Dance

Rhythms of life

It took ages for the cultural expressions in Gilgit-Baltistan to develop and mature, they are now fading away at a much faster pace -- there is a dire need of proper documentation

By Naeem Safi

Gilgit-Baltistan, being one of the most beautiful places on earth, has a lot more to offer than just the scenic beauty. Contrary to the popular belief, the inhabitants of these valleys in the northern areas are much more cultured and civilised than their counterparts in the urbanised communities of the south. Their respect for diversity, belief in originality, unaltered hospitality, a rich value system, and love for peace can hardly be matched by the mechanised, 'modernised', educated, and enlightened humanoids.

Up in these valleys, one is lucky enough to witness a humble old man -- passing by on the dirt road, with his coarse hands, worn-out clothes, and bent under the weight of a straw bundle -- transforming into this leaping and beaming dancer. As if some ibex jumping from rock to rock, with that special gaze and swift moves painting images in the air, like many of his ancestors would have done before him. The brisk footwork, the stop-motion-like feel of it, the strong eye contact combined with facial expressions, the gradual transition of gestures and moves from suggestive to persuasive, entrap the intoxicated spectator in its web, just the way a hunter would trap his prey or a lover his beloved. Reflections of feelings, emotions, and aspirations, like frozen images in each move or 'frame' of the dance. These can vary between an eagle's dignified romance, a charging soldier, the swaying dervish, a noble commander, a jolly sportsman and many others. In some styles, certain moves and gestures clearly show imitation of the mating dance found in various other species.

The dance styles found here have roots around and beyond the Pamir knot, and have evolved through many generations and religions. But somehow the origins and inspirations have been lost among the changing layers of ideologies and cultural mingling, change in lifestyle preferences, and the gradual decline in reliance on nature in its un-adulterated state.

The dances specified for cultivation, Bao Faow for instance, and other such for harvesting and other seasonal festivities have their roots in old times, and these might have been proper religious rituals of the pre-Islamic times, like the famous Navajo hunting chants. The dances of these valleys are inter-connected with layers of aesthetics, poetry, music, history, mythologies, and drama. However, the dynamics of response vary from tribe to tribe, family-to-family, season-to-season, types of rituals, and festivals. Each style or occasion requires its own music, poetry, age group, and set of costumes. Along with the regional and tribal signature styles, individual performers improvise and adjust their moves according to the music and type of event, moving back and forth between the spiritual and the carnal, the plural and the singular, the subtle and the perceptible. Despite so many variations and improvisations, there is some method, some order in this disorder, that distinguishes its variants from the others.

The narrative may not be as elaborate for the non-locals as other dance forms of the subcontinent, Kathak for instance, but that could be because of the weak vocabulary available to translate such ethnic expressions, especially their interpretive aspects. These puzzles need masters and experts to study them carefully and then translate them.

Dance, in its essence is celebration of life and not lines. It is strange that dances from these valleys yet have to make it to the national level 'cultural' celebrations, the way the rest of the four provinces are represented by an assortment of dance styles of their own. One of the most valuable and priceless assets of this country is its rich cultural diversity. And all the efforts to consciously neglect or undermine these marginalised communities and their unique identities, for some hypothetical idea of unity, have caused a lot of damage and a good part of this priceless heritage has already been lost forever.

Who knows that this art form -- if approached with a genuine desire for inquiry in mind, on onomastic, anthropological, and other such levels -- may reveal certain aspects, which can connect the scattered dots of identity in crisis and fill in the gaps. High-level academic investigations will not only help understand the beauty of it, but may be able to connect the present with the original sources of inspiration.

Such cultural expressions are beyond religious and geographical boundaries. And though, it took ages for these cultural expressions to develop and mature, they are now fading away at a much faster pace, are in dire need of proper documentation. The range of complex gestures must be deciphered, not just for the sake of preservation but also for further promotion. The preservation of the intangible cultural heritage is the least the inhabitants and the authorities of this part of the world must do, especially when mindless 'development' plans in the very region are destroying the rich range of other heritage forms, like the marvellous petroglyphs along the ancient Silk Route -- which are undoubtedly a part of the world's heritage.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2010-weekly/nos-11-07-2010/enc.htm#2

Review: Aasim Akhtar

Hazy dreams

Aasim Akhtar's recent drawings at Rohtas II were like characters in a finely woven plot where each individual is signifying the other and carrying multiple themes along the way to the final act

By Naeem Safi

But solemn is the silence

on the silvery haze

That drinks away their

voices in echoless repose,

And dreamily the evening has

stilled the haunted braes,

And dreamier the

gloaming grows.

