Favorite Musical Masterpieces: #1 - Abdul Karim Khan ("Piya Bin NaahiN Aavat Chain")

I heard music in my house for as long as I can remember. There was my father's record collection and his spools of taped recordings from which he would sometimes play his favorite pieces for us (K.L Saigal, Mehdi Hassan, Begum Akhtar). There too was my mother's ubiquitous transistor radio, with a brown leather covering, on which over the years I listened to untold hours of music broadcasts from Radio Pakistan Lahore and All India Radio's (AIR) Urdu service. There was the twice weekly doses of 'Chitrahaar" on Doordarshan. My love of old film songs owes much to AIR's program "Aawaz de kahaN hai".
This may just be a personal peculiarity but I have always felt an urge to share with others whatever music, art and literature moves me. More often than not it has been my wife on the firing line but many others have received my enthusiastic "gifts". I now intend to use this 'safe' space to introduce some of the pieces that have deeply moved me over the years. (No chance here of holding people forcibly hostage). I have listened to many of these recordings dozens of times and the few people who periodically hit this page may chance upon something that they otherwise may not have experienced.

My first selection is Ustad Abdul Karim Khan's famous 1925/26 thumri "Piya bin naahiN aavat chain" in Raga Jhinjhoti. Abdul Karim Khan was the doyen of the Kirana Gharana and fittingly its is his bust that sits in the main entrance of the All India Radio headquarters. This thumri is revered by many fans of Hindustani semi-classical music. This is marvellously effortless singing and Abdul Karim Khan's mastery of 'sur' is breathtaking. Virtually all Kirana musicians (including Malika-e-Mauseeqi Roshan Ara Begum) at one time or the other have performed this thumri but Abdul Karim Khan's original recording remains in a league of its own.

My Pakistan Photo Journal (Part 2) - The Walled City

February 15th - Inside the Walled City, Lahore:

Went with a friend on a walking tour inside the walled city ('androon shehr'). We entered via Masti Gate from the Minar-e-Pakistan / Badami Bagh side of Circular road and eventually exited from Delhi Gate after going through numerous alleyways and bazaars of the inner city. We stopped along the way to see some mosques and historic buildings and enjoyed a Kulcha/Chhole lunch at the stepped entrance of Sonehri Masjid.

The front courtyard and facade of Begum Shahi Mosque

Entering Masti Gate our first stop was the oldest extant Mughal mosque in Lahore, the Maryam Zamani or Begum Shahi Mosque (above) built in 1614. This beautiful mosque close to the Akbari Gateway entrance of the Lahore Fort was built by Emperor Jahangir's mother who was known as Maryam-uz-zamani (Mary of her age). This wife of Emperor Akbar and mother of Jahangir was a Rajput princess, the daughter of Raja Bihari Mal of Amber (now Jaipur). She was born Rajkumari Hira Kunwari.

In her Lahore Travel Guide, Yasmeen Lari writes: "Comparatively small in size, its present exterior hardly provides the foretaste of the wealth of decoration in the prayer hall. ---The central dome rises above the remaining domes and is carried on a drum; while those on the flanking bays are rather flat hemispherical cupolas. The treatment of the enormous dome itself is remarkable in its muqarnas (stalactite squinches) and elegantly painted fresco network."


The beautiful interior of the dome of Begum Shahi Mosque with its painted frescoes

