Etymology - 1 (Kind of …)

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Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time … and I am in love with it. If I ever had the chance to choose a career for life, Etymologist would be it.

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Of course, I never did choose a career for life.

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I started wanteing to be a doctor, like my father (Abi) - but not because of his real influence. Born in 1940 to a doctor - who had been recruited in late 1943 to the British Military Service in WW2 - I travelled to several cities (in and outside India, and to parts that later became Pakistan) with him until the war ended. 

There were no children in camps but Abi insisted that Ummi (my mother) and I had to go along … and was granted permission to do so by the Army. So I was the only child around. The first trip I went to was when I was 4 years old.

With Abi I went fairly often to Hospitals where he treated several soldiers who were injured, some almost beyond belief. I saw nearly dead soldiers and even saw a soldier die before my eyes. I never seemed to fear death. In fact the oldest memory I have was that my Nani (maternal grandmother) died when I was 3 … and I remember that event so clearly. When she was gone, I was told that the angels had taken her to a place to cure her. That was what 'dead' meant to me for years.

In the middle of the war we went to Calcutta for a few days holiday with my Khala (Vaseem). It was there that sirens announced planes coming down (Japanese, I was told) to bomb us. We hid under tables. I was told not to pick up sweets that they may drop, because eating them would cause us to die. Don't know if that was to scare me or it was real.

There were two things I did remember from the camps: One was the day we were celebrating Victory. A young soldier climbed up a long set of stairs and jumped into a pool of water underneath. He missed. Fell flat a couple of feet away. And was dead. On the spot!

Before that death, I remember my father and his colleague discussing a man whose head been pierced by some bullet marks. His colleague, perhaps his senior, had said that they couldn't treat him as it was too close to the brain and there was no way that he would survive the surgery. I often thought of that. I even asked my father, who drew weird pictures on a piece of paper to show what a brain was. But I couldn't really understand.

Later on, just before the 1947 Partition, I was in Budge Budge where my Khalu (famous Indian hockey-player, Asad Ali) had been posted by the Customs.  I saw a few dead people floating down the river because of Hindu-Muslim riots. The river was just across the street. My childhood friend, Sattar, a servant 3 years older than me, was playing football with me and he kicked it so hard that it went across the street, right into a winding part of the Hooghly River. He rushed and bent down the floating bushes to pick up the ball and threw it right back after showing it to me. It was the head of a dead child he had picked up by mistake.

So I wanted to be a doctor as I grew up. A brain surgeon was what I wanted to be. Life at colleges were tough. I got thrown out of one; I walked off the exams in the second one. That'll be in another blogpost that I write. 

Abi was getting severe heart attacks during those days and I couldn't have lived off his money for long. Another year at college. Five years at Medical School. Two years of Internships. Several years of setting myself up as a Surgeon. No way!

I told Abi the only one of two lies I remember telling him: I had done well at my exams and was going to get a First Division. (The second lie I won't get into.) I then said I was going to sail away on a friend's father's ship to Chittagong and meet my cousin there … and come back. I wrote to him from Chittagong that I had actually joined a ship and was in the Merchant Navy now. He was most upset. Again, that'll be in another blogpost, too.

Abi died in 1963. Didn't even live to see me pass my exams and get a reward for having topped the International Navigation marks. Then they suddenly decided to stop giving the official awards, so my Merchant Navy College Head, Captain Safdar, gave me a TimePiece-cum-StopWatch as my gift.

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Many of my loves and passions come to me from Abi: Classical Music, Eastern and Western; becoming a voracious reader in English and Urdu; love of and the writing of Urdu Poetry; watching Cricket & Tennis; being totally in love of Science; a passion for correct languages; fighting for Human Rights; loving the truth; even crying in movies :(

We were poor, too. My father had left the Army after Partition, had serious medical problems himself, had a few odd jobs but coudn't continue at his clinic so there was really no money in the house. Ummi was amazing at how she managed to make the loveliest dishes with what little we had - and kept not us but every visitor asking for more. She knew how to make the food we loved out of everything she could get. I used to always tease her about how she managed to put water into everything and make it expand into a lovely, large, edible dish.

