Aslam who minded the cash register while his two younger, chubby brothers, Feeqa (Rafeeq) and Bhutto (Zulfiqar) waited tables.

Fateh Hall, University of Agriculture Faisalabad

In addition to those who resided in Fateh Hall, there were many Balochistani students in other hostels, too, some of whom would join these gatherings and whose names I would like to recall here: Inam ul Haq, Tahir Aqeel, Irfan Ali, Maqsood Khan, the three Ali Rezas (Ali Reza Hazara, Ali Raza Naqvi and Ali Reza Raisani), Zulfiqar Achakzai, Riaz Khan, Amir Mehmood, Najmul Hassan, Ubaidullah Luni, Anwar Adil, Nasrullah Shah, Fazal Haq, the two Naveeds (laghado and latt!), Azam Kakar (Dr. Ziaratwaal), Bashir Agha jr., Wahab Khan, Manzoor Baloch, Naqibullah Khan, Sajjad Foladi (Loralai walla), Shahid Masood, Dawood Almas, Rauf Khan, Mehrullah Jan, Zubair and Masood Chaudhry and later, Muhammad Ali Agha. There would be some students from NWFP, as well. Two of them, Ishaq Ibrahim and Shahid (?) Afridi, were the closest to us. Ishaq, who I believe was either from proper Peshawar or Mardan area, was perennially present and was good company, a joy to be with. Popular, loved by all and always smiling, laughing and cracking jokes, he had a cool and care-free attitude, except when it was exam time during which he would start panicking! “It’s that time: theory of structures and Dr. Amanat!” This particular engineering subject, spread over two semesters, was one of the most difficult to pass. The subject was dry, theoretical---all formulae derivations, calculations and number crunching----but what made matters worse was that it was taught by one of the most unpopular professors on the faculty. It is true that some oddball types loved his communicatively obscure and clearly anachronistic teaching style, but the majority simply failed to understand what the man was trying to communicate. Moreover, the professor’s temperament did not help matters, either, even if at times he displayed streaks of dark humor. While my classmate Najmul Hassan (from Quetta), because he was a math wizard, sailed through it and got high marks, my senior Mazhar and many others had to spend an extra semester just because of this one subject and the good professor who taught it. Other classmates from Quetta, Amir Mehmood Reza, Nasrullah Khan, Ali Reza Naqvi, Anwar Adil and yours truly barely made it.

Student politics at the university was mostly done on what is known as the ‘baradari” basis, where different Punjabi baradari groups like Gujjar, Jhat and Rajput etc. had formed their own student organizations. There were the usual politically oriented student groups as well, such as the Islami Jamiat e Talaba (IJT) and People’s Student Federation (PSF). At times these groups would clash with one another, often violently, and when that happened the authorities would close down the campus. BSA was our student organization that served as an umbrella association for all the students from Balochistan and which was mostly about organizing social and cultural activities and helping the students from the province with any issues that they might have at the university. By the time I graduated, things had changed a bit. While there were still these gatherings at Fateh Hall and other hostels, although much infrequently than before, many of the seniors had left----Inam, Mazhar, Irfan, Munawar, Tahir, Zubair, Sajjad, Masood, for example--- and with their departure many of the old traditions also began to disappear. BSA, for example, became ineffective and even unnecessarily politicized at times. I guess, it was the passage of an era, however short-lived, that I was witnessing. It was time for change, in other words.

For more, please click:  Class of 83: St. Francis' Grammar High 

     and,  Hussainabad, Quetta: The place, the people and their values

TGB: The Contentions of Abdal Hakim Murad

TGB: The Contentions of Abdal Hakim Murad

Islam is not an extension of your ego.

The noblest form of mercy is to protect others from yourself.

Self-expression? Is your self worth expressing?

Religion can be deformed by only two people: a stupid Muslim or an intelligent priest.

If the culture is sick, then your ease with it is a sign of sickness.

Luxury will persuade you that you are not a psychopath.

Govern the thoughts in your head, or else you will walk around dead.

