education
Brain-train gym
A facility in Lahore's posh area offers solutions to attention-related problems through computer assisted exercises which make learning fun
By Suhail Akhter
'Pay attention' has become the buzzword in schools these days. It is used habitually by teachers in classrooms. For most students though, 'attention' remains an abstract and an elusive concept as they fail to grasp what paying attention really means. Now students are being invited to actually learn to 'pay attention.'

Miani Sahab -- living history
Scholars lived where Miani Sahab graveyard now stands. Almost half of the land has been lost to encroachment
By Isma Haider
The city of Lahore has a whole history within. Great people and huge buildings have a pivotal role in making Lahore a historical place. Although the intellectual activities from Lahore are fading out with the passage of time and so are its great people, no doubt its buildings too have almost lost their beauty and importance but their mystery, however, still remains intact. One such place is Miani Sahab.

Documentary film festivals tend to be like minefields. Most of them show documentaries that are boring, mundane slices of life. Others tend to be stereotypical views captured on the narrow viewfinder of someone's brain. But sometimes one finds diamonds in the rough.

The Vasakh film festival that showed twenty three documentaries from across South Asia, concluded on April 27, 2008. It was a mixture of the three.

A Certain Liberation, a Bangladeshi documentary directed by Yasmine Kabir tackled the subject of a country's breakup.

By only focusing on Gurudasi Mondol, a woman in her forties who went mad in 1971 when, during the Liberation War of Bangladesh, she witnessed the murder of her entire family at the hands of the collaborators of the occupying forces, Kabir painfully depicts how a country is formed out of violence and in turn, made a study of insanity.

Kabir with a handheld camera shows Gurudasi roaming the streets of Kopilmoni, a small town in rural Bangladesh, in pursuit of all she has lost, taking liberties that only her madness and her strength of character afford her. The film ended with a horrific monologue, where Gurudasi sitting in a small boat, recounts how her entire family, which included her four small children, were gunned down in front of her eyes.

Operation Sunrise, a Pakistani documentary directed by Faizan and Nuzhat was on the media coverage of the Lal Masjid Operation. The concept was worthwhile and it raised a few interesting questions -- mainly focusing on the interviews conducted with the bureau chiefs of different news channels -- but its extremely bad voiceover and amateur camerawork let the documentary down.

Interactive Resource Centre's documentary Emergency Plus was on the lawyers' movement in Pakistan and how it shook up the urban centres out of political slumber. The film records the events that have been continuously playing an important role in determining the country's fate. The fifteen minute long documentary, which felt like five, was a well-edited, slick documentary which inter-cut between media coverage and interviews. It was like a time capsule for the political junkie and a perfect introduction for a layperson.

Munizae Jahangir's 'Baloch Battlefield' was an extremely daring and profound attempt at looking at the looming problem of Balochistan. Secretly shot in the extremely sensitive parts of Balochistan, it contained Nawab Bugti's last interview and gave a rare and deep insight into the violent conflict in Balochistan where nationalists have been fighting with successive governments in Islamabad for their economic and political rights.

Continuous Journey directed by Ali Kazimi who is an award-winning filmmaker based in Canada, was perhaps the best of the lot.

Continuous Journey was a complex tale of hope, despair, treachery and tragedy. It was a revealing Canadian story with global ramifications set in a time when the British Empire seemed omnipresent and its subjects were restless and seeking self-determination.

In 1914, the Komagata Maru, a vessel with 376 immigrants from British India, became the first ship carrying migrants to be turned away by Canada. The consequences were felt throughout the British Empire as several hundreds of Indians from Canada returned home to join an armed struggle against the British that would later be brutally crushed by the colonial authorities. Continuous Journey was more than a history film; it was a provocative, moving and multilayered film essay.

Through archival footage, vintage photographic montage and inventive voice-over performance, Kazimi documented the story of the 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus held on the boat half a mile from Canadian shores without provisions for more than two months. By examining the global context and repercussions of a Canadian event, Continuous Journey challenged the viewer to reflect on contemporary events, and raises critical questions about how the past shapes the present.

On May Day rally at GPO Chowk, Rubina, 32, working in a local packaging factory, held a placard which read 'Stop gender discrimination in remuneration of the same work'. Women were carrying placard and banners suggesting serious issues related to women workers of the informal sectors of the country.

A large number of women workers engaged in the formal and informal sectors also turned up at the rallies in a bid to put forward their demands before the government and the day also provided them an opportunity to voice their concerns over protection of rights, especially of those women who are facing exploitations at the hands of their employers on account of lack of effective legislation in this regard.

Workers across the world marked May Day to pay tribute to martyrs of Chicago who fought a battle for fixation of work-hours in 1886 for all the workers. A large number of Pakistani workers also took to streets to mark this day with new enthusiasm as the new coalition government augured well for them, lifting the ban on trade unions imposed under Industrial Regulation Ordinance (IRO) 2002 and setting Rs 6,000 as minimum wage for all workers.

On this May Day, a large number of women workers hailing from informal sector of labour market participated in the rallies along with the male workers demanding from the government effective legislation for alleviation of their sufferings like job security and equal remunerations with their male counterparts. ILO Convention 100 envisions equal remuneration for men and women for the same work at a workplace.

"Factory owners keep us back for work even for more than 12 hours and pay us for eight hours work. Isn't this exploitation? But we cannot protest at workplaces as we know nobody will come to our help," says Rasheedan Bibi, a resident of Kot Lakhpat, who works in a textile industry.

