Artwise
Luxury architecture versus
under stated elegance

Salwat Ali

Ever since architect Frank Gehry's exuberantly curvy Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, became a hot tourist destination; new museums plans in significant locales are prescribing to the imposing and the ostentatious. The much publicised, proposed string of museums in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are a case in point where 'architects' like Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Rem Kolhaas have designed audacious structures that are works of art in their own right leading to extravagance for its own sake, to gain attention. The United States itself, from where 'starchitecture' first originated, abounds with numerous such structures already existing or under construction. A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in New York promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights.

Among high profile sites that have already made news the Calatrava addition has spurred the Milwaukee Art Museum revival. Santiago Calatrava is known for his playful experimentation with kinetic, folding architectural form and his majestic white winged addition has done wonders for business. Milwaukee is not alone in this adoption of architecture as a commercial ploy. A 2006 survey by the American Association of Museums found that 50 per cent of responding museums had begun or completed construction, renovation or expansion in the previous three years. The boom is partly due to museum officials who recognise that using name architects for expansions helps attract tourists. Also, it is easier for museums to get donors for capital improvements than operating expenses because donors like having their names attached to the work. The Museum of Modern Art in New York hired Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi to design an addition that opened last fall. In San Francisco, the de Young Museum's addition opened in 2005, designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog and de Meuron and Fong and Chan Architects in San Francisco. The Denver Art Museum commissioned American architect Daniel Libeskind for an addition, a symphony of titanium angles and peaks, which opened last fall.

The current spate of luxury architecture with an overload of flash and dash is heading towards overkill. While the architects grab the news headlines a number of gifted architects around the world have been quietly taking a radically different tack. Journalist Cathleen McGuigan reports that "Ignoring 21st century fashion, they have been working under the radar, focusing on architectures most timeless and essential elements – light, scale, proportion – to create serene spaces that can be glamorous or modest, anonymous or rooted precisely to a geographical spot. What they have in common is that their designs don't shout they whisper."

The understated elegance of such projects is attracting a serious clientele, the kind of patrons who wouldn't be caught dead with a logo on their shirts – so why would they call attention to their houses, offices or art galleries? They are drawn to architecture that's less about the object – the thingness of a building – and more about the experience of space. "People come to us for a particular quality, not for show" says New York architect Calvin Tsao. "They want space that is both functional and has a certain ambience, that sense of calm."

Subtlety in appearance is also on the rise, a discreet new direction in museum design away from the signature styles of big name architects. New York based Richard Gluckman, an architect known  for his beautifully minimalist museum and gallery spaces says he's been guided by a mantra of the Russian constructivists: "Not the new, just the necessary."

Issue
Life, on the other side of the divide

Javeria Javed Syed

On a sweltering hot day of July 2006 with sun scorching its heat directly on my head I went to Sikandarabad located in Clifton area of Karachi, sent there by my university. We were sent there to provide the kids, mostly of poor families, with vaccinations and medical check ups as to the standard of their health. It is by visiting these areas that one understands the plights of the underprivileged. It is seldom that well-off or privileged people think of these poor people or about their problems. These slums are in fact a black spot on our welfare system.

 What was surprising was the dilapidated condition of the houses, bumpy roads filled with stinky smells as sewerage lines of the area were leaking. Stray dogs were roaming about everywhere on the streets and roads. I was there to give the children polio drops to assure their safety from polio. People were reluctant to open their doors; no one there knew anything about vaccination or may be they had developed a fear of white coats mostly related to jabs and needles.  At one of the houses, a man came out and started yelling at me as I asked him to bring out his kids for vaccination. I had to move from there and leave the kids in that house unvaccinated; it didn't feel right as I was unable to perform my duty. 

Life of females in the slums is particularly miserable; they can't or rather are not allowed to make any decisions for themselves or for their children. On entering a house my heart swelled, as I saw a two year old boy coughing and crying. When I asked his mother "Rafia can I help you, our health care center is located in premises of Sikandarabad, and you should take him there." She replied that she is waiting for his father because she is not allowed to go outside the house without his permission. As I checked her boy Asim, his fever was 103'F and he was having bouts of cough yet her mother could not take her baby to nearby local clinic as there was no male in the house for the permission or to accompany her. In another house there were two rooms with twelve people living in them. They had no faucets which compelled them, to make collection, to buy two tankers of water every month, mostly in summer, costing Rs.1200 each that is a very high price to pay for the people living in this area in poverty. Electricity supply was erratic and irregular. Most girls don't go to school, they help their mothers in running house errands and only boys go to a nearby school.