Third World Christianity: worship a white man, and be saved from your past!

The hijab: a display of modesty.

The New Atheism is built on three pillars: human ego, priestly pederasty and the Wahhabis of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Who were more anti-Western? The Taliban or the Buddhas of Bamiyan?

She that uses her body to exploit is a suicide bomber.

Fundamentalism is a belief that revelation forces us to be stupid.

Men and women sin differently.

I am my weakness; you are my strength.

Male and female cannot be equal, for they are mutually superior.

Terrorism is to jihad what adultery is to marriage.

True religion invites us to become better people; false religion tells us that this has already occurred.

The East is content with form; the West is form without content.

If you forget that the world is always dissatisfying, you will always be dissatisfied.

Atheism is like excrement: when enough builds up in the body, it has to come out.

Pain is to show you that life is authentic.

Insan with the e-culture becomes insane.

Feminism has failed in its ambition to abolish women.

Honor the views of every feminist who has had twins.

Not every male superiority is female inferiority.

Your weakness is in proportion to the number of things you crave.

The disbeliever only disbelieves in the god he has created.

If you luxuriate in your humility, it is pride.

Great art is God looking at you. Mediocre art is you looking at God. Demonic art is you looking at yourself alone (Dervaish’s note: most of contemporary Urdu poetry belong to this last category, navel gazing of the worst type!)

We want to make religion as small as ourselves; just as we have made our homes as ugly as ourselves.

Modernity: a way of drowning in nothingness.

Islam’s heart is ethical; the modern West’s skin is ethical.

Capitalism: the law of the jungle that destroys the jungle.

Many wear the turban to prevent Allah from reading their minds.

Modern holidays: the nafs will heal the Ruh.

God is not a reality to be explained; He IS the explanation of reality.

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Haqq.     Khair.      Jamal.          (Truth, Goodness, Beauty)

For more, click: Bandagi, Sufi Master, 

Source: Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad's (Tim Winter) Website

The Traditional Vision of Man

Short, Short: The pandemic and isolation

Short, Short: The pandemic and isolation

“…it may well be that you hate a thing the while it is good for you, and it may well be that you love a thing the while it is bad for you: and God knows, whereas you do not know.”                                                                                                              Qur’an Al-Baqarah, 2: 216

“Often, in giving you something He is (in reality) denying you (something), just as He may, in denying you something, be really bestowing a gift upon you….Your wishing to be isolated (from the world) when God has placed you in its midst betrays selfish desire; to wish for the world when God has isolated you from it is evidence of a decline in your spiritual aspiration.” 

                                                                                                      Ibn Ata Allah as-Iskandari 

The choice is ours.

We either see this (COVID-19) pandemic as just another excuse to continue, insouciantly, indulging our lower passions, or as an opportunity to reflect, to tear ourselves away from the noxious distractions of this world, and to elevate ourselves. We either see it as just another ailment that our hubristic culture of science and technology will eventually overcome, or a warning sign that things have already gone too far----far beyond any reductionist, disjointed techno-fixes. We either succumb, once again, to the pernicious, omnipresent cult or system of indoctrination (which, in its systematic and institutionalized form, is called modern “education”) that confuses purely quantitative data and information with knowledge, or heed the warnings of the sages, who clearly define, delineate and distinguish wisdom from knowledge, knowledge from information and information from data (T.S. Eliot).

The choice is ours.

Quarantined, we either TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Twatter, NetFlix and YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram ourselves and sink further down to the lower depths of our being, or see this pandemic as a blessing in disguise, and take stock of our life. It is a choice between seeing what is difficult, what is inconvenient and uncomfortable, what is adverse and painful as “fuel to be burnt for our journey” as the Japanese farmer-poet Miyazawa Kenji has said, or seeing it as nothing else but all that: inconvenience, difficulty, pain and adversity. For sure, the pain and discomfort are there and real, but suffering is/should be optional. Otherwise, what is the meaning of Faith?

