...Of The Bahawalpur Blues

I spent the last three years in a jungle. After a bit of R&R, I'm off to my next assignment tomorrow, Bahawalpur. I've been to South Punjab before during the catastrophic floods of 2010. During my month-long tour of duty back then, I had spent five days in Bahawalpur, making it my base camp for further explorations. The few days I spent in Bahawalpur were enough to leave an indelible image of the city's beauty and history. Now, I'm going there on a slightly more permanent basis. I could stay there for a year or so, or, given recent developments, I might simply touch base there and head off to greener pastures.

Bahawalpur is the de-facto capital of South Punjab, and as such, the heart of the Seraiki belt ; the Rohi. I have written in the past about my affiliation for the culture of the Rohi, so I won't rehash that (mainly because, like this post, I've left most of my packing for the last minute). What I will do is share a sampling of what willl essentially be the soundtrack of my life down there. The Kafi is the major poetic tradition of the Rohi, and Hz Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA) is the poet synonymous with the Seraiki Kafi. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting ...

The Bahawalpur Blues

1. Ishq Anokkhri Peerr - Ustad Salamat Ali Khan - Nazakat Ali Khan

"Love is a peculiar ailment, awakening hundreds of sorrows inside me" sing the Ustads. With a preamble taken from another of Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA)'s kafis, this is a splendid exploration of the central themes of the Kafi; love and separation. As the tempo picks up and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan's taans become more plaintive, more urgent, one can't help but be moved.

2. Peeloon Pakkiyaan Ve - Hussain Bukhsh Dhaadhi

A student of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan, Hussain Bukhsh Dhaadhi was a consummate, classically trained musician. His Taankari was legendary - albeit a little vociferous like his Ustad's, - and his voice was clear and piercing. Here he sings about the arrival of spring, when the fruits are ripe for picking and the desert takes on a colorful mantle. The vigour and vitality of the desert Spring are perfectly encapsulated in this performance.

3. Neenh Ta Avallhra Okha Laayam - Iqbal Bano

Iqbal Bano had a voice that was equally suited to ghazal, thumri, playback and folk. Here she sings a wonderful Kafi; "What a stubborn, difficult love I have set my heart on". The earthiness and heft of her voice perfectly suited to the kalam, using selections from the Sufi canon as girahs, Iqbal Bano gives a powerful performance.

4. Ajj Waal Firaaq Dassaindi Ae - Zahida Parveen

The greatest performance of the undisputed Queen of the Kafi, period. I have loved each and every note of this recording for as long as I can remember.

5. Na Maar Naenaan De Teer - Taj Multani

Taj Multani has a softer, more urbane sound as compared to his contemporary folksingers, but his adayegi and choice of kalaam are wonderful. Here he uses extensive girahs on a Kafi of Hz Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA), delivering a mellow, mellifluous performance.

6. Shah Ranjha Albela - Muhammad Jumman

Muhammad Jumman of "Yaar Daadhi" fame gives the studio treatment to this Kafi, turning it into a lively, Sindhi-style ditty. The violins and vibraphones take nothing away from the simple beauty of the kalam.

7. Hik Hai Hik Hai Hik Hai - Hamid Ali Bela

Hamid Ali Bela made a name by singing the Kafis of Hz Shah Hussain (RA), and sang few kalaams of other poets. Here he sings Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA)'s declaration of the One-ness of God. Again, simple lyrics and a studio arrangement, with Bela's deep baritone weaving a simple melody.

8. Aa Wass Maandre Kol - Abida Parveen

Lacking in vocal calisthenics, this recording of Abida's is a favorite of mine. A plea, a paean, an evocation of love, this Kafi is an endearing message to the beloved. Taken from a wonderful album released by EMI in the early '90s, the percussion, the Sarangi and Abida's unhurried style make this a superb performance.

9. Jindrri Lutti Taen Yaar Sajjan - Pathanay Khan

It is fitting to close out this selection with the de-facto National Anthem of the Rohi, sung by the greatest Kafi singer in Pakistan's history. Again, nothing much needs to be said about this performance other than that it is one of the most sublime pieces of music I have ever heard.

This post constitutes a (hopefully) temporary goodbye, as I don't know if and when I will find the time for further posts. Given my usual slovenliness, that shouldn't ruffle too many feathers. Till then ...

...Of Dargahs And Devotions

If I had a penny for every time someone's asked me variations on the following sequence of questions, I'd be a millionaire by now. The questions being...

"Where are you going ?"

"Data Darbar"

"Why?"

Rumors run rife among my friends and family as to what can my reasons be for frequenting Sufi shrines and Mazaars so often. According to some, I'm a hardcore dope-fiend who goes there to score. Others think I'm one of those multitudes who can be found 'maatha-taiking' and 'mannat maaning' at the graves of the Saints. Still others have the eerily accurate idea that a hardcore foodie like me goes there to sample the delights of the 'langar'.