On my next visit, I met a 76 years old baba jee (an old man) with severe hypertension, his systolic BP was 180mmhg and diastolic was 95mmhg. When I asked him, "Are you taking any medicine for it" he said, "I don't have money for the medicine."  I felt bad about his helplessness and gave him some money but I knew that is not what bwill help him for long. In a house not far from the baba jees place, I met a woman suffering from Cancer. When I asked, "Are you undergoing any treatment"? She said she had saved some money, not for her treatment but for her daughter's jahez (dowry) as she is getting married in two months time. What that poor lady doesn't know is that her life probably won't allow her to see that happy day.

In one of the houses, a 19 year old girl told me that her father beats her mother every now and then but her mother bears all such treatments meted out to her only for the sake of her children. The daughter named Tania, seeing how women are treated by men, had developed repulsion for men and she wishes to remain celibate for the rest of her life. I comforted her as much as I can, by talking to her, as I gained her confidence she poured out her whole miserable story.

Every time I go to that area, or any such similar settlements, I feel like I am in a strange society that I donít recognise but after visiting a few times, on my last visit, I felt like I have developed some sort of attachments with these people who once refused even to listen to me. How come, these strangers who didnít know me for long started treating me so affectionately and with so much respect. I learned one thing from there that talking politely and helping people is what gains love and respect for you. We should neither treat people by judging their socioeconomic status nor discriminate against them on any religious or racial grounds.

Many of us as when we were very young have read:

"All things bright and beautiful

 All creatures great and small

 All things wise and wonderful

 The lord God made them all".

Every time I visit there I go home with a heavy heart. I pray to God to change these poor people's life into better living standards.

Review
A history of conflict and violence

Excerpts

The Deadly Embrace

Religion, Politics and Violence in India and Pakistan 1947-2002

Edited by:  Ian Talbot 

Published by: Oxford University Press 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area Price: 495  Pages: 190

Introduction

The term communalism is used in the Indian subcontinent to describe identity focused on religion. Unlike in other parts of the world, it has acquired a pejorative connotation as it is associated with conflict and violence. In reality, communally based identities and conflicts do not inexorably result in violence. This identification arises from analytical flabbiness which elides conflict into violence. It is nonetheless undeniable that the modern history of the subcontinent has been marked by frequent outbreaks of both inter-religious and intra-religious violence. The true number of causalities which accompanied the 1947 partition on religious grounds will never be known and is subject to considerable controversy. Death toll figures range from 200,000 to 1.5 million lives. What is clear is that the dislocation surrounding partition involved the largest mass displacement of people (13 million) in the twentieth century. Post- Independence communal and sectarian violence in India and Pakistan has resulted in thousands of deaths and undermined the stability of both states. It has marginalised minority communities and undermined civil society by stimulating polities based on division and hatred. Finally, communal and sectarian violence has reinforced community stereotypes and encouraged 'victimhood' memories for national and community self-assertion.

How then can the subcontinent's communal and sectarian violence be understood? One could

quarry sacred texts and uncover teachings regarding the sanction for violence. This ultimately futile approach, as all scripture is open to widely varying interpretation, has marked some attempts to understand the links between Islam and 'terror', post 9/11. It is well-known that the Quran became a best seller in the United States in the wake of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. In an ironic juxtaposition, both liberals and neo-fundamentalists over-emphasize the importance of scriptural traditions in the lived experience of communities. In doing so they are repeating the essentialistion of religious identity by the orientalist scholars of the colonial era.   

The contributions in this volume both individually and collectively address the range of questions we have referred to above. The common theme emerges that in prolonged bouts of communal violence, politicians, bureaucrats and the police are complicit, if not active, participants in disorder. Such an understanding regards violence as planned and purposeful rather than spontaneous and irrational. The fullest exposition of this view is of course contained in Paul Brass's conceptualisation of the institutionalised riot system. Critics would unconvincingly argue that it overemphasises both the role of politics and the spread of communal violence and finally that it seeks to rationalise actions which are inexplicable in their level of brutality. These arguments have been played out to such an extent regarding the partition related violence that it has been treated as a unique phenomenon, divorced from the rich literature on ethnic and communal violence in the contemporary subcontinent and beyond.  The concluding two chapters focus on sectarian militancy and violence in Pakistan. Sectarian strife has claimed more than 4000 deaths in the country since 1980. The year 2003 was a particularly bad one with eighty-nine reported sectarian incidents.

Freedom's Dawn

This dawn that's marked and wounded,

this dawn that night has nibbled on.

It's not the dawn we expected;

It's not the dawn we were looking for.

Hoping we would find it somewhere

Friends, comrades set out thinking

Somewhere in the desert of the sky

The stars would halt

Somewhere the night's slow waves

would find a shore

Somewhere the ship of our heartaches

come to rest.

When we set out on youth's mysterious journey

so many hands reached out to lure us back.

From the restless bedrooms in love's palace

so many embraces beckoned, bodies called.

But so much dearer was the face of dawn,

the dress of morning's maiden;

our dreams were stronger than our weariness.

But what is this we hear?