The stanza from The Fairy Thorn by Samuel Ferguson best describes the overall mood of Aasim Akthar's "And dreamier, the gloaming grows", which is a series of his recent drawings that went on display at Rohtas II, in Lahore. The series uses the minimalist choice of materials -- 15 drawings framed in white, graphite on paper, with a couple of pastel works, and hung on white walls.

At first glance, some of the works look like a continuation of Marvin Bileck's etchings and engravings; not just for the choice of the title of the show but also for the choice of forms used, like the ones in the Heart to Heart, with which the show begins. However, it goes beyond that where the narrative begins with a metaphor from nature, and then goes on to engage metaphors of the nature. The varying tones of grey, and the choice of intimate instances -- personal, telluric, or the marriage of both -- is divulging the subconscious. It is nature that creates attraction between the two opposites and connects the organic forms of existence, or even the inorganic ones. The show is like a journey through the colourless mist of melancholy, where the images seem like reflections from a very lonely place. The place where subtle is part of the obvious, and obscure is rendering clarity.

Most of these drawings are like whispers, almost motionless, and embedded within them are the fine suggestions of the ineffable; while some are meandering through the moonlit landscapes of carnal desires, from a perspective that is slightly drifting towards the Other side, away from the land-of-the-sane-and-the-sure. A place where tall peaks of human passion are laden with tales that need to be told, and the walls of deep gorges are painted with shades of concupiscence. The interplays between the positives and the negatives, and the animate and the inanimate -- especially in the case of the five Bodyscapes -- are giving birth to the new and the more meaningful.

The Wind of Desire beautifully portrays the classic contest between the pull of desire and the vast abyss that is filled with myriad obstructions impeding the former. Along with that, the desire to break free from it, and glide over this chasm towards the ultimate bliss, intensifies this contest. The distorted torso with the bloated chest seems to be filled with the immense burden and pain that is precipitated by this conflict, as if desire is a deity and human flesh its ambrosias, struggling for survival yet defenceless and being sacrificed for a 'sacred' and inevitable cause of making the desire immortal.

In the Poppy Seed, poppy buds, flowers, and stems are rendered and composed in a manner in which they are dancing to the tune of life, depicting the never ending attraction between the pollen and the carpel, present in almost all living beings, in one form or the other, and a major thesis of life itself. The pale coloured petals of the blossoming flowers are the only objects that have used some hues in the entire body of works displayed in the show. Such a limited and careful application of colour, in this context, is apparently suggesting, or desiring, the feminine as a source for brining the colourfulness into the grand scheme of existence.

Apart from the individuality of each work, the discourse created by the titles in a particular order, and parallel to that the catharsis produced by the visuals in that order, further add on other meaningful layers to the set in totality; like characters in a finely woven plot where each individual is signifying the other while at the same time asserting its own identity, and carrying multiple themes along the way to the final act.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2010-weekly/nos-23-05-2010/enc.htm#2

Interview: Amira Farooq

"The best part is the absolute isolation"

By Naeem Safi

Amira Farooq lives and works in Lahore. She received her BFA from NCA in 2004, followed by a brief adventure in print and electronic media as a model and presenter. Since then she has been painting and recently had her first solo exhibition at Nairang Art Gallery. She creates intense dialogues concerning the complementary nature of human relationships, emotions, and the existence, by juxtaposing the opposites in contrasting colours and forms -- usually, along with some elements from nature.

She is the fifth person to go to NCA from her family, and that too only to pursue fine arts. "Father is an architect, and mother is a designer. It definitely had an influence on me, because you see the way your house is kept; every little thing, like how to view things."

TNS: How has your major in printmaking at NCA influenced your work?

AF: It's all connected. I need variations in expressions, because you learn things that you might use in the other medium. Printmaking is a two-dimensional medium and I think that comes out a lot in my work. But the more I paint, the more I break away from that.

TNS: How has NCA affected your work, if at all?

AF: NCA, obviously, is an old structure, and has taught me some discipline that you can't work without. But apart from that, it is the exposure that I got there, by meeting people from all over Pakistan, which was a huge eye-opener and got me out of my own little bubble. It has influenced my work more, conceptually, rather than in technique or skill.

TNS: How do you conceptualise your images? Do you draw on ideas or memories?

AF: I just pick an emotion, focus on it and I paint the visuals that best describe it. Sometimes I sketch, but most of the times I am working straight on canvas. I have to have music to work; that really helps channelling the emotions and in focusing.

TNS: How much role the element of chance has in your work?