My reasons are varied and even I'm not fully aware of them, but a few are very obvious. The places radiate peace and calm, there is an overpowering spiritual energy to them, they are perfect for contemplation and what people in my line of work call 'zeroing the bubble', and yes, the 'langar' food is brilliant. Another important reason is of course, the music. Almost invariably, the shrines that I've visited have had a tradition of regular musical performances that are carried out by a small, hereditary group of 'darbari' musicians. They vary from accomplished to inept, from crude to highly polished, but they share one common bond, the bond of devotion to their Dargaah and their 'Peer', and this devotion shines through in their performance, whether Qawwali, Kafi singing, Noha-khvaani or simple instrumental musical performances. Below is a selection of some of the many musical performances, both regularly held and impromptu, that I've come across in my travels around the various Sufi Shrines of Pakistan.

One of the first places I visited on my 'Great Roadtrip' across South Punjab was the Shah Rukne Alam (RA) shrine in Multan. One of the most easily identifiable landmarks of Pakistan, the beautiful shrine is normally a quiet, peaceful place. Music is generally not an important part of the 'Suhravardia' silsila's devotional practices, so it was a bit of a surprise for me when, sitting in the courtyard of the shrine, I heard a number of voices joined in a rather unusual chant. I immediately whipped out my cellphone and started recording. I found out later that it was a group of villagers from interior Sindh who regularly make the pilgrimage to the Saint's shrine to pray for bountiful crops, successful marriages and the birth of children.

Villagers chanting in prayer at the shrine of Shah Rukne Alam (RA)

                         



Ucch Shareef is one of the most historically and culturally significant places in Pakistan, with Pre-Mughal tombs littering the landscape, nestled among scores of Sufi shrines, each with a unique history and a devoted flock of 'mureeds'. The birthplace of the great 'Pathanay Khan', the town also has a longstanding musical legacy. One of the many shrines in Ucch Shareef is the one belonging to the Naqshbandi saint Hz Mehboob-e-Subhani (RA), which was one of the noisiest, most interestingly populated places I've been to. There were children playing and crying, elders snoozing and eating, women knitting and chattering, and a group of seminary students reciting the Quran.In this astounding cacaphony were mingled the sounds of two local minstrels, a pair of wandering 'Noha-khvaans' who were singing a Seraiki 'Noha' or lament for the Shuhada of Karbala. An unusual style and beautiful language mixed with a unique 'takrar' based style make them two of the most unique performers I've heard.

 Two wandering minstrels performing a 'Noha' at the 'Mehboob-e-Subhani' shrine at Ucch Shareef

                        

Around six months ago, a friend received a rather anguished email from a Qawwal in which he lamented the 'disastrous decline of Qawwali' in Pakistan. I informed my friend that the reports of Qawwali's decline were greatly exaggerated and the genre was in fact, pretty healthy and more or less chugging along smoothly. The reason was that there's still a large number of 'Darbaari' qawwals who regularly perform at shrines all over Pakistan to undiminished audiences and who are still carrying out the task of propagating and transferring the wealth of devotional and musical treasures that Qawwali encompasses. Case in point is the following video. On a trip to Qasur, I made a detour to the hilltop shrine of Hz Kamal Chishti (RA). One has to climb at least two hundred steps to get to the shrine which overlooks the city of Qasur, a fact that ensures that the crowd of devotees is often very thin. On the day I went there, there was a small party of Qawwals performing there. They weren't musically very talented, the instruments were in a state of disrepair and there wasn't a soul in sight for them to perform for, yet they were singing away like nobody's business. And when I asked them if they knew anything in Farsi, they readily obliged ...


Qawwals at the shrine of Hz Kamal Chishti in Qasur

                        


 While on the subject of Qawwali, I've been lucky enough to have attended a fair number of mehfils, both private and in a Khanqahi setting. Each has its own pleasures, but I've always been partial to the Sufi kalam that's performed in a Khanqah. And of all the places I've been to, the one place that has proven to be an almost textbook example of what a Qawwali mehfil in a Khanqah should be is the daily Qawwali that takes place at the afternoon majlis at the shrine of Hz Pir Mher Ali Shah Sb (RA) in Golra Shareef. In a tradition that goes back to Hazrat Sb's own time, a daily Qawwali mehfil takes place at the shrine just before mid-day. The late, great Haji Mahboob Ali Sb (RA) performed in these mehfils for around forty years, and after his death the tradition was continued by his brother (and accompanist) Haji Mushtaq Qawwal. The current darbaari qawwal at the shrine is Billa Qawwal, who makes up in choice of kalaam and use of 'tazmeen' and 'gireh-bandi' what he lacks in classical musical training. All the requisites of khanqahi Qawwali are adhered to; the mehfil takes place in the presence of a Shaykh, in this case, Pir Mehr Ali Shah (RA)'s grandson, Hz Shah Abdul Haq Gilani, the attendees are respectful and discerning, the 'nazar' to the qawwals is given through the hands of one of the many important spiritual personages who attend, and the atmosphere is one of a spiritual "wa'az" or instruction.