The quarantine, the shelter in place and the isolation can be seen as a godsend for inner revivification, for the renewal of our authentic self that gets forgotten and lost in the turmoil of this world, or they can be viewed as sprinkled sand into the bearings of the amply lubricated and finely tuned machine, the beloved narcissistic-consumerist lifestyle that keeps us exclusively attached, leech-like, to the mundane and the trivial. Since it is more than obvious that the inevitable outcome of this lifestyle is our already toxic levels of anxiety, fear and insecurity, the latter view will only further aggravate our inner turmoil.
                                
We can continue to be floating weeds on the putrefied waters-----the de-centered, disoriented beings of matter-worshiping, anti-spiritual modernity that insists that "man lives by bread alone"----- or we can re-examine, re-member, re-connect and revive our-selves. Just like in normal times, even more so now in the midst of this pandemic: “To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine” (Zygmunt Bauman).

The choice is ours, indeed.

The Collapse

For more, please click: Short, Short: On belief

On YouTube:                                   Dervaish's Quetta Channel 

Yaadish Bakhair: Abdul Baqi Asadi

Abdul Baqi Asadi of Nauabad Quetta and Mashhad, Iran

Yaadish Bakhair: Abdul Baqi Asadi

“One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.” 

                                                                                                 Goethe

“Kun taki”. “Kun taki fried chicken”, to be exact. “Kun” in some dialects of Persian means one’s bottom (buttocks, arse, ass, bum) and “taki” means a repair patch, an adhesive bandage or plaster usually placed on cuts, blisters or wounds. So what is this “kun taki” fried chicken? Can you guess?

Here’s the answer: It is how I first pronounced the greasy but delicious fried chicken I ate in Mashhad, Iran. Long before this brand of fried chicken-----Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)---- was sold in Pakistan, it was a household brand name in Iran, mostly due to the accelerated modernization and/or Westernization of the country by the late Shah of Iran during the decades following WW II. The Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was deposed in 1979 by the Islamic and cultural revolutionaries. A year later, he died in exile in Egypt. I, along with my elder sister, was visiting Iran and was with my late uncle Abdul Baqi Asadi when I had my first gustatory encounter with the popular Kuntaki Fried Chicken (KFC) in Mashhad e Muqaddas, the city of the eighth Shia Imam Ali Reza (AS). The year was 1982. It was the year Iran Khodro (National Motors of Iran) launched the new Peykan 1982 car (local version of Hillman Hunter/Rootes Arrow) which featured wide square head beams and lots of red and orange glossy plastic for tail lights, perhaps in an attempt to rival the beautiful Toyota Corolla 1982 which was selling like hot cakes back in Pakistan then. My cousins Zia and Siraj were going crazy about that new Peykan. Although lacking the elegant finish of a Japanese Corolla, it was a tough car, nevertheless. (Yes, cars! Sorry folks, just can’t help it!) 

The KunTaki Fried Chicken (KFC)

Abdul Baqi Asadi was the eldest among his brothers and sisters. He lived the latter half of his life in Mashhad, Iran with his wife and children. The main reason for his move from Quetta to Mashhad was his marriage to an Iranian relative, a wonderful woman with a heart of gold. It was also because of better employment opportunities, I guess. Iran was a very different place when he moved there, unlike the country of today. He was an ambitious man, the sort that loved challenges above all the other things that the adjective “ambitious” connotes. Like his other brothers, he was also a committed and resourceful professional in whatever he did----and he did a lot of different things in his life, was a versatile man and a deft multitasker long before that word became popular. In his numerous professions he was, nevertheless, a very different person from others in the family, in the sense that he not only viewed and studied or analyzed, but also dealt with situations, especially the intractable ones, differently. Difficulties made him more focused: he was a “can do” man. In that, which basically meant temperamentally, he resembled his younger brother Abdul Rahim, and to some extent, Abdul Mehdi, too. 

