Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia in Karachi

Thank you for the invites, Jehan Ara & Amin Hashwani. 

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Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia plays the North Indian bamboo flute, the Bañsuri ... and he is at the very top of a list of anyone playing this instrument.

Bañsuri, one of the oldest musical instruments in India, is a side-blown flute made of bamboo or reed and has 6 or 7 holes. The instrument is associated with the Hindu God, Krishna, who is often shown playing it.

Chaurasia Ji, himself, says he should be called a bañsuri-player and not a flute-player because the western flute is made up of a number of things that the bañsuri does not have. In fact a bañsuri, as he told the crowd in Karachi, "has no strings, no buttons, no tuning. Its just a piece of wood with a few holes and you pick it up and practice and play it!"


Pandit Pannalal Ghosh, a well-known bañsuri player, really brought this instrument into classical music … but it was Chaurasia Ji who expanded its area and is now considered to be the man who really made this reed-instrument one of the most loved and respected in India and the world of music.

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Sabeen Mahmud saw Jehan Ara's mention on Twitter, in her remarks to Tammy Haq, that Pandit Chaurasia was playing in Karachi (as well as Islamabad and Lahore). The last time he came to Pakistan many years ago, he performed only at the other two places but not Karachi. This time he was being invited to play for India's 63rd Republic Day Anniversary. Also involved - I am most happy to say - was the ICCR! 


Sabeen, a founder member of APMC  (I was a founder member, too, when it started), was at my house and I called Ayla Raza — the 'actual' Founder of APMC, Karachi — and asked her to come to the house. I called Aneesh Pradahan and Shubha Mudgal and got Chaurasia Ji's number in Mumbai. Ayla called up the number and spoke to his daughter-in-law. She manages his bookings and we were told that he was free one night before the Indian Embassy performance in Karachi. She told us the 'rather large' sum of money he'd charge. 


Hmmm: Well, it was of the kind of money that some people generally use for their daughter's wedding-day jo∂aa here — but this is only our subcontinental classical music (being performed by one its Masters) so who'd pay for this?


Ayla said she'd go and call up Arshad Mahmud (NAPA), Sharif Awan (Tehzeeb), and Hameed Haroon (Dawn). We three felt that it was important that a large venue be agreed upon and all the groups (APMC, NAPA, Tehzeeb, and Dawn) should put in the money, arrange for lots of free guests - preferably at Mohatta Palace - and let our audience hear this music. Ayla also had to get permission from ICCR in India, who had helped his coming here along with the Indian High Commission.


A whole day passed and nothing happened. Sadly, we gave it up! It was too late to invite people, or even arrange for anything at all by now. I don't know if she got to Hameed or not but was, more or less, shoo'd away by the others (or so I am told).

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The same evening I got a call from Mehreen Rafi (an ex-NAPA student) that Chaurasia Ji was lecturing at NAPA the next morning at 8:30, but she seemed pretty 'unsure' about his really being in Karachi. I said he was in Karachi and I'll come to NAPA with my wife and Sabeen in the morning. I phoned Arshad about the time. He told me it was going to begin at 10 AM and asked me to come early because "it will be crowded".


We arrived at 9.30 and only Abro & Attiya Dawood (and Suhaee) were there ... and, perhaps, two or three students. However, by 11 AM when the car brought Chaurasia Ji, there were (maybe!) 15-20 students and ex-students, some other guests, and the local NAPA teachers.


During Chaurasia Ji's beautiful playing, someone from PTV (I think that's who he was) managed to get two phone calls and had an assistant go out to receive them and at each time the door cranked badly while she went out and came in. Two other people took calls and spoke with friends during the performance - and one was actually told by Zia Mohyeddin Sahab that he'd be shot!


Chaurasia Ji's performance and his humor and his conversations were brilliant and a lot of fun. I hope NAPA would do this kind of thing more often … and certainly invite some of our best musicians (all of whom were missing) to these events. They should also do similar things with our own non-Karachi musicians when they come here so that students can ask them questions, talk to them, understand how each thinks and moves, and how they are so amazingly rich - despite the lack of education in many -  in an area that very few people really understand.

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One person said to me at the evening's fabulous concert at Marriott that "I was wanting to hold my own show". The other person said he had invited me to the NAPA concert, but he hadn't.


Ayla Raza was in the evening concert but only because her husband had been invited. No one who talked to her from NAPA invited her to the morning performance, despite knowing that she was the founder of APMC. Pity! 


Sheema Kermani was also at the evening concert and complained about why she had not been invited by NAPA and was told that it wasn't the job of the person she was speaking to for inviting anyone. More pity!

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Some thoughts on this can also be seen on Mahvash's Facebook.

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A little background of Chaurasia Ji's early life

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, born on the 1st of July, 1938, in Varanasi (Benaras), surprisingly does not come from a lineage of flautists. His mother died when he was only six and he had to learn music without his father's knowledge because his father was a wrestler who wanted his son, Hariprasad, to follow in his footsteps.