From the Begum Shahi mosque we stepped into the Masti Gate bazaar and walked south past the dense rows of shops toward Moti bazaar. Many of the bazaars inside the walled city tend to specialize in specific product categories interspersed with food shops. For example, Masti Gate and Moti Bazaar have dozens of footwear shops. Arriving at Chowk Surjan Singh from Moti bazaar we took a left turn onto Hatta bazaar. Continuing on Hatta bazaar we arrived at the junction of Shahalmi bazaar heading south and Dabbi bazaar heading east. At this junction slightly south east is the Kasaira (utensils) bazaar and hidden amongst shops full of shiny pots, pans and pressure cookers is a very narrow entrance to a hidden historic garden called Baoli Ranjit Singh Bagh. This now dilapidated garden once had a stepped well (baoli) where people bathed in the summer months. The baoli marked the residence of Sikhism's fifth guru, Guru Arjun Dev (1563 - 1606). Yasmeen Lari informs us that "later, the well was filled with the debris of Guru Arjun's demolished house and lay uncared for many years. It was restored when an ailing Maharaja Ranjit Singh dreamt that he would recover only after he had taken a bath in the waters of the baoli." The abandoned bagh today with a few young kids playing cricket awaits a modern savior.


Baoli Ranjit Singh Bagh near the junction of Shahalmi and Dabbi Bazaars

There are homes and buildings that surround the Baoli Ranjit Singh Bagh. Standing inside the garden I saw the fascinating facade of the building below ("Gobind Ram Kahan Chand, Estd. 1805, Hindustan Commercial Bank Ltd."). It was puzzling to me how this facade has survived in its current condition because it looks freshly restored. (A bit of Googling revealed that Gobind Ram Kahan Chand was the founder of a company in Lahore in 1805 focused on spreading Ayurveda and its benefits. The company moved to Delhi after partition and is still in business today as GK Herbals.)


Facade of an old building visible from Baoli Ranjit SIngh Bagh

Exiting the bagh we continued our walk east into Dabbi bazaar which is a shopping area popular with women of the walled city with its shops full of crockery, kitchenware and sewing and knitting supplies. It is from Dabbi bazaar near the Kashmiri bazaar chowk that one enters the famous, elevated Sonehri Masjid with its golden domes. This mid-18th century mosque was built by Nawab Bhikari Khan, Governor of Lahore during the time that Mir Mannu was the Mughal ruler of Punjab. Mir Mannu had defeated Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1748 in a battle in Sirhind and remained the Governor of Punjab until his death in 1753.


A view of Sonehri Masjid from the front entrance

Sonehri Masjid was elevated above the shops in Dabbi bazaar with the intention that the rent from the shops below the mosque would provide a steady source of revenue for the mosque's maintenance. For a short while during the reign of Ranjit Singh, the mosque was shut down due to the complaints about disturbance caused by the azan by local Sikhs who had placed the Garanth Sahib in the adjacent baoli mentioned above. The intervention by the Fakir family of Bhati Gate, who had good relations with Ranjit Singh, resulted in the Sikh ruler reversing his decision.

The streets of the walled city were decorated extensively for Eid Milad-un-Nabi (Prophet's birth anniversary)

After enjoying an impromptu lunch from the street vendor at the entrance of Sonehri masjid we continued east through Kashmiri bazaar shops past Chowk Kotwali to the grand Masjid Wazir Khan. Perhaps the finest inner city mosque, Masjid Wazir Khan built in 1634 is an architectural and cultural treasure. It has been extensively photographed and is an oasis of calm in the midst of the bustling walled city. Flocks of pigeons perched on the domes and minarets of the mosque frequently fly over the courtyard from one side of the mosque to the other creating a surreally beautiful environment with the sound of their fluttering wings. Most of the surrounding buildings looking onto the mosque courtyard are residential and fit in seamlessly with the mosque's architecture unlike some other parts of the walled city where ugly new developments sometimes sit in jarring conflict next to sublime monuments.

Entrance gateway and minarets of Wazir Khan mosque as viewed from outside the prayer area entrance

Hakim Aliuddin, the trusted aide of Emperor Shahjahan was granted the title of Wazir Khan in 1620. He became the governor of Punjab in 1632 and left a legacy of numerous monuments, the most famous of which is the Wazir Khan mosque. He also established the town of Wazirabad located 100 km north of Lahore in Gujranwala district. 