Nasima - Billa Qawwal And Party at the Golra Sharif Shrine
 

                          


The next video was recorded at what I can safely call the greatest day of my life. It wasn't the day I graduated, or the day I got accepted into Med school, or the day I got engaged (apologies to the future missus). It was the final day of my Great Roadtrip, when after having visited Multan, Bahawalpur, Ucch Shareef, Derawar and Dera Ghazi Khan, I made my way to the town of Mithankot to pay my respects at the shrine of one of the greatest of Sufi poets, Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA). Pathanay Khan and Zahida Parveen were playing in the car on my way there, and a large number of Khwaja Sb's Kaafis were written on the walls of the shrine. The obvious step after payng my respects was to ask around for anyone who might sing one of Khwaja Sb's immortal kaafis for me. Somebody directed me to a group of Fakirs sitting in a corner of the shrine courtyard, one of whom was the current Khalifa of the shrine. I introduced myself and expressed my desire to listen to some of Khwaja Sb's kalam and the Khalifa Sb graciously consented to sing some for me, albeit making excuses for his voice. As I brought out my cellphone camera and he started singing, goosebumpy silence was quickly followed by a sudden gush of emotion as tears came to my eyes. I looked around and realised that I wasn't alone, very soon the entire circle of Fakirs was gently sobbing (some of which can be heard on the recording). This in itself would've been enough to make this an unforgettable experience, but somehow I plucked up the the courage to ask the gathered audience if  I could sing something too. they graciously consented and there, right next to Khwaja Sb's resting place, in the company of a group of Fakirs, I sang one of my favorite (and my parents' and grandparents' favorite) kaafi. When I ended, the teary-eyed assemblage very kindly appreciated me and we prayed together for a while before I took my leave. Nothing, and I mean nothing has come close to the sheer spiritual and psychological elation I felt that day.

 Kafi Khwaja Ghulam Fareed (RA) sung by Khwaja Sb's Khalifa

                         



So there you have it. The secret's out and now whenever you see me heading out for another Sufi shrine, you'll know why I'm going there. I'm going there for spiritual solace, I'm going there out of curiosity and respect for the personage buried there, I'm going there because I've heard their langar is good. But I'm also going there in search of music, especially when it mixes with the rarefied atmosphere of a Dargah and produces moments of absolute joy like this one ....

                        

The Great Roadtrip - Of Patron Saints And Ghost Towns

It is now almost a year since I undertook what turned out to be the greatest road-trip of my life. The term 'voyage of discovery' might be a cliche but that's certainly how I will describe the week or so of traveling that I did in South and Central Punjab last September. What with one thing or the other, I've never gotten around to properly writing about it and sharing some of the experiences, sights and sounds of those six or seven days. But the leisure afforded me by my current location has trumped my innate laziness and I've decided it's about time I got around to it. My memory might be clouded over by the year gone by, but I still remember enough to get the writing juices flowing, and armed with the hundreds of photos I took with my crummy cellphone camera, I think I can finally shape the account of my great roadtrip into something resembling a coherent narrative.

Like every good story, this one begins with a prelude. I had been in Dera Ghazi Khan working in the flood relief efforts for over three weeks and was itching for a break. The workload, though heavy, wasn't the reason I was raring at the bit. I had planned a great deal of sightseeing in and around Dera Ghazi Khan and wasn't getting any chance of going about it. Although the evenings were usually free but travel restrictions meant that I wasn't able to see anything more than the one odd place of interest that happened to be in one of the villages where I'd set up a medical camp. An abortive attempt was made to visit the Sakhi Sarwar shrine; an attempt that turned into something resembling a farce on wheels starring a car that could only go one kilometer at a time before stopping to pant and wheeze, a tape deck that insisted on playing lewd Naseebo Lal songs and a driver that could only understand Pushto, which neither of the passengers could speak.

It was with great relief and a fair bit of excitement that I greeted the announcement that the entire party of around a dozen people would be taking a day off and going on a roadtrip to the nearby hilltop town of Fort Munro, with a stopover at the Sakhi Sarwar shrine. My sightseeing plans were finally starting to see fruition as the traveling party rode out on the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway. As an aside i would like to mention that I have seen around two dozen cities and innumerable towns all over Pakistan and I have never seen a place that depressed me more than Dera Ghazi Khan. A district headquarter, DG Khan looked more like, I hate to admit it, a pigsty. All the main roads were muddy ditches, the traffic was horrible, the city was skirted by a huge and foul smelling sewerage nullah and the whole place had a weirdly oppressive air. The immense relief I felt at being out on the open highway, away from the mud and congestion of DG Khan cannot be described in words. The road ran through wide plains that slowly rolled up into rocky hills where the road got a little treacherous.

