...Of A Return To General Practice

It is exactly ten years to the day I joined Medical school. To say that the five years I spent there were life changing would be an understatement. Apart from the obvious fact that I entered a 17 year old awkward undergrad and left five years later as a chubbier but still awkward doctor, there were other imprints the place left on me. Most of my enduring friendships were formed in those five years; mainly because, due to a rather nomadic upbringing, Med school was the only place where I had lived for the extended period of five years. The degree of financial independence I achieved there afforded me ample opportunities to indulge my (at least at that time) burgeoning pursuits. I dabbled in, explored and discarded quite a few of those pursuits, and made the best use of the opportunities for discovery that were available to me. During those five years, my newly discovered passions ranged from music (Dylan, Waits, Young, and later, Qawwali) to books (enlarging my Wodehouse collection, the divers pleasures of Rawalpindi's second-hand bookstores) to travel (the beginning of my love affair with Lahore).

After Med School came a year of internship (House job) in Lahore, and because my family had shifted there, the city that had intrigued and enchanted me on various (mostly surreptitious) visits finally became Home. The internship year is probably the most demanding year in a medical professional's life, and my case was no different. I managed to get a maximum of two or three nights free per week, and holidays were almost nonexistent. But I managed to make the most of the precious little free time I had to explore the historical, cultural and culinary (mostly culinary, hence the ever expanding waistline) treasures of Lahore. At the end of my year in Lahore, I prided myself on being better informed about the city as compared to many longtime residents. On a professional level, I managed to acquit myself fairly well in a trying and sometimes overwhelming schedule.

The number and variety of patients and diseases that I got to observe, treat and monitor was both exciting and a little bit daunting. However, the natural evolution of a career in medicine tends to turn a doctor from a Jack-of-all-trades to (if he/she's lucky), a Master-of-one. A specialty has to be decided early and the course of study altered to fit the specialty. I chose my specialty fairly early and applied for the necessary examinations. After months of fairly intense study (including a month of sixteen-hours-a-day drudgery), I managed to pass the examinations and get selected for training in my desired specialty. The training will start next year (touch-wood) and I will hopefully be limiting myself to patients who have been referred to me for specialized treatment. So from my early years of attending literally hundreds of patients a day, with complaints ranging across the spectrum of disease; I will eventually be able to give my undivided attention to a handful of patients per day, with problems and illnesses that fall within the narrow confines of my specialty.

The reason I have set out the story of the last ten years of my life in rather unnecessary detail is that I have found strange parallels between the trajectory of my professional life and (of all things) my blog. My blog seems to be hitting the same pit stops as my career as a doctor, the only difference being that while my career has trudged along at the speed of an arthritic tortoise wading through a pool of treacle, my blog has raced ahead like a coked up, amphetamine fueled rabbit.

Before my drug crazed animal analogies get out of hand, allow me to explain.

For the initial three years of its existence, the blog was as random as could be. Topics ranged from explorations of the world of show business to football to half a century old cartoons. I wrote about whatever interested me. Of course, grumbles about lethargy, laziness and bloggers' block abounded even then, but i managed to churn out a respectable number (if not quality) of posts every month. Gradually however, a change came over the blog. Over the last three years, I have started writing almost exclusively about the subject that has interested me most. That subject is music, and especially "Sufi" music ( I hate the moniker as much as you ). As the topics of my posts have gotten more specialized, the number and frequency of the posts have decreased. The main reasons of this decline in output are my old friends lethargy, laziness and bloggers' block; but another factor has also contributed.

Since the direction I have chosen (consciously or unconsciously) to steer my blog in demands more than a passing interest in and knowledge of the subject, each post has to be prepared to a stricter set of standards compared to before. Each post has had a fair amount of audio/video accompanying it, which has meant long uploads. I have listened to each recording a fair number of times before writing about it, and the writing itself has been a result of concentrated effort at getting my point across without resorting to pedantry. This has had a rather unfortunate effect on my already crippling procrastination habit. I have hesitated to commit myself to the preparation that each post demands, refraining from writing about subjects that I felt I wasn't qualified to write about or where I felt I couldn't get my point across in a manner that I saw fit. As a result, there have been one and two month intervals between posts and the annual output has declined sharply.

My blog has specialized a full five years before my medical career shall, but there is a small but nagging difference. While I am willing to narrow down the spectrum of diseases I want to treat, I have not been able to narrow down my interests. Over the last few weeks or so, I have been thinking of pulling a Benjamin Button on my blog. In other words, I have decided to turn it back from a specialist to a general physician. I shall of course continue writing about Sufi music and Qawwali, but I shall also begin seeing other patients again. Topics and themes that have greatly affected me but which do not require extended preparation or exercises in meticulousness shall (hopefully) be discussed again. It might alienate some of the newer readers, but it might also recapture some of the esoteric, fly by the wire feel of the early years. Lets see how long this experiment lasts.

Book Of the Week : 'The Diaries : 1969-1979" - Michael Palin
Movie Of the Week, 'The Innocents' 1961
Music Of The Week, 'Popular Problems', Leonard Cohen

...Of Festivals And Firm Refusals

There are very few excuses this time, and those few are flimsy at best. It has been laziness, plain and simple, that's kept me from writing for the better part of the last 5 months. I've had time - not ample time, but enough to hammer out a rough draft or two - and I've had ideas, but I've lacked the get-up-and-go that is the catalyst to productivity. A lot has happened over the last five or six months, several events warranting a write-up, but they've gone largely uncelebrated-or unmourned. Still, better late than never (God forbid). What follows is a hodge-podge of ideas that have been on my mind recently.

Notes On A Festival 

I plan my once-a-month weekend around events that interest me, so that my weekends serve a dual purpose; touching base with the folks back home and (barely) keeping my cultural interests alive. Even so, I miss most of what goes on in the metropolis; movies, concerts, book fairs etc that I would've given an arm and a leg to attend. Still, if there's a slim chance of catching something exciting, I don't mind traveling an extra two or three hundred miles or spending an extra four or five grand on fuel so that I can return to the jungle with something more than a jar of Nano's mango pickle.

Last month I made a quick one-night trip to Lahore to attend a series of plays performed by a wonderful theatre group from across the border, and this month I managed to attend (and convinced more than two dozen family members to attend) the Mystic Music Festival held at Alhamra. The fact that the family would also attend meant a lot of organizational and coordinational (a word I just made up) hassles, but it was well worth it. Over two nights, I had a fair amount of fun, managed to listen to - and watch - some exceptional performances and accomplished the 'touching base with the family' task fairly adequately as well.

I won't go into detailed descriptions of the acts but I did carry away some pretty clear impressions from the two nights that I attended. Some were positive, but a few things niggled me as well. It was pretty easy to pick out favorite performers from amongst the twenty or so acts that I saw. First and foremost, Saeen Zahoor is a gift from God. His voice, especially in the high registers, is spine-tinglingly, goosebumping inducingly powerful and his wonderfully unassuming style perfectly complements his phenomenal talents. I've rarely found myself teary-eyed at a concert, but Saeen ji made me almost break into sobs.God bless him for that.

The other veteran performer who was totally on-the-money was the wonderful Akhter Chinar Zehri from Balochistan. I've grown up watching him on TV as the uncle who sings "Dana-pe-dana", which he obligingly performed at the festival. But what clinched the performance for me was his rendition of Hz Maulana Rumi (RA)'s wonderfully charged ghazal from the Diwan-e-Shams

بیدار شو بیدار شو ھین رفت شب بیدار شو

بیزار شو بیزار شو وزخویشہم بیزار شو

This he performed in his trademark style, lingering on and emoting each verse, whirling and swaying all the while. It was a trance-inducing performance and I won't forget it any time soon. 

Then there were two rather young acts who impressed me very much, and were appreciated pretty generously by the audience as well. The "Bazm-e-Liqa", a group of Ismaili musicians; male and female of relatively young ages, from Hunza in the Gilgit-Baltistan region who accompany themselves on traditional instruments like the Rubab and the lute, with percussion provided by tambourines and Daff's. They were unhurried, completely lost in their own performance, with wonderful voices and a soothing and tranquil performance style. They performed, among other things, a Hamd of Pir Naseeruddin Naseer(RA)'s and a wonderful ghazal of Hafiz Sherazi's and were probably my stand-out favorites among all the performers.

The other performer that really impressed my was Wahdat Rameez, a young musician with no family background in music but possessing a wonderfully melodious voice. He was accompanied by his brother on the harmonium and they sang only two pieces, the "Rohi" and a traditional folk tune made famous by the Wadaali brothers. The style was unassuming, the voices clear and melodious and classically trained. I'm pretty sure I'll be hearing a lot more from them in the future. Honourable mentions also to Kishan Lal Bheel from Cholistan and his band of traditional musicians/dancers/fire-eaters.