Single aisle prayer chamber of Masjid Wazir Khan

After spending some time in the peaceful Wazir Khan mosque we walked south east past the Delhi gate bazaar exiting the walled city via Delhi gate where our car was waiting to transport us back home to a more spacious, amenity-filled but less enchanting Lahore.

To Follow:

Part 3 - Shahdara Monuments

Part 4 - A Visit to Multan

Part 5 - Snapshots of Personal History

Trip to Pakistan - A Photo Journal with Random Musings (Part 1)

February 12th & 13th - Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore:

The renowned Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz was born on February 13th, 1911 and his birth centenary is being celebrated this year both in Pakistan as well as in many other cities all over the world. Faiz's family spearheaded the efforts to organize numerous events in Lahore to mark the occasion. This included an exhibition of photographs at Faiz Ghar in Model Town, release of some new books on Faiz, a colloquium on his life and work at LUMS, a session of readings and reminiscences by some of Faiz's friends and family and an evening of music with Tina Sani singing Faiz.

No photography was allowed at the performance events but I sneaked in a badly lit, badly taken photo just for the record.

On February 12th, I attended the session of readings and recollections at the Alhamra Arts Council.  The primary attraction for many attendees was the Indian contingent led by Shabana Azmi and her poet husband Javed Akhtar. (Shabana Azmi's father, the progressive poet Kaifi Azmi, was a close friend of Faiz and she had known "Faiz chacha" since she was a young girl). The Rajasthani singer Ila Arun also accompanied the celebrated filmi pair. The evening was a bit of a hodge podge. There were some sublime moments like Ila Arun's highly unusual and powerful rendition of Faiz's poem "Africa Come Back" with its haunting refrain of "Aa jao Afreeka". Also, the novelist Ali Sethi, whose vocals have been a big hit for a couple of years at the Jaipur Literature Festival, did a nice job singing Noor Jehan's famous "Mujh se pehli si mohabbat" and Farida Khanum's lesser known gem "Sab qatl ho kay teray muqabil say aaye haiN". Javed Akhtar is a natural storyteller and his narration of interactions with Faiz during the poet's visits to India had the crowd in stitches. Shabana Azmi was quite overshadowed by her husband's deft public performance. The rest of the evening was mostly a miss with Arshad Mehmood's pathetic introduction of Indian visitor and Faiz family friend Shama Zaidi ranking as the low point.

The musical evening with Tina Sani on February 13th was more uniformly enjoyable. The playlist had a good mix of the well-known ("Bahar aayee") and the new ("Kuch pehlay inn aankhoN aagay", "Woh butoN nay daalay heiN waswase") with the traditional finale "Hum dekheiN gay". Tina Sani also sang the beautiful number from the Shabana Azmi / Muzaffar Ali film "Anjuman" written by Faiz and composed by Khaiyyam ("Kab yaad meiN tera saath nahiN") and courageously dedicated a verse in that ghazal to Salmaan Taseer.

Jis dhaj say koyee maqtal meiN gaya woh shaan salamat rehti hai
Yeh jaan to aani jaani hai, iss jaaN ki to koyee baat nahiN

February 14th - Garden Town, Lahore:

Visited the Chughtai Museum. Abdul Rahman Chughtai (1899-1975) was the famous national artist known for his large watercolors as well as a distinctive style influenced by Islamic calligraphy and miniature painting. The museum has been established in the residence where the artist died and is owned and run by Abdul Rahman Chughtai's son, Arif Chughtai. Interestingly, Abdul Rahman Chughtai is buried on the property alongside his brother.

February 15th - Allama Iqbal Road, Garhi Shahu, Lahore:

Visited the Allama Iqbal Museum in the morning. This museum was established in 1977 in the house where the philosopher poet spent the last three years of his life and died in 1938. The government bought the property from Iqbal's son Justice Javed Iqbal. Iqbal himself named the house "Javed Manzil" and had bequeathed this property to Javed Iqbal in his own life even though his son was only a six year old boy. This was Iqbal's fourth house in Lahore. (His first house was inside Bhati Gate before he went to Europe for his education, second was in Anarkali and the third was on McLeod Road). This land and house cost him a princely sum of 42,000 rupees in 1935.

