...but what is Pakistan?

MUSIC IN ISLAM

2010-10-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

Music is Permitted or Prohabitted.....?
References within the context of the Holy Qur`aan along with the Hadith of the Prophet confirm that music is haraam.
Interpreters of the Qur`aan have defined the term `lahwal hadith` which is mentioned in the Qur`aan as:
1) Singing and listening to songs.
2) Purchasing of male and female singers.
3) Purchase of instruments of fun and amusement.
When Sayyidana Abdullah Ibne Mas`ood , a very close companion of our Prophet was asked about the meaning of the term `lahwal hadith`, he replied

“I swear by Him besides whom there is no other God,that it refers to ghinaa (singing ).”This statement, he repeated three times. This view is unanimously supported by the four Khalifas, the eminent Sahabaah, Tabi`een, the four Imaams and other reliable Islaamic scholars and authorities.
One hadith from the Bukhari Shareef, the most authentic Book of Hadith, further confirms unlawfulness of music and singing :

`There will be people of my Ummah who will seek to make lawful; fornication, wine-drinking and the use of ma`aazif ( musical instruments ).`Detailed analysis of the arabic word `ma`aazif ` shows that it refers to musical instruments, the sounds of those musical instruments and singing with the accompaniment of instruments.
Closer analysis of the wordings of the Hadith establishes the prohibition of music. Firstly, the words `seek to make lawful ` shows that music is not permissible, as logically one can only seek to make lawful that which is not allowed. Secondly, if music was not prohibited, then it would not have been brought within the same context as fornication and wine-drinking.

Something from Soul

2010-10-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/HvBFor-yeQM

Simplicity!

2010-09-28T04:50:00.000-07:00

Angelina Jolie: I only wear three basic colors

I have no idea if this is a genuine interview or some third-hand tabloid account in which these quotes are attributed to Angelina Jolie. I think it’s probably from a small interview Angelina may have given the British OK! Magazine, and now comes to us viaMy Fashion Life. The quotes sound like Angelina though - which is why I think this was at some point part of a legitimate interview. Angelina is talking about her fashion. In my opinion, Angelina’s fashion sense is at best okay and at worst, boring and a bit too old for her. I was sorely disappointed with many of the dresses Angelina wore during the awards season this year, because she seemed to be dressing in just an endless string of glittery sacks. Part of the reason I adored the tight black column dress she eventually wore to the Oscars was that it wasn’t baggy, ill-fitting, or old-lady-ish.
Angelina admits that she doesn’t put too much thought into her red carpet fashion, and that she has “three basic colors and I get the same shapes in different colors!” Yeah, Angie, we noticed. We also noticed that one of your colors is beige. You need to stop that - it washes you out:

The Oscar-winning beauty – who is often voted one of the world’s most glamorous women – doesn’t worry about what she’s going to wear to major events and usually sticks to a style she feels comfortable in.
She said: “I don’t think too much about what to wear on the red carpet. I usually have three basic colours and I get the same shapes in different colours!”
Although Angelina isn’t overly concerned with fashion, she admits she does like to put on glamorous outfits from time-to-time as it makes a change from her everyday clothes.
The ‘Wanted’ star – who raises six children with partner Brad Pitt - said: “I like to get dressed up and feel like a lady every once in a while.”
Despite giving birth to twins Knox and Vivienne 11 months ago, Angelina has regained her super slim figure and credits it to running around after six children.
She told Britain’s OK! magazine: “I feel great, albeit a little sleep deprived! I run around with all these kids so it’s pretty busy. But I feel great and I’m very happy that they’re healthy.”