Kolpur Train Station

Before he moved to Iran he worked for Pakistan Railways. I vaguely remember his postings as Station Master at such remote or out-of-the-way train stations as Spizand, Aab e Gum, Kolpur and Nushki in Balochistan. We would visit him in these godforsaken ghost towns and their equally spooky, dusty train stations that always reminded me of the scary tales that I used to read in the popular Suspense, Jasoosi and Ibn e Safi digests my father used to buy from the book vendors at Mizan Chowk. 

Spizand Junction, Bolan 

 At these train stations that looked and felt like abandoned colonial-era structures right out of a horror and mystery tale, the things that I most enjoyed were the beautifully lacquered and regularly waxed solid wooden boards on the walls of the Station Master’s office. These wooden panels listed the names of all the previous luminaries that the stations hosted, the deceased, retired and transferred Station Masters. I would try to read the names aloud and sit there for long, looking excitedly at the exquisite quality of the solid, shiny wood that made a strange backdrop for everything else in the office which was old, broken and dusty. 

Aab e Gum Station

After his move to Iran, Abdul Baqi soon found his niche, or rather, he created one for himself. No, not in the Iranian Railways----the unfortunate Iranians in that department of public transportation and rail logistics, wittingly or otherwise, deprived themselves of a qualified man!----but, first at the Pakistan Consulate in Mashhad as an interpreter and liaison officer, a job which continued for some years, and then in a private firm that had nothing to do with the overseeing of day-to-day operations of sooty, coal and diesel driven locomotives. It was some kind of trading house, dealing in import and export of a whole range of products. I clearly remember meeting the president and owner of the firm, one Mr. Sakhawati, or Agha e Sakhawati as they say in Iran. A remarkable man was he, this boss of Abdul Baqi, so much so, that he could easily be introduced to English speaking non-Iranians as “Mr. Generous” or “Mr. Generosity”, which was the literal translation into English of his typical Persian name. My uncle Abdul Baqi, whom I have already introduced as an apt multitasker and a polyglot, had the complete trust of his boss and to say that he was his right-hand man would be an under-estimation: he was running a sort of one-man-show at Mr. Sakhawati’s trading firm. There, he was the manager, the translator and interpreter, the accountant-cum-auditor, the dispatcher, the sales and legal representative of the firm, event organizer and so on.

A Bansuri

Abdul Baqi was a man of many tastes and hobbies. He was an expert flute or bansuri player, for example. On his old bansuri, he could play most of the old Bollywood hits, especially the ones sung by crooners like Talat Mehmood, Manaday, Mukesh and the great Muhammad Rafi. Not to say anything about the hit songs of Lataji. Often, he would also sing the songs for his audience. He was a champion carrom player, too. Once it was his turn, our eyes would get tired following the big, round striker hole or “pocket” one carrom men (carrom piece) after another (the small black and white plastic discs). He would use all the tools in his arsenal of carrom skills: direct hit, rebound, angle shot, double touch and so on. And when we would start protesting, he would relent but only after positioning his pieces in such a way that would obstruct the opponent’s angle of hit! Think of Jimmy White and the game of snooker and you will get the idea of what I am talking about. But above all else, it was his wit, his sophisticated command of at least three languages, his refined sense of humor and his constant cheerful and positive disposition that most make up my memories of my uncle Baqi. In a place like Iran where people take pride in their language, the old Farsi language, and never let an opportunity go by without pulling some kind of a linguistic trick or without using wit and sarcasm, often in the form of poetic verses and proverbs, either to entertain friends or to upset opponents, Abdul Baqi Asadi was always the undefeated contestant. He would tell us original and quality jokes that would make us roar with laughter, to the point that we would start getting cramps in the stomach. Whether at home with children and relatives, outside with friends, or at work with colleagues, he was excellent company. He was a sweet man, Abdul Baqi Asadi, our Mama e Nuqul.