AF: I think everything that we do in life is half chance. When you start making a painting, you intend to do one thing, but during the process you discover things, maybe through the paint, or let's say something spills over, or all of a sudden you see something on the canvas that you hadn't intended to make before. So yes, there is the element of chance in almost all creative processes.

TNS: What famous artists have influenced you, and how?

AF: Michelangelo has influenced me for one sheer skill, prolificacy. And then Dali for his mind; you just can't walk away from Dali without reacting. I really love Van Gough because he was the rebel of the art world. I, kind of, relate to him in terms of feeling misunderstood. In order to achieve greatness, there is a certain amount of suffering involved, and nobody gets it better than Van Gough. And then when I'm sitting down and painting, in my space, my biggest influence would probably be the first cave painter. Because here was somebody who was free of conditioning and approval, and all he thought about was just making an image, and re-creating something that he had seen in nature. And I think you have to be really free in your head from the voices of other people while you paint. So, I channel that anonymous caveman -- or woman, we don't know -- who started painting on the cave walls.

TNS: You mean you paint without any inhibition and do not expect any sort of appreciation for your work?

AF: When I am painting, the viewers are not there. They come into the picture when I show them my work. There is a dialogue. Not every piece can be loved by everyone; but every piece is loved by someone. That is a sort of validation that you need, to keep working. Because there is so much isolation in this profession that without that feedback, sometimes, it's hard to see what you are doing is really important. The job description of the artist is to be the conscience of the nation. In order to love something, you have to be free of your own selfish desires.

TNS: Do you feel that your technique of rendering is a bit simplified for painting?

AF: One could look at my work and say that it's not as 'skilled' as it is expected to be, but that is exactly my point. I'm trying to create a stylised version of reality that looks very simple from a distance, and even child-like to some extent. But at a second glance, the concept is not child-like at all. The paradox I like to play with my work is to keep the visuals very simple and the concept a little out of the box. Lately I've gone back to the primaries; if it's a simple thought, I might use fewer colours. It depends on what I am trying to say.

TNS: What are the best and the worst parts of being an artist?

AF: The best part is the absolute isolation, and it is just addictive once you start expressing yourself on a daily basis. Being an artist gives me a licence to insanity.

But then, the stereotyping can be very inextricable. Because most of the people believe that I will automatically be liberal and open to everything and anything under the sun, which is not the case. I have very clear-cut preferences and very precise likes and dislikes. And being a female artist, there are a lot of sexist gender issues attached as well.
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Published in The News on Sunday
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2010-weekly/nos-14-02-2010/enc.htm#4

Experience

Qingqi

By Naeem Safi

On way to the Walled City of Lahore for a photography assignment; the road is blocked after one had crossed the Railway Station. The closed windows and the popular songs on an FM channel running western songs are the only solace against the noise and the visuals of the dilapidated urban fabric.

In the midst of all this sound and fury, something shiny and very colourful catches the eye. It looks like two metal benches welded together and then set on wheels. It’s a Qingqi rickshaw decorated with vibrant coloured motifs and objects.

But then, it’s not the only one; there is a swarm of them, not all of them colourful and decorated. They are causing the roadblock. That just adds to the passion, and one scrutinizes this weird looking ‘thing’ that some humans use as a vehicle.

One finds some striking similarities between this machine-age-creature and our beloved state, beginning with the question of its origin. Some say these things were inducted after removing the tongas with an organised campaign (read conspiracy) by one of the ‘top 10’ families. A propaganda campaign was launched against the horses on various forums, instilling fear in the masses of some extremely dangerous virus found in horse droppings.

The same horse — which made empires for humans — had to witness this disgrace by the same ‘superior’ species; thus leading to a partition between the two, both sides oblivious to the real causes.

Instead of planning a proper urban transport alternative by the government, this wonder-of-the-world was offered instead. What a way for a nuclear power to enter the 21st century.

The structure of this creature is a puzzle in itself — half bench and half bike (of Chinese origin) and some interesting improvisations according to the owner’s need. It is imagination stretched to the maximum. But in a way, they are ahead of the Greeks in creating a mythological creature that not only exists in real life, but plays a vital role in the common man’s life—a god or a beast; leave that to the riders of this storm.

It is beyond comprehension why would someone spend so much money and effort to decorate a badly designed product and above that, seek a stamp of approval for that? We will have to wait for some white skinned foreigner to approve of this futile exercise as ‘art’; just like its predecessor, the so-called Truck Art.

The passengers are compulsorily divided into two groups, each having a view of the same journey 180 degree apart from the other. The driver’s seat has a provision for an extra passenger, whose weight balances this creature against the load at the back (doctrine of necessity?). The cannibalized bike pulls the entire load (population) with its small engine (economy), as a result, making more noise (read owning the conflicts of the entire Muslim Ummah — another myth?) and creating more pollution.