The museum houses many of his personal effects such as suits, shoes, bow ties, watch etc. It also has photographs, letters written by him to his family and contemporaries and his various books and educational degrees. There is also the room in which he received guests with its original furniture in place including the bed on which he breathed his last.

Looking for Refuge in Poetry - "In Memoriam" by Tennyson

In grim times, there is always solace to be found in good poetry. Whatever the tribulations of the present it is always wise to regain a modicum of optimism without which life can become quite unbearable. Lord Alfred Tennyson's new year excerpt from his great poem "In Memoriam" is particularly apposite for the occasion even though I am a few days delayed in ringing it in. Perhaps this poem can usher in the new year afresh.

"In Memoriam" [Ring out, wild bells] -
 Lord Alfred Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

(Slow) Death of a Nation

The governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was assasinated today in Islamabad by one of his security guards. The motivation for the cold-blooded killing seems to be Governor Taseer's vocal advocacy for the reform of Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws which are often abused to persecute minorities and frequently exploited to exact personal vendettas. I was not much of an admirer of Mr. Taseer's political style but in a nation cowed with fear of extremists I had enormous respect for his courageous opposition to the dark forces of religious obscurantism that are devouring Pakistan. He had the great virtue of standing up unabashedly in public for his liberal beliefs which were quite evidently not shared by a vast majority of his compatriots. He knew that there were threats to his life but he did not shy away from expressing his views unlike dozens of other politicians who maintain cowardly ambiguity or even worse kow tow to reactionary forces.

Even though I follow South Asian politics closely, I don't much comment on the sorry state of Pakistani state and society on this blog. There are many inside and outside the country who are chronicling the country's tragic downward spiral. I have instead preferred to focus in this space on the historical and cultural richness of the place where I spent my formative years. However, there are times that it is not possible to maintain the hope that the ship of state will one day be righted and that the perenially suffering ordinary citizens will some day find relief from their unending misery. Today is one of those dark days which signal a steadily accelerating slide into the abyss.

There are many complex reasons why Pakistan today stands at the precipice of catastrophe. Perhaps the most important is the unrelenting exploitation of the country by its ruling elites (military, political, feudal and bureaucratic) since the country's independence. From 1951 onwards Pakistan has been a rentier state whose rulers utterly ignored investment in their own citizens but mastered the art of monetizing their geopolitical location by selling their alliance to imperial patrons. They were first put on the payroll for an extended period by the U.S. during the cold war to join the anti-communist camp which also happened to fit perfectly with the military's obsessively anti-India view of the world. Along with the founding ideology of a religiously-based state, disregard for the needs of its own citizens and military emasculaton of democratic institutions, this uncritical alliance with the likes of the medieval Saudis and the cynical Americans against the "godless" Russians continued to push the population toward creeping intolerance and fanaticism.

The straw that finally broke the camel's back was the disastrous military rule of Zia-ul-Haq and the country's frontline role in the decade long war after the Russians invaded Afghanstan in 1979.  Pakistan became both a major conduit and destination for drugs, guns, refugees, mujahideen and mullahs with billions of dollars channeled through the Pakistani military to turn Afghanistan into Russia's Vietnam. The seeds of fanaticism and systemic rent-seeking by the ruling elite were now firmly planted. After the Russian departure and the end of the cold war, the U.S. lost interest in Pakistan in the 90's and the ruling establishment was temporarily set adrift without an imperial sponsor. The establishment knew no other way of how to run the country and the patterns of empowering intolerance, financial mismanagement and ignoring the needs of the populace continued unabated. The state had temporarily lost any reliable rental income and turned to arms deals with rogue regimes to finance its unsustainable policies but the post-9/11 "war on terror" brought the country back in the limelight. Suddenly, the U.S needed the former client state yet again for a new mission but with the added twist that the ally was also the source of much of the trouble. Also, by now too much had changed for the relationship to return to the former coziness as the population had been radicalized dramatically having been reminded repeatedly of the former friend's treacherous abadonment. More ominously, the children of the Zia years had now grown up and the malignancy initiated in those years had metastasized in every nook and corner of society.