[From My Fashion Life]
So the twins are healthy now? But what about that Life & Style report claiming the twins were totally sick? Oh, right. It was Life & Style.
Am I being too harsh on Angelina’s style? She’s never been, say, a Nicole Kidman. Meaning that I think Nicole really cares about fashion, and she uses the red carpet to create drama and buzz. Angelina doesn’t - I think she’s missing the “fashion diva” gene, bless her heart. While I don’t always care for Angelina’s red carpet style, I do like her “everyday” style. In her everyday life, she seems to favor great pants, pencil skirts, simple blouses, sweaters, and some of the best coats ever. In her everyday life, she usually looks comfortable and classic.
Here are photos of Angelina at events and out throughout the year. Credit: Fame Pictures and WENN.com

Bride via HIghway....Trucks in Pakistan

2010-09-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

Just like the Billboard painting performed in Pakistan, there is another indigenous form of art performed in Pakistan and it is the Truck Painting. With its all colorful floral patterns, depiction of human heroes with creative aspect ratios, calligraphy of poetic verses and driver’s words of wisdom, this form of art is truly a part of Pakistani transport tradition.

I recently came across Abro’s photo collection of Pakistan’s truck painting and that provided me the necessary impetus behind this post. These photos were taken by Abro as part of a book called Food Path- Cuisine Along The Grand Trunk Road From Kabul To Kolkata published by Roli Books India and Lustre Press.

This art is so Pakistani, that the freight trucks which are built byFord, General Motors, Hino Pak etc in beautiful aerodynamic shapes are first retro-fitted with very Pakistani stlye bodies and a special ‘viewing deck’ at the top of Driver’s cab. The ‘viewing deck’ is a very multipurpose extra space. It is used by ‘cleaners’ to sleep at night and also to load extra luggage when needed.

Following Photo is the redesign of Ford Motor Company’s Logo by a Truck Painter in Pakistan

Following mosaic is again a colorfol montage of Abro‘s work on capturing Pakistani truck art. We will blow some of these photos below to see the details.

The Regional Flavor of Truck Painting

These truck bodies are then immaculately painted by the street artists who can be found at Truck stands all across the country. e.g. Hawkes Bay/Mauripur Road Road Karachi, Pir Wadhai Rawalpindi, Badami Bagh Lahore, Sariab Road Quetta etc. These hired artists then paint the whole truck in brightly colored patterns. It is said that everty city’s artists have perfected their art in their own signature way. Trucks decorated in Quetta and Peshawar get lots of wood trimming where as those in Rawalpindi get lots of plasticdecoration. Karachi excels in using reflective tapes, also called‘chamak patty’ in local language. Camel bone decoration is used by artists of rural Sindh.

Check out the photo to the left and note the amount of detailing that has gone in decorating the area around number plate and indicator lights at the back of a truck. Quoting reference [4] below. It is said that:

In Karachi alone… more than 50,000 people toil in small, family-run workshops comprised of apprentices and highly trained artisans, each with his well-defined specialty. Dominated by the painstaking ethic of proudly independent craftsmen, this time-consuming manufacture is the opposite of mass production: Every hand-painted truck, bus and rickshaw, despite sharing numerous signs and symbols, virtually screams its uniqueness.

The Poetic Talent of Owner and Painter Shows on a Truck

Pakistani trucks are also used as means of displaying the owner or the Painter’s Poetic taste. It also serves as a calligraphic board as well as a notice board for public messages.

Note the two photos below. In the photo to the left the truck owner is declaring himself as hopelessly romantic (ye dil hai aashiqaana) and in the photo to the right he is requesting his beloved to accompany him to his hometown, which is by the way, KhuzdarBalochistan. (aao sanam Khuzdar chaleN)

History of Vehicle Painting in Pakistan:

Atleast one website (here) gives following history of bus/truck painting in Pakistan and quotes it to one Peter Grant.