Abi's love of books never died. On days when he did go to the clinic and made some money, he'd give most of it to Ummi … but he always bought another book. For himself; for Ummi; and for my birthday gifts. He said to me that if I were really hungry I could tighten my belt and survive another day when food would somehow arrive. But a book was a book. "It gives you pleasure whether your stomach is full or empty …".

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One of his loves was Dictionaries. We had many of them. Farsi, Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. Old and new. He loved words. … and that, too, came to me.

Which is why I really should have been an Etymologist. 

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From the Merchant Navy, after 25 years of service, I came back to Karachi (Ummi's illness and the birth of my daughter after 14 years of marriage) and set-up an educational computing company, Interface, the first of its kind in Pakistan. This arrangement, bad as it was, moved me (with a lot of difficulty) into opening Solutions Unlimited - a consultancy that now runs with my wife heading it. I founded Enabling Technologies, which produced the best Multimedia Software including CD-ROMs in Pakistan. As an Apple-only company we even produced our first CD-ROM for IBM! (That's going to be one of my blogpost, I promise.)

In the meanwhile I also joined Hamdard University and taught for three years until the first Masters came out. Jehan Ara and Sabeen assisted me at some lectures, too. My best student was Syed Ali Hasan, who is now one of our great animators and now also runs a 3D Printing company.

While this was on, I began drawing cartoons for The Friday Times. You can see them here. Do see the first few, anyway. I'll add more as soon as they become available.

My companies — when they started — had my wife Nuzhat, Sabeen, Jehan Ara, and myself … and none of us had taken Computer Studies in our lives, except Sabeen at school. And she had come to my company for further studies. Her KGS Computer Teacher hated her. From Sabeen's exam papers some pages removed when they were sent to UK … so she failed the subject. Efforts by her father, Tallat, proved that this had happened. An act on his part (probably bashing up the Principal!) was probably stopped by Sabeen's mother, Mahenaz, who was teaching at KGS Kindergarten.

The remaining three of us learnt computers on our own, using a BBC computer and then moving on to a 9" Mac. Nothing comes even close to these two systems.

Later on, Sabeen — who'd joined us when she was 14+ as a student and stayed on until she formed PeaceNiche-T2F — and I decided to open Beyond Information Technology Solutions (BITS), partly in association with the Kasuris. They soon left, dedicated as they were to Education, and I owned the company.

Jehan Ara - who had joined us when she had come back from Hong Kong - said she'd rather not be part of this. So we split half of the company: She continued Enabling Technologies and is now the head of Nest I/O and P@SHA.

Sabeen soon became a Director at BITS (as a gift for her years of service with me) and continued with me as a Consultant to some ventures that we occasionally took online (including our work at Tehelka/India and a leading paper in Afghanistan), despite running her new organisation extremely well. In fact T2F is now considered a standard here and elsewhere.

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This ended with Sabeen's assassination on 24th April 2015.

Like me, Sabeen was never afraid of death.

Listen to a TV Program about her.

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I am sorry I have bored you with this rather long drawn-out preamble. I promise I will move on to Etymology - 2 as soon as I have the time. If you like what I write, you'll find it enjoyable.

Its all going to be online now …

Starting with my very first cartoons (and I mean my very first, coz I had never drawn one before) that started being published in The Friday Times, I did a few other things: A few cartoons for The News; A few Photos or Book Covers or Contents, suitably altered; a few Fake-Ads. And maybe a few more items.

Sadly, my dear friend, my adopted daughter, my mentee … and then my mentor, Sabeen Mahmud (Sab), is not here any more. And I can't even try to tell you how many of us feel about this. There are nothing but tears that flow out. Every few hours. Every day. And there are many silent sobs in between.

Sab had asked me to print quite a few of the cartoons and put them up at T2F for 3 days, beginning with my birthday. (I'll be 75 on the 2nd October this year). The cartoons & similar stuff is now being put up on Tooniyaat. If you go there, start with the oldest post (Howdy) and then move up. This way you'll get the chronological order in which they were published.

There was her idea of having me appear on a program at T2F, on the 2nd & 3rd October, where I'd be asked questions by her about my crazy life and crazier ideas. She mailed me a long list of questions that she'd ask. Yes, Sab. I will answer them, too, in Koee Mayday Dil Say Poochhay, a recent blog that I have started. The posts on these may be written, pod-casted, or video-casted.