While these were the standout performers in my view, the other performers, barring one or two exceptions, were also pretty good. However, there were one or two things that rankled and proved major bummers. One of the things that annoyed me was something I have written about previously. There were seven Qawwal parties featured over the two nights that I attended the festival, and they all performed at least three items each. The irritating bit was that all the twenty or so items performed by the Qawwals boiled down to half a dozen Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan pieces. Some Qawwalis, like "Allah Hoo Allah Hoo" and  "Saanson Ki Mala" were repeated four times each night, and I have now grown to hate, literally loathe "Yeh Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai" mainly because I heard it performed four times in a single night by four different Qawwali parties. I feel sorry for Nusrat, God rest his soul, but I feel doubly sorry for the hundreds of Qawwals whose growth and development became stunted when they couldn't grow out of his enormous shadow. Not one Qawwal performed an original composition-except maybe Imran Aziz Mian. who decided to forego half-hearted Nusrat covers in favour of half-hearted covers of his father's famous Qawwalis. 

The other thing that Qawwals in particular, and most other performers in general, suffered from was counter-intuitive sound mixing. With a few exceptions- "Bazm-e-Liqa", Wahdat Rameez and Arieb Azhar-, each performer's sound-mix consisted of an ultra-loud tabla/dholak and earscreechingly loud vocals; with the harmoniums, guitars, saxophones, clarinets and violins completely drowned out. It was a sad sight to see a rather elderly clarinet player playing the bejeezus out of his instrument,sitting in the back-row of a Qawwali party with no microphone in front of him, while at the same time there were two microphones each for the two dholak players. I've never been able to understand why performers - and in some cases audiences - prefer this setup. It was at the performers' insistence that the levels were adjusted, with many vocalists urging the sound engineers to literally 'take it up to 11', ala Spinal Tap. What resulted was a muddled mess of noise that was pretty distressing to the ears. I'm afraid this is what most of the concerts I've attended have sounded like, and it represents a pretty sizeable hurdle in the way of enjoying the precious few live musical events that take place in Pakistan. 

Looking At It From Smaug's Point Of View 

Once upon a time there was a phenomenal treasure trove of music in a folder on a file-sharing site. It had been uploaded by a gentleman of Pickwickian benevolence and consisted of hundreds of hours of extremely rare recordings by some of the greatest musicians of the last century. It was freely available to the public to listen to, share and download-albeit with moderation. You were allowed a limited number of downloads per day so the servers wouldn't get overloaded. People mostly minded the rules and listened/downloaded with restraint, enabling the folder to remain online for almost three years. Well, one day, as was inevitable, someone greedy came along. The download limit was exceeded, the servers got overloaded, the filesharing site investigated and decided the folder seemed suspicious in terms of copyright infringement and shut it down. The greatest online repository of music, which had taken at least two years to upload and organize, is no more. The gentleman who had painstakingly uploaded the folder is unwilling to go to all the effort again, just to accomodate those he now calls 'selfish freeloaders'. 

Some friends of mine knew an elderly gentleman who was rumoured to possess several extremely rare Qawwali recordings and had a few hundred tapes in his collection. Overtures were made to him to share some, if not all, of his recordings with us, in exchange we'd digitize and organize them for him. these overtures were met with a firm refusal. The gentleman provided a reason for his refusal, which I'm paraphrasing here. The recordings that he possessed had been personally recorded by him at various Qawwali mehfils over the last half-century. In order to attend those mehfils he'd had to travel many hundreds of miles, spending days and weeks in travel just to listen to -and try to record- his favorite artists. Getting invited to these mehfils had involved first being accepted into the community of organizers, conoisseurs and performers. This acceptance had been cultivated over years, and involved meetings, discussions and active participation in the various activities associated with shrines and dargaahs. After he'd been deemed worthy of an invitation, had made the week-long trek to some far off location and been allowed to attend the mehfils, he had to receive permission to record; permission which was not always forthcoming. It was therefore, quite a challenge to record these mehfils.

If he heard about a recording in the possession of somebody else, the whole odyssey would be repeated. He often had to travel a couple of hundred miles in search of a single recording and return empty-handed, but the recordings he managed to get were cherished possessions. The recordings in those tapes, he said, weren't just audio snippets of obscure musicians. They were a record of the places, people, relationships, time and effort that were associated with acquiring them. They were, in short, milestones to his life. What we were suggesting, he said, was that he hand over those milestones to us when we had experienced/suffered/enjoyed/felt none of the things he considered the price of the recordings. Hence the flat refusal. Both 'zauq' and 'shauq' had to be amply demonstrated before he'd be willing to part with any one of them. So, while my friends were allowed to listen to some of the recordings, they came back empty handed.

The late Lutfullah Khan Sb was the foremost audiovisual archiver/collector in Pakistan. His collection of audio/video and documents related to the performing arts is unparallelled in its breadth and scope. He had painstakingly collected, edited, organized and cataloged the entire audiovisual history of Pakistan. This obsession consumed and controlled most of his life, and is enshrined in the most extensive audiovisual library in Pakistan. He left clear instructions to his family that after his death, his archive should be given over to the person or organization who could provide adequate financial compensation to his family for what is an incalculably rich treasure. This financial compensation would have to run into tens of millions of rupees ( a fair assessment in my opinion), otherwise there would be no-sale. On no account would the archive be donated free of cost, in fact Lutfullah Sb preferred setting fire to the whole collection rather than allowing it out of his family's hands without 'adequate financial compensation.' Almost a year after Lutfullah Sb's death, the archive remains closed to the public.

The small music collection that I've managed to acquire over the last three or four years owes much of its existence to the kindness of friends and total strangers. With a few exceptions, I have not had to travel hundreds of miles, or offer proofs of my 'zauq' or 'shauq'. I have often bickered when, in search of recordings and such, I have been faced with a firm refusal or delaying tactics. But I have also come to see that there is some, if not complete, then at least some justification in the refusals. In an age where the internet and filesharing have made gazillions of hours of audio and video freely available, some of us, myself included, have started taking this easy availability for granted. We have started to consider it something of a right to be able to see everything, hear everything and enjoy everything. I'm not saying this free availability is a bad thing. I'm sure my music collection, and come to think of it, my life would've been woefully incomplete if not for those angels in human shape who share so much of their collections on filesharing sites and YouTube. 

But consideration must be paid to the dissenting voices, who believe that simply desiring something isn't enough, one must do something to deserve it too. 

P.S Look up Bazm-e-Liqa and Wahdat Rameez, you won't be disappointed.

...Of Five Conversations

A window into the surreal place I currently call home .

Conversation 1:


W. Doctor sahab, yeh aap ke laptop ke wallpaper pe kis ki photo hai?
Me. Woody Guthrie.
W. Woh kaun hai?
Me. Singer tha ek.
W. Accha .. Doctor sahab, mere laptop pe bhi ek singer ka wallpaper hai.
Me. Accha, kaun ?

W. Justin Bieber.

 .........................................................................................

Conversation 2:

Katy Perry's 'Firework' is playing on the telly, as she sings "Boom boom boom!! / You're shining like a moon, moon, moon!!

Me. Aren't Katy Perry's lyrics awesome?

R. Exactly doctor saheb, itne beautiful lyrics haina. And so deep.

Me. Oh-kay....

...............................................................................................

Conversation 3:

Rob Schneider's 'The Animal' is playing on the telly.

B. Yaar yeh banda kya zabardast actor hai.

W. Exactly sir, kya expressions hain iss ke.

B. Haan, tum ne iss ki 'The Hot Chick' dekhi hai? Pata nahi Oscar ke liye kyun nahi nominate hota yeh.

W. Waqai sir, uss Al Pacino se to bohat behtar acting hai iss ki, kyun Doctor saheb?

Me.  .........

..................................................................................................

Conversation 4:

I'm watchin F.W Murnau's 'Faust' on my laptop.

W.  Doctor saheb, yeh footage kitni purani hai?

Me. 1926 ki hai.

W. Itni purani? Phir to iss main Quaid-e-Azam bhi hongay, haina ?

Me ............

...................................................................................................

Conversation 5:

H. Doctor saheb, yeh saaray posters aap ke hain ?

Me. Ji sir.

H. Yeh chaar boorhay kaun hain?

Me. Sir yeh Rolling Stones hain, ek band hai kafi purana.

H. Yeh abhi bhi gaatay hain?

Me. Ji sir.