The passengers on these swarming creatures get to hear the blasting sounds (the religious and political rhetoric) as if they are riding in some rally, but in fact are barely travelling, and that too in a dehumanised manner. They are denied the right to privacy and, above all, a sense of decency.

The whole thing just shows the psyche (or helplessness) of our people who will do anything to get from point A to point B; no matter how harmful and senseless the means are; compromising their honour and dignity.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2010-weekly/nos-07-02-2010/she.htm#3

Interview: Saeed Akhtar

"Art is all about our lives, why hide it?"

Professor Saeed Akhtar’s contribution to the development of art in Pakistan can hardly be matched. His is undoubtedly a classic master. His observation, mastery of skill, combined with his imagination has produced the most remarkable works that appreciate the beautiful in the local by idealising them in various thematic settings. Quest for the Divine beauty was the focus of his recent exhibition.

By Naeem Safi

The News on Sunday: Have you always been an artist?

Saeed Akhtar: I had this appetence for art, just like everyone else has that for one thing or the other. However, before that, I was interested in automotive mechanics, especially motorbikes. I would disassemble the parts and join them again, marvelling at their beauty and the capacity of human brain.

TNS: Which aspect of art is more consequential for our times in this part of the world?

SA: Art encompasses all aspects of life through architecture, textiles, ceramics, and other such disciplines. A molvi once said to me that I’ll burn in hell for teaching drawing. I replied that it is for Him to decide, but what can I say about you, the core of ignorance. He works as an electrician, and has learned his trade with a lot of beating from his ustad, instead of learning it in an appropriate institute, where he could have learned proper drawing. The absence of quality art education at school level has turned this society into the mess it is now, where all one see is entangled cables hanging in front of ugly facades. I can not imagine a single moment of life without art.

TNS: Do you believe that this attitude has anything to do with the shifting interest from realism to abstraction?

SA: In our days, art was believed to be a means of earning money, and for that one needed proper training in seven-eight skills to achieve the required level of understanding. These days words are stressed upon more than any other skill; this does not solve the problem. When an artist is not well equipped with the required set of skills it will breed frustration. But who knows, the artists of today can be more successful than those of our times, as each period has its own requisite set of skills. And I believe the young artists are well aware of that.

TNS: As we are talking about changing times, how is Saeed Akhtar of today different from the one of 1960s?

SA: Learning, is what distinguishes them. Our teachers could see one eighth of an inch error in perspective in a glance. I once asked my teacher, "Ustad jee ay inni inni ghaltiyan tohano nazar aa jandian ney?" He said, "Hann puttar, sari umar lang gai ay wekdey." I would not have much consciousness then, regarding my errors; the teachers were there to identify them. Now I can depend only on my own judgement.

My canvas offers me new challenges everyday, it annoys me, it hurts me, and it makes me feel like crying. But the joy that follows a finished work is unthinkable for anyone else. This is what my struggle is all about, since coming from the age that was all about learning the fundamental skills.

TNS: What interests you the most when deciding a subject?

SA: Anything that comes out nicely in the end. Beauty is not the only standard; beyond that, it’s the expression that matters. The thought of painting eyes kept bothering me for a long time; I would paint and wash repeatedly. The eyes that I painted on a 4’x4’ canvas remained untouched for quite a while; one day I started drawing lines around them that turned out to be my own image, from the time spent in Quetta.

TNS: How do you choose your hues and tones, some of them being imaginary for you?

SA: I am not familiar with the look of blush, or a suggestion of greenish tint on some freshly shaven face. But I can not deny their existence. I see tones and then blend them according to my imagination. However, I am not too cautious with colour application; and sometimes my misjudgements fascinate viewers.

TNS: How do you see the nude in the broader scheme of existence?

SA: I believe this whole existence is for the human body. If you pay attention, all the activities that you see around you are linked to the human body, the dress, the building, and almost all of the innovations related to such products. God says that He has created the human body in His own image, which is the most beautiful. In other words, the more beautiful a human, the closest she/he will be to the Divine. God is beautiful and loves beauty. Though we can not imagine His beauty, we can still idealize the glimpse of it in the human form. The Romans and the Greeks have done the same. The seven nuktas that make an alif follow the human proportions with which the whole Quran is written. Sharing beauty and joy is not a sin.

TNS: You believe you are looking for the Divine in such manifestations of beauty?