The first stop was the town of Sakhi Sarwar around twenty miles down the road from DG Khan, housing the shrine of Hazrat Sakhi Sarwar (R.A), the patron saint of all travelers, which was rather fitting now that I look back on it. The shrine was located deep inside the town so we parked the cars at a distance and walked through the narrow alleyways towards the shrine. As we got closer, I was greeted by the sight that I would become familiar with in the course of trips to dozens of other shrines; a shrine bazaar. On either side of the path leading upto the shrine entrance were shops selling flowers, multicolored chadars, semiprecious gemstones and 'makhaanas'; the tiny white sweetmeat that is traditionally distributed as tabarruk. The entrance to the shrine comprised a large two-story facade with a central entryway flanked with two yellow-painted panels. The upper story had three beautifully decorated overhanging balconies. The courtyard had a neem tree in the centre and was flanked on one side with a centuries old mosque and on the other by a row of 'hujras'. Facing the entrance was the main shrine complex, with a long covered enclave and a single door leading to the tombs of the saints. The entire courtyard was bordered by an underhanging ledge adorned by beautiful painted tile that is South Punjab's speciality.


 The enclave was covered by a wooden roof that had beautiful geometric patterns adorning it in a design that I was later to see at shrines in Ucch Shareef, Multan and Lahore.Inside the tombs there was relative darkness and the unmistakeable scent of incense and rosewater. There were a number of small graves of some of the Saint's disciples and followers, and in the eastern corner of the tomb, the graves of the Saint himself and his sons. We paid our respects and then wandered around into a small room that adjoined the main tomb. Here sat an old man wearing tattered robes who would swat us each with what looked like a bouquet of peacock feathers and demand a rather hefty sum for the priviledge. It was an insight into the rather unusual system of commerce that thrives in and around shrines. After a further bit of wandering, including a futile search for the spot where Guru Nanak Saheb was supposed to have stayed when he made a pilgrimage to the Sakhi Sarwar shrine, we left for our second and final destination for the day, the town of Fort Munro.

Fort Munro is an historically important town. The seat of the government agent in the colonial times, it marked the eastern boundary of the Baloch lands and was the site of a small fort that housed a military garrison. After Balochistan's accession with Pakistan , Fort Munro served as the residence of the political agent. It was supposed to be South Punjab's answer to Murree, a temperate hill-station in the middle of the plains that offered a respite from the weather for the wealthy and the well-to-do. what it turned out to be was something quite the opposite. I'd seen ghost-towns in films and on TV, now was my chance to see one for myself. As we wound up the surprisingly tricky climb, we couldn't see a single inhabitant. There were houses, shops, motels, roadside dhaabas and pan-shops. There just wasn't anyone in them. In a town whose population should've been at least five or ten thousand, we couldn't find a single person.

This inexplicable lack of inhabitants wasn't the only eerie thing about Fort Munro. As we reached the crest of the hill, we saw to our right a body of water too large to be a pond and too small to be a lake. It had a small pier on one of the banks and had a dark, murky and somewhat sinister look. Coming to the top of the main hill, there was a fair-sized plateau that housed a park, remnants of an old fort, deserted government offices and to complete the ghost-town decor, an old colonial era graveyard. Naturally, we made a beeline for the graveyard. There were around a dozen graves, great and small, belonging to the military personnel and their families who inhabited the fort nearly a century ago. This graveyard proved to be the most interesting place we visited in Fort Munro for a number of reasons.

The first grave that caught my eye was that of a brother in arms, quite literally. Horace Allenby Smith was a military surgeon and a Fellow of the Royal Society in the days when it really meant something. The thought of that poor army doctor lying buried thousands of miles from his home in a godforsaken piece of rocky ground on top of a desolate mountain put a lot of things in perspective. There were graves of two or three little children who had drowned in the lake we'd seen earlier. And there was another grave which clearly showed signs of having been opened recently. All in all, the perfect setting for an episode of the Twilight Zone or one of those cheap TV movies they make based on Stephen King stories.


Needless to say, the entire traveling party was thoroughly spooked at that point, so much in fact that when we saw the first living thing we'd seen the entire trip; a goat on a mountain ledge, we half expected it to sprout some wings and come swooping down on us Nazgul style. Thankfully it didn't and even more thankfully we managed to catch the thing. And having caught it we did the civilized thing,  namely slaughtered, barbecued and feasted on Herr Goat. After a pwopah meal, the kind that dispels the spookies and puts courage into the hearts of men, we set about exploring again. Not that it did us any good, a deserted colonial era cricket pitch-cum-tennis court being the only thing we saw. It was then that we decided to call it a day on the trip and head back. The highlight of the return trip was a sing along. Trust me, you haven't lived till you've heard a fifty year old Pashtun gentleman belt out 'Bailamos' in a pushto accent.

The trip to sakhi Sarwar and Fort Munro wasn't entirely what I'd envisioned it to be, but it was very important to me in that it proved to be the starting point for all my subsequent explorations and photographing excursions. Three days later I left Dera Ghazi Khan for Multan which was the first stop on my Great Road Trip and when I returned home ten days later, I had traveled nearly 2000 miles and a discovered a new facet to my life.