H. Hmm, Iss umer main to ghazlain hi gatay hongay. Haina doctor saheb?

Me. Bilkul sir.

..........................................................................................................

...Of A Number Of Things

What follows is a series of small erm, discourses on a number of topics that interested me but weren't deemed suitable for further elaboration because, let's face it, I'm the laziest fella this side of the Indus. They don't have a common thread running through them and have been hastily jotted down as I unpack my bags after heading back to my little shed in the jungle.

The 'Usual'

Most of the things that I've grown to enjoy immensely in Lahore were actually my own discoveries ; bookshops, places to eat, places to see etc that I had stumbled onto in my many exploratory forays. One place however, bears the distinction of not only being pointed out to me by a friend but actually, persuasively prodded towards, and I can safely say that never was I prodded towards a more favorable destination. One of the small, no not small; sizeable pleasures that one can hope to achieve in a long residence at one place is acquiring a place where, slightly modifying the theme from Cheers, 'not everybody but at least somebody knows your name'. That place for me is the Lahore Chatkhara in Mini-Market, Gulberg.

The fact that after my initial visit, I could be found there at least three or four times every month bred a little familiarity. This was reinforced by the fact that I'd always be carrying a pile of books and would inadvertently be waiting for someone, something which sort of singled me out from the rest of their patrons. The bond was completed by the fact that the first time I tasted what I had been ordered by my friend to taste - a plate of Samosa Chaat and a bottle of Coke - I was so taken that I immediately ordered another serving and gave the waitress a pretty phenomenal tip. The happy result is that now, whenever I go there, I am nodded-at by said recipient of my tipping largesse, led towards my 'usual table', allowed to wait uninterrupted for my 'usual friends' and need only to inform them to bring me 'the usual'. It may not be the Anglers' Rest of the Mr. Mulliner stories or the eponymous bar from Cheers, but trust me, there's great pleasure in being a 'usual'.

The Unbearable Nusrat-ness Of Being

I came late to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Wait, let me rephrase that, I was a huge Nusrat fan the first 20 odd years of my life but when I 'rediscovered' Qawwali some four odd years ago, somehow Nusrat remained on the fringes of my radar. One of the reasons was that I had been warned off him by the "purists" - back when I was silly enough to  pay any attention to them, another was that every time I listened to him, my mind would always (unfavorably) compare him to his father, which I realise now was unfair. However, when I gradually rediscovered Nusrat, I was immediately entranced by his skill, his emotionality and (unlike what the purists had blabbered on about) his immense 'ehteraam' for the Classical idiom. Of course I had to pick and choose from literally thousands of his recordings, but at least I was a Nusrat fan.

Mark the sequel though. It's been more than a decade since Nusrat passed away. Qawwali has seen a decline and then a slight resurgence but the influence of Nusrat has remained. Not only has it remained but it has grown so overpowering that I've noticed a (to me at least) very disturbing trend in modern Qawwali, namely the Unbearable Nusratness Of Being.

The overwhelming majority of Qawwals have realized that Nusrat sells. As a result, everyone has become what can best be described as rather sub-standard Nusrat clones. In doing so, the Qawwals have all but completely abandoned their own hereditary style, their trademark items and their unique performance styles. The entire Fareedi clan for example - which boasted such modern stalwarts as Agha Rasheed Ahmed and Abdul Raheem Fareedi - has decided to convert to Nusratism en masse. Gone are the trademark emotive, classical bandishes. Instead, we have cheap synthesisers, alarming vocal histrionics and wholesale borrowings from Nusrat's repertoire.

Another example is one of the rising stars of the current Qawwali scene, Asif Ali Santoo Khan Qawwal, whose father and grandfather were supremely talented Ustaads of Qawwali, but who has completely moulded his style on Nusats, with the result that more often than not, his performances veer towards jumbledness and confusion rather than clarity. Even the ‘Dehli-wala’ gharanas of Qawwali, both in India and Pakistan, have also eschewed their usual emotive, nuanced and more measured style for a more ballistic and over-the-top style that somehow sounds odd to the ears. The overall result being that where once the Punjabi ‘ang’ of Qawwali was a many-textured style with different performers binging their own uniqueness to the fore, nowadays Qawwali in the Punjab is totally Nusrated.

Now I know this is an honest-to-goodness rant and that I am obviously overreacting to what is the natural result of the presence of a towering cultural figure who cast a very long shadow, but unless some of the current performers discover their own distinctive voices and look towards their own personal heritage for fresh ideas, Qawwali will degenerate into something much less appealing and enlightening and satisfying than it’s supposed to be. And worst of all, the purists will be proven right.

The Joy Of Text

When I go on holiday, I don’t necessarily ‘go on holiday’. Let me explain. Others may use the holidays to catch a bit of much-needed R&R, laze about, catch up on their sleep or generally idle. My holidays are the exact opposite of that. Averaging only five to six hours of sleep per day, I manage to cram in so many activities into the three or four days off I get every month that I actually need a day-planner to help me get through all the commitments. These include getting through the checklist in the previous post, the requisite socializing, shopping, taking care of pending official paperwork and downloading as much music and movies and TV shows to last me the month or more before I next expect to be home.

Another object that is forced to share this increased holiday workload is my long-suffering phone. Here in the jungle, the phone serves as a combination torch and Angry Birds console and that’s it. No cellphone signals and no Wi-Fi means it lives out the month a shadow of its true self. But let me get in my car and get within cellphone coverage range on my way home, and Abdul Ghafoor (my phone’s named Abdul Ghafoor) comes alive in the most remarkable fashion. Over the course of the next three or four days, I manage to make more phone calls, send more texts and do more phone-ly things than most people tend to do in their entire lifetimes. My preferred modus communicadi being the text message, which I’ve preferred over phone calls for as long as I’ve had a cellphone.

The pure pleasure of carrying out conversations over SMS is lost on people who take the ability to send and receive texts for granted. But to a person who gets to receive terrible jokes and Doomsday warnings only once a month, the true worth of the medium is evident. It’s hard to describe the absolutely nonsensical bracing effects, after having spent a month or more in complete radio silence, of a conversation like this :

Q. Musab bhai, aap ek kaam keejiye.

Me. Ji janab ?

Q. Aap Nijaam ke bal bal jaiyye.

Me.Ji behtar.

A month after arriving in my jungle hideout, I had managed to procure a phone and establish some form of communication, two months later, I improved that to include what can mercifully be called an internet connection but the ability to send and receive texts had eluded me. Because of some oddly convoluted logic, phones here can carry out any two of the three activities of voice calls, text messaging and internet connectivity, but not all three. So in opting for the ability to sit for hours waiting for the Google homepage to load, I relinquished the ability to text. The result was that on my recently concluded holiday, I took out my textual frustrations to such an extent that I managed to crash the Messaging application, which is no mean feat on an Android phone. This brought home the realization that steps needed to be taken, avenues needed to be explored and measures needed to be implemented so that I could spread out my textual largesse over the entire year instead of treating my phone like a stock-ticker three days a month and letting it grow fat and lazy the rest of the time.

As always, the simplest solution has proven the most practical. Doing the required math, I decided that to phones were better than one. One for calling and texting and the other solely for crawling the internet. So now mine is the only room for miles with two oddly shaped telephone antennae on its roof. Now all I have to worry about is how to get enough electricity to charge two phones when there isn’t enough for even one. But that, as they say, is a horse of a different colour.

Classical Music Versus Lamb Chops

Here’s a question. You know the Festival Of Lights in Lahore is part of your ‘culture’. Yet you live in Khuzdar, or you’re allergic to lights. Would you then consider it your duty to do whatever you can to preserve and support the Festival Of Lights simply because it’s part of your 'culture' ?

I got to dwelling on this question after reading a Facebook post, a rather anguished post lamenting the treatment of Classical musicians in Pakistan, especially the lack of respect paid them and the impending void they will leave if not appreciated, supported and given their due ‘ehtiraam’. This is sadly very true and the handful of senior classical musicians, with one or two exceptions, are living out the last days of their lives in penury, mostly neglected, with their huge talents and ability going to waste rather than being transmitted to future generations. The loss to our cultural milieu will be immeasurable when they’ve passed away. That much is clear.

Mark the sequel though. Classical music has, for most of its history, been an art form appreciated by a comparatively small audience, almost like Opera or Jazz. The small audience has been, for the most part, discerning, passionate and appreciative. And they’ve had the means to support the art-form that they appreciate. This has taken the form of court-patronage in the previous centuries and although now considerably diminished, is still carried on in the tradition of Mehfils and soirees etc. With these means, the passionate followers of classical music have managed to get their fill of their favorite type of music and contribute to the maintenance and sustenance of the classical tradition.