Among things that Sab thought T2F would print some day would be my poetry book, and a collection of my father's stories, essays, and poems. My poems are now put up every Sunday, (though not in any chronological order). You can see them on Alam Zadah.

My father, Abi (or Azhar Kidvai), has a website now - and it is being added to every few days. It will have his entire collection, including all his verses in his own handwriting. There are some memories and some pictures, too.

Bye.

Bowled Over by Imran Khan!

A Picture of IK that caught Dr. Israr's attention.

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Israr said that women should not be allowed

to watch a Cricket Match since

the bowlers actions

[s]excite them.

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I loved IK when he was a Cricketer.

I hated him since he moved into politics.

I really couldn't stand his views on youths and women.

(Strangely, both vote for him.)

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These quotes are from an old interview in

The Friday Times

(Jan 19-25, 1995)

Parliamentary System

Parliamentary system of democracy is nonsense. I am asked why I do not enter politics. I say that for a start I don't believe in getting into a system in which you have to pay exorbitantly to get elected. Secondly, this party system parliamentary democracy, this is just nonsense.The discipline of the party system means that sometimes you have to compromise, you have to lie in public. Therefore only a certain kind of personality is suited to this system and I cannot be part of it. I'm much better outside politics.

The current leaders haven't a clue which way they are taking us. Someone at the top has to set an example, and then be determined to set things straight. If you paid bureaucrats a better salary, for example, they would collect taxes. Their salaries are unrealistic in the first place. So they become corrupt. l don't want to talk about solutions, or what system would be best for the country because I don't want to get into politics. Every government has asked me to join them and I have always refused.

Karachi's Youths

The reason people here wear trousers and shirts is to show that they are a degree better than the common man. I am ashamed to see the upper class youth of Karachi, for instance. What relevance have they to Pakistan? If you left them in a village they would probably get lost.

The West & Us

Familly is their biggest weakness. Our strength is our family system. While I was in university I read Germaine Greer‘s "The Female Eunuch" and thought women‘s lib was right. I now realise that it's impractical.

[The women] are all on diets and half of them have anorexia. In discos, all the fat women sit on the side and get drunk and depressed.

If reducing clothes means progress then that should mean that the African tribes are very progressive!

I said [in an earlier interview] that having lived in the west I have seen its strengths and its weaknesses. Their strengths are. meritocracy, justice, human rights, and so on. Their weaknesses, their biggest threat. is the breakdown of the family. This is a direct consequence of immorality. Since the sex drugs and rock n roll revolution of the 60s, I myself have seen the breakdown of the family. And then women's lib, which has degraded the status of mother, they say why should we stay home and look after children when we can go out and work too. In other words, motherhood, which is looked up to in our culture, is nothing in the west. As a result their family life has broken down. When men and women both go out to work, soon there is a divorce. How is the home to be run? Degrading the mother's role plus sexual permissiveness has led to the mess that the west is in right now.

l would like to see women have all the rights given to them by Islam. ln my view, men and women are equal but different. What western women's lib is trying to prove is that they‘re the same. They're trying to compete with men. This was never meant to be, it was a complimentary role and never a competitive role. The biggest damage that women's lib has done is to destroy the family. All my friends in the west are divorced.

Men & Women

Men and women are supposed to have complimentary roles, the basis of which is that only women can be mothers. A man cannot change nappies. It is not possible for a man to manage a house. If a woman wants to pursue a career then she shouldn't have children. If you want to have children. then you have to have a woman at home. One has to provide and one has to look after the kids and it cannot be the man who looks after the kids!

Gays

The limits of freedom have gone too far. For instance, I disagree with gays getting married. This is against the norms of civil society.

Rape

The problem here is that the weak are oppressed, not women in particular, that is all lies. When Veena Hayat was raped the government almost fell, but when a poor woman is raped, no one cares. Think about the poor man whose wife is raped. imagine what he goes through! 

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Done!

Congrats Beaconhouse!

This is the post I put on my other blog

but its here for those who read

only these posts.

Click the link above!