Cover Stories - Of Pir Adil, The Place That Started It All

One of the reasons I consider my one month flood relief duty in Dera Ghazi Khan the most exciting and probably most memorable one month of my life is that along with working my socks off in the relief efforts for most of the month, I also managed to squeeze in five or six days of hardcore exploration and travel. Most of this exploration was carried out in a four day whirlwind tour that had me covering 1500 kilomketres and visiting five or six cities in what has since come to be known as the "Great Road Trip". There were however one or two detours that I made before that, on what can be called 'company time'.

 On my way to DG Khan from Multan at the start of my duty, I looked up places of interest in and around DG Khan (a thoroughly fruitless and dispiriting exercise) One name kept popping up repeatedly, the village of Pir Adil. It was a village  to the north of DG Khan, around 12 km from our base camp. The village housed a Sufi shrine, there wasn't much more I could find out about the place however. It was obviously the shrine of a Sufi saint, but it wasn't obvious what distinguished it from the innumerable others that dotted the landscape. The shrine was of one Pir Adil Shah Bukhari , a 9th century Chishti saint. That, and a vague idea of it's location gleaned from Google Maps was all the information I had about this place.

Our daily ambulance trips to and from Medical camps were more or less a rambling caravan that pitched it's tents wherever we felt we were needed. We had no restrictions of distance or time and there was an almost limitless supply of fuel. This meant we travelled far and wide, covering a radius of almost ninety kilometers, spending eight or nine hours in the field everyday. Usually the trips were pretty straightforward; base camp to medical camp and then back again with no detours along the way. After a week or so, this spartan routine started becoming tedious. I was eager to get some exploring under my belt but wasn't able to get any time off. In addition, my routes usually took me away from the one or two places that were worth seeing, including the Pir Adil shrine.

Around the seventh day of our Medical camps however, we were told to pitch camp at the Dera Ghazi Khan Cement factory, around 14km North-west of the main city. Looking up the place on Google Maps (an app that more than earned it's Official Seal Of Awesomeness  over the course of my South Punjab adventure), I found that the route led me pretty close to the village of Pir Adil. I figured this was as good a chance as any to visit the place. After finishing up the day's camp at the Cement factory, I sent one of the ambulances ahead of me so it could take the remaining supplies and the less footloose of the support staff back to the basecamp while I set out in the other to find the village of Pir Adil.

It turned out to be a pretty straightforward path in the end. As the map shows, heading north from the Pakistan Chowk on the Indus Highway for a distance of 8 miles brings you to the Cement Factory chowk. A further 2 miles bring one to a crossroads with a direction pointer showing the way towards Pir Adil due East. A straight metalled track leads to the village a mile down the road.

View Pir Adil Shrine in a larger map

About half a mile before the shrine, as the magnificent white-and-blue tiled dome of the shrine emerged on the horizon,I finally understood what distinguished the place from the countless other shrines all over DG Khan. Driving into the village, all of us in the ambulance let out a collective gasp as we rounded a turn and the shrine came into view. I hadn't yet been to the magnificent shrines in Multan and Ucch Sharif yet, so this was my first exposure to the "Multani" style of architecture, and I was floored by what I saw. At the edge of a large graveyard, surrounded by four low walls, with an impromptu trinket market outside it, stood the tomb of Pir Adil Shah Bukhari. It was a magnificent building, at first sight very similar to the pictures I had seen of the Shah Rukn-e-Alam tomb in Multan.

A quadrangular building ,with a hexagonal second storey topped by a beautiful dome, it dominates the landscape of the surrounding village. The eastern edges are rounded off by cylindrical bastions topped by a small minaret each with a lotus pattern on top. The westerly bastions are more intricately designed, with hollow mehraab-like depressions along their lengths and a slightly larger lotus atop the minarets. The exterior walls are decorated by beautiful yet simple blue-glazed tiles in geometric patterns that vary on each wall. On some there is a crisscrossing brick lattice adorned with blue tiles in the centre of the lattice-work. On others there are groups of geometric patterns ascending the walls in ordered groups. The southern entrance - the one facing the graveyard - has a vertical row of three depressed arches on either side. The eastern entrance is larger and opens into the courtyard of the shrine. Topped by an overhanging ledge, with rows of mehraabs around it, it's a beautiful structure. Three horizontal filigrees circle the four walls on the first floor, with three more on the hexagonal drum that forms the second floor. The edges of the hexagon are topped with slender white minarets that encircle the large white central dome. It was a rather compact but extremely beautiful building and I spent a lot of time admiring it's various details from the outside before entering the shrine itself.

Entering the shrine from the direction of the graveyard, I was immediately struck by something that I'd later realize was characteristic of most of the shrines I'd visit - an overwhelming sense of calm. It was semi-dark and very cool, with a breeze blowing through the open doors. One or two gentlemen were sitting inside the shrine, praying, one of whom I struck up an entertaining conversation with. Sunk into one of the walls was a mehraab decorated in intricate glazed tile that probably served as a prayer spot. Above the mehraab were two quatrains painted on the walls. One was a chronogram that revealed that the interior of the shrine had been repaired in 1343 A.H. the other was a Persian couplet that was faded and thus couldn't be read properly. Between the two inscriptions was a simple floral pattern.