Yaadish Bakhair

Abdul Baqi Asadi with his parents

Please visit:          Dervaish's Quetta Channel (on Youtube)

Yaadish Bakhair: Sikander Ali

Sikander Ali of Hussainabad, Quetta

Yaadish Bakhair: Sikander Ali

My younger daughter comes and observes me as I wash and wax the car. She watches me quietly but keenly, disappears for a while and then returns. She performs this ritual many times and finally, when I am almost done spraying the rims and the tires, she asks me: “How do you do that? How can you make an old car look as if it was just bought from a new car dealer? ” I tell her that I like washing cars and that I learned how to do it long time ago, when I was a teenager. She continues with her query, “But where did you learn it, and who taught you to clean cars like that? ” And then I tell her that I learned it from one of my uncles who loved cars and who knew how to wash and wax cars. I tell her about my uncle Sikander Ali, who never tired of washing and waxing his cars-----he enjoyed it, even elevated it to an art form----- and who taught me that art, too.

Toyota Mark II, 1974

I have mentioned this uncle of mine before, in the context of cars when I wrote a blogpost on the cars of Quetta in the 1970s and 1980s. Sikander Ali was the youngest of the five brothers, younger than Sadiq Ali. He was a tall, handsome man with slightly curly hair and a temperament that was a carbon copy of, or matched that of his father (my grandfather), Haji Qasim Ali. Of the five brothers, he was most like his father in that department, unlike my uncle Samad Ali, who was the least like his father when it came to temperament. Sikander Ali, just like his brother Sadiq, was also a man of many friends, a popular personality with many tastes, including cars, music and movies. And most of what I remember about Kaka (uncle) Sikander are about these things.

Sikander Ali (third from left) with friends

I don’t remember if he ever finished his college education. For many years he was away from Quetta, travelling and working---more the former than the latter----in Europe. I vaguely remember my grandfather always asking my grandmother to ask Sikander to return to Pakistan so he could get married and join the family business, and to stop wasting his time in Europe. And return he finally did, by road, in his car: he drove his beloved sapphire blue Toyota Mark II all the way from Germany to Quetta! It was that Mark II, and the one that followed it-----a maroon beauty with plush leather seats and wood-paneled dash----that became, for me, the training laboratory, the main object of experimentation (under Kaka’s watchful eyes and supervision, of course) on my quest to learn and master the exquisite art of car licking! I started as his chotoo (assistant/sidekick) at first----doing the wheels and dusting the floor mats----but soon graduated, first to doing the glass parts and then to applying the thick coat of silica compound to the bonnet (hood) and dickie (boot) and finally spreading and buffing with carefully moistened fine cotton and silk-like flannel cloth. Those two surface areas of a car with the most paint, the bonnet and the dickie, were considered the most important and nobody was allowed to touch them without proper prior training. In the vernacular, they were called the “show” of a car or a truck. So, when I say it is an “art”, I am not kidding. Even my little daughter now realizes that. 

Sikander Ali (second from right) with friends

Talking of cars, one of my most vivid memories of Kaka Sikander is about these little crimes that he would get us, my elder sister and I, to commit for him. It was during the years when he was in in his early 20s, or maybe still a teenager. During summertime, when my father would sometimes come home early to take a nap, Kaka Sikander would ask us to steal my father’s car keys for him so that he could go for a drive to Hanna Lake, Urak Valley or Spin Karez with his friends. I clearly remember my father used to drive a mint green Opel then which he used to park in that Hussainabad street next to the rectangular electric pole. There were times when he, my uncle Sikander, would get into trouble. My father would suddenly remember some business to take care of in the city and would start looking for his car keys. But he would never say anything harsh to the uncle in the way of rebuke, apart from the cold silent look, probably because he remembered well his own little felonious escapades in my grandfather’s cars when he was my uncle Sikander’s age. 