That all the battles have been fought,

that the destination has been reached!

It's all changed, our leaders' struggling zeal;

celebration is the order of the day, mourning forbidden.

Yet anguish of the heart, unfulfilled desire,

nothing is cured by this false dawn.

When did it come and where has it gone?

The lamp still waits for the morning breeze,

the night weighs on us still.

This is not the moment of our freedom.

Keep moving, keep moving!

We have not arrived!

- Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-84)

From: The Penguin book of Modern Urdu Poetry,

selected and translated by Mehmood Jamal. 

Cultural
Far from the metropolitan...

  Qudsiyha H. Zaidi

PART-II

Now that you have finally made it to your destination, let's get to the lifestyle and some of the prominent features of this place 'far from the metropolis'. Well to start off, its very likely that there won't be any Star Plus to help you through the day which would be, not because of the unavailability of cable TV but because of it being shunned by the majority since they regard it as a conspiracy to corrupt the simple and straight people that they are and this stand of theirs remains firm for the most part of the day until the time comes for them to gather in some 'baithak' for those regular gossip sessions at the house which usually happens to have the best cable service. To be fair to them, the TV does stay off for most of the time since they don't really need no stupid ëStar Plusí to entertain them, they have plenty of tales of their own to tell and hear and they can go on and on about how bad some persons feet stink, the funny things the kids said or did, reiterate some distant events of the past or get updates on their cousins and their cousinís cousins. So, if you want to rid yourself of the nail-biting thrills and suspense of whether Parvati would fall in some trap or whether Tulsi would be able to save her Meehir which is, incase you are dumb enough not to figure that out on your own after having watched the past two hundred years of their lives, a few of these baithak sessions would surely lighten you up.

Beware, for now comes what I find the most striking feature of such a place which is that the term 'genie' is thrown around quite a lot and isnít for no reason. As they say, hear too much of a rumor and you are better off believing it. So, become a believer before some genie has to make an effort to make you one as you may or may not like that moment of transition which might come as a slap out of nowhere or a consistent comforting pat on your head while you lie there out in the open. It might come as a whisper in your ear or it might when all of a sudden, your bed starts rattling for no reason and it would definitely come when you see two blood-red eyes hovering in front of you. I highly doubt that a formal introduction to them as the pet family genie would fail to convince you. That definitely is no reason for you to never make a trip to such a place, just make sure that you are wearing a board that says "I taste sweet" since I hear they dislike sweet. That way the genie might think twice before eating you. Ah!, come on, I've never heard of them eating a human but then again, that only makes more sense.

While you are there, you can spend your time messing with bumblebees nests, maybe work on your accuracy with the stones but make sure once you succeed you donít stick around and celebrate for too long as you won't like it when the bees join you in your celebration and kiss you all over for ridding them of their dirty, uncomfortable home; it really stings and burns and does so even more when someone cleanse all those impressions left with some oil. The person who said 'love burns' must have said it after a similar contact with them bees. Anyways, no need to feel abused or molested, itís just that anyone 'far from the metropolitan' rarely holds back when it comes to showering love. Go see a mirror if you donít believe me. Though it must have been a few days since you have been there but you will still see traces of all those smooches on the forehead, the elderly blessed you with on your arrival.

Now thatís an interesting ritual on its own, particularly if you have a large family. You have to go and attend everyone you know in the locality, unless you want to risk offending them. You would usually find the elders relaxing, lying back against a pile of pillows on some 'charpai'. On seeing you, they will give a gesture of them willing to embrace you and so you would bend all the way and give them a hug and just when you thought its over and are straightening up, you would feel two feeble hands tightening around your head like a clamp, a sudden jerk and you would be pulled back again. While you wonder where-ever that strength came from, you get the due smooch (es) you forgot to receive. Now, you might be thinking that you can get away if you are only accompanying a friend on his trip back home but no, usually you don't. It is often after the ritual has been performed that your friend has to step in and inform the elder that you are being mistaken for him.

There's a lot you can do 'far from the metropolitan'. You can go and help catch the chickens you would be munching on a few hours later, doesn't matter from where. Distance only adds to the thrill and make sure you hide that chicken on your way back because your state of euphoria may come to an abrupt end when someone passing by grabs you and tells you it's his chicken you are holding. Yeah, people there have an uncanny ability to recognize their chickens. Tree climbing is also an option and you would find many there of various difficulty levels. So if you want to go back in history and experience first hand how it felt like being a chimp, now's your chance. You can go take a bath in some near-by stream and have another one on your return. You can chase a dog and get chased by them once the dog being chased reunites with his pack. You can kill snakes and scorpions and help make this world a safer place. You can approach some 'jogi baba' experienced in black arts and jinx the person(s) you never could stand and I bet many would find this last one intimidating enough. So, Iíd leave you here and let you discover the rest of the life and activities far from the metropoltan on your own.