Chaurasia Ji did go to the akhaa∂a and trained with his father for a while, but he also started learning music, practising at a friend's house. He often credits his wrestling training for giving him the immense stamina and lung power. He once said ,"I was not any good at wrestling. I went there only to please my father. But maybe because of the strength and stamina I built up then, I'm able to play the bañsuri even to this day."


He was 15 when he started on the first steps to his musical career by taking classical vocal lessons with Pandit Raja Ram of Benares. A little later he heard a flute recital by Pandit Bholanath and was so impressed that he changed his vocal lessons and became a bañsuri player.


At 19, Chaurasia Ji started playing in AIR, Orissa, and when he was 24 he was transferred to the AIR headquarters in Bombay. Strange that a bañsuri player should choose a Surbahar and Sitar player as a teacher ... but music is music … and it was here that he got his brilliant training from Shrimati Annapurna Devi (then the wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar). 


Annapurna Devi is the daughter of the famous Ustaad Alauddin Khan (of the Maihar Gharana). Alauddin Khan was also the father of Sarod Maestro Ustaad Ali Akbar Khan and the superb teacher of Sitar Maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Ravi Shankar said in his autobiography that Ustaad Alauddin Khan told Roshan Ara Khan (Annapurna's Muslim name) when she asked him about marrying Ravi, "He is a  Brahman and cannot become a Muslim, so you should convert to Hindu and marry him! ". Which is what she did.

Apart from classical music, Chaurasia Ji has made a mark as a music director for Indian films along with Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, forming a group called Shiv-Hari. He told us that his first recording for a film song was with Talat Mahmood (and the now famous Sitarist Rais Khan also accompanied him).


He has also collaborated with various world musicians in experimental cross-cultural performances, including the fusion group Shakti and has played with several western musicians, for example with John McLaughlin and Jan Garbarek in Zakir Hussain's Making Music. (A brilliant CD - Get it now if you haven't heard it yet!)


Currently Chaurasia Ji is at Brindavan Gurukal in Mumbai, where he ensures that students learn the art of Indian Music as well as Fusion and Jazz. His discography can be found here.

The Quest (Dis)Continues

Picture at the T2F Qavvaali by Sadaf Zubairi

The DAWN magazine today featured a piece on Qavvaali (or Qawali) held as part of PeaceNiche's new Qavvaali Project. This will be a project that will save, for posterity, loads of bandishes that we may be 'losing', with fewer qavvaals performing them these days.

The singers will be the top qavvaals, like Fareed Ayaz and others, who will sing at T2F this year. Children of famous qavvaals like Manzoor Niazi Sahab, Bahauddin Sahab and the young members of Fareed/Abu group and others will also be performing on separate occasions.

There were some things in the article that a few of us did not necessarily like (but that's just my friends and I - great qavvaali lovers - I guess). One specific part was really terrible:

Ayaz’s father, Ustad Ahmed Khan, knotted skull caps when he had migrated from India. Ayaz was born in 1949 in Pakistan, where he grew up fending for his family and learning music. He was less known as a qawal until Coke Studio invited Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad with their group for an in-studio recording that reflected ‘the depth of musical diversity’ in Pakistan. 

Though the group has been performing abroad, especially in Tehran, they lately hit headlines in India and Pakistan when they performed for a peace initiative in Ajmer at the shrine of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti.

Fareed Ayaz's father was Ustad Raziuddin Ahmed Khan (known as Munshi Ji by almost everyone, because he was a Munshi Fazil). He performed for many years in Hyderabad Deccan. Munshi Ji was an excellent Qavvaal and a classical singer, as well as a great ustaad. One of his students (a son-in-law and nephew) is Ustad Nasiruddin Shami - a brilliant singer himself, who was also seen in Coke Studio.

In 1956 Munshi Ji led the vocals in the Manzoor Niazi group along with Manzoor Sahab, Bahauddin Sahab, and Iftekhar Sahab. (Farid, according to the article, was then 7 …)

Their recordings were sold by EMI (think of the wonderful pieces you can hear in their Amir Khusrau's death anniversary records). They performed internationally. Fareed was heard on Sitar at that time, before he began his qavvaali singing. Nasiruddin was heard in the qavvaali, something he occasionally does in a few houses now, with his sons. Abu joined much later and has become a tremendous singer.

My collection of Munshi Ji and his son's recordings goes way back to 1960s - and we have had them in performances at home and abroad. Manzoor Niazi and Bahauddin have been great singers with their own sons. These other groups were formed once the parties became too big to stay in as one large group. Many of them sing the same pieces in their own way and add many new pieces that suit their styles better.

To say that Fareed & Abu were less known as a qawwaal before Coke Studio is obviously the idea of a person who may never have really heard them before. As for not being well known, all of these qawwal bachas have performed all over the world - a little search on YouTube will show many old and new recordings. They have performed several times in India, USA, UK, and in other places. Perhaps talking to their thousands of fans here (and abroad) will also convince the writer that he has been completely misled by what he found out and wrote. Maybe what he meant was about their being well-known among the Coke Studio audience, although their three performances at Indus Valley School were crowded by young listeners.