The extraordinary tradition of decorating trucks has its roots in the days of the raj when craftsmen made glorious horse drawn carriages for the gentry. In the 1920sthe Kohistan Bus Company asked the master craftsman Ustad Elahi Bakhsh to decorate their buses to attract passengers. Bukhsh employed a company of artists from the Punjab town of Chiniot, who’s ancestors had worked on many great palaces and temples dating back to the Mughal Empire.
It was not long before the truck owners followed suit with their own design. Through the years the materials used have developed from wood and paint to metal, tinsel, plastic and reflective tape. Within the last few years trucks and buses have been further embellished with full lighting systems

Pakistani Truck at Smithsonian Museum at Washinton DC:

Quoting Richard Covington who wrote ‘Masterpieces To Go: The Trucks of Pakistan’

Americans got a tiny taste of Pakistani truck painting in the summer of 2002 at theSmithsonian Folklife Festival, when Ali and bodywork expert Jamil ud-Din brought a truck from Karachi to Washington, D.C. They decorated it right there on the National Mall, as outdoor artists-in-residence. As a talent scout for the festivalâ€™s Silk Road theme, truck aficionado Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an anthropology professor at the University of Michigan and a top us scholar of Pakistani culture, chose the pair for their versatility in incorporating the countryâ€™s disparate styles of truck art. Their finished masterpiece, a 1976 Bedford, is now part of the Smithsonianâ€™s permanent collection. (Photo to the right)

Kafeel bhai Ghotki walay

A Small town in Northern Sindh calledGhotki is famous all over the world because of a truck painter who originally hailed from here. His name is â€˜Kafeel Bhaiâ€™ and he signed his paint work on frieght trucks as â€˜Kafeel BhaiGhotki walayâ€™ (brother Kafeel fromGhotki). As the number of trucks painted by him increased on the roads, so did his popularity because he not only signed his name on trucks but also wrote an introduction to himself as an ambidextrous cricket player who could do both slow and fast bowling. As cricket is a national passion in Pakistan, Kafeel bhaiâ€™s name spread far and wide. His signatures included the sentence:

â€˜cricket ka be-taj badshahâ€™ (uncrowned king of Cricket) and â€˜Left-arm right-arm medium-slow bowler, kafeel bhai Ghotkiâ€™

It is said that overtime his fame crossed seven seas and a team of reporters arrived from Australia to see his ambidextrous bowling. His introduction at Wikipedia says that nowadays he weaves cloth or nylon strings to make chairs in Ghotki. People who know him claim that he has reluctance accepting money from people and never demands money for his goods or services. People usually have to give it to him themselves. He often refuses to take the money in his hands and asks the buyer to just place it in his pocket.

The Movie Pair of Rani Mukherjee and Mustafa Qureshi??

The truck owners and truck artists of Pakistan also pay homage to their heroes and heroines in their own innocent ways. These painting do not strictly follow the aspect ratio of real life figures. That is why Bollywood actress Rani Mukherjee is painted on a Pakistani truck with some extra weight. I don’t know who is the male figure on the other truck. My guess is Mustafa Qureshi (my first guess was Javed Shaikh) but I’ll take your guesses too ?

Some other figures that frequently get painted on Pakistani trucks areMadam Noor Jehan, late Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Lady Diana.

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. All Photos for this post (except the Smithsonian one) are courtesy ofAbro at flickr.com
2. Pakistani truck Photo at Smithsonian Folk Festival is from flickr.com here

References and More Photo Galleries of Pakistani Truck Art

1. Abro’s Art of Wheels Pakistan Gallery at Flickr.com
2. Pakistani Truck Art
3. Pakistani Truck Art by Martin Sokefeld
4. Richard Covington and Shahid-ul-Islam’s Article: The Trucks of Pakistan
5. Pakistani Truck art at Flickr.com
6. Pakistani Truck Art being Promoted in Germany
7. The Painted Trucks of Pakistan by Tim Hyland

Dodieee... A Pakistani fruit.

2010-09-23T04:39:00.000-07:00

Dodieee... A Pakistani fruit.

Let me confess I did not know what this was until I saw this picture. Do you know what it is? What is it used for? Where it comes from? Do tell us more about this is you do know? Or, make a guess?

Most of our readers had guessed the answer right. Infact I got to learn much more about this fruit from the comments than my own source of information. Here is the answer that I researched. This fruit is called ‘Dodi’ in Sindhi. It is a seasonal fruit grown in shallow waters. I don’t know the Urdu name. But through your informative comments we all did get to learn many other names of this fruit.