The King of Reggae, Bob Marley: The Uprising

When Sikander Ali returned from Germany, he was a head-to-toe flower-power hippie: long hair, the bell-bottoms, the colorful psychedelic shirts with foot long collars and the Ray Bans with the elephant ear lenses. But above all, it was the music that he brought with him on the black-and-orange 90-min and 120-min BASF and Scotch cassette tapes and the 12-inches 33 rpm vinyls or LPs that most betrayed his equally colorful and psychedelic years abroad. For many years, even after we moved to our new house in Hajiabad, off Toghi Road, I was still listening to those tapes and LPs loaded with the hit songs of such 70s soft rock and disco luminaries: Bee Gees, Boney M, John Travolta, Earth Wind and Fire, Oliva Newton John(Grease), Eagles, Smokie, Super Tramp, Roger Whittaker and, yes, the great Bob Marley (his Uprising album with The Wailers). These were all Kaka Sikander’s music from Germany and Denmark. They were his favorite singers, especially Bob Marley, that undisputed king of reggae. But the name of one singer of the golden age of soft and middle-of-the-road rock that was the 1970s, Al Stewart----in particular his two mega hit singles “Year of the Cat” and “On the Border,”----has become forever etched in my mind as the quintessential Kaka Sikander reminder. I have often wondered how intriguingly strange it is that many of us recall the past, both people and events, through songs and movies. For me, Al Stewart and his “The year of the Cat”, an excellent song with the typical 70s combination of rock guitar and rhythmic drum intro that melodiously glides into the equally fluid voice of Al Stewart singing his poetry, forever means Sikander Ali, my late uncle. Period.  

                               

Al Stewart's:       Year of the Cat

Al Stewart's:       On the Border

For many years Kaka Sikander was our school pick-and-drop man. He would pick us up from school late afternoons and drive us home, sometimes obviously not happy with that chore that his brother, my father, had assigned him. It was understandable: any wild young man obsessed with fancy cars, wild rock music and possibly girls, would not be happy doing such a routine, boring job. I have already hinted at his temperament, which, like his father’s, was a bit on the volatile side. But that was also what made this lively and spirited man unique among his brothers, so different in many ways, but still similar in many others. Sikander Ali was not the man that you would want to mess with.

(Kaka) Sikander Ali

Sikander Ali died in January 2018. I met him during my short visit to Quetta in December 2017. We had coffee together two days before he suffered a terrible, fatal stroke. While sipping coffee, I recalled Al Stewart and the Toyota Mark II and he was completely surprised to hear that, to the extent that he went completely silent for what seemed like hours only to return from that stupefied state with a sad, broad smile, saying only this: “those were the days, they were real times. Weren’t they?” 

My daughter has invited some of her friends over and they are playing with their toys in the room next to my study. They are just doing kid talk when suddenly I hear a friend of her say “cars…gas station…car wash…”. She is telling the others about how funny it is to sit in the car while the car gets shampooed, wiped and dried by mechanical tentacles in the coin-operated car wash at the gas station. And then I hear my daughter’s voice, telling them: “You know, we have never been to an automatic car wash. In fact, my father has never taken his car to a gas station car wash all his life.” The friend who was talking earlier says, “Really? Then how come his car is always shiny and looks like a brand new car”? “He washes and waxes it himself, with his own hands. He had an uncle who taught him how to do it long long time ago” replies my daughter.


Yaadish Bakhair.
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Note: The people that I write about in this Yaadish Bakhair series were all too human, just like the rest of us: frail, fallible, imperfect. The attempt here is not to paint them as super-humans, or to elevate them to the angelic realm of perfection, but to shine a light on one, two or some aspects of their multi-dimensional personalities. These are mere fragments, or fragmentary sketches, about the subject personalities the way I saw and knew them, and the way I now remember and write about them. These are not whole biographies. How could they be? Yes, there is choice involved since we cannot do without that when we engage in any discourse, of this type or any other variety: a story told is always another one ignored. Others may see things differently and may wish to draw their own conclusions and sketches.