The fact that all Qavvaal Bacchaas sing Persian, Purbi, Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, Seraiki, Sindhi and other languages is remarkable. As qawwaals Munshi Raziuddin and his cousins were among the greatest exponents, along with Sabri Brothers and Nusrat's father and uncle (Mubarak Ali & Fateh Ali) who used to sing way before Nusrat hit the world with his marvellous pieces.

I attended the burial of Munshi Ji in 2003 and I miss him like crazy at all the sessions of Fareed and Abu. I hope the next generation will see Moiz and Hamza and others take this gharaana much further.

The wonderful Qavvaali collection by Citibank, which featured Munshi Ji, Manzoor Sahab, and Bahauddin Sahab, never really got launched properly — although bootleg versions are now available everywhere (but, sadly, without the lovely book that was in the original and beautifully boxed set).

Maybe a little research - even in Wikipedia - would be of help for the author in Dawn to understand what this group is like: Here's a piece from there:

Munshi Raziuddin Ahmed Khan (1912 - 2003) was a renowned Pakistani Qawwal and classical musician in India and Pakistan and a researcher of music. He belongs to the best-known gharana of Qawwali, Qawwal Bachchon Ka Gharana of Delhi. Initially, he performed in the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad. However, after the fall of Hyderabad, he moved to Pakistan. 

In 1956, he formed Munshi Raziuddin, Manzoor Niazi & Brothers, along with his cousins, Bahauddin Qawwal and Manzoor Niazi. This ensemble lasted until 1966. After 1966, Munshi Raziuddin turned to solo work, forming his own Qawwali party, and was successful until his death. Munshi Raziuddin was succeeded by his sons, Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad, who perform as Fareed Ayaz Qawwal.

My recordings of Munshi Ji singing with his sons at a session a few weeks before his death - made especially for my company (b.i.t.s.) and its team that adored him - are impeccable and are available at T2F.

Many people who love Munshi Ji, his cousins, his sons, and the entire qavvaalee idiom can be found at this place on Facebook. Lovely qavvaalees from old qavvaals are available there.

Darkened to oppose SOPA

Here's the best New Year Card I received —

Does wishing

“A Happy New Year”,

make any difference to our New Year,

other than renewing social bondages?

Why not replace our wishes with some concrete steps

to make this world a better place?

A little action may be better

than thousands of wishes.

Let each of us make a New Year Pledge to contribute

towards elimination of

Religious bigotry,

Senseless superstitions,

Irrational believe,

Hatred of other societies,

Greed,

Poverty,

Hunger,

Malnutrition,

Illiteracy,

Ill health

and
Discrimination

on the basis of 

religion,
race,
nationality,
caste,
colour
or
gender.

On the 1^st day of January 2012,

I will complete 81 years of my life

and at the beginning of my 82^nd year,

I pledge that:

My age will not deter me from hard work

towards achieving my mission.

Now that I have relatively less time

and more unfinished work,

I will work harder.

I will follow in the footsteps of

Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and Faiz

to strive for peace and harmony.

I will endeavour to eliminate the rote system

by encouraging inquisitive and analytical minds.

I will propagate information and knowledge

for a well informed mind to make better decisions.

I will donate all my savings and future earnings

for the service of humanity.

[My cadaver has already been donated

for transplant of organs
and for any other medical purpose,

without going through any so called ‘last rites’.]

  

Rashid Latif Ansari


•


(Thank you Rashid Bhai!)

They are here …

This was the Revox A77 Tape Recorder

that was used for most of my recordings!

Here's a new label that you will love!

We will be releasing several CDs (and an occasional DVD). Most of the pieces will be recordings done by me at my home or at public places where I was allowed to record. Others will be recordings of things I managed to get from close friends and preserved them, as well as an occasional lecture or old recordings that have no copyrights any more. Some of these are from 78s and have not been converted by the companies so far.

Musicians will include Ustad Asad Ali Khan of Agra Gharana, Ustad Munawwar Ali Khan (son of Ustad Ba∂ay Ghulam Ali Khan) of Patiala Gharana, Munshi Raziuddin and his sons (Fareed & Abu).

There will also be a host of Shaaérs that I have recorded at home and on my ships in mushaaeraas held in Chittagong. Apart from those there will be some great old poets that many have missed.

On a few occasions we have taped Ismat Chughtai and others reading from their works or talking about life in general. Then there's Nasir Jahan, reciting some lovely kalaam and talking about his encounters with Arzu Lakhnavi and Josh Malihabadi.

The first four sets of CDs were issued this week and are available at T2F:
• Remembering Munshi Raziuddin — A collection of his rare recordings.
• The BITS Sessions (2 CDs) — The almost last concert by Munshi Ji which he did for his lovers.
• Fareed Ayaz & Abu Mohammad — A rare selection of pieces.
• Qamar Jalalvi & Iram Lakhnavi (2 CDs) — Pakistan's finest ghazal writers read their kalaam.