The photo above shows a person selling ‘Dodi’ in Larkana on June 20, 2009.

WE GROW TOGETHER.......

2010-09-08T04:07:00.000-07:00

KANUPP (Karachi Nuclear Power Plant or best known as KANUPP) is located atKarachi, Sindh, Pakistan. KANUPP is Pakistan's first nuclear power plant and is the first nuclear power plant in the Muslim world to be constructed.

Canada had what was believed at the time to be a trump card in the international effort to curb Pakistan's ambitions; namely the supply of uranium and technical support to Pakistan's Canadian manufactured KANUPP nuclear power plant. KANUPP was believed at the time to be Pakistan's only source of fissile material from which a bomb could be made. At the same time, matters were complicated by France agreeing to sell Pakistan a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant and technical expertise which would have the capability of turning the "spent fuel" from KANUPP into large quantities of weapons grade plutonium.^[4]

^{While inconceivable in this day and age of instant communications and "special envoy" shuttle diplomacy, the task of bringing Prime Minister Bhutto to the negotiating table and obtaining an agreement fell on Keith MacLellan as Canada's representative in Pakistan}

Unfortunately, both Canada and the West had seriously underestimated Bhutto's determination to develop Pakistan's own bomb and the sacrifices that it was prepared to pay in order to do so.^[5] In fact, unknown to them, Bhutto had formally launched Pakistan's nuclear programme within 3 months of being elected Prime Minister in 1972^[6] and subsequently accelerated the programme in 1974 by launching Project-706 , which was later described by Time Magazine as "Pakistan's equivalent of the U.S.'s Manhattan Project" . Part of this project involved developing the technology and expertise to produce and refine uranium from other sources than Canada.^[7]

As a result, the threat of Canadian sanctions on the KANUPP reactor were less of an ultimate deterrent than was believed at the time. Consequently, negotiations between Keith McClellan and Prime Minister Bhutto finally broke down in 1976 and despite a State Visit to Ottawa by Bhutto, Canada withdrew its support for the reactor.^[8] This action however only resulted in a delay rather than a cessation of Pakistan's nuclear programme.

Canada not only refused to supply fuel but also said;

"NOW PAKISTAN'S ECONOMICAL HUB WILL DROWN TO DARK''.

These were the words which panitrated in the hearts of Pakistani people and they committed themselves that whatever happen WE WOULD NOT LET OUR OURSELVES DOWN AND GET THE PLANT WORKING AT ANY COST.

When Canada cut off supplies of nuclear fuel and spare parts in December 1976 ,^[28] PAEC developed its own fuel within two years and began loading KANUPP with indigenous nuclear fuel by 1980.^[29] Munir Ahmad Khan also launched the uranium enrichment project under the code-name Project-706 which included the site selection of the Kahuta plant, completion of a pilot enrichment plant at Chakala along with selection and preparation of the pilot centrifuge plant at Sihala, procurement of essential equipment and materials for the enrichment project and selection of trained manpower for the project. All this work was begun in late 1974 and completed by PAEC under the overall supervision of Munir Ahmad Khan by 1976.

THAT WAS THE STORY OF A NATION

WHEN THEY COMMITTED THEY DID IT !!!

Pakistan.............Coming soon

2010-09-07T10:50:00.001-07:00

Area:		796,096-sq. km. [Punjab 205,344; Sindh 140,914; Northwest Frontier Province 74,521; Balochistan 347,190; Federally Administered Tribal Areas 27,220 and Islamabad (Capital) 906 sq. km.]
Population:		172.80 million (2008 Census)
Ethnic Composition:		95% Muslims, 5% others
Per Capita Income:		US $ 460
Currency:		Pak. Rupee
Language:		Urdu (National language), English (Official)
Archaeological Sites:		Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Taxila, Kot Diji, Mehar Garh, and Takht Bahi
Major Cities:		Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and Multan.