For more:  Hussainabad: The Place, the people and their values

Please visit:                 Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

Yaadish Bakhair: Abdul Hadi

Abdul Hadi of Nauabad, Quetta

"Observe what he does, look into his motives, find out in what he is at peace. Can a man hide himself? Can a man hide himself?" 
                                                                                            Confucius
Abdul Hadi (Mama Hadi)

“Oh, so you are Hadi sahib’s nephew. Why didn’t you say so earlier? No problem, just give me a minute and I’ll get your file in. Please have a seat here. What would you like to have? Green tea or tea with milk?” I have no count of how many times I have heard that in the numerous government offices of Quetta, from superintendents, section officers, office clerks and peons. Hundreds of times, I am sure, if not a thousand. Anybody who has lived in Pakistan, or knows a thing or two about how Pakistani government offices work can easily understand what that sort of thing means and can easily relate to it. There, in Pakistani offices, especially government offices, unless you hear something like that from the demigods who populate those offices---all the way from the G-21 secretary to the peon, or the chaprasi--- you are sure to spend days, weeks and months, if not years, without getting the smallest of things done----your very legitimate official things, that is, as were my cases. Unfortunate as it is in a way, through the years that I lived in Pakistan, I got things done that way, by mentioning the magic word: Abdul Hadi. 

                                   

My uncle Abdul Hadi, the elder brother of Nasim Ahmed about whom I wrote earlier on this blog site, was a workaholic. A government servant all his life, he was a dedicated professional. I have used that adjective "professional" before. What I primarily mean by it is someone who does his or her best in the most difficult and trying of situations. It has, of course, other denotations and connotations as well, but that is the meaning that I often have in mind when I use it. Abdul Hadi became a public servant soon after graduation, moved through the different tiers of the provincial bureaucracy by dint of hard work and finally retired as an Assistant Commissioner for Quetta District. Just like in private life, he was old school in public life, too. What that means is that he had an old-fashioned work ethic which required a sincere commitment,  a principled dedication to his work. Ever ready to deal with all sorts of emergencies that his tough job demanded, he was often on duty round the clock, all day and all night, and would return home at dawn only to leave again for work a couple of hours later. 

In office with local elders

Widely known, especially in the official circles of the city, he was loved and respected not just for his professionalism but more than that, for the kind of person he was: generous, self-effacing and at home with all, irrespective of social class, age, caste, tribe or ethnicity etc. He was more Hadi Sahib than Abdul Hadi Hazara or any other ethno-religious appellation attached to his name that would make him tribal, parochial or sectarian, or so perceived, if I may put it that way. For sure, he had his own distinct identity---ethnic, linguistic, cultural-religious, like we all do----but he was there for all, an awami figure universally approachable, as a true public servant should be in an ethnically and linguistically diverse, multi-cultural society. And that is also because he was old school through and through. Like his good friends and colleagues from almost all the ethnic and linguistic groups of Quetta City, he was an authentic Quetta Waal. He belonged to that breed and generation of people who are now fast becoming extinct as its last remaining members who embody the old values (iqdaar) of Quetta Waali retire and pass away. Indeed, the city will be impoverished in a very profound sense when the last of these noble souls vacate the social, cultural, political and religious landscape of Quetta City.

Pishin posting (in white shalwar kameez and coat)

Abdul Hadi was a man of community. The community that he was born into and where he lived all his life is called Nauabad, meaning “new neighborhood’ or “new community” although it is anything but. There is a story about this old Alamdar Road mohalla of equally old Hazaras that it was established at the start of the last century by his father Mullah Ghulam Ali and with that it came to be known as “Nauabad”. I cannot attest to the authenticity of that, though. My uncle Hadi was a regular and constant presence in his community. Exhibit: on any given evening, especially after he retired, he could be seen cleaning not just the patch of asphalt in front of his house, but the entire street. Water hose in one hand and a sturdy long broom in the other, he would wash and sweep the narrow street with a small army of boys and girls, all mohalla kids, running about him and helping as he instructed each one of them their assigned chores. One of these kids would pick the pile of collected garbage, another would bag it, a third would run it to the collection spot for final removal and a fourth would assist with the long hose to make sure it did not get bent or stuck somewhere and so on. And then there were times when he would use his position to make sure the mohalla had its electricity, water and gas running, not in a way that would be considered unfair or illegitimate use of power, or abuse of authority, but doing all of it within the bounds of propriety and general human decency. Those who obliged, who carried out his orders or requests, did so more because of his accommodating character and genial personality than because of his official authority or position in the government, anyway. In him and in what he used to do in and for his community, one could discern the ethos that are the very foundations of any tightly-knit traditional community where people are like one big family, like a single organic unit, where they are equal partners in everything small and big, in all that makes the community smile and cry, in happiness and in tragedy, or in life and in death. Old school, again. 