The CDs/DVDs will have the prices marked and we certainly hope that all of you will support this rather difficult job of digitizing from my old tape recordings by buying these and giving them as gifts to people coming from outside Pakistan. Friends outside Pakistan — and there are several who love this stuff in India, USA, UK and more —  can ask local people to buy them and send them, too.

Please — if possible — do not copy them. Buy more. Let's have some income with which we can get more people to help in the digitizing and conversions.This is not a business venture and we need to have enough money to keep it going. There's tons of stuff that I want you all to be able to hear. Thanks.

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

"Christopher Hitchens — the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant — died today at the age of 62." — Vanity Fair: 15.12.2011

RIP

Read his interesting essay on
Pakistan at the death of Osama bin Laden

Dear "Books & Authors" …

It's nice to have a magazine like yours (a lot of your stuff is awful but there are some good pieces in it, too!) that 'caters' to a reading public. The size of the public can be assessed by the size of your mag … so it is truly a tribute to DAWN that it hasn't pulled the magazine off.

One expects, however, that the Editor of Books & Authors will ensure that the Urdu often printed in it is ok. Today's Kaatibs know little of that language. Typing the right keys on the keyboard isn't enough. Also, like most of our current teachers in schools, they know poor Urdu and even less of Poetry.

My daughter, Ragni, was told by her KGS Urdu teacher when she and her classmates didn't want to borrow badly printed Urdu books from the library - specially when they were reading interesting and well-designed work in the English books - that they would "need to know Urdu - because how else will you talk to your servants".

Neither do our book publishers! Take a look at the popular Urdu series by OUP here, now used in several schools, and you'll see how bad - even awful - the Poetry section is. Some of it is even put in by the teacher who couldn't find good poems from anywhere — and she can't write poetry to save her life. Other publishers are much worse.

In today's edition of your magazine (Print Version, of course, because the Net Version doesn't show the Urdu parts), Intizar Husain, in his Literary Notes' Poets of their times (what a terrible title … but that's what newspapers do!) wrote about Urdu Poetry.

It is imperative that you should have looked at the quotes and made sure that they were correct. The shayr I am referring to is Mir's (not Mayyar's).

The second misra' has been ruined beyond belief by the kaatib. Imagine those who are new to poetry reading this and using this second misra' in their conversations.

Please, Editor saheb[a], do pay attention in the future. Or let someone who understands Urdu do it for you. It's very important. It's our National Language, just in case you've forgotten.

Some memories

My mother and I shifted out of our house on Nazareth Road soon after Abi (my father) died. We were forced to vacate the house by the owner - a nephew of the Nizam of Hyderabad - who felt, on the day that Abi died, that the contract was not valid anymore since it was between him and my father.


Ammi Jan (my maternal aunt) and Abbu Jan (Asad Ali, an All India Hockey player of great note, who was also my dada’s youngest brother) were staying with us and moved with us to a house in PECHS for several months. Later on we shifted into the Iqbal Town house which was built with Abbu Jan's pension and provident fund - the way it was in the old days when you retired. My Khala and Khalu were like second parents for me.

Abbu Jan & Ammi Jan

(I always told friends that the Iqbal Town area was named after Iqbal Bano :D … being a little wary of Allama Iqbal and the number of things named after him everywhere.)


Ammi Jan passed away in 1967 while I was on the "M.V. Shams" and heard of it as soon as my ship arrived in the dock. It was awful to see a lovely person go. Her asthma had been a big problem all her life and this time she could not beat its attack.

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I got married at the Iqbal Town house in 1970 and had Nuzhat sail with me for almost 10+ years in the Merchant Navy. She is an avid speaker and a lovely actor in a few plays. Of late she has put up a good website for women in trouble.

Wedding

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Abbu Jan came with us to my DHA house (my first real home that was built with loans and borrowed money). Ragni, our only child, was born in 1984 and part of all this is written for her to read. Abbu Jan expired in 1987. Ummi lived here until 1989, when she passed away in January.

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The Iqbal Town house, however, was among the best periods of my life in Karachi. Despite being far away from all our friends' houses, we had Iqbal Ismail, Salman Kureshi, Muzaffar Ghaffar, Noel Colaco, Joe D’Cruz, Humayun Gohar, Umra Charlie and many others visit us there each time I was on leave or my ship was at home port. Closer to the house were Lala Mufti, Captain Anees Jaetapkar … and the author, Ibné Insha, who lived nearly a block away. Meeting him was always wonderful and hilarious. Maybe I will write a post about him some day.

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Suroor Barabankvi

Suroor Barabankvi (a wonderful poet and a 'wonderfuller' person), whom I had met in Chittagong during a Mushaerah I held on my ship, knocked at my house gate one day and I was thrilled. He said he had arrived the night before and was going to be here for a week. We called him the next day and had him recite some poetry for us and four of my father's cousins who were his fans: Kamal Mahmood (Jan Ammu. He was Talat Mahmood's elder brother), his wife (Amna Phupi), her brothers Ayub Chacha and Sulaiman Chacha. The last three were the grandchildren of Ustad Amir Minai.