The final resting place of the Pir was right below the dome, which was simply in ornamented from the interior. There were one or two relics, including an inscription on a stone tablet written in Arabic. There was another inscription on a piece of ivory that was well nigh illegible, however the date 1053 A.H was clearly visible at the bottom left.A stone slab with the imprint of a foot was kept in a glass case. The custodians claimed that it was a footprint of the Prophet (S.A.W) that Hazrat Jalaluddin Bukhari, also known as Hazrat Jahanian Jahangasht (R.A) had brought with him from Makkah. the inscription above the print also claimed as such. The Pir's lady wife was buried right next to the main shrine in a smaller chamber which I found at the corner of the courtyard. It was a small domed building, the corner of which was jutting into the courtyard through the walls.Older photographs (rarer than hen's teeth) reveal that it was a small, simple square white structure topped with a dome

I stayed at the shrine for around an hour or so but the ambulance driver and the rest of the staff were getting testy about delaying their lunch, so I had to reluctantly leave. We all bought a few sweetmeats from the stalls outside the shrine as well as distributed some of the remaining medicines and then departed towards the base camp. I was genuinely moved by what was my first visit to a shrine since childhood, and I'm sure the experience of visiting Pir Adil was catalytic in my resurgent interest in and affection for Sufi Shrines. After that brief visit to Pir Adil, I've travelled all over Punjab, paying my respects at many other shrines and tombs, and everywhere I've felt the same ambience, the same feeling of spiritual serenity that I experienced for the first time at that tiny, hidden away tomb outside Dera Ghazi Khan- the tomb of Pir Adil.

P.S The account of my first exploratory trip should I think be soundtracked by what is the da-facto National anthem of the Seraiki belt. In my favorite version of this immortal folk melody; the late, great Pathanay Khan sings the Rohi.

Cover Stories - Of Dialects, Diversions, Digestibles and Deplorables

At the start of my flood relief tour of duty in South Punjab, mixed with a sense of duty was an overpowering sense of adventure. I was being sent on a very somber and serious task and I understood it's gravity, however it was also my first field assignment and I was going to a part of Pakistan that I had never been to (and one that I would have wished to visit in more happier circumstances). Since I only had a vague idea of what to expect, I called up many of my batchmates who had gone to the affected areas in the first wave of relief efforts in order to get an idea of what I was getting myself into. I was told to expect intense heat (despite it being October), rigorous work and long periods of boredom. "You'll have to provide your own entertainment" was the general sentiment.

The first (and only) piece of instruction we received on reaching DG Khan was, "You and your team will perform the role of a 'Roving Medical Camp'". And boy, did we rove!! Every morning, a caravan of three ambulances loaded with personnel and supplies would set out on a journey of at least 30-40 km to a new destination, making the return journey in the evening. We never visited one place more than two or three times, and since our area of responsibility was the entire Tehsil DG Khan, we managed to visit around a dozen different locations; from the coast of the Indus to the foothills of the Suleiman mountains to abandoned villages and destroyed factories, and occasionally to the havelis and castles (yes, friggin' castles) of the local Sardars.I found these ambulance rides, especially the early morning one with the trafficless roads and the morning breeze highly enjoyable. Each morning, I would pop in my earphones and turn on my iPod. I made it a point of habit to listen to one single album in it's entirety during a single day's ambulance trips. As a result, I can't think of the roads and pathways of DG Khan without hearing faint echoes of Neil Young's 'On The Beach' or Miles Davis' 'Bitches' Brew' or Munshi Raziuddin Sb.'s 1988 Mehfil.

I belong to the Jhang-Sargodha-Chiniot region that borders the Thal desert and considered myself if not fluent, then at least passably well versed in the Seraiki language. Or so I thought. On my very first day's medical camp, I found myself clutching at straws as patients explained their symptoms in the thickest, most unintelligible Seraiki. Initially I thought I was getting the gist of it and tried to plow through assisted by guesswork, but I quickly saw the error of my ways when I realized that the patients who were complaining of 'Phairay' weren't suffering from Vertigo as I had imagined, but Diarrhoea. I quickly recruited a local lad as interpreter and kept him by my side for the next two days while I learnt the ropes. By the end of the month, I was so used to listening to Seraiki that on my first day of clinic duty back in Lahore, I was genuinely shocked when my first patient started detailing his symptoms in English.

Most of our medical camps were 7-8 hours long and the patient population thinned out around the 2-3 p.m mark and that's when exhaustion, heat-sickness and boredom would start creeping in. It was then upto us to quickly find a diversion or risk falling victim to cabin fever. The vicinity was scoured for potential entertainments and more often than not, one was found. A tubewell would be located nearby, dhotis and shorts would be borrowed from the locals, a local farmer would be requested to donate a few stalks of sugarcane and voila..an impromptu jacuzzi-cum-waterpark would be set up in the middle of the wilderness.

