Open season in Punjab
28 January 2016
Indeed, in April 2013, this writer saw frequent groups of grey partridges feeding fearlessly by the side of the less frequented roads of the Soon Valley.
Read more »Labels: Birds, Punjab, Soon Valley
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:30,
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Musa’s rock with the hole and the roof
27 January 2016
For the tenth time did Rehmat Khan Buzdar try to convince me that hospitality was not such a bad thing after all. And for the tenth time I returned that it was not such a hot idea to slaughter a sheep for a vegetarian and if he and his lot kept at killing their flocks the way they were doing it their tribal name of Buzdar (buz for goat and dar for owner or keeper) would soon be a misnomer. I said hospitality could just as easily be a nicely done dish of vegetables or lentils. But that, he argued, would not become Baloch hospitality. Then he told me the story.
There was once a Baloch of kind heart and generous spirit whose door was forever open to all comers. It was a rare mealtime that the man ate by himself; always there would be a passing traveller pausing to partake of whatever the man’s hearth could offer. But not so the man’s wife. A shrewish woman of niggardly disposition, she ceaselessly lamented the drain the hospitality caused on their larder and the trouble it caused her. No amount of cajoling blunted her verbal offensives.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, People
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Deosai Sky
26 January 2016
Related: Deosai Truths - Book Review by F. S. Aijazuddin, Deosai - Book Review by S A J Shirazi, Special talk on BBC Radio
Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Nadeem Khawar, Photo Stream, Travel Photography
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Bearer of the Balti footprint
20 January 2016
Even today Raskam is just a collection of stone and mud huts, about 20 in all, sitting a couple of hundred metres above the rocky bed of a young Yarkand River. In those early days when the first Balti hunters approached it, Raskam would only have been a few felt yurts where the Kirghiz shepherds sheltered from the dry, freezing cold.
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The name, we are told, is a corruption of Rast Kan — the Good Mine. Early Victorian explorers wrote of good copper to be mined in the region. There were, they recorded, dozens of smelting furnaces around Raskam. The copper would have been exported to Yarkand, the nearest trading centre. Surely the Baltis would have asked about reaching this unknown place that sounded almost like an El Dorado.
Labels: Explorers, Gilgit–Baltistan, Northern Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Where his Highness tarried
18 January 2016
Jajja Abbasian is the kind of place one would scarcely ever notice. To begin with, it lies on a road and a defunct branch railway line that very nearly goes nowhere. I say very nearly because it lies fifteen kilometres northwest of Khanpur (south Punjab) on the highroad to Chachran. I hadn’t noticed the place when I passed through to Chachran some twelve years ago on my way to ride the Indus Queen across the Sindhu to Mithankot. I would not have known of it had my friend Omar Sheikh, the good police officer currently keeping the law in Bahawalnagar, had not told me of it.
There was in Jajja, Omar said, a mansion built by Nawab Sir Sadiq Mohammed Khan Abbasi V. As well as that, Jajja was also the birthplace of Birbal, one of the Nine Jewels that adorned the court of Akbar the Great. He wasn’t certain however whether or not there was a 16th century monument to commemorate the coming into this world of that remarkable Birbal. This he left to me to ascertain. And so it was that my friend Raheal Siddiqui packed me off from Bahawalpur. I picked up a guide in Khanpur and we drove out along the old railway line to Chachran.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Back from the brink
14 January 2016
There is something about Mian Said Ali that makes you like him. It is the gentleness in his ready smile, the humility of his demeanour and the matter-of-fact way he talks of his predicament that makes you warm up to him. There is also something that tells you that Said Ali can weather any storm without giving up.
A native of village Janu on the highroad from Khwazakhela (Swat) to Bisham and only a few kilometres outside the former, he suffered like so many others through the years of militant savagery. Yet he kept his smile.
Said Ali and his two brothers own 17 kanals (two and a bit acres) of agricultural land. Living together as a joint family, the brothers worked their holding together. Because it was spread over undulating ground, the land was terraced and unequally divided between fields for seasonal crops and orchards.
Read more »Labels: Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, NGOs
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Deosai Living
12 January 2016
Related: Review - Deosai Land of the Giant, BBC Podcast Urdu
Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Nadeem Khawar, Photo Stream, Travel Photography
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Utopia
11 January 2016
My parents and everyone else were duly concerned about my well-being. But the greater concern was about the flustered driver. They sat him down, brought him a glass of water and told him children being what they are; it must have been my fault for not watching the road. Moreover, I seemed none the worse for wear and that he should put himself at ease. Tea was offered and had and then the gentleman was shown out of the house. That, if you ask me, was utopia.
There was no rage. No instant thrashing of the poor driver and no rush to burn his car to ashes. There was understanding and a fellow-feeling. There was recognition that a child was more likely to have erred. There was a spirit to accommodate and forgive. It was the year 1956.
Read more »Labels: About
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The mosque of Wazir Khan
06 January 2016
Indeed, it will not be incorrect to say that together with the contemporaneous Shah Jehan Mosque of Thatta, it is a superlative of Mughal art. Masood Khan of Aga Khan Cultural Services Pakistan (AKCSP) says, the tile work seen in both mosques reached its state of perfection in Shah Jehan’s period, was used to great advantage and then faded out of the artists’ vocabulary.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, Lahore, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Kaghan Shari
04 January 2016
The shari came in all colours as long as they were black or a few shades of brown. When the arctic wind of winter drove down sleet and snow from the high slopes of Kaghan Valley, this three metres long and a metre wide shawl would completely wrap a grown man in its lamb’s wool warmth. Weighing no lighter than three kilograms, it contained enough wool to keep a body warm on any freezing day.
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| The counterfeit shari that is now passed off as the real thing. No buyer is aware that the original woven from raw lamb’s wool came in black and a few shades of brown |
And it was always a man that the shari kept warm: traditionally and strictly it was part of the man’s attire. Understandably it radiated no bright colours; its signature being black and varying shades of tan. The only embellishment the shari bore was the arrangement of tassels along the two narrower borders.
Read more »Labels: Handicrafts, Kaghan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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