I recorded many of Suroor Bhai's poems on that day — and more in the years to come. Here is a nazm you’ll like in his lovely voice. By the way, Suroor Bhai's younger brother married Jan Ammu's youngest sister (Khalida - my Phupi Jania) later on.

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Sulaiman Chacha asked me to meet his friend, Syed Nasir Jahan, when I came back to Karachi and settled down, in 1984, from the Merchant Navy. I decided to 'duck' the issue, thinking that Nasir Jahan — a regular radio broadcaster with a lovely voice — was unlikely to be great fun for me to meet. His interests, apart from Urdu Poetry, were not likely to coincide with mine (or so I thought). His Naats were, of course, delightful to listen to on Radio Pakistan and his Nohas and Syed Aalé Raza's Salaam at every Muharram were always something I watched when I could. I had always thought that was what he was about … until I met him later.

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My friendship with the Chittagong poets had developed fairly over the years. Most of them were regular visitors to the ships and were always included in our regular Mushaerahs that I held there on my ships. You will hear some of their verses in future blogposts and on a website. A few examples are in this post, too.

Bangladesh's war brought Asghar (Gorakhpuri) Bhai to Karachi - after having been left for dead under various corpses by the Mukti Bahini. His escape tales were worth listening to - as were most tales told by him. He was really a fascinating story-teller. Asghar Bhai was someone I always loved. Along with him, from Chittagong, came Nasir Zaidi (Shohrat) and his friend Kazim 'Nudrat' (Kajjoo) Abidi, two young poets.

Every now and then, we'd have Asghar Bhai read out a few of his verses. One of my favourite pieces,  recorded soon after Bhutto's death, was his Tanha Farishtay Ka Noha.

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On some occasions we'd have another friend from Chittagong join us: Kavish Umar, who never became popular here. He was a superb poet and wrote often. At one Mushaerah in Chittagong, with Comodore Asif Alvi presiding, the first few poets did not turn up. Each name was called and there was no one to answer. (The reason was a little political problem. We have those in Mushaerahs just as we have them in our Cricket teams being selected.) The crowd was seemingly getting angry.

Asif (Alvi) Mamooñ - a second cousin of my mother - decided to call Kavish to the microphone in the hope that he would be able to keep the crowd quiet. Kavish was upset to have been called to the Mushaaerah at the beginning - but Asif Mamooñ was his boss! Kavish came up to the microphone and said, “I have just a qit’a that I wrote a few minutes ago. Here it is.”

Karayñ to kis say karayñ jabré bandigi ka gilah,

Sünay to kaun sünay shikvaé dilé naashaad,

Saré niyaaz jhükaaéñ kahaañ kahaañ, Kavish,

Falak peh ayk khüdaa haé, zameeñ peh laa-taadaad.

He then left the stage amidst tons of people clapping and wanting him to come back … and left the place to go home. True Kavish!

Kavish was a strong Muslim but had very Leftist tendencies. Yet, he was very anti-Faiz and often wrote verses that were against Faiz's philosophy. Here is one nazm that he recited on “M.V. Bagh-e-Dacca” in the last Mushaerah we held there in 1970, just before the Bangladesh war began.

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The day that Asghar Bhai arrived in Karachi, he came to see me. He had a close friendship with Nasir Jahan — and that meant that we were all soon meeting (specially with Shohrat & Kajjoo) at our place. 

My first meeting with Nasir Bhai stole my heart. Here was a man who was a wonderful conversationalist, adored classical music, totally in love of Urdu prose and poetry, recited beautiful verses, specially poems and anecdotes of Arzoo Lakhnavi and Josh Malihabadi. He loved many of my English books that I very rarely found other people reading. His wit and sarcasm were superb. And he loved the food at our house!

Nasir Jahan

During my days in the Merchant Navy I was posted to Hong Kong for a while, relieving an officer in Gokal’s GESL. When Eed-e-Meelaad-un-Nabi was a month away I was asked by NBP’s Mushtaque Sahab to help him get someone from Karachi to come and be part of the Pakistani celebrations. Nasir Bhai's name cropped up in my mind and Mushtaque Sahab was thrilled.

I phoned Nasir Bhai, asking him to come over to Hong Kong. It took a lot of convincing, since he hated flying. "I have been scared of it all the time", he told me. Finally, three phone calls later, I got him to agree to come over and he was part of the Meelaad celebrations. We also managed to convince him to recite various verses (including a Manqibat to Hazrat Ali - from Ghalib) at a local club, with me reciting a couple of mine in between his readings, too. Here is one of mine.

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A few years later Nasir Bhai, Asghar Bhai, and myself had a radio broadcast (called Baat-say-Baat) which was the only piece from the series that Nasir Bhai did that was played twice again by public demand! A part of it is what I managed to get from a friend who taped the last bit of it. I think the first 10 minutes or so are missing, but this is what I have.