Like Opera and Jazz however, Classical music is not entirely ignored by the mainstream. In genres like Qawwali, Ghazal and Folk Music for example, artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan, Tufail Niazi et al have been instrumental in introducing the lay-listener to a taste of sub-continental classical music; a feat that has resulted in a wider listenership and appreciation for this genre. Yet classical music has remained, for better or worse, a rather exclusive art form, appreciated and nurtured by a rather small group of fans (at least in Pakistan). This group is well-versed in the intricacies, technicalities as well as the niceties associated with classical music. It knows, for example, the etiquette of a ‘mehfil’ and the ‘ehtiraam’ accorded an Ustad, and in mehfils where this group is exclusively present, such niceties are usually expected to be followed.

Any art form, however exclusive, cannot hope to remain both insular and vibrant. In terms of Classical music, this problem is somewhat rectified by including a sizeable number of lay-listeners in mehfils and the repertoire is designed to include more popular ‘items’ along with the ‘thaith’ classical pieces. Another very common trend is inviting these musicians, especially Qawwals, to functions such as weddings, parties etc where they perform to a decidedly mixed crowd. Now, the point I was trying to elaborate in the question of the start of this piece comes into play. How is the lay-listener, with not more than a passing interest in what the musicians are performing, supposed to react? Does he, despite the fact that whatever is being performed is flying over his head or that his attention is constantly being diverted by the rather delectable looking lamb-chop at the wedding buffet, feign interest and try to treat the music and the musicians with something more than cursory attention ? Or does he, following his heart (and stomach), head straight to the group of his friends – with a small detour at the buffet table of course – and start chattering like nobody’s business, not giving a hoot to the group of people gesticulating and caterwauling on stage ?

As an enlargement of the above question, unless the classical musicians have modified their repertoire to include more populist pieces – a step which will more often than not have the effect of alienating their core audience – why should the lay-listener pay attention to this group of performers, despite the fact that Classical music forms an integral part of our national culture. Because from the listener’s point of view, in the current economic and political situation, paraphrasing Faiz – ‘Aur bhi gham hain zamanay main culture kie siwa’. And again, perhaps his cultural touchstones include something completely different from those of classical music fans. Perhaps he digs Atif Aslam and the latest Bollywood music, perhaps he’s into hip-hop or death-metal or Naseebo Lal. Why should he give a hoot to the fact that Ustad Ghulam Hussain Shaggan is currently living in a two-room apartment in a seedy part of Lahore or that Ustad Manzoor Ahmed Niazi is now the last surviving member of a legendary generation of Qawwals or that a treasure trove of Classical music recordings is slowly decomposing in the basement of the Radio Pakistan building in Lahore?

This is a thorny issue, for both the listener and the musicians. Should a more populist approach be tried by the musicians and tolerated by the die-hard listeners or is adherence to the classical idiom, coupled with increased patronage by the core group of listeners the way forward? Because one thing is clear – at least to me- Classical Music, classical Qawwali and all similar art-forms, will have rather limited appeal as compared to more popular arts unless drastic changes in performance are made. It will always be up to the small yet devoted group of listeners to archive, promote, nurture and introduce this art form, like it has been in the past. I don’t know who can shoulder the blame if these art-forms continue to decline, but at least it isn’t the wedding guest noisily munching on his lamb-chop and enjoying the company of his friends, oblivious to the fading echoes of what he certainly doesn’t consider his ‘culture’.

...Of All The Bases And How They Were Hit

In my five years of surreptitiously visiting and then a year and a half of actually living in Lahore, I had pretty much defined what were, for want of a better phrase , my 'places of interest'. Now that I've returned to square one in that my status has reverted from resident to occasional visitor, I can draw on my extensive (if I do say so myself) and exhaustive knowledge of what I like to come up with a pretty all-encompassing list of all the things that make Lahore awesome.

Now obviously I can't enjoy or experience the literally dozens of sights and sounds and tastes (especially tastes) that make Lahore what it is on these 3-4 days per month trips of mine , especially now that they will be split between visiting the family in Sargodha and what a friend calls 'Lahoring'. So I've narrowed my list down to a 12-point checklist. If on a trip to Lahore, I manage to check the requisite number of boxes, I can consider the trip a success. And as every new tabulatory exercise like this requires a 'type specimen' - a perfect object with which to compare subsequent similar objects, I can safely put forward my current thirteen day hiatus in Lahore (which unfortunately ends today) as the standard against which all future trips will be measured. Without further ado then, here's......

My Lahore Checklist

•   Visited three closest friends living in Lahore - Check
•   Gotten together with more friends over Samosa Chaat at the Lahore Chatkhara - Double Check *
•   Touched base with the in-laws and close relatives - Triple Check
•   Visited the Data Darbar at least once - Triple Check *
•   Attended a Qawwali performance - Check
•   Eaten at at least two of my favorite places at MM Alam Road - Check
•   Purchased at least a truckload of books - Quadruple Check
•   Had a plate of Do-It-Yourself Gol Gappay from the Hafiz Juice Centre at Anarkali - Check
•   Purchased at least two new Qawwali cassettes - Check
•   Completed all the requisite downloads/updates/fixes that my laptop requires till the next trip - Check
•   Discovered at least one new place of interest - Check
•   Misdirected people asking for directions at least once - Check

A word on the Asteriks in the next post ......

...Of Borrowed Resolutions

2012 is here.

A new year calls for New Year's resolutions. Instead of making my own (lazy bum that I am) I figured I'd borrow some from the king of the troubadours, Mr. Woody Guthrie. All things considered, it's the finest set of rules-to-live-by since the Ten Commandments.


Happy New Year everyone !!

Woody Guthrie's New Year's Resolutions

P.S Where there's Guthrie, there's bound to be Dylan. In keeping with the spirit of things (and the spirit of shameless borrowing), here's Uncle Bob's list of New Year's Resolutions, taken from the greatest radio show ever, Theme Time Radio Hour.

                     

...Of Another Country

I've been aware of this malady of mine for a long time but it became painfully obvious around a weeek ago. I was sitting in an empty dining hall, perfunctorily changing channels on a beaten down old television when I stopped on PTV. They were showing an interview with the senior character actor AK Hangal. It was some fifteen minutes into watching it raptly that I came to a realization that I was probably the only person in Pakistan who, at 11pm on a Friday night, would willingly tune into PTV of all channels, watch a rather exhaustive interview with a 94 year old actor whom most people would only barely know of, and not only watch it but nod knowingly every time the words "Garam Hawa", "Homi Wadia" or "Prithvi Theatre" were mentioned. While I was thus a revereein' the interview ended and the credits rolled with Mehdi Hassan singing Nasir Kazmi,

"Bhooli bisri chand umeedain, chand fasanay yaad aaye
Tum yaad aaye aur tumhare saath zamanay yad aaye"

Inexplicably, my eyes grew moist.  It was then that I turned off the television in some alarm and left.

Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out this peculiar predicament. Why is it that I live a sort of double life in which the past plays a more important role than the present or the future. Why is it that I will gladly spend days upon days listening to or editing a 40 year old piece of music and consider it the most pleasurable experience imaginable when the very same piece of music will make grown men cover their ears and run for cover. Why do I spend (or did I spend) hours on the internet trying to find a site that will stream Turner Classic Movies so I can sit back and watch Preston Sturges marathons. Why do I know Monty Python jokes better than names of some of my family members?

It's not that I have an overpowering obsession with all things grey and mouldy, it's just that the past is more appealing to me than the present.And when I refer to the past and the present, I mean of course the cultural aspect. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I dream lovingly about the days of kerosene lamps and open air lavatories. It's the cultural, the artistic ephemera from the past that fascinates and captivates me, and I can't seem to find an explanation for it. I have a fairly active social life (or at least I did when I was in Lahore), am fairly proficient professionally and function adequately well in everyday situations. Yet always, and I mean always, at the back of my mind will be snippet of a Rafi song or a line from a Wodehouse novel or a scene from a Humphrey Bogart film. It's a semi-sleepwalking state that I've perfected to such an extent that except for the keenly observant, no one can usually guess that I'm actually thinking of something completely remote from the topic of conversation whenever I'm talking to them. Again, it's not that I have no interest in the present, or like Ignatius J Reilly from The Confederacy Of Dunces, consider everything modern 'an abortion of the highest order". I am a rabid fan of film, literature, television and some of the music of the present day, although I will admit my tastes differ slightly from the average.

