Saturday, February 21, 2015

THE FRAGMENTED THRONE and LEGACY of TIPU SULTAN

 Treasures from India: Jewels from the Al-Thani Collection 

 

THE FRAGMENTED THRONE
and
LEGACY
of
TIPU SULTAN



Al Thani Collection

Hassan Al Thani is a Qatari art collector and between him and his family members there is a large art collection showcased in various museums and gallerias internationally.

Recently closed, there was an exhibition of his collections at the Met, titled Treasures from India. It caught my attention as it contained the finial, the top portion, of the throne of Tipu Sultan.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/treasures-from-india

There were supposedly eight of them, the throne was broken in order to share the spoils of war. One is in Windsor Castle. This one was found in a Scottish home, and auctioned a few years back.

Another of his collection was a magic box.

Tipu Sultan’s Magic Gold Box

Not really clear what was the purpose of it, but divided in twenty equilateral triangles, all have an Arabic number on them, supposedly to solve some arithmetic problem.

We have been fascinated by Tipu Sultan, and while growing up, he is one of the few undisputed heroes we read of. He is the one credited with the quote that one day of tiger's live is better than hundred years of a jackal.

We were raised with superhuman image of Tipu Sultan, who would have defeated East India Company had it not been the conspiracies of fellow Muslims, the Nizams of Deccan and his own vizir Mir Sadiq, who betrayed by pulling troops during the Siege of Sirangapatam to collect their salaries.

Reading up on him make me realize that he was perhaps the only one who defeated the English more than once. He was smart, clever and had reached out to Afghanistan, Constantinople and Napoleon to find an alliance against the British.  He may even be credited with the first one using rockets in warfare.
 
Although many Muslims rulers of India who fought and were defeated or killed by the East India Company like, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Sirajud Dula and likes occupy a hero's status in India, Tipu Sultan does not.

And the reason is not that complementary. There are many accounts of his intolerance and savagery to non Muslims. Granted most of the accounts are by English and Hindus and have their biases but his own writings in letters to others do not help either. He seems to be very clear in his goal to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. His proclamations are clearly laced with concepts of religious war against the infidels. He is fighting with Marhattas as much as he is fighting the East India Company.

By some accounts, he had destroyed multiple Churches and Temples, and forcibly converted Christians and Hindus to Islam. And by forcible conversion I mean forcible circumcision.

 We were also told as kids the the English were smart enough to make sure that there is no more Tipu and thus had taken his sons to England and were completely brainwashed. I could not see any reference to that. There was a revolt ie the Vellore Mutiny in 1806 where the family members and other prisoners revolted and were mercilessly crushed. Perhaps most of the surviving family lives in Calcutta and rest scattered all over the world.

Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan, father of the Noor Inayat Khan, who was portrayed in the World Unit Production movie Enemy of the Reich, was grandson of a granddaughter of Tipu Sultan.

Well that is what it is. History is always a mixed bag. He was one who chose to die with sword in his hand rather than running away to fight for another day.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasirgondal/sets/72157650282810866/



Oscar Shorts 2015, My Picks

Just came back from watching Oscar Shorts

http://theoscarshorts.shorts.tv/

My pick
Animated Shorts:  Me and My Moulton
Live Action Shorts.  Butter Lamp 








LIVE ACTION SHORTS:

Pervaneh: Story of a teenager Afghani girl in Zurich, trying to find legal status, being financially exploited and trying to help a struggling family back home. Accidentally finds friendship and experience liberty meeting up a renegade Caucasian girl,

Butter Lamp:A roving portrait photographer in a small town in Tibet (perhaps). Excellent portrayl of characters. Groups of people come and get their pictures taken in front of background screens of views of all over China, Tieenman Square, Great Wall, Monasteryies etc. Powerfal play of human emotions in an otherwise ordinary situation.

Phone Call: Will perhaps get the Oscar. Excellent role by Sally Hawkins of Blue Jasmine fame. Acts as a crisis center telephone worker who helps a miserable man live through the last minutes of his life, while herself anxiously waiting to meet her boyfriend at 7 PM

Aya: An Israeli women cannot resist an oppurtunity to be someone else for some time and runs away for a short time, with a Danish music judge who takes her as his pickup driver from Tel Aviv to Jerusulam. She lets herself wander a bit too much before she heads home,

Boogaloo and Graham:Most Funny. Story of two brothers in Belfast given chicken by their dad as a present, start to love them and would not compromise on anything to be separated from them. Most hilarious joke lines.

ANIMATED SHORTS:


Me and My Moulton: A story of three sisters in Norway, living on limited resources with what-they-think weird parents, longing for a better life. Finding out in end that happiness can be in small things and appreciate their parents despite their limitations. Old style animation, simple budget very well done.

