The Witch's Fire
28 June 2017
Decades ago I heard from soldiers of Jhelum district, especially those who lived around the hill of Tilla Jogian, that at night djinns walked around in the wilderness with lanterns. So many of the soldiers from my unit claimed to have seen those lights. No amount of lectures on science and ball lightning could make them believe anything else.
Once a thick curtain, as the Vemonia creeper as it looks in June 2017
I learned of ball lightning from the Penguin science magazine that my father regularly got back in the 1960s. Exceptionally dry weather and wind scudding along rocks and trees can create an electrical charge that grows and glows. It moves about with the breeze, erratically because it is repelled by any object of similar charge (remember your physics?). I would ask my men if the lights sort of danced about as if carried by drunken beings and they agreed, but none of them save my MT NCO, the very smart Ashraf Mirza of village Vahali near Choa Saidan Shah, ever believed me.
Labels: Historic Myths
posted by Salman Rashid @ 15:58,
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Munawar Mirza
20 June 2017
My friend who told me of Mirza had lived in Township since before the start of time on this side of Lahore. That is, since 1974 when it first came into being over wheat fields and forest and when the Hadiara Nadi was still a clear, freshwater rivulet where one could fish for rahu. Mirza Sahib (as I address this fifty plus man with dyed hair and moustaches), is talkative as talkative can ever be. And when he talks, his hands stop working. Consequently, a job that would take thirty minutes lasts well over an hour.
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:35,
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Buddhism is 5000 years old!
10 June 2017
On or about 5 June 2017, a tweet appeared with an image of Pattan Minara near Rahim Yar Khan. The tweeter, one fool named Shiraz Hassan, wrote that it was a Buddhist temple and that it was believed to be five thousand years old! And this man claims to be a BBC correspondent! So, if this is BBC, I refuse to ever watch their television, listen to their radio or read their web pages.
Below is the lowdown on Pattan Minara. But first of all on Buddhism.
The great Buddha lived in the 6th century BCE, that is, just two thousand five hundred years ago. Buddhism dates from that time. One would have to be an utter idiot completely ignorant of an historical timeline to believe that Buddhism dates back to the 6th millennium.
This brings to mind one item from about twenty-five years ago. At the end of a season of work at Harappa, archaeologist Mark Kenoyer did a lecture at the Lahore Museum. Among other things, he pointed out the halo-like disc behind the head of a presumably holy figure and likened it to the ones we see on stone depictions of Buddha. The report in The News the following morning detailed the discussion and ended it by telling its readers that the people of Harappa were Buddhists!
Read more »Labels: Buddhism, Heritage, History, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:58,
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Plaat he Plaat
05 June 2017
Many years ago, driving along Waris Road, I noticed they were tearing down the nearly one hundred year-old Birdwood Barracks. BTW, does anyone remember who Colonel Birdwood was? Anyways I stopped to ask the uniformed subedar what was happening and he said aador (order) hai.
I hurried home to grab my camera and take pictures of the building that would soon vanish from human memory. Back at the demolition site the subedar refused to let me. He told me it was ‘army area’ and taap seecrot. (You guessed it, the man was from Hazara.) I said what was secret about a few buildings that would soon bite the dust, but the moron refused to see the sense in my words.
Read more »
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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ترکی ریڈیو اور ٹیلی ویژن کارپوریشن کے سلسلہ وار پروگرام پاکستان ڈائری میں سلمان رشید سے ملاقات
03 June 2017
Click to listen the podcast [vLog] at Turkish Radio and Television.
Labels: About, Podcast, Salman Rashid, Urdu, vLog
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The funny side of… monkey business
02 June 2017
Old Mr Darwin said something about all life evolving to higher forms, which we take to mean that we were monkeys at one time. On the other hand, the Quran has a line about some Jewish miscreants being turned into monkeys. (Aside: With only a few date trees in Arabia, I wonder where the poor newly-evolved simians would have lived in that desert land.)
Here in merry old Lahore, we have our own bunch of folks struggling to return to the primate shape of their forefathers. And it all started about four years ago. An errant Qingqi (oh, who wretch invented this monster?) driver was booked by a traffic warden. Leaving his machine in the middle of the road, the driver quickly clambered up a power pylon that happened to be at hand. There, from ten metres high, he threatened to jump if the warden did not cancel his ticket.
Read more »Labels: Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Necropolis with a View
01 June 2017
The direct road from Mardan to Swabi in the Northwest Frontier Province [Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa] passes through the heart of Yusufzai country: great stretches of well-worked farmland cut across by the occasional canal or punctuated by a few low hills and populace villages. As one drives eastward to Swabi the craggy ridge of Kharamar (Rearing Snake) hill blocks the view to the north. Twenty-seven kilometres from Mardan, under the highest point of the ridge, lies the village of Adina.
Once it was just a quiet Pakhtun village; then in early 1993 it hit the news. The discovery was a group of ancient graves high above the village under the hooded peak of Kharamar. The man behind this discovery was the tall, hawk-faced Professor Farid Khan, fiftyish yet bursting with youthful energy. The professor has devoted his entire life to archeology and knows everything there is to know about NWFP prehistory. It was therefore entirely my good fortune to be driving to Adina with him.
Labels: Books, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Sea Monsters and the Sun God
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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