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There are so many things I recall about Nasir Bhai, Asghar Bhai, Shohrat and Kajjoo. Our wonderful days together. The craziest nights out that lasted until the early hours of the morning. Tons of poetry. Many stories. Asghar Bhai & Nasir Bhai had remarkable memories of the old poets, their writings, their lives … and we were always thrilled to hear not just their verses but also the anecdotes that both told. There was one about Arzoo Lakhnavi that Nasir Bhai told us and then repeated it at a friend’s house. I have the recordings of both times but decided to share the friend's version here to give you an idea of the kind of audiences we used to have.

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Muzaffar Warsi (before his beard)

We'd all go to meet visiting poets at public gatherings and bundle them into our car to bring them home for the night. One was Muzaffar Warsi. I had met him when he carried a bunch of Currency Notes on the "M.V. Shams" to Chittagong. I was walking past the open door of his cabin when I heard sounds of a lovely recitation. I walked in and told him that it was great and he told me that he was a ٹھیك ٹھاك poet.

The first qit'a that he then recited for me was something I always remember:

Zindagi kee qabaa ka har tük∂aa زندگی كی قبا كا ھر ٹكڑا
Vaqt kay paérahan meñ taankaa haé وقت كے پیرہن میں ٹانكا ھئے
Aé zaamaanah, hamayñ düaaéñ day اے زمانہ ہمیں دعايں دے
Tayree üryaanioñ ko dhaanka haé تیری عریانیوں كو ڈھانكا ھئے

Muzaffar Bhai always came to meet me whenever he arrived in Karachi. I miss his voice. Among my favourite pieces from him was his Ya Rahmat-ul Lil Aalameeñ.

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Among others who came often to the Iqbal Town house were people whose poems I also recorded there: Himayat Ali Shaér, Mohsin Ehsan, Naseer Turabi, Havi (from Quetta), Mohsin Bhopali, Athar Nafees, and Peerzada Qasim. I will put some of their verses on a new website. (Soon — I promise!)

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Suroor Barabankvi left this world in 1980. We all miss him an awful lot. He reminds me most of all of his shayr that said:

Jin se mil kar zindagi say ishq ho jaae, voh log

Aap nay shaayad nah daykhay hoñ, magar aésay bhi haeñ! 

•

I was in a hospital in London, going through a surgery. During a heavily-dosed period on the first day I saw Asghar Bhai walking in and saying he was there to see me. I asked Nuzhat when I woke up if Asghar Bhai had come and she said I was obviously dreaming. I said I'll be going back to Karachi in 2 weeks and will ask Asghar Bhai to come every day and keep me company while I am recuperating in bed.

When I arrived in Karachi, my cousin Naz (who was staying at our house) asked me if there are two Asghar Gorakhpuris. I said, "Of course not!" — and she brought out a Jang Newspaper that said Asghar Gorakhpuri was dead! I was dumbfounded. I rang up his Brother-in-Law, a fellow Master in the Merchant Navy, and he said Asghar Bhai had died with a heart attack when Shohrat and Kajjoo were visiting him at home. Nuzhat took the car out and I, lying in the back with great difficulty, went to his house.

Asghar Bhai had died within minutes of the time that I remember seeing him in hospital! Even stranger, he gave some of his writings to Nasir and said to give it to me and told him to write ‘Zaheer’ in the corner "with a ز" because he thought Nasir would write it with a ظ like most people. He took a sip of water after that remark — and was no more!

•

Kavish Umar, for reasons best known to him, disappeared from our lives. He used to live in Orangi Town. I have no idea where he went. Neither did Shohrat or Kajjoo know. (If any of you know where he is, please do tell me!)

•

Nasir Bhai phoned me from Islamabad and said he was coming to Karachi and that I should ask Nuzhat to make his favourite Kabaabs and Kheer and he will come with Shohrat. When Nuzhat came back from the office the next day, she asked if I knew about Nasir Bhai. I said he'll be here for dinner tonight and you have to make some food for him. She said she'd just heard on the radio in the car that he was dead and the body would be coming by the flight he was to come by.

Shohrat and I reached the graveyard and waited for his body that was coming from the airport. We buried him and I cried an awful lot. A lot more than I had for anyone in years.

•

Shohrat died 2 years ago, just a few weeks after I had gone to see his child's wedding.

•

Kajjoo had been ill for a while. He was bedridden often. One day he phoned me to say he was feeling a lot better and would come to see me soon. "Do you have some old Chittagong Mushaerahs that we could play?" he asked. I said I did have a few. Three days later his daughter phoned me to say that Kajjoo had passed away.

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These recitations that I have on tape are my only connect with a beautiful past.

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Jehan Ara, daughter of Mushtaque Sahab, became a mooñh-boli bahen for me soon after our first two meetings. Much after we both left GESL, I also worked with her in the Media Publishing Agency she ran and I did a small computer consultancy in HK for a while. Much later, she came back with her family to Karachi and joined me at Solutions Unlimited (SU) & Enabling Techmologies (ET) in 1994. She wanted to start a media agency here, but Pakistan did not seem to be the right place.