This leads us to the Pakistan of today: a poverty stricken population with a dangerously radicalized youth that lacks education and opportunity and is susceptible to all manner of conspiracies and angry paranoias; a nuclear country living beyond its means hurtling toward anarchy. The country may be past the point of no return with the society now tipped permanently toward the religious fanatics and their sympathisers which includes significant sections of the urban middles classes. Only a very concerted effort by the ruling establishment to unequivocally change direction may have a chance of arresting the slide. However, the ruling elites have demonstrated scant understanding of the existential crisis facing Pakistan let alone showing the willingness and capability to take on the challenge. If things continue as they are, the assasination of even flawed liberals like Salman Taseer and of Benazir Bhutto before her will be seen as signal events hastening the rapidly extinguishing hopes for a moderate, democratic state that can provide opportunities for its people.   

A coda: There has always been a deep confusion about Pakistan's identity and the question of what sort of state its founder intended to establish has never been resolved. It is a topic that can be debated for a long time but Pakistan's example makes one thing plain. Modern nation states cannot thrive when their ideological basis is exclusionary. A state based on primacy of religion or ethnicity will, in a pinch, always relegate minority citizens to an inferior status. In the contest between equality before the law and ideological purity the state's ideological reason for existence will always trump the facade of supposed legal protections for the weak. This is as true of Pakistan as it is of Israel and post-revolution Iran. A state based on principles of absolute equality of all citizens under the law is a prerequisite for a modern nation state. Even when states fail to live up to their principles in practice sound constitutional principles make it possible for individuals to defend their rights and liberites from a position of moral strength. The history of the United States is a gradual march in the direction of greater individual liberty and equality before the law. American minorities won these freedoms by arguments and struggle based on the virtuous founding principles of the constitution even when in practice the principles were not always upheld. The struggle for equal rights in the U.S. is a ongoing process but the principles enunciated by the founding fathers always provide intellectual, legal and moral support for those seeking equal rights under the law.

Faiz's 26th Death Anniversary - A Noor Jehan Tribute

Faiz Ahmed Faiz died 26 years ago yesterday (November 20th, 1984) aged 73. Over the years, regardless of whether governments tried to suppress his poetry or to promote it, his hold on the Pakistani literary culture has never flagged. In addition to the seemingly eternal relevance of his poetry to the Pakistani masses, Faiz was also fortunate to have had his works performed by the greatest Pakistani vocalists of the twentieth century. Malika Pukhraj, Farida Khanum, Mehdi Hassan, Amanat Ali Khan and of course Iqbal Bano all have signature recordings of Faiz's kalam.

However, starting with "Mujh Se Pehli Si Mohabbat Meray Mehboob Na Maang", Noor Jehan came to be identified as the voice of the revolutionary poet in captivity. Faiz is said to have heard Noor Jehan's rendition in prison and permanently dedicated the ghazal to her. With the possible exception of Iqbal Bano's "Hum DekheiN Ge", Noor Jehan's original version of "Mujh Se Pehli Si Mohabbat" is the ghazal that most reverberates in the Pakistani popular imagination.

As a tribute on Faiz's anniversary, here is a version of Noor Jehan singing this ghazal live. The video is old but I love the quintessential Noor Jehan you see in this performance.