Feast:
Typical Disney style. High tech animation, a gluttony dog, ultimately helps get his owner win the love of his life, and everybody lives and eats happily thereafter

The Bigger Picture: Story of two brothers and their dying mother. One lives at home and takes care of house chores and the other is worldly successful, have sibling rivalry, but find peace between themselves after mother dies. Very artistic painting style animation.

A Single Life:

A very short movie, only two minutes, With in the playback of a record, one lives the whole life from pizza loving kid to cremation and all the stages in between. Very artfully done.

Sweet Cocoon:Funny high tech animation of a cocoon and finally turning into a beutifyl butterfly for a split second before being eaten up by a bird. Pixar typical

The Dam Keeper: Story of a neglected piglet who doubles as the Dam Keeper of a town and is a day time school kid, How he is either avoided or bullied and how tender feelings are cultivated once he meets a mate.
Footprints: A complicated satire on trigger happy gun lovers
Duet: A typical Disney animation of a boy, his dog and the girl though different stages of life, from infants to a loving couple. A fairly tale. Goo music and dance animation, nothing much else

Bus Story: A dark humor story of a bus driver rookie in rural Canada.



Sunday, February 15, 2015

Hundred Shades of New York by Mustansar Hussain Tarar

Hundred Shades of New York

by

Mustansar Hussain Tarar





I had to re-write all of this. This has never happened to me before. Google does not save a copy of what you draft. I spend all the time in writing this peace and inadvertently pressed the delete button one more time than I should have. And I lost the whole draft. 

So, here I go again, and hopefully I do not make the same mistake again. Perhaps I wrote something Providence didn't like and hence suffered this fate. 

So, last December, I was in Lahore airport waiting to come back to NY. It was the foggiest day and the six a.m. PIA flight ultimately took off after thirteen hours. I had a lot of time to kill in the International lobby. On my umpteenth visit to the lone book store, I finally picked up the book. It had an attractive cover, Mustansar Hussain Tarar ( it seems that one has to say his full name otherwise something is left out) sporting an unworn jersey around his neck with Lady Liberty and NY Skyline in the background. My journey was long and the book would make good company. Why not. It was a recent book, about his trip in 2005 and so not that much about the distant past.

I had never read his travelogues, which are I presume his main claim to fame; in his writings, I mean.  I have read his two novels, Raakh and Des Howay Perdes and really enjoyed Raakh. It is a very powerful story. And obviously everybody knows Tarrar as a tv person, as an actor and an anchor.

It is a long book, more than 650 pages, and although it is named for NY, has more than 150 pages about Florida; Orlando and its environs to be specific.

He claims he never felt a desire to visit USA as he thought there was nothing much to see here. He had traveled the world extensively which is obvious looking at his list of books. He thought of America as a land of gaudy and belligerent people, who have nothing to impress him; so not worth his time and money.

He visits USA in 2005, that is where the book is set in, to see his first grandson for the first time and to attend his first birthday. His daughter, a physician had married a Pakistani American and moved to Orlando. Now Mr Nofal, named after Warqa b Nofal is to celebrate his first birthday. In addition to that, his son, a CSS officer in Foreign Service, is in NY on a World Bank scholarship to study International Relations in Columbia and is living in a Broadway apartment. 

He lands at JFK and anticipates 'special treatment' being a Pakistani. To his astonishment he has a rather pleasant and positive experience. he somehow feels deprived of what he expected.

Tarar has the amazing skill to explain the things in a vivid way. He takes you along with him and no matter how much he wanders into the details he does not let you drift far away. The readers believes he has been wherever Tarar takes him. He has quite strong opinions on almost everything, but when his observations and experiences let him feel differently than what he thinks he should, he is not shy to admit and change his opinion. That is a rather unique characteristic different from our other writers. Many would bend over backwards and come up with convoluted explanations to stick to their initial position in the face of obvious on the contrary; not him. Tarar has the courage to admit and change.

He starts his book with reference to Maxim Gorky's 'City of the Yellow Devil'. Written at the turn of last century, it is a scathing account of NY and the superficial and shallow life of its inhabitants. He predicts it as a doomed city which corrupts those who live in it. This was the mindset Tarar came in with. Before he left, New York had changed him and his opinion. He admits falling in love with the city.

He spends considerable amount of time and pages of his books on visiting various museums and centers of arts. From Metropolitan Museum of Art to Museum of Natural History to Guggenheim Museum to Museum of Modern Art to Lincoln Center to Broadway Theaters to The Public Library and the Greenwich Village. He shows the excitement of a child and does not feel shy at all expressing it when talking about the artifacts he had known and read about all these years. 