Eventually Jehan also helped me increase Enabling Technologies and was a 'partner' in it (although it stayed as my company on the records - something neither of us thought of legally changing with all the hassles that involved). We worked together for a while until I decided to join the Kasuris (of Beaconhouse) and set up BITS.

Jehan decided to continue with Enabling Technologies, which is not working at the moment because she is P@SHA's President and doing extremely well (as is P@SHA). Her blog, specially if you are interested in technology and women, is worth a read.

BITS became mine after the Kasuris decided to stay out of IT … and I gave 50% of it to Sabeen Mahmud, who had, more or less, started working with me when she was 15! She is brilliant and was responsible for loads of our work: from Jehan's Interactive floppy-disk version of her biodata that we passed everywhere (it won a prize at an exhibition here!) to the wonderful Faiz CD and more.

Sabeen now runs PeaceNiche - an NGO. Its first 'product' — T2F, a place that you must visit if you are in Karachi — is respected in most cities in Pakistan.

BITS (Beyond Information Technology Limited, to give it its full name) is now a consultancy and works entirely off the Internet.

A story we all need to see …

On YouTube there are several moments that many of us get moved by. This was one that has moved me tremendously.

Here's a boy. Homeless, orphan, sold gums and sweets on the street. He loved to sing and this is why he applied … and was picked up to come to the Korean Talent Show. No relationships, sifaarish, bribes. Nothing.

Watch this:

We have a million kids like this on our streets. But with no feeling of music or art or anything, how do we train them to live and become the giants that some of them can become.

The Kirana Gharaana: Jhinjhoti Thumri

Ustad Faiyaz Khan (of the Agra Gharaana) called Ustad Abdul Karim Khan "the greatest singer of his time". Everyone loved his voice, taans, and his amazingly raseelay taraanaas.

Arguably the finest classical singer in India, Ustad sahib made several recordings that have been released on 78s and transferred on to LPs. You can buy them now on CDs, if you have missed out on them. They are a treat!

Of all the delightful recordings that he made, the gorgeous Thumri in Jhinjhoti was his finest piece and here it is for you.

It has, since, been sung by numerous singers, but I thought I'd just add 3 more pieces of that Thumri that are rarer than the ususal materials available - generally - on records.

K L Saigal (though not a Kirana Gharaana singer) sang a small piece of it in the original Devdas. It was never released on a 78 because of its short length … but you can hear it here.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, in his role as a playback singer and music director, decided to make a recording (now available in the Saregama Series) with Lakshmi Shanker. His taraana is so evocative of what Karim Khan sahib did.

Finally, it is Roshanara Begum - the Kirana singer who came to Pakistan. Her long version of this Thumri is great and pays a wonderful tribute to Karim Khan sahib, her teacher.

Enjoy!

Oaf Tobark …

Can hardly put this down!

[Get it from Liberty Books]

Bertrand Russell

(Written for Ragni)

•••

Here is a picture of Bertrand Russell, taken by Dame Lotte Meitner-Graf. It hangs in the Captain's Dayroom (although many people call it a 'library') in our house.

Lotte was a lovely old photographer. She took several portraits of Russell on his birthdays and other days. She also told me how she had a lot of difficulty in photographing 'a young Princess Elizabeth, who was very sober and not a bit like her sister'.

There is a print of this picture as a frontispiece in Bertrand Russell's autobiography. I always thought it would look great on the cover instead of the picture she had used. I went to see her in London, having once been told by my father that she was a wonderful photographer — and, soon, I was heralded in by a beautiful little deaf girl who'd been with Lotte for years.

Lotte started discussing London's weather (it was raining like crazy) and then moved on to loads of other things, including the fact that my father had met her in London. She remembered "... that Indian doctor. He had a lovely sense of humour ...". She spoke of Pandit Nehru, whom she had taken many pictures of and found him to be a wonderful talker.

I had a great time and had a piece of fresh fluffy chocolate cake her girl had made. I then said to her, showing the book that I was carrying, that this was a lovely picture and I'd like it framed as a large one. About 1.5'x2' was what she thought would be OK and the print would cost me £150 - something that I did not have. But I said go ahead. I'll get the picture the next trip. She said that I should reconsider taking the other picture that was on the cover. "It is so much better", she insisted. I said: No -  this was what I wanted! She told me that it wasn't quite as good, but she'd do it.

Two days later I went back to her and gave her £10 in advance. She smiled at me and said I should look out of the window in the next room as Bertie was coming to her house for a set of pictures. I could not meet him at her house since he wanted to come privately, always. I looked outside and, eventually, saw Bertrand Russell - the greatest philosopher of our time - walking down the road, with an ice-cream cone in one hand and another one in the other hand. I believe he was often seen that way. That was really wonderful. (I did see Russell earlier, in a garden near his house, when he walked past in the mornings to read. I also saw him at one of his last meetings in London.)

Next trip, when I reached London, I had no money with me, though I did have about £100 in a bank … but I wasn't sure if I should borrow the money from someone and get the picture or not. Maybe I'll phone her the following trip, I thought.

The next day we heard that Russell had died.