My friends and batchmates who had completed their tour of duty in South Punjab kept enthusing about the hospitality of the local population. The first evidence of this hospitality came when on the third day of our medical camp at Jhok Uttra, the father of one of the kids we'd treated came carrying a huge cauldron of home-cooked fish on his head. He'd caught a "Commando machli" - in his words- that morning and graciously had it cooked it for us.  The fish was delicious, definitely a member of the Special Services, and was destined to become the first in a long list of similarly erm, piscine tokens of appreciation. "Say it with fish" seemed to be the locals' motto and we didn't mind it one bit....at least not at first. When it seemed that we had been force-fed almost half of the aquatic fauna of the Indus, I respectfully drew the line. It got to a point where, one day, after the announcement of our medical team's arrival in a village, we had to make a follow-up announcement assuring the locals that we definitely, DEFINITELY didn't want any fish.

The locals then turned to another ploy. "Fine" they said,"If fish isn't doing it for you, we have another ploy up our sleeve" The next day, a great big vat full of milk was delivered to us. From that day on, it was the whole food-fest all over, only this time we were being pressed with jugs upon jugs of cold, sweet milk. Again, we received and imbibed all of it with thanks at first, but we had to start the whole 'respectfully decline' routine again when a constant diet of fish an milk began to manifest itself in the form of sleepless nights, frequent daily urges to shower and other signs of "Khoon Ki Garmi" that I needn't go into the details of. Suffice to say that the locals' hospitality didn't just leave a mark on my mind but also on my waistline and what Beach the butler would lovingly refer to as 'the lining of my stomach'.

The hospitable folk of Dera Ghazi Khan cannot be held solely responsible for my gastronomical excesses. I was lucky to be billeted with a group of people that can be best described in that choice Urdu phrase, "Khush Khoraak". All day, all of us would work like pack-mules, but when we gathered for dinner, there wasn't just a feast of reason and flow of soul but a meal of the scrumpciousest food that could be prepared in the middle of nowhere. Twice weekly, there would be night-time barbecues, or alternatively, reconnaissance trips in search of driver hotels (I would like to take this moment to offer an unsoliscited testimonial : the Madina Driver Hotel at Kot Chutta on the DG Khan - Quetta road is the greatest truck-stop hotel in the world)  With profuse apologies to my vegan readers, I tasted more members of our winged, hoofed and pawed companions than I could ever hope to. Apart from the aforementioned fish and the more common staples like mutton, beaf and chicken, we were treated to duck, mallard, quail, partridge, hare and veal. It seems only the wily camel escaped being invited to dinner.

Again, most of these delicacies were sent to us by the locals as tokens of appreciation. However, there were some who didn't share the same sentiment. In fact, at one or two places we met with thinly veiled contempt. One of the local Sardars-owner of one the castles I mentioned in the beginning- made it known in his village that any artisan, worker or labourer found assisting our team would have his arms and legs broken. Despite that, he had the gall to smilingly (and forcibly) conducting us all on a tour of his grand mansion, pausing every so often to deliver a Gaddafi-esque stream of consciousness rant on the hazards of universal education, the correct place of women in society, the relative merits of a girls' school versus a dairy farm and why he thought the feudal-sardaari system was the way forward for Pakistan. A week after we finished the reconstruction of a girls' school in his village, we got word that he had uprooted the new water pumps we'd installed and filled the bore-holes with concrete as well as converted the school playground to - you guessed it- a dairy farm.

Cover Stories - Of Days And Nights In DG Khan

The massive floods that ravaged most of Pakistan in the latter half of last year,although sparing me and most of my near and dear ones, nevertheless left me with a feeling of extreme helplessness, inadequacy and impotence. Even though I was busying myself in helping with the various relief efforts that were being organized by a number of my friends as well as trying to do my bit in terms of monetary and material aid, I couldn't help but think that i needed to do more. Friends and colleagues from all over Pakistan were being rushed to the affected areas to provide medical relief while I was stuck in Lahore. When a month had passed since the start of the flooding, I resigned myself to playing at most a distant tertiary role in the relief efforts and gave up on the idea of working in the field.

Out of the blue, a rumour started circulating that a second wave of medical professionals was being sent to the flood affected areas to take over from where the first batch had left off. My name, along with those of ten of my colleagues, was being floated as part of this team. Sure enough, the rumor was soon followed by an official announcement. I was told I was to leave at two days' notice for a month's tour of duty in South Punjab. With that in mind, I started packing ; three or four pairs of clothes and a dozen or so books. I stacked my iPod with the complete three seasons of Arrested Development and around half a dozen Preston Sturges movies, confident that this arsenal of awesomeness would be more than enough to fight off the occasional attacks of ennui.