Here is another personal favorite of Noor Jehan singing Faiz: "Tum aaye ho na shab-e-intezaar guzri hai"

Woh Baat Saare Fasane MeiN Jis Ka Zikr Na Tha
Woh Baat Unko Bohat Na Gawaar Guzri Hai



Photo: Faiz with the Chilean 1971 Nobel Laureate poet, Pablo Neruda

Granta 112: The Pakistan Issue

"Right now there is a collision of interesting times and terrific talent of writing about Pakistan and writing coming from Pakistan. --- Its a thrilling moment literarily but obviously there are some serious themes at work here." (John Freeman, Granta editor)

"I cannot subscribe to the notion that Pakistan will fall apart; it might but I am not going to begin from that point. I can't. I love that place." (Novelist Nadeem Aslam in an interview with Carol Zall of "PRI's The World" radio program)

Granta's Pakistan issue published this fall is a major literary event for the country. Even as it highlights the quality and breadth of modern "Pakistani" art and writing it would be foolish to believe that the boom in good English writing coming from Pakistani-origin authors, by itself, is the primary reason for this literary focus on the country. The "interesting times" that Freeman refers to are, of course, a major contributing factor. Even so, this prominence on a global platform for the literary and artistic voices of the country is an unqualified boon for those who wish to have Pakistan seen from a perspective other than the prennial lens of "security".

The issue has been reviewed widely in both the British and American media: Isaac Chotiner in the The New York Times, Ben East in The National, Mustafa Qadri in The Guardian, Arifa Akbar in The Independent and Mira Sethi in The Wall Street Journal. On November 15th, Public Radio International's program The World and its host Lisa Mullins devoted half of the radio show to a discussion of Granta's Pakistan issue including interviews with Declan Walsh, Kamila Shamise and Nadeem Aslam.

Granta's issue will reach only a tiny slice of the country's English speaking elite plus a few curious foreigners but it will introduce readers to the richness of current English writing by Pakistanis. They may be surprised by what they find. Some of the most exciting voices on the South Asian literary scene are Pakistani. Mohammad Hanif, Nadeem Aslam and Daniyal Mueenuddin are easily distinguished from many of their Indian fiction writing counterparts in style as well as choice of subject matter. Mueenuddin, in particular, with his characters and stories set in a rural milieu is plying unique territory.

Jafar Panahi - In Defense of Tolerance & Free Speech

Jafar Panahi, the internationally acclaimed Iranian film director was arrested earlier this year by the authorities on charges of making an "anti-state" film. He was held in detention without trial for 3 months and released on $200,000 bail only after his compatriot filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami circulated an open letter petition to the Iranian government that was signed by the likes of Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Robert Mackey in the New York Times today has the details of the story including the English translation of the full text of the passionate statement that Panahi made to the court last week in defense of artistic freedom and tolerance. It is a plea that must be heard by repressive governments and authoritarian groups all over the world. This is an eloquent defense of the most basic of human rights: the freedom to think and speak one's conscience without private or public coercion. It is convenient to talk only of Iran in this context but these are values periodically under threat in many parts of the world. Sadly, it is the so-called Islamic world where most restrictions exist on this fundamental human freedom with many western allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt being the worst offenders.

Here's the second half of Panahi's courageous statement which is patriotic in the best sense of that much abused word:

History testifies that an artist’s mind is the analytical mind of his society. By learning about the culture and history of his country, by observing the events that occur in his surroundings, he sees, analyzes and presents issues of the day through his art form to the society.

How can anyone be accused of any crime because of his mind and what passes through the mind?

The assassination of ideas and sterilizing artists of a society has only one result: killing the roots of art and creativity. Arresting my colleagues and I while shooting an unfinished film is nothing but an attack by those in power on all the artists of this land. It drives this crystal clear however sad message home: “You will repent if you don’t think like us.”

I would like to remind the court of yet an other ironic fact about my imprisonment: the space given to Jafar Panahi’s festival awards in Tehran’s Museum of Cinema is much larger than his cell in prison.

All said, despite all the injustice done to me, I, Jafar Panahi, declare once again that I am an Iranian, I am staying in my country and I like to work in my own country. I love my country, I have paid a price for this love too, and I am willing to pay again if necessary. I have yet another declaration to add to the first one. As shown in my films, I declare that I believe in the right of “the other” to be different, I believe in mutual understanding and respect, as well as in tolerance; the tolerance that forbid me from judgment and hatred. I don’t hate anybody, not even my interrogators.