Someone once asked Dylan why he played so many old songs on his radio show, "Well, there are more old songs than new ones y'know" was his reply. And I suppose that is an argument that can be advanced in my defence. There are more Rafi songs than Atif Aslam songs, more Wodehouse novels than David Mitchell novels, and according to the law of averages, proportionally more good Rafi songs than good Atif songs and so on. But popular taste, and indeed my taste doesn't work by this logic. It's something else that draws me to what I call entertainment and what others call, in a most appropriate word, "maghziyaat".I guess it's more of what Dylan meant when he wrote in Chronicles, and I'm paraphrasing here, that his world wasn't the world of the '60s, his world was the world of a hundred years ago; the world of the American civil war  that he spent hours every day reading about in the New York Public Library. The events in the daily newspapers of the 1860's were to him more relevant and more resonant than what was going on around him. That was also what attracted him to the folksong in the early part of his career, the fact that something was written decades ago yet was still relevant and alive.

I think maybe that frame of mind comes closest to describing my own. I believe music and film and literature from the past aren't things that come with expiry dates or notices that say 'You must be this old to enjoy this.' The fallacy that most people fall into is thinking that the exact opposite is true, that a Mehdi Hasan ghazal is something only 'Uncles' are supposed to enjoy and we'll be damned if we're caught listening to it. The same is obviously true the other way round and the members of one generation are generally averse to partaking in the pop culture of the ones that succeed it. Thanks to modern means of communication and dissimination, the past and the present are both right in front of us, to partake of as much as we like.

I don't know where I intend to go with this discussion ( or this one-sided ramble if you will ), but I started out attempting to identify what it was that makes me so attracted to the past. I think I tried a similar exercise previously, in a rather execrable little poem if I remember correctly *shudders*.  I haven't come to any conclusion but I think that if I can somehow balance, however precariously, the demands of what my father often refers to as 'PRACTICAL LIFE" (yes, he uses capitals when saying it), with the demands of say, knowing the names and artistic aachievements of Messrs Jerome Kern, Bulwer-Lytton, Bix Beiderbecke, Rex Harrison and Micheal Bloomfield, I might be able to achieve a rare distinction, a dual citizenship of the present and the past, which as they say, is another country.

...Of Five Weeks

It's been exactly five weeks since I came here from Lahore. "Here" being the place I'm currently ensconced in (I love that word) and the name of which I can't mention because of reasons too tedious to go into here. I had thought at the outset to write a journal. I thought I could overcome my natural laziness and get down to at least a cursory habit of regular writing, after all I had faithfully kept a journal for the whole six months I was at PMA. I kept at it for a week, writing in pencil because I'd been told that journals are best written in pencil, but eventually complacency interfered. The journal is now being used for jotting down stray thoughts that'll prolly be collected in a blogpost. It wasn't just complacency though. The fact that nothing ever happens where I am living contributed directly to the cessation of my pencilling. And when I say that nothing happens here, I mean just that. Here's a brief rundown of an average day.

Get up around 8.
Shower and such.
See the two or three patients that come to the clinic.
Play video games till 2.
Lunch.
Nap till 6(aka roll around in bed trying to sleep while fanning yourself with a folded up newspaper).
Go out for a bit of exercise (only the first week)/Watch movies/television shows/documentaries on The Dude* till dinner.
Drive two miles to where the inhabitants gather every night, have dinner, do the day's only bit of socialising.
Drive two miles back and go straight to bed.

*The Dude being my laptop, named after the person who's lazy footsteps I seem to be following, Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski.

It's not just my innate introversion and asocial tendency that's led me to spend my days as described above. It's a mixture of being miles away from other people, lack of access to electricity, the telephone, the tv, the cellphone, the internet and other similar modern abominations and yes, my innate introversion and asociality that's turned me into either a modern day Thoreau communing with nature or a slightly paunchy, mustachio'd version of Rousseau's Emily. Yes, mustchio'd. I've decided to keep a moustache in lieu of a pet and I can say it's proving to be a great companion. Many an idle hour has been spent twirling the edges of said fungus while lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. But gentle reader, I hope you don't get the impression that I'm living in a sort of Kafka-esque morass of utter despondency and boredom. There are distractions, a few every day, that help tide the day over and have helped me while away these three weeks.

There's the weather first of all, a weird abomination that seems to have combined the worst features of the weather systems of the Amazonian rainforest and Hell. We have the heavy rains expected in this time of the year, but they aren't just heavy. Every night it pours, turning the dirt roads into slush and making it impossible to leave the room. And inside the room is an entirely different matter. The drip-drip-dripping roof and the buckets on the floor to catch the indoor deluge were something I'd only seen on TV or in movies until now, but being a quick learner, I can now easily place buckets, mugs and glasses at strategic locations within five minutes of hearing the first distant roar of rainclouds.  It rains every night, usually accompanied by violent thunderstorms, and every so often as a special treat, we have gales that uproot trees and block roads. The rains are then followed by the most oppressive mixture of heat and humidity ever concocted by Beelzebub or whoever's in charge of the meteorological machinations in this part of Pakistan. A dozen glasses of Energile every hour are required to prevent oneself from dehydrating to death. I use to think Lahore's heat was bad until I got here. On the bright side, one doesn't have to worry about hygiene because at least seven baths are required every day if you want to save yourself from turning into human fly-paper.

Along with the weather, the fauna round here are definitely something to write home about. Apart from the usual domestic menagerie of cats, dogs and goats and the profusion of insects both great and small, In three weeks, I've seen jackals, deer, an ibex or two, baboons, wild boar (who seem to roam these parts in groups of upto 50), wild buffalo, hyenas, foxes and yes, that most common animal around here, snakes. More on the snakes later, I believe they require a separate account because of the special part they play in our social life. At least you can say this about the dumb chums, they really go out of their way to socialize.

The insects were the first to establish contact. One afternoon around three weeks ago, I woke from my nap itching all over. I thought a shower'd fix it but it didn't. A look at my arms and legs revealed that I'd turned a pretty pink, and not only was I pink, I had erupted in an effusion of large wheals and bumps. I realized I was getting an allergic reaction because one of the insects that inhabited my bed, taking completely the wrong view of my sharing the sheets with them, had decided that it was time for us to become more than just friends. I hurrried over to the tiny hospital that doubles as my office and got myself injected with the requisite mixture of steroids and anthistamines that ought've gotten rid of the unwanted effects of insect affection. The pinkness and the itching started going down and I breathed easy. But at around midnight, the itching returned with a vengeance, burning up my arms and legs. I bore it as much as I could, then decided i oughtta get a second shot of the medicine if i wanted a good night's sleep. I got out of my bed and immediately felt the ground give way under my feet. I grabbed at a nearby chair as my heart sank like it'd never done before. I realized that the allergy was worse than I'd thought, and when the sinking feeling didn't pass after a minute or so of horrid waiting, I made a dash for the hospital. Barely getting to the door, I woke up the poor nurses (male nurses dear reader, no need to look at me that way). Got my BP checked and just as I'd thought, it was down to 100/60. I got myself hooked up to an I/V line so that I could get some fluid in me and get my BP up, dozing off to an uneasy sleep only to wake up only an hour later feeling that the itchiness and the queasy heart-sinkingness were returning. A review of my BP revealed that it'd gone down to 80/40 and we'd officially entered scary territory. That's when I did one of the most surreal things I've ever done. Being the only doctor at the hospital, I made the decision that the patient's condition was now beyond my capabilities and that he should be evacuated to the nearest medical centre. I wrote myself a prescription accordingly and called the ambulance, which came a half an hour later and by 5am I was safely settled in a medical ward. The happy result being that my nurses now happily tell everyone who cares to listen, "You'll never guess who was the first serious patient doctor sahab referred? Himself!!"

When I got back, the first thing I did was to get a mosquito net and fix it onto my bed. I mean I was flattered by all the interest the insects were showing, but you have to draw the line somewhere, if you know what I mean. That's when the goats came into my life. There's a herd of mountain goats that can be seen prancing around my lodgings, and I hadn't paid much attention to them. That is until it was, as the writer says, a dark and stormy night. My room has tiny courtyard in front of it, with a roof large enogh to barely keep out the rain. I was sleeping while the tempest raged around me when I suddenly felt he bed shake. For the first week after I'd gotten here, I was plagued by almost nightly nightmares, probably a subconscious response to the change in surroundings. I thought this too was one of theose nightmares when suddenly, my senses were assailed by a curious smell. I thought, I've never had olfactory nightmares, what gives? Waking up and looking about, I realized that I was surrounded by goats, hundreds of them. They were all around the bed, they were under the bed, and one of the more adventurous ones was trying to get into the bed. They were fidgety, loud and smelly. Especially smelly. Still sleepy, I tried to figure out the reason of this hairy convention that had suddenly decided to congregate around me. I knew it couldn't be just my animal magnetism, and it was when I looked around that I realised that a rainstorm was pouring outside and the animals had gotten in around my bed to try to shelter themselves from the elements. I figured it wouldn't be nice to shoo the poor creatures away into the rain, so I pinched my nose and willed myself back to sleep, being woken once or twice again when one or the other of the members of herd got particularly excited. The goats, encouraged by my hospitality, have now become a fixture so that every rainy night, I have to accomodate a dozen or so hirsute quadrupeds around my bed.