Being an artist and raised in the 40's and 50's he mentions time and again names he had felt a connection all his life. From Allen Poe to Whitman, Mark Twain to Hemingway, Charles Ray to Louis Armstrong, Rock Hudson to Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor to Whitney Houston and of course Marilyn Monroe.

He does not like country music and loves Jazz.

A tendency seen in many but perfected by him is the way he connects what is in front of us with what is in our collective past. He finds similarities in strange ways, hidden from many eyes. Looking at the staircase of Guggenheim he recalls the Minar of Samarra Mosque in Iraq and the Giraldo in Seville. Jazz reminds him of a painful voice of the oppressed people around the world. 

On his visit to New York Public Library, he searches for Urdu books and to his dismay finds a very limited collection. He offers his books to be there and three of his books are now part of the collection. That includes Bahao, Raakh and Qurbat e Marg main Muhabat, a sort of trilogy.

He enjoys the strolls in the Central Park and is in Times Square the first night in New York. He visits many other neighborhoods like Harlem's 125th Street and Chinatown. He has an interesting conversation with a Jewish Rabbi.

Writing about the Village, he recalls the gayness of the area and the Stone-well Inn. He reminds the West and his readers that certain areas in Pakistan are far ahead in the creed of brotherly love. He could not help admit how he had felt a heartbeat dropped while watching a performance of a Lakhtai dancing boy from Bannu.

He runs into a Pakistani in Greenwich Village; in fact an Uzbek from Peshawar. His attempts at hospitality looks suspicious to Tarar as feigned. In his excitement to show Tarar a Cafe owned by a Pakistani and frequented by Al Pacino, he asks Tarar whether he has ever heard of Al Pacino. Tarar, feeling offended, writes and I translate. "Not all but many Pakistanis living in New York, have this problem; coming straight from Mandi Bahuddin, having never been to Lahore or Peshawar, landing directly in New York, ask you, 'Do you know what is a Pizza?Have you heard of Statue of Liberty?, Do you know Marilyn Monroe?"

While talking about the superficiality of a nova rich Pakistani, he exposes, in my opinion, the problem of the educated intelligentsia elite. Why he picked up Mandi? Perhaps there is a close personal connection; the Wikipedia mentions his birthplace as Mandi and Lahore on the same page.

The Uzbeb takes him to Cafe Vivladi, which has Woody Allen and Al Pacino connections; the Pakistani owner is not present. He talks to him on the phone and offers him a return visit when he could entertain Tarrar appropriately. Tarrar takes it as a shallow gesture and does not even remember his name. Ishrat Ansari is a gem of a person and has patronized art of various sorts through his Cafe which has regular live performances. Tarar, I feel, is rough with him.

Another common style of our writers and Tarrar is no exception here, is to express quite freely while elaborating upon the physical attributes of women of color; whether they are from African or Asian origin. Moreover he is amazed why Americans go crazy about the less endowed Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy.

He has no good words for US Presidents expect one. Strangely that is Richard Nixon. Like a believer in conspiracy theories, he almost absolves Nixon of his actions and puts the blame of his exit on the 'secret hand' and says that Nixon was made to leave by the powers to be.

He makes a comment that during his various visits to the Met, he hardly saw any Asian, or South Asian to be specific. That must be his sampling error, as they are there all the times.

Although he mentions a few Pakistani friends and artists whom he meets, he does not spend any time on the social and literary life of Pakistanis in New York. Shaukhat Fehmi and Hammad Khan are amongst the lucky ones mentioned. 

Thanks to Tarar, I came to know the full name and age of Mamoon Aimen who was his class mate in elementary school; and so is Dr Khalid Butt, the famous transplant surgeon.

Errors, minor but noteworthy
While commenting on the food, he expressed his dislike of American Pizza. He mentions that Pizza are better in Europe and that Americans did not make this Italian dish right. I did not know before coming to NY that Pizza was 'invented' in USA by Italian Americans, particularly in New York.

While talking about Julia Roberts he called her movie American Beauty. I think he meant Pretty Women

He mentions Captain James Yee, The first Muslim Chaplain in the military.  He called him a doctor which he is not. I am glad that he mentioned Yee as he was the first one to expose the treatment of Gitmo prisoners and had to pay a heavy price for that. 

While talking of Orlando, he mentions Disney World as Disneyland. Disney Land is in California. 

Overall I enjoyed reading the book although it took me a lot longer than I thought to complete it. It was interesting to read about a place you live in for major part of your life, explained by someone who shares your background and is visiting it as a tourist.