I recognize my responsibilities toward the future generations that will inherit this country from us.

History is patient. Insignificant stories happen without even acknowledging their insignificance. I, myself, am worried about the future generations.

Our country is quite vulnerable; it is only through the [guarantee] of the state of law for all, regardless of any ethnic, religious or political consideration, that we can avoid the very real danger of a chaotic and fatal future. I truly believe that tolerance represents the only realistic and honorable solution to this imminent danger.

Respectfully,
Jafar Panahi
An Iranian filmmaker 

UPDATE: December 20th, 2010

Jafar Panahi was jailed by the Iranian authorities for 6 years for working on a film which was judged "anti-regime". He has also been restricted from traveling abroad or speaking to foreigners for 20 years. Here's the story in The Times.

Iran is a particularly noxious regime but defenders of individual liberty and freedom of speech need to be vigilant everywhere. From religious zealots who advocate murder against offensive expression to the Western governments bearing down on Julian Assange to dissuade people from exposing their wretched power games, individual freedoms need consistent defense everywhere on the globe.   

Stray Thoughts - I

1) I was listening this afternoon to Jonathan Franzen's interview on KQED's "City Arts & Lectures" series. His recent novel "Freedom" has received almost unprecedented literary attention a decade after the blockbuster success of "The Corrections". An audience member asked him what kind of people read serious fiction about unhappy people to which Franzen responded that literary research shows that fiction readers are typically "socially isolated" which doesn't imply that they don't have friends or semi-normal lives. It just means that these "readers" often feel a closer kinship to books and authors than they do to people around them.

2) Pankaj Mishra mentions in his op-ed piece in the New York Times today that the private wealth of 49 Indians on the Forbes list is nearly 31 percent of India’s gross domestic product. Most poor countries are likely to have similar statistics and the wealth gap is rising alarmingly even in the wealthy countries, particularly in the United Sates.When I see the images or read of the unending depredations of the wretched of the earth I often wonder how it is that the rich and the powerful are able to sustain such a patently unjust status quo. Why are the far more numerous poor and oppressed unable to mount any significant challenge to the ugly conditions they are doomed to endure because of unhappy accidents of birth?

Here's one answer via Lev Tolstoy in Tony Judt's brilliant last book "Ill Fares the Land":

"There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him." (Anna Karenina)

Jose Saramago - The Notebook

Jose Saramago, the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, died earlier this summer at the age of 87. Fernanda Eberstadt wrote an obituary in The New York Times which also does a good job of surveying his major works. I have not read "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis" and "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ", the two works that are considered his masterpieces but did read the more recent "Death with Interruptions" which continued the trend of his later, more allegorical writings. In "Death with Interruptions" he imagines a country where Death decides to take a break and give humans an idea of what it would mean to have eternal life. After the initial euphoria the unbearableness of unending life and the desirability of death begins to dawn on people for reasons big and small. James Wood wrote a typically perceptive review in The New Yorker called "Death Takes a Holiday". As Wood writes in his review:

“awkwardnesses”—metaphysical, political, pragmatic—soon reënter. The Catholic Church is the first institution to sense a danger. The Cardinal phones the Prime Minister to point out that “without death there is no resurrection, and without resurrection there is no church.” For the Cardinal, life without death is tantamount to God’s willing His own demise. Life without death abolishes the soul. A panel of philosophers and clergymen is convened, and both sides agree that religion needs death “as much as we need bread to eat.” Life without death is like life without God, one churchman says, because “if human beings do not die then everything will be permissible.” (This is a version of the Dostoyevskian fear that without God everything is permitted.) One philosopher, sounding like the slyly secular Saramago, suggests that since death was “clearly the only agricultural implement god possessed with which to plough the roads that would lead to his kingdom, the obvious, irrefutable conclusion is that the entire holy story ends, inevitably, in a cul-de-sac.”