SA: In this regard, human face attracts me the most. I saw a face, when I went for haj, and thought that the artist who painted Mary must have seen a beauty like this. Such beauty leads to beautiful thoughts where we find our own ideals.

TNS: The figures on display in your recent exhibition portray such beauty?

SA: Beauty is somewhat personal. I like high-bridged noses, some people don’t. Some like narrow eyes, while I like big eyes. You have to see the beauty in its context, because different regions have different perceptions of it. The bright coloured attire and ornaments used in our deserts in the South can not be appreciated through some other culture’s perspective due to the difference in sensibilities. The working women with Gandhi, had just fabric wrapped around their shoulders, and were not wearing any blouses. In our childhood the women would wear tehband with kurtas, and there was no concept of bra. Why do we want to see the female in stiff and straight posture anyway? Similarly, since I have lived in Quetta, I really like the graceful turbans wore by the men there.

In my recent exhibition, only five paintings are a bit exposed, and they were the first to get the sold tag. And the apparently unusual postures are nothing but images from daily life that is not tied with ropes, and which can be extraordinary on its own. One of my paintings — showing a female figure in motion on a swing, her hair swaying in the wind and the bust visible through the drapery — was bought by a lady. I enquired where she had it hung; it was in their living room. Art is all about our lives, why hide it?

TNS: What is the story of buraq?

SA: It is all about emotions and has little to do with the tangible. Our prophet’s journey through heavens — and his description of the ride, which was much faster than light — brings to mind such visuals that guide us to the path of breaking free. Look at the fascinating colours of feathers on this planet; buraq, for me, is the culmination of all flights.

TNS: How do you feel about art appreciation and art criticism in Pakistan?

SA: Artists have colours and art critics have words to play with. But mostly the critics here use the same old vocabulary, and you feel like reading the same thing over and over. Our art institutes mainly focus on the Western Art and art history as the art. And in comparison, there is not much of the published material available on the local arts and artists. Do art students know about the local artists as much as they do about the Western artists? How many art students actively visit art galleries and exhibitions, or know about Shakir Ali Museum, Chughtai Museum, or the Alhamra Permanent Art Gallery?

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2009-weekly/nos-27-12-2009/enc.htm#2

Interview: Julien Columeau

"I think writing is born also out of a dialogue with different authors and that makes you conscious of a very important thing; that there are books that you have never read and you would love to read but nobody has written them and you are the person who is going to write them. Writing is always about writing what others haven't written."

By Naeem Safi

Julien Columeau got a degree in Islamic Studies from Sorbonne, Paris, and has been working as an interpreter for an international humanitarian organization for the past twelve years. Was posted in India, Afghanistan, and lately Pakistan. Heavily influenced by philosophical and literary theories of Maurice Balnchot, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, the 'enfants terribles' of French Thought. Has published two novels in France. His third French novel, Zahid (story of mujahid turned pimp) is under press in Paris.

Following are the excerpts from an interview TNS had with him recently.

The News on Sunday: Can you recall precisely when did you decide to become a writer?

Julien Columeau: I don't think I ever decided to become a writer; I think I just decided to write. Becoming a writer, in my sense, sounds a bit pompous. There are very few people that I'd call writers. In French we have this concept of 'écrivain'. Écrivain is somebody whose life depends on writing. He is the person who'd die if he didn't write a book or a line. He lives out of writing, spiritually, gets his energy out of writing and not out of anything else. I think it is very difficult and very few people can attain that. Most of us get energy from writing, people who are like me, who are in the habit of writing, as people are in the habit of smoking. We derive our energy from writing but I don't think we derive all our energy from writing and we are striving to get close to that stage where you are one with your writing.

TNS: Could you tell us about your writing habits? Do you follow a strict regime or wait for inspiration or the 'right mood'?

JC: I don't believe in inspiration and I don't believe in getting in the mood either. I think what you have to write is within you and it has been within you for years. It's very much connected with your own subconscious. I think writing is a form of a conscious dialogue with your own subconscious. It's all about you letting your subconscious talk very often. You have to go and meet a psychoanalyst and you don't decide the time when you are going to meet him and, unfortunately, it's following a very strict routine. All the psychoanalysts stress a lot on the importance of routine.

TNS: How important is company or setting for a writer?

JC: It is important, to some extent, but it is also very good to be able to see it for your own imagination and not for your physical aids. I think in order to write fiction you need to give more importance to the unseen. I would say that without having been to Lahore I would have never written the book, Saghar, if I talk about myself. But at the same point, when I wrote Saghar I don't think I was in Lahore.

When I had the first idea of Saghar I was quite far away from Lahore. The city was some kind of a memory or a fantasy. And this is why I didn't feel restricted by geographical facts that at times you feel you have to respect if you are talking about a given place.