The isolation has had its advantages as well. In fact, if it weren't for the weather and all the animal intrusions, I might've grown to like this place. The locals assure me that I've just come at a slightly importune time and if I'd arrived any time except the months of May-August, I'dve found the place heaven on earth, albeit still one overpopulated with goats and snakes. I've managed to do a lot in these five weeks, including finishing six books, one of which I had started thrice previously and had given up on because a)it's a rather difficult read and b) because there were too many distractions in Lahore. And having finished it, I can safely say that "The Confederacy Of Dunces" is one of the funniest, smartest books I've ever read, and one that has given me two of my favoritee fictional characters in Patrolman Angelo Mancuso and Ignatius J Reilly. I've also started brushing up on my Persian, doing it the only way I thought best, by reading Rumi's Masnavi verse by verse and then breaking down the accompanying translation. I've listened to music almost non-stop, to such an extent that my favorite pair of headphones finally decided it could take no more and handed in the dinner pail. Luckily I'd brought an extra pair just for that contingency (at the time of writing, these too have gone kaput) I've been listening to a lot of Jazz and marvelling at the absolute genius of Louis Armstrong, especially his recordings of the late '20s and early '30s. The mixtape a friend gave me before I departed from Lahore hs also been on constant play, as have been two or three of my favorite Qawwals. Lest anyone fear I've been shirking my duties too much, I must inform them that I haven't been tardy on the Qawwali front, having cleaned up and edited the sound on ten or so very rare Qawwali videos.I had also stocked The Dude full of movies and TV shows because I had a pretty good idea of the amount of boredom I could expect, and I'm glad I took that precaution. I can also safely say that Freaks And Geeks is one of the greatest, humanest TV shows I've ever seen.

My situation here isn't entirely an uncomfortable one, but I'm sure I can surround myself with a more homely atmosphere. That's why when I get home on my first leave, along with the requisite amount of catching up and reacquainting myself with such exotic things as running water and muslim showers, I need to do some shopping. Specifically a television and a DTH antenna. Maybe then I can give the Dude a rest and recapture some of my old couch-potato glory just in time for the football season. Who knows, with a couple of posters on the wall, a UPS, football on the telly and a goat or two by my side, I just might grow to like this place. Touch wood!

...Of A New Perspective On Heaven And Hell

Pop Milton once said, “The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven”. I've come to somewhat similar conclusions over the past five weeks, as you can read below.

Heaven is having the leisure to finish six books in five weeks.

Hell is being surrounded by people who read Sidney Sheldon and call this activity "bookreading"

........................................................................
                         
Heaven is listening to Barre Ghulam Ali Khan sing Malhaar while the monsoon rages.

Hell is trying to keep goats out of your bed while the monsoon rages.

.......................................................................

Heaven is a cool glass of Energile after a long day in the sun.

Hell is the long day in the sun preceding the glass of Energile.

....................................................................

Heaven is understanding what Ghalib meant when he said,

          "Dil dhoondta hai phir wohi fursat, ke raat din
           Baithe rahain tasawwur-e-Janaann kiye huay"

Hell is understanding what Ghalib meant when he said,

"Girya chaahe hai kharaabi mere kaashaanay ki
Dar-o-deewaar se tapkay hai bayabaan hona"

...................................................................

Heaven is a life free from Pakistani news channels.

Hell is hearing secondhand bad news, weeks after it ocurred.

....................................................................

Heaven is no Sahir Lodhi and no Madni Channel.

Hell is no Coke Studio and no Turner Classic Movies.

.....................................................................

Heaven is living in splendid isolation.

Hell is having nobody to contact when the toilet drain clogs up.

...................................................................

Heaven is finding cellphone signals in the middle of a secluded field after you've wandered miles searching for them.

Hell is realizing that the field is infested with snakes and that the signals aren't strong enough to even send a text message.

...................................................................

Heaven is watching all three seasons of Black Books without interference.

Hell is a place where "Mind Your Language" is considered the pinnacle not only of British comedy, but of all comedy.

......................................................................

Heaven is living where I live.

Hell is living where I live.

..................................................................

....Of Leaving Lahore And Long Overdue Admissions.

When I was in Med School, a yearly trip to Lahore was an almost sacred ritual. For a few days every year, spending a sizable chunk of my meager allowance/stipend, I'd grab a bus to Lahore, happily explore the city on rickshaw, meet the few friends I had there and get some shopping done. Summer or winter, I'd make it a point to visit Lahore, even if it meant using false pretences to goad out a permission from my parents. Even though I had lived a sizable chunk of my life in Rawalpindi and hadn't ever LIVED in Lahore, I considered it my , erm my spiritual home if you will. However, when my five years in med school ended and it was time to decide where I wanted to do my house-job, I was in a fix. My family was in Rawalpindi (they'd planned to eventually move to Lahore in a year's time) and I knew and liked the city, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the voice that said, "Go to Lahore!!"

In the end, it was the advice of a friend - a friend of otherwise highly dubious character traits - who implored me to choose Lahore, that, coupled with my parents' decision to bring forward their planned Lahore move ahead by one year, made me decide for Lahore. Looking back, it was probably one of the smarter decisions I've made in a rather checkered decisionmaking history. After spending one whole year in Lahore, I can safely say that I haven't regretted it one bit. I had come here primarily to do my housejob and that I did. It was the most intellectually rewarding one year I could hope for, even better than what most of my coursemates in Rawalpindi had spent. I got the chance to learn at the feet of some of the best teachers in the country and substantially improve my practical and clinical skills. On the personal side, I was lucky to have two of my closest friends -make that three, with the third a recent addition - living literally next door. That meant I was never too hard pressed for companionship.

The exploring/photographing bug bit me at just the right time as I scoured the backroads of Lahore in search of amazing places. If summer had delayed itself just one or two more weeks I'd have visited and photographed just about everything I'd set my sights on. Unfortunately the oppressive Lahore heat (probably the only thing in which Lahore loses brownie points to Pindi) and my tight schedule meant that I still haven't visited or photographed a few very important landmarks - Masjid Wazir Khan for example. Some other time perhaps. It's also been a year where I've indulged almost all my rather varied intersts. I've been to Qawwali performances by the dozens, watched plays and stand-up shows, attended concerts and conferences, and in what must certainly be the highlight of my life so far, met Yusfi sahab. And I've eaten, by God have i eaten. The extra tonnage that I've put on over the last year doesn't do justice to my culinary exploits. In short, I've lived it up - at least according to my definition of living it up.

My one year is now up, and it's time to leave. I'll be moving to a rather remote location in two or three days, as diametrically opposite to Lahore as you can imagine. Even though I knew that I was gonna have to leave Lahore at the end of one year, that still doesn't make the departure any easier. I may be able to live without the food, the exploration or the 'ronaq' but there's one very vulnerable chink in my armor, one that I don't usually let show to others,but one they might notice if they are attentive enough.

When we were completing our training, a newly graduated psychologist joined us for six months. The poor guy had to spend all day dealing with idiots who'd shout out,"Yo shrink, come here and tell me about my personality." And being the nice guy he was, he'd provide them with a rather detailed and unflatteringly accurate description of themselves. One day, when he and I was alone, he asked me why I hadn't ever bothered him with the usual request. i replied that I pretty much knew who I was and didn't need further analysis, thankyouverymuch. He said he'd still tell me one rather important thing he'd noticed about me over the course of six months, it was that I had a 'dependant personality'. I needed people, friends around me to function properly. Without a proper social support structure, I was constantly in danger of collapsing inwardly into a coccoon. I simply nodded my head in assent and left, slightly unhappy that he had discovered my most important weakness.

And that is the chink in my armor that must now confess to. I'll be going to a new place, with a new set of colleagues, which is something I would've been fine with were it not for the fact that the remoteness of my location might make it impossible to establish any contact with the folks back in Lahore, or for that matter anywhere else in Pakistan. Without my 'social support', I'd be a fish out of water, which is a rather frightening proposition. But what gives me some hope is that I've been in a similar situation before. Five years ago when I joined med-school, I was thrust into a group of strangers. It took some adjusting, but after spending five years, I count that group of strangers among some of my very best friends. Maybe this adventure'll turn out the same way too. I can only hope.