I was pretty excited when I left Lahore for Multan,which was the designated staging post for me and my batchmates from various other cities. After a painfully brief reunion with many of my Med School friends and an even briefer night's sleep, I was woken up at 6am the next morning with the information that a vehicle was waiting outside to take me to what would be my home for the next 35 days, Dera Ghazi Khan. On my way to Dera Ghazi Khan, I got my first glimpse of the ravages wrought by the flooding. Roads lay destroyed, fields and crops were inundated, concrete skeletons lined the road and heaped up remains of household items atop mounds of earth marked places where mud huts had stood. It was a sobering and depressing sight that prepared me for the grim task I was to perform over the coming days and weeks.

After my arrival in Dera Ghazi Khan and a perfunctory welcome, I quickly settled into a routine that I was to follow - with one or two modifications - over the next 35 days. There were two doctors sent to Dera Ghazi Khan, me and another colleague from Lahore. We would be up by 7am, have a quick wash-and-brush followed by breakfast and then set off in a caravan of three ambulances to set up a medical camp at a pre-designated location. The ambulances were loaded each morning with a sizeable stash of medicines that had been donated from various sources. We would stop at a Rural Health Centers or a Basic Health Units all over tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan. Our destinations had names like Jhok Uttra, Samina, Haji Ghazi, Nooria Kooriya - tiny villages and hamlets that weren't even on the maps.

While the camps were being set up each morning, an announcement would be made on the village mosque's PA system and the patients would start arriving. In ones and twos at first, later followed by entire clans and neighborhoods so that our average patient load was something like six to seven hundred people per day. People walked, cycled and in some cases, crawled miles to get to the camp. I had never managed workloads as huge as this and for the first day or two, was completely and utterly panic stricken. however, we soon got the hang of it, got our man-management skills in order and the operation progressed smoothly. The day's work would be over when our stash of medicines gave out, which was usually around the 4pm mark. By that time, we were supremely, exquisitely and utterly knackered and the packing-up process would begin. Packing up was a tricky and somewhat dispiriting exercise because of having to turn back (sometimes rather forcefully)stragglers and latecomers because of lack of medicines , especially when we knew that we wouldn't be visiting that specific village again. We'd load up the empty medicine cartons in the ambulances and return to base camp after seven or eight hours in the field.

The first thing to be done on returning to DG Khan would be to ask for a jugfull of what I can safely claim to be the greatest drink ever concocted by the ingenuity of man. Forget beakers full of the warm South and the true, the blushful Hippocrenes; this was the real stuff. If I ever met the gentleman who 'on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise', I'd quietly take him aside and offer him a glass of what was rather prosaically called 'Limoo paani' but i think better merited the name coined by Douglas Adams; the "Pangalactic Gargle Blaster". The first time I drank it, I couldn't believe my throat. It was cold, boy was it cold ! It was equal parts tangy and sweet and peppery and otherworldly. Over the course of my 35 day South Punjab sojourn, I must have consumed gallons upon gallons of the stuff and near the end, was so familiar with the nuances of it's taste that I could guess whether it was 'proof' or not just by measuring the layer of froth at the top of the glass. While departing at the end of my tenure, I called aside the sublime genius who was responsible for creating this elixir, warmly grasped his hand, thanked him in hushed,awed tones and gave him a thousand rupee note as a token of my gratitude.

Getting back to the daily routine; after lunch, washing up and a very brief siesta, the afternoon's activities would commence. For the athletically inclined - and as I was to find out to my disadvantage, the disinclined as well - there were daily compulsory, repeat compulsory evening sports. Cricket, Badminton and Volleyball were played at the ungodly hour of 5pm in the blistering DG Khan sun in a misguided attempt at keeping up morale. Participation, or at least attendance was compulsory and for someone as pathologically averse to pointless physwical activity as me, this was the most unpleasant part of the day and indeed the whole month.

These silly diversions ended around eight p.m, after which the entire group gathered for dinner. Here I must mention that my little medical outfit was attached with a much larger flood relief and reconstruction effort that comprised around two dozen other people. Most of them spent the day distributing rations, reconstructing damaged schools and hospitals or looking after administrative arrangements. The complete workforce of our relief operation usually gathered under one roof only once a day, at dinner. Because of this, dinner was more than a meal, it was a sort of reunion-recap-review and coordination conference.  The meal itself was a formal affair, you had to dress for it (a fact that I hadn't anticipated, hence the prevalence of tees, sweatshirts and track trousers in my wardrobe) there were three courses and a hierarchically determined order of seating. It was immediately followed by a three or four hour long exercise vaguely labeled 'Conference" that me and my fellow doctor made an early and highly rewarding habit of sneaking out of. The result being that we would be comfortably snoozing in our bed by the time the first of the dead-eyed populace returned from the conference room at 2 or 3 a.m. A good night's sleep and the cycle would start anew the next day.

For the greater part of 35 days, this was my daily routine. It was tough and at times dry and monotonous but there were occasional diversions and distractions, countless indelible encounters and stories and a great deal of culinary adventures that rendered my waistline more Pickwickian than I'd prefer. Then there's also the small matter of the five day sabbatical that I've chosen to call The Great(est) Roadtrip......but that, as they say, is a horse of a different color.