However what prompted this blog entry is that I am currently reading Saramago's collection of blog / journal entries that he wrote for a year between September 2008 and August 2009 and were published this year under the title "The Notebook". These small pieces reveal a man of luminous intelligence, acute perception, deep commitment to fairness, justice and left-wing politics and a visceral disgust for power that tramples on the dignity of human beings. Saramago never forgot the dirt poor, rural background that shaped him. Even at 86, the fire burned brightly for the man who was a member of the communist party in the darkest days of Portugal's fascist government and chose exile to the Canary Islands in 1992 on principle when his novel was blocked for a European prize by the Portuguese government under pressure from the Catholic Church.

Here are some excerpts from "The Notebook". I couldn't help read many of his observations and relate them to my own obsessions. His love letter to Lisbon would resonate with anyone who feels a similar connection to their personal Lisbon. (I substitute "Lahore" for "Lisbon" in this essay)

September 15th, 2008: Words for a City

"But in 1147, when the Moors were defeated after a three-month siege, the name of the city wasn't changed right away;---When did Lisboa start being Lisboa in law and in effect?---
One might think these historical minutiae uninteresting, but they interest me a great deal: not just knowing but seeing - in the precise meaning of the word - how Lisbon has been changing since those days. If cinema had existed at the time, if the old chroniclers had been cameramen, if the thousand and one changes through which Lisbon has passed over the centuries had been recorded, we would have been able to see Lisbon growing and moving like a living thing across eight centuries, like those flowers that we see on television opening up in just a few seconds, from a still, closed bud to a final splendor of shapes and colors. I think I would love that Lisbon above all else.

In physical terms we inhabit space, but in emotional terms we are inhabited, by memory. A memory composed of a space and a time, a memory inside which we live, like an island between two oceans - one the past, the other the future. We can navigate the ocean of the recent past thanks to personal memory, which retains the recollection of the routes it has traveled, but to navigate the distant past we have to use memories that time has accumulated, memories of a space that is continually changing, as fleeting as time itself. This film of Lisbon, compressing time and expanding space, would be the perfect memory of the city.

What we know of places is how we coincide with them over a certain period of time in the spaces they occupy. The place was there, the person appeared, then the person left, the place continued, the place having made the person, the person having transformed the place.

October 9th, 2008: God and Ratzinger

 As I once wrote during a spell of vain metaphysical inquiry, a good fifteen years ago, God is the silence of the universe and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence.

October 23rd, 2008: Do Torturers Have Souls?

Through my will I can determine to do or not to do something, and liberty renders me free to determine mysef one way or another. Since language has accustomed us to consider the will and liberty as inherently positive concepts, we are suddenly aware of an instinctive fear that the sparkling medals that we call liberty and will can show the complete and utter opposite on their reverse sides. It was through the use of his freedom (shocking though the use of this word might seem to us in such a context) that General Videla became, through his own will - I insist on that, through his own will - one of the most loathsome participants in the bloody and seemingly unending world history of torture and murder.--

Knowing whether or not they have souls does not matter much. In fact, the person who should know most about this subject is the Argentine Catholic priest Christian von Vernich, who a few months ago was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide. His service record shows six murders, the torture of thirty-four people, and forty-two cases of kidnapping. And if I might be allowed a tragic irony, it is even possible that at some point he gave one of his victims the last rites....

November 7th, 2008: Words

Just as kindness should not be ashamed of being kindness, so justice should never forget that above all it is restitution, the restitution of rights. All of them, beginning with the basic right to live in dignity. If I were asked to put charity, kindness, and justice in order of precedence, I would give first place to kindness, second to justice and third to charity. Because kindness already dispenses justice and charity of its own accord, and because a fair system of justice already contains sufficient charity within it. Charity is what is left when there is neither kindness nor justice. (emphasis mine)