I just had to get the picture. I told Nuzhat, borrowed the money from someone, and phoned Lotte. She said I should come over. When I got there, she said the picture was much "brillianter, if I can use a word children use these days. Much more than I thought it would be". She was really thrilled to see it and said to me that she'd let me have it for just £50, because I was right in choosing a good picture.

(Ragni: The picture hangs in the room where I spend most of my time. Under it is a collection of his books. You can have both when I am no longer here, but I certainly hope you'll have to wait a bit … I promised you that I'd try and be around until I am at least 80 years old!)

Mustafa Zaidi

He was born 81 years ago in Allahabad. He wrote poetry (first as Tegh Allahabadi and, later, as Mustafa Zaidi) and several of his books of poems were published. We now even have a proper Kulliaat, so those of you who have not read most of his work should go out and get it. Now!

(This is unlike the various forms of Kulliaat of Faraz published, with incremental verses, while he was alive … and, recently, Fahmida Riaz's Kulliaat, although I hope to see her writing many more verses).

My first reaction to seeing his work was of utter amazement. Published in 1949, I read Zanjeerayñ about 3 years later - when I was just 12 - and could not stop. Since then I bought every book he published: Roshni; Shehré Azar; Mauj Meri Sadaf Sadaf; Garaybaan; Qabaaé Saaz — and, of course, his posthumously published Kohé Nida.

Through all my love of Urdu poetry, something that had happened almost as far as I can think back — with regular mushaeraas in our own house and among relatives and Abi's friends — I did read a lot of poems. In spite of being a great Josh Maleehabaadi fan, a Sahir Ludhianvi devotee, and a lover of Faiz, Mustafa Zaidi's works were always my favourites. This man's works were remarkably different. I still read his collected works after a few days. His poetry had truth, beauty, love, and honesty.

Mustafa Zaidi was a great follower of Josh

and the old poet looked upon him like a son. 

Mustafa's poems contain some of his finest ghazals, too, but his nazms were even better. His response to Faiz and Sibté Hasan for refusing to print his work (because of the government's ideas!) had him write a lovely poem. It became the talk of the town. Even the poem that didn't get published became a household kalaam and everyone of us recited it. His poem about a possible war with India is remarkable. Whether it's his small poem on Vietnam or a major work, like his amazing travel tale, they are works that I find impossible to see in any collection of other poets. (Why do I not name the poems? I want you to go out and get his collected works and find them!) 

Sadly, Mustafa was murdered in 1970 (just 4 days before his 40th birthday). Part of the blame fell on his 'girlfriend' of the time, Shahnaz Gul. She was caught and tried, but the police — for reasons the intimate parties know well but won't tell —  cleared her and decided that Mustafa had committed suicide. Shahnaz probably was in the know of what really happened, though she did not actually kill him. She went back to her husband, who had actually found Mustafa's body (and Shahnaz Gul, in a stupor, lying next to him). Yes, she was an absolutely amazing woman and had loads of strange and madly-in-love 'friends'. None, I imagine, could have loved her as much as Mustafa Zaidi. His last five poems about her will tell you the kind of love he had for her. Here is one beautiful shayr he wrote for her:

اترا تھا جس پہ  باب حیا کا ورق ورق 

بستر کی ایک ایک شکن کی شریک تھی

The government (I really wouldn't know who else to blame!) went to town on him. The entire period after the trial we had nothing in the papers other than a 'second murder' of Mustafa by the press. Jang, the paper with the highest readership in Pakistan — and something that went into millions of homes — carried images, stories, discussions, even interviews with prostitutes, about how 'evil' Mustafa was. The public 'swallowed' all of this, decided that the murder of such a man was something that needed no tears, moved his books either out of the house or locked them up. Children were not to read about him. Youngsters were never to be given his writings. Soon, we lost his works and his popularity — and, for many younger people, Mustafa did not exist.

It is fortunate that Mustafa is now 'back' and many young people are beginning to read him again today.

There are many things to read about him, including Lauren Steele's beautiful English work (which includes some of his poems, translated by her, and an elegy by Salaam Machli-Shahri). There is remarkable piece by Raza Rumi on his blog. I was a bit perturbed at the piece's early statement (has it now been slightly modified?) that Mustafa had committed suicide. I knew that was not the truth and many people also felt that way. But that's what the government and the police had people believe — and Raza is much younger than I am so I won't begrudge him writing that way. He writes well, and the piece is beautiful.

However, Saba Zaidi (a niece of Mustafa) wrote two lovely remarks on Raza's piece so do read those, too. It'll help you, perhaps, change your mind a bit.

I would have liked to write a lot more about Mustafa Zaidi ... but I decided that this should be enough. I'll hold a session at T2F soon and you'll be able to come and hear his voice reading his poems and also hear other people who knew him better talk about him.

In the meanwhile, here is a piece by him that should keep you thrilled. It contains a shayr by Mustafa Zaidi — and one that I know still holds good:

ہر ایک شخص طلبگار تھا کہ شام و سحر 

اسی کا نام  لیا جاۓ  اور  اذاں  کی طرح