It actually got me a lot of liberty to write about Lahore in a very dreamy way. In order to translate it into words you need to feel the distance. I was not describing Lahore, I was describing the vision of Lahore, which is very imprecise and I wanted it to be so.

TNS: You have written a novel about poet Saghar, by the same name. Would you like to share the experience?

JC: I didn't have to go through much actually; it was just a couple of book readings about him, written by those who were close to him, who had a lot of love and respect for him, which was good. And I feel that a lot of Urdu poets have earned people's respect but I don't think many poets have earned people's love to the extent to which Saghar had. I have the feeling that he is very dear to the people of Lahore, especially the Walled City and some adjacent areas where he used to move around and that's a very specific thing. So what I encountered first was people's love for Saghar, and a lot of them could still identify themselves with Saghar and his memories, as if Saghar was embodying a period which is dead now.

And then I realised there were important things missing, unfortunately, people were talking about their perception of Saghar and their love for Saghar but not much about Saghar himself. And they were talking a lot about what they assumed Saghar was going through -- mentally, spiritually, and philosophically. The thing that was missing was Saghar 's point of view itself. It was then I realised that I'd have to go through his diwaan as often as I could and try to interpret it in my own way into some fiction. I've been writing the fiction for a couple of years, which was to find a kind of fictional background for a lot of the verses by Saghar, which moved me and that was the beginning of the purpose of writing the book.

TNS: What has influenced this text more: reading Saghar or living in his city?

JC: Yes I'd say both of them but especially Saghar himself, meaning whatever I could get from his poetry, from different biographical accounts, and what also I could gather and understand, which is very important, is that people don't know much about his life. So it's mainly about some kind of gaps which I noticed in his biographies, huge gaps. People were not aware of very important things; they knew where he was born, where he died, but they didn't know what happened to his mother after 1947. They didn't know who inspired him, whom he referred to all his life in a very metaphorical way. So basically what I didn't know about Saghar is what inspired me to write about him.

TNS: You feel that your perception is different from that of the local Urdu writer?

JC: I'm not too sure. It's debatable. If you talk about the local writer you might be talking about the masters. Obviously I cannot write anything classical because I don't know much about classical literature. People in the modern age feel differently. The set of experiments attempted by contemporary writers in the past thirty years have taken Urdu literature to its limits, for instance Enver Sajjad, Anis Nagi, and the stories of Hassan Askari, the first stories written in Urdu that are very fresh and willingly used the method of stream of consciousness. I was very much influenced by poetry as well, especially Majeed Amjad.

TNS: Do you use such a rich vocabulary in French as you've used in Urdu?

JC: The aspects of language, which I stressed on and exploited, while writing in Urdu and in French are different. In French I wrote in a very intellectual and internalised way, and in Urdu I tried to exploit the colourfulness of the language.

What you write is not what the language tells you to write but you are telling the language what it is to express. I was more conscious in the beginning when I was writing in Urdu, so that not to make it obvious for the reader that it's a foreigner writing. And since I had to write in the voice of Saghar I was not allowed to write anything but what I imagined would be a very rich, colourful and precise language. The effort was very conscious in the beginning but soon it became Saghar 's voice itself and then I was possessed by it. If I think about most of the scenes I have no idea how I wrote them, or no recollection of the mood I was in. This connection of distance is what helped me feel Saghar 's character and hear his voice within me.

TNS: So what you are saying is that you had some sort of a spiritual experience?

JC: I would not say that at all, being very far from roohaniyat. I think it's a very material experience. And in spirit it's a very sexual experience.

TNS: Do you believe Pakistanis have understood and appreciated Saghar the way he deserved it?

JC: Saghar was a malamati, somebody who despised himself and made himself despicable in the eyes of the society. I don't think there is any question of deserving. He stays in people's memories as a malang, with all the sensitivities and sensibilities that are associated with it, and that's what he wanted. This is something that I talk about in the novel, the malang who was so present in the public spheres and life. While malang is somebody who lives a life of retirement or that of a hermit, which was not his case. And I somehow came up with this idea that maybe Saghar could have been rejected by the other malangs that creates a different state of mind in the end where Saghar is completely satisfied with his life and he feels that he is neither a malang nor a normal person anymore. The last thing that gave meaning to his life was the company of his beloved.