Nauabad

Nauabad

                                                                                            

There was something about Abdul Hadi of Nauabad, something that one could not quite point out clearly or put in precise words, yet one knew it and felt it because of his downright, unostentatious presence. There was humility and a dignified demeanor, for sure. There was the generosity of spirit and self-effacement that I have already mentioned. These were qualities that attracted both the young and the old equally. But there was something more: a certain calmness, a quiet repose that was a kind of carelessness about, or a disregard for the mundane and the petty. This carelessness was invariably accompanied by an attentiveness to things usually ignored by the many, a subtle attentiveness to the invisible, little things: an attitude that can be called sophisticated simplicity (exemplified in the way he dressed and spoke) and that befits a dervish. Perhaps it was that. This quiet calmness could be seen not only when he was doing his community chores with his team of mohalla kids---which he obviously enjoyed---- but also when he was in the midst of his often nerve-wrecking, round-the-clock assignments as the Assistant Commissioner of Quetta district. After all, he was, yes----old school.

With friend Flt. Lt. Samad Ali Shaheed

Yaadish Bakhair.


Note: The people that I write about in this Yaadish Bakhair series were all too human, just like the rest of us: frail, fallible, imperfect. The attempt here is not to paint them as super-humans, or to elevate them to the angelic realm of perfection, but to shine a light on one, two or some aspects of their multi-dimensional personalities. These are mere fragments, or fragmentary sketches, about the subject personalities the way I saw and knew them, and the way I now remember and write about them. These are not whole biographies. How could they be? Yes, there is choice involved since we cannot do without that when we engage in any discourse, of this type or any other variety: a story told is always another one ignored. Others may see things differently and may wish to draw their own conclusions and sketches.

For more, click:Hussainabad:The place, the people and their values

Visit (click):          Dervaish's Quetta Channel (Youtube)

TGB: The noble, the holy, the sage and the primordial

TGB: The noble, the holy, the sage and the primordial (Hanif)

"Let the beauty we love be what we do."                                   Rumi

" The noble man is one who dominates himself.

The noble man is one who masters himself and loves to master himself; the base man is one who does not master himself and shrinks in horror from mastering himself.

The noble man always maintains himself at the centre; he never loses sight of the symbol, the spiritual gift of things, the sign of God, a gratitude that is both ascending and radiating.

The noble man is naturally detached from mean things, sometimes against his own interests; and he is naturally generous through greatness of soul.

The noble man is one who dominates himself; the holy man is one who transcends himself. Nobility and holiness are the imperatives of the human state.

The knowledge which man does or can enjoy is at the same time animal, human and Divine. It is animal in so far as man knows through the senses; it is human when he knows by reason; and it is Divine in the contemplative activity of the intellect.

For the sage, every star, every flower, is metaphysically a proof of the Infinite.

Primordial man knew by himself that God is; fallen man does not know it; he must learn it.

Primordial man was always aware of God; fallen man, while having learned that God is, must force himself to be aware of it always.

Primordial man loved God more than the world; fallen man loves the world more than God, he must therefore practice renunciation.

Primordial man saw God everywhere, he had the sense of archetypes and of essences and was not enclosed in the alternative "flesh or spirit"; fallen man sees God nowhere, he sees only the world as such, not as the manifestation of God."

                                                       Isa Nur Al Din (Frithjof Schuon)

Haqq.      Khair.     Jamal.

For more, click: Bandagi