What my two year stay at my next port-of-call will lack in friends, it'll more than make up in free time. From people who've served in similar places, I've gathered that killing time is the most important problem one faces. I think I have that covered. There's the extensive study that I'll have to start in order to appear for my specialization exams, then there's the Truckloads of Qawwali recordings that I've been assigned to edit and catalog. There's 160+ gigabytes on my harddrive that I'll devote substantial time to; so that at the end of two years, I ought've listened to all 19571 songs I've accumulated (a daunting task). A trunkfull of unread books goes with me too, none of them related to medicine. With such ample supplies, I think I'm pretty much covered as far as killing time is concerned. And if all else fails, I can still write.

I'll end here, I don't know when I'll get the chance to write again, so readers can consider this another one of my temporary retirements from writing. Consider this also, whether they can read this or not, a thankyou to all the many people who have made this year the most special year of my life. And finally, consider this a thankyou to Lahore, for being so good to me.

...Of An Alarming Change

There are thought-out, worked-upon posts and then there is hack work to keep the juices flowing. This is probably the latter.
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My weekends have changed.

In my five years in med-school, weekends were like pit-stops. We used to look forward to them, counting down the days and generally living a weekend-to-weekend existence. The whole work week was considered a tedious preamble to the really important stuff, namely the weekend.

Sunday was an almost hallowed day and I would go to great lengths to keep it that way. Saturday mornings at the college were spent dreaming up weekend escapades and any study or ward-duty was done grudgingly and with complete disinterestedness. Playing hookey (quite a dangerous exercise considering where I was studying) and trying to get home as early as possible was an accepted practice. Throughout my stay in med-school, I never stayed in the hostels for a weekend unless it was absolutely unavoidable, i.e there were exams or the weekend was -in official parlance- a closed weekend.

The fact that my family moved four times during the five years I was in hostel meant that going home on weekends was a rather tedious and,in hindsight, expensive task. Except for the two and a half years that the family was settled in Pindi , going home generally meant a taxi-cab from college to the bus station, a hundred kilometre bus ride, and another cab from the bus-station to home. This process was repeated in reverse less than 24 hours later for the return journey. This ensured that at least 8 of the possible 30 hours were spent traveling.

What I didn't realize or probably realized but didn't care about at the time was the obvious monetary cost of performing the same ritual week in week out in the face of rising fuel prices and bus fares. All in all, I may've spent in the neighborhood of 50-60000 rupees simply on traveling to and from home on weekends. But here's the thing; looking back I can safely say that the time spent away from the hostels was worth every penny.

Weekends at the hostel were usually mind-numbingly dull affairs with most of my dorm-mates either home or out about town and nothing but 8-10 hours of sleep to while away the time, waking from which I had to endure the hostel-food which descended to unthinkable levels of blandness on Saturdays and Sundays. An unhealthy gloom descended on me every time I knew I was going to have to spend a weekend in the hostels.

Weekends at home were a completely different story, with every hour utilized to its fullest. I wasn't (and still am not) a very sociable person in that I didn't make friends in whatever neighborhood we were living in at the time. Hence there weren't many social calls to pay. I usually stayed home, and if I went out at all it was probably to go to
a) a bookstore or,
b) the now deceased Sadaf CD Store

The lack of a social circle also meant that I could spend my time in catching up on my reading or writing, spending a few hours on earnest undisturbed study or painstakingly downloading the next week's supply of music (those were pre-broadband days). If there was nothing else to do, I'd spend hours upon hours in front of the telly, getting my money's worth out of the couch in the living room,oblivious to the world around me.

Sleep was strictly rationed to the bare minimum. I rarely slept more than 5 to 6 hours on weekends, preferring to sleep off all the fatigue on Sunday night when I was back in the hostel. Afternoon naps were eschewed even in the balmiest weather and it was usual for me to sleep at 4 in the morning and wake up 4 or 5 hours later.

That was then, this is now.

It's almost four months now since I started working on my house-job and there are precious few weekends left. Sundays are working days unless by a freak of nature my name is not on the weekend duty-roster. On the average, I get every sixth Sunday off, with a non-stop succession of workdays in between. Add to that thrice weekly night duties and I have my hands full most days of the month. I can't complain however. The workload isn't unbearable and the fact that I'm finally learning actively after years of passively imbibing knowledge means that I don't consider myself an overburdened drone.

I get around two to three evenings free every week, which is more than what I used to have in Med-school,especially during final year. It's the weekends that have dried up, and that's a tragedy of gargantuan levels. Still, things would be acceptable if the level of activity on those precious few weekends equaled if not exceeded the R&R of weekends past. If I could get a bit of reading, a bit of writing, a bit of listening and viewing done over the weekend, I'd be a happy man.

But the balance of R&R has swung from recreation to rest. Where once sleep was strictly rationed, it has now spread itself over the day to such an extent that I wake up on Sundays at the ungodly hour of twelve in the afternoon, most times only to grab a two to three hour nap in the afternoon. I've replaced Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski the poster-boy for unshaven slacking. Downloaded music remains unlistened to, movies that were eagerly awaited and downloaded gather dust in the DVD rack and newest contents of my overburdened bookshelf go untouched for months. Most disturbingly, it's been almost three and a half months since I acquired a new car-my first car mind you- and I feel absolutely no urge to grab the keys and take it out for a spin and practice my driving on the only day I have time for it. The result is that even after 3 months of being a car-owner, my driving skills are cretinous at best.

This is an alarming situation and I'm worried over it. Strangely, worrying only makes me want to snooze even more. I can't put my finger on the cause of the blight that has descended on the holiest of days in my calendar. The only reason I can think of is that I unconsciously accumulate fatigue over the weeks and weeks of ceaseless work and the only time I have to unburden myself is a Sunday. Try as I might, I can't maintain the same levels of activity I used to produce in the preceding years. My friends and acquaintances ensure me that what I'm going through is actually a return to normalcy after years of what they consider fairly deviant behaviour. Weekends were meant for sleeping ,they say, congratulating me on the fact that I have finally seen the light.

The sad bit is that I slowly feel myself warming to their point of view.

...Of Diseases and Diphthongs

I remember discussing a disease with a friend the other day ( I'm afraid 80% of small talk between doctors is about diseases, don't let Grey's Anatomy fool you) when I mentioned in passing that I couldn't help but liking the name of an otherwise quite unwholesome illness. It was when I let my tongue roll around the word a few times as it were, that my friend slowly edged away, muttering under his breath and giving me the eye.

I have a special place in my heart for a few words because of the sheer vocal pleasure I get from pronouncing them. You can't exactly call them 'musical' words, but they have a nice 'ring' to them as Bertie Wooster would say. Growing up watching the BBC back when there weren't that many Lancashire, Yorkshire or *shudder* Glaswegian accents around, I couldn't help but appreciate the niceties of enunciation and the value of what the Pythons called a 'beautiful speaking voice'. I don't know what's the secret balance of vowels and consonants and diphthongs that makes a word especially pleasant to pronounce, but I love pronouncing the words I love and attempt to drag at least one or two into any given conversation . It's a bit like name-dropping, only more geekish.

Here then, are some of my favorite words in no particular order. I'll write as many as I can remember off the top of my head.

Meander

Mellifluous

Schopenhauer (try dragging that into a conversation!)

Delicatessen

Infundibulum

Gonorrhea

Nonchalance

Ensconced

Automaton

Mozambique

Arbeitschgemenschafft

Detentes

Henri Bergson

Plum

Insouciant

Shenandoah

Marble Cake

Books Of The Week,"The Life And Works Of Amir Khusrau","Young Men In Spats"

Music Of The Week,"Kaatskill Serenade"Bob Dylan, "Yaad Piya Ki Aaye"Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan

...Of Lahore

2 months.

That's how long it's taken before my folks have despaired of Lahore. The distances have gotten to them, and the traffic, and the higher cost of living, and the heat. Boy, the heat! For a family who've lived the most part of the last 6 years in the North, it wasn't a great idea to land in Lahore just when it had climbed to the top spot in Beelzebub's "Homes Away from Home for Vacationers From Hell" list. The past two weeks' steadily rising mercury has slowly eroded my folks' "new city,new home" excitement and even the thought of regular Persian lessons at the Farhang-e-Iran isn't succeeding in driving the thoughts of colder, calmer climes from my father's mind.