He created his own mental space. I have the feeling, as far as his interaction with drugs is concerned, that it became a habit later at some point. As in the beginning it was born out of his wish to experiment with different states of consciousness. He talked about drugs, using the metaphor of wine and the name he chose for himself, Saghar. But it was more than just consuming drugs consciously and in a very organised way as far as his poetic dynamic is concerned. A point that I'm highlighting in the novel is that he became a malang out of compulsion, to some extent. But at the end it is his decision. When he walks out of the hotel room towards Data Darbar, he is someone who knows where he is going, with an aim in mind to describe and analyse the old process -- when he says "mein khud ko munazzam tarikay sey taraaj karonga", the only instance of the future tense in my novel.

TNS: Would you like to elaborate on the protagonist's choice in Saghar to appreciate the military parade over saving his love?

JC: That's the feature of Saghar, him being a patriot. I'm describing something that some people witnessed but the context is fictional where his girlfriend is feeling the effect of withdrawal and he is out to get some money for her heroin. She is dying while he is doing that.

I felt like it was echoing with the beginning of the second part when he writes the national anthem of Pakistan and in return loses his personality. It's a kind of metaphor expressing the way the states crush individuals through the passion that they ignite in their hearts and minds about the nation and other confused and meaningless concepts.

Saghar is very much attached to mythology, and nation is very much part of the mythology which is beyond his own existence and that makes him jealous of these soldiers for being part of it, yet real creatures.

TNS: You feel other writers influence your writing?

JC: I think writing is born also out of a dialogue with different authors and that makes you conscious of a very important thing, which is that there are books that you have never read and you would love to read but nobody has written them and you are the person who is going to write them. Writing is always about writing what others haven't written. You have to be faithful to the originality. You need to distance yourself from the authors who give you energy through their ideas in order not to write in the same style as them. The idea is to achieve the balance between yourself and the others, because if you're too much of yourself then nobody will understand a single word of what you write.

TNS: Before learning Urdu, what was your perception about this culture?

JC: A person coming in contact with something that is new to him has some prejudices. And I had some kind of fixed ideas in my mind and was going pretty much by all the stereotypes which are being circulated outside Asia. Learning Urdu was a very important and central experience, the experience of changing yourself through a language that is a very fresh object to you. While doing that, you give up on your own culture and background and more of your inner self and identity and focus on something else. And if you have been able to focus on that then you will realize that it doesn't really make any difference if you write in Hebrew or Urdu.

TNS: Your favourite Urdu authors.

JC: My favourite Urdu writers are poets. First on my list would be Majeed Amjad, then Saleem Ahmad and maybe not immediately Saghar, which may sound very paradoxical. I love what he wrote but I don't think he reaches the heights. He was not like a literary figure who is coming up with literature consciously. His own process of creativity and writing was very different in nature from the process of Majeed Amjad and Saleem Ahmad, or N.M. Rashid.

Each poet's poetry is, or defines a different genre. It's not that some people write in the poetical genre but I think that Majeed Amjad writes in the Majeed Amjadian genre. It goes beyond style because style is about repeating a certain set of images or combination of words. It's born out of the unity of the inner kaifiyyat and the way this kaifiyyat meets the author's world through words. I feel a lot of silence, or sakoot -- being stuck in time -- in Majeed Amjad's poems. Or like Joan Elea who was toying with the zero, or nihilism.

TNS: How do you see the contemporary Urdu literature?

JC: Urdu literature was in danger, some time ago, to die of suffocation. And I don't think many literatures can survive by themselves. There have always been two currents of Urdu literature, one is the riwayat pasand, who want to go by the tradition; and there are people who want to break free from the tradition.

I have the feeling that that kind of hangover with tradition was very much present with Urdu literature when the taraqi pasand were going to take over. Then some people, among which Asad Farooqi, and Muhammad Umar Memon, and Ajmal Kamal, realised that Urdu was going to die out of suffocation and decided to open the window by translating and adapting works from other languages into their own.

TNS: Anything else you want to share or shed light on?

JC: I wrote this novel first in French, and then I realised that very often I ended up explaining some concepts indigenous to this land. Then wrote it in Saghar 's language and changed it to the first person that gave me the liberty to impersonate him and play his role actively in my mind. Actually Urdu freed me from all the constraints that I was feeling while writing in French. People would find it very paradoxical for me feeling much more freedom in writing in a language which is not my mother tongue. But it was as if I was equipped with a new and fresh imagination, which was a very exciting and unique experience.

The book I have written is more of a tribute than a novel. After its completion I visited Saghar's shrine and asked for forgiveness from the baba.

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Published in The News on Sunday

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2009-weekly/nos-18-10-2009/pol1.htm#1

Truth or Lies

SEEDMAGAZINE.COM August 31, 2009

Truth or Lies

New Ideas by Veronique Greenwood / August 17, 2009

A new study raises the question of whether being honest is a conscious decision at all.

