Sardar Naseer Tareen: A Man for all Seasons
10 July 2013
As the son of the last sardar (chief) of the Tareen tribe of Pashtuns of Pishin, north of Quetta, Naseer Tareen should normally be wearing the mantle of the sardar. He is, however, anything but the archetypal tribal chieftain: he is suave, cultured, educated, outspoken and down to earth. If that is not remarkable enough, Tareen is also one tribal chief who never approved of hunting and in a society where meat eating is macho, prefers vegetarian eating. His Urdu is untainted with the hard Pashtun accent and his English gives away his two decades in the United States where he studied and worked.
When he first went to the University of Connecticut in 1958, he had hoped to return home with a degree in International Relations to join the coveted Civil Service. However it did not take long for his mentors in school to realise that his real line of work was theatre arts or communications. ‘There I was, the son of a Pashtun sardar, being told to pursue what would be called the mirasi’s work at home,’ he says with a laugh. Perhaps because he never saw himself as a bureaucrat, Tareen was looking for a way out, and a year later he decided to study Film Making.
Labels: Balochistan, People, Sardar Naseer Tareen, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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