I must digress however. Granted it's swelteringly hot. Granted too, that the traffic in most parts means that a driver like me who isn't even qualified to call himself a novice can't take his new car out for a spin on most roads without bringing it back with at least a lac or two chopped off it's resale value. And granted that even though I've always been a bit of a miser, the last month or two have repeatedly left me asking for handouts because although I've been working for two and a half months now, my pay doesn't arrive till the 1st of July. The upside of which is that come 1st July, I'll be rolling in the stuff.

But what makes me less eager ,and possibly even averse to giving it up on Lahore is the fact that I've enjoyed it immensely ever since I came here. I'd been 'staking the joint' over the last 5 years and had a pretty good idea about these and many other killjoys that I might have to encounter If I ever moved to Lahore and I'm pretty much prepared to take the rough with the smooth. And it's been more smooth than rough so far.

For a start, I'm actually enjoying my job. The housejob year is probably the most important year in a doctor's career, where armed with the accumulated knowledge(?) of five years of Med School and filled with a mix of excitement and trouser-soiling nervousness, he finally starts seeing and treating patients. I've been at it for the last two months and it hasn't proven as hard as I was expecting it. The hours aren't as bad as in most other hospitals AND I'm learning stuff at a steady rate AND the senior doctors are more than helpful,most of them being alumnus of my college AND like I wrote earlier, I'm not as complete a cretin as I was expecting myself to be. Most of all, as my choice of medicine as a profession was more by default that by choice, it's gratifying to know that I actually have what's vaguely referred to as "aptitude" for it.

This being the food capital of Pakistan and me being me, I've let my taste buds lead me all over Lahore and I can safely vouch for their instincts. From hidden-away dhaabas to shishipoopoo coffee house,I've been there and eaten that. And if the pot belly that had completely vanished at PMA attempts a comeback, it'll be a well deserved one. And it's not just food, I've been able to indulge most of my maghaz tastes here, from attending Qawwali sessions to stand-up shows to getting in among the publishers at Urdu Bazar. I'd told my folks that once I'd gotten to Lahore, It'd be pretty hard for them to keep me housebound.

But most of all, the friends and relatives I used to make those cross-country visits for are now close by and I can arrange a meetup if not every week than at least every fortnight. That fact alone accounts for more than 85% of Lahore's awesomeness.

Books Of The Week,Alistair Cooke,The Biography. The Graveyard Book,Neil Gaiman

Movies Of The Week,Zombieland,Monty Python At The Hollywood Bowl

....Of A More Circuitous Route

It's taken a night in a rat-infested, AC-less room and 24 straight hours of work to finally jolt my mind enough to make me sit down and actually write something.

I'd like to get something off my chest at the outset. The hullabaloo at the recent banning of a number of websites by PTA in response to the "Everybody Draw Mohammad" competition has made two things quite clear.

1) The polarity between the pro and anti ban camps is pretty wide, with very few suggesting any middle ground.
2)I am completely, utterly ambivalent about the whole thing.

Whatever the ultimate implications of the ban may be, I'm not going to use up a whole post on something that a lot of people have expressed themselves pretty eloquently about. A lot of people have asked me what my feelings are, and I can quote Rhett Butler to summarize, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!" I've been meaning to quit Facebook and rush over to *Diaspora for ages anyway.

It's been exactly one month since i began my housejob. It's an extremely encouraging sign that I'm actually enjoying my work and that, contrary to what I feared when I left PMA, I actually do remember most of what I learned in med school. I had received a lot of half-cynical,half-congratulatory comments when people found out that I was starting off on a "pwopah" job after 6 years of moseying around in med school, mostly humorous warnings about years of drudgery,clock-punching and Charlie Chaplin style hard labour hat await me; but if the initial one month is any kind of indicator, I might be on to something good here.There had been times when I had doubts about putting up Lahore as my choice for my housejob, but most of them have thankfully been resolved. Despite the heat, the distances and the initial feeling of alienation; I'm enjoying it immensely.

One thing I've noticed on the wards this past month that is quite frightening is that we have a full-blown Hepatitis epidemic on our hands. Patients of hepatitis B and C make up approximately 60-70% of the patients admitted in my ward, including quite a large number who are admitted for other diseases and discover they have Hepatitis during routine post-admission blood testing. And considering I'm in a female ward where most of the patients are married ladies with an average of two children each, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of working in a female ward, I was mockingly accused of sexism by a friend earlier today when I told her what I think is the main difference in dealing with male and female patients. The difference can be summed up in one word; somatization. Where a male patient with pain in his abdomen will tell me where it hurts, how long it's been hurting and how it has affected his daily activities, a lady with the same symptoms will complain about the pain for a fleeting moment, and then wander off to explore wholly different trains of thought wholly unrelated to the actual problem. the interesting thing is that the long stream-of-consciousness ramblings contain many subconscious clues about the actual complaint, but it's a more circuitous route to diagnosis.

Since this post is also a stream-of-consciousness ramble, I was thinking today of some things that really annoy me. I'm not prone to anger, preferring to simmer rather than boil over, but there are some things that really get my goat.I managed to write some of them down in no particular order as follows;

The soul-numbingly inane keyboards played in Pakistani music,especially where they're not needed.
Sahir Goshdarned Lodhi.
The stream of terrible news emanating from The-Place-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
The fact that people are burning tires close to where I live because apparently, that's the sanest, most logical response to somebody's house being burgled.

I'll cut this post short right here because there's something I need to get off my mind right now that doesn't quite fit in with what I've written here.

...Of Freedom And How I Chose To Celebrate It

It's been exactly 24 hours since I landed back home from PMA. My five and a half years of cadet-ship are finally over and the prospect of finally starting my career as a doctor beckons. My stay at PMA was interesting to say the least, and the immense relief I felt on finally passing out is difficult to describe. However, after 6 months of (near)total isolation from all things good and healthy, I was rearing and champing at the bit, ready to "git".

In the past 24 hours, I've...

   Downloaded at least two GB's worth of music.
   Watched Alice In Wonderland (which was awesome) and Clash Of The Titans(which sucked a**e)
   Gone out and bought a Philip Roth, a Nick Hornby and a Calvin And Hobbes anthology.
   Actually managed to write these four or five lines.

   All in all, a pretty decent recuperation if I do say so myself.

...Of The End Of The Line

Unless hell freezes over or popular demand prevails, which even in this age of wonders, is a very remote possibility, I might've posted my last.

                 Here's to the last 2 odd years and all the joy I've gotten out of my blog (very me-centered. I know) and to any joy it might've brought to anyone else . A million thanks to all who've read and commented, and I hope to keep on reading new things from all of you for a long time to come.

                            And here's to the future, whatever that might bring.

Cheers,
          Musab.

...Of Me And Bobby D

Dylan's 68 today. I first heard him in '04, when he was 63," just a kid with a crazy dream" as Leonard Cohen says.
Time doesn't permit a 'proper post', but here's a random list/rundown of sorts of ten things about me and Bobby D. I've intentionally left out mentioning anything as a favorite for obvious reasons.

First Listen : Late 2004, I think sometime after I had joined med school.

First Song : 'Like A Rolling Stone" from the Manchester Free Trade Hall '66 concert. (Some initiation !!)

First Dylan Record I bought : " Love And Theft"

First Dylan record I downloaded : "Bringing It All Back Home"

Greatest Gift I Ever Got : The complete Dylan discography, Don't Look Back, Bob Dylan : No Direction Home, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid and the entire 1st season of Theme Time Radio Hour.

Current Harddrive Space Dylan Occupies : 19.36 gigs and counting.

Average Daily Trips To Expectingrain.com : 10

Number Of Dylan Books On My Shelf : 5

Theme Time Radio Hour : The entire 1st and 3rd season, and pretty soon, the whole 2nd season as well.

Last thoughts On Bobby's 68th : Happy Birthday Bob, keep on keepin' on !!

…Of Father Abe And Nightmare Photos

This is my current desktop wallpaper
It's a photo of Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inauguration, and shows him delivering his greatest speech. The "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" speech is one of man's greatest moments of oratory; the photo is the only one of Lincoln speaking; and it was taken barely weeks before he was assassinated. But it's also one of the spookiest photographs ever taken. For not only does it show Father Abe, standing behind the solitary white table, spectacles on his nose and the text of the speech in his hand, it also shows his would-be-assassin.
John Wilkes Booth can be seen standing near the top of the Observation deck above the President. I doubt if anyone who hasn't seen a photograph of him will recognize him, but a straight line drawn from the central pillar-thingy on the Observation deck grille finds him. I didn't take much time finding him though. You never forget a face you've seen in a nightmare ....
Here's a final photo to close down this ramble....