Photo courtesy of Rui Ornelas

In a famous set of experiments in the 1970s, children were observed trick-or-treating in the suburbs. Some were asked their names and addresses upon arriving at a door, while some were asked nothing. All were instructed to take just one piece of candy from the bowl, but as soon as the owner of the home retreated into the kitchen, the children who hadn’t provided their names and addresses shoveled the candy into their bags, sometimes taking everything in the bowl. Psychologists posited that anonymity made the children feel safe from the repercussions of their actions, an effect they call deindividuation.

Moral psychologists have since constructed myriad experiments to probe the workings of human morality, studying how we decide to cheat or to play by the rules, to lie or to tell the truth. And the results can be surprising, even disturbing. For instance, we have based our society on the assumption that deciding to lie or to tell the truth is within our conscious control. But Harvard’s Joshua Greene and Joseph Paxton say this assumption may be flawed and are probing whether honesty may instead be the result of controlling a desire to lie (a conscious process) or of not feeling the temptation to lie in the first place (an automatic process). “When we are honest, are we honest because we actively force ourselves to be? Or are we honest because it flows naturally?” Greene asks.

Greene and Paxton have just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that attempts to get at the subconscious underpinnings of morality by recording subjects’ brain activity as they make a decision to lie. Under the fMRI, subjects were asked to predict the result of a coin toss and were allowed to keep their predictions to themselves until after the coin fell, giving them a chance to lie. As motivation, they were paid for correct predictions. For comparison, the researchers ran tests in which they asked subjects to reveal their predictions before the coin toss. The scientists then analyzed the subjects’ success rates using statistics: The dishonest were identified as those who guessed the results of the coin toss more times than chance would dictate.

Greene and Paxton had hypothesized that if deciding to be honest is a conscious process—the result of resisting temptation—the areas of the brain associated with self-control and critical thinking would light up when subjects told the truth. If it is automatic, those areas would remain dark.

What they found is that honesty is an automatic process—but only for some people. Comparing scans from tests with and without the opportunity to cheat, the scientists found that for honest subjects, deciding to be honest took no extra brain activity. But for others, the dishonest group, both deciding to lie and deciding to tell the truth required extra activity in the areas of the brain associated with critical thinking and self-control.

Their findings—that honesty is automatic for some people—is part of a growing body of work that shows that many, if not most, of our daily actions are not under our conscious control. According to John Bargh, a Yale social psychologist who studies automaticity, even our higher mental processes, ranging from persistence at an activity to social stereotyping to stopping to help a person in need, are performed unconsciously in response to environmental cues. And Jon Haidt of the University of Virginia has found through numerous studies that we make some moral judgments, like those involved in the trolley problem, based entirely on our emotions and are unable to explain logically why some things are right and others wrong.

Greene and Paxton’s study suggests that honesty in particular is automatic only for some, which Bargh interprets to mean that some portion of the population might be naturally honest, while others struggle with telling the truth. “It could potentially be some of the most intriguing evidence for group selection,” Bargh speculates, adding that the results are reminiscent of the evolutionary idea that “cheaters” and “suckers” coexist in a specific ratio in the animal kingdom. The classic example is parasitic cuckoos and the hapless birds that raise the cuckoos’ young. Bargh wonders if the ratio of “cheaters” to “suckers” exists in our species as well. In the Halloween party experiment, were there children who did not take extra candy even though they hadn’t revealed their names and addresses?

Greene and Paxton specifically state in the paper that they are not drawing conclusions about how the “honest” and “dishonest” group behave beyond the confines of the experiment, so to answer some of these deeper questions they plan to submit subjects to a retest and assess the robustness of the labels. If these designations hold up to further testing—if people really are consistently honest or dishonest—the pair would then hope to identify what individual personality traits might predict each case. Then the experimenters will also try to track down what kind of situations—like being reprimanded or being alone in the room—bring out honesty and dishonesty. They hope to thus search out the roots of automatic morality.

One surprising finding from this study reveals the complexity Greene and others face in trying to dissect moral behavior: The decision to lie for personal gain turns out to be a strikingly unemotional choice. Some moral dilemmas Greene studies, like the trolley problem, trigger emotional processing centers in our brains. In his coin toss experiment, there was no sign at all that emotions factored into a subject’s decision to lie or to tell the truth. “Moral judgment is not a single thing,” Greene concludes, suggesting that although we often lump them together under the heading of “morality,” deciding what’s right or wrong and deciding to tell the truth or to tell a lie may, in some situations, be entirely disconnected processes.