So far exact figure of women working in the informal sector cannot be known as there is no official data prepared by the government so far but according to an estimate more than 10 million women are working in the informal sector of labour market. These women are working as housemaids and as kiln workers in addition to those who help farm the lands in agriculture sectors.

"We hail the decisions of the prime minister who has allowed the workers to form unions. We will also form our union now for protection of our rights," says a group of women who are working in a stitching unit of a local textile factory.

Most of the women working in carpet industry and packaging factories are on daily wages. Their basic objective behind working is to rear their children while making their both ends meet. These women are not being adequately represented in trade union while most of the trade unions in different factories are governed by male workers. There are only 5,000 women in different trade unions.

Women workers feel job insecurity in informal sectors as they are not given any contract letters which makes these women more vulnerable to their employer's exploitations. Most of them are daily wagers.

"Women should be given proper representation in trade unions so that they can resolve issues related to working women in all sectors. The government should take stringent measures to prepare data of such women workers while making an effective legislation which can reduce cases of gender discrimination regarding remuneration. A contract system should be evolved to ensure job security for them," demands Rubina Jamil, President Working Women Organisation.

The majority of women work as domestic help or in agriculture sector. Women agricultural labourers earn 60-65 per cent of the wages as compared to men. Statistical decompositions show evidence of wage discrimination.

Women's maternal responsibilities and care-giving role can be strong barriers to employment. In Pakistan, institutional childcare is practically non-existent. If women's employment is a policy goal then the country needs adequate support services for women to be able to enter, and to stay in the workforce.

Women's employment, however, is not merely a poverty reduction issue, though it has been viewed primarily from that perspective until now.

An important corollary is to ensure decent conditions of work and minimum wages in the agricultural as well as the domestic service market.

The social and economic empowerment of Pakistani women is still very low and their struggle is on, says Global Gender Gap (GGG) Report 2007, published each year by the World Economic Forum. The GGG identifies a gap in the overall participation of women to be integrated into the workforce in Pakistan.

There is a dire need to finalise a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities. Such a framework will also provide explanations for policy-makers and business leaders in seeking solutions for talent shortages and in closing gender gaps.

Women need to be represented in trade unions to demand their wages and benefits. The insecurity that they feel stems from the history of working women.

Strong labour laws should be framed so that those employers who are hiring cheap women and children workers, should be made answerable. If it remains unchecked it can lead to further deterioration in working conditions.

Fed-up of the daily talk (gossip) shows running on each and every channel? With literally everything being repeated, from the guests to the topics under discussion down to the silly-billy, Oh no! the 'deadly' cross questioning of the anchors. Anyways let it be.

So what other options do we have other than grumbling over these talkative shows?

For the last few weekends my mailbox overflows with emails pouring in from a blog linked to a music reality show that ended some five months back. It stroke me at first, why is the moderator asking me to come back on the scene, but later I was told that the contestants of the reality show are coming back -- but this time on a different show altogether.

The moderator's mail read: It's as real as any reality show; all contestants from various popular reality shows will take the stage. You can come and defend all your contestants and vote for them.

Vote? Did he say that? Lets set aside the voting for the President or the anonymous -- duo Gilani and Kyani for The Time 100 Most Influential People and get back to our late night 'vote-in campaign' for the best singer out of all that is Harshit. I guess the trick worked and it was seemingly enough to instigate me.

We all know that there isn't much reality in all the reality shows. At the end of the day all shows are working for Television Rating Points TRPs. But I don't know there is something that makes you hang on to the show as long as it continues.

It's strange, especially for a Pakistani to love the reality shows, where the private media is like a 'reality bite.'

But as Louis Ferdinand Celine, French writer and physician, once said, "To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into frenzy in front of them. To hell with them!"

I standby the same notion for all the right and the wrong reasons.

The packaging of the music reality shows, particularly 'Voice of India' (VOI) is such that they cater to all sets of audiences. Saturday night guest judges get the maximum feedback. Even prominent Pakistani singers such as Ghulam Ali, Abida Parveen and Atif Aslam have been the judges. However, it saddens me to mention that Atif Aslam's appearance on the VOI wasn't much appreciated by Abhijeet Bhattacharya, who came all-out saying that Atif Aslam doesn't have the talent that could match the show criterion. And Abhijeet didn't attend the show in protest.

However, my friends (blog competitors) from across the border had a different take. In the posts they mentioned that reason for Abhijeet's walkout wasn't Atif Aslam but the elimination of his contestant Irfan. See I told you its fun and sheer entertainment.

Sometimes the talent of the contestants takes a backseat; controversies like the judges' brawls, appearance of celebrity guests, and the ethnicity factors become more important.

Talking of ethnicity, this factor sells like anything. Not only is it good for the TRPs but this time it also helped the Sikh from Punjab win the trophy. Yeah no guesses! Ishmeet Singh who didn't steal our hearts but did steal the VOI. His vote bank from north, specifically Punjab, was so strong that poor Harshit despite being consistent throughout the four month long show lost it to someone who should have been eliminated in the first few weeks. But gimmicks such as ethnicity, religion, caste, and creed always pay off.

Lastly, imagine if we start producing 'qualitative' reality shows in Pakistan, who would be our judges? Not the boring talk show hosts plz!!

• Exhibition by PHA at Alhamra, The Mall till

Monday, May 05.

• Exhibition: Baaji Naama by Vidha Saumya at Nairang Gallery till Thursday, May 08 from 11am to 11pm

• Thesis Display of painting, sculpture and graphic arts of the students of College of Art and Design, Punjab University at Alhamra, The Mall from May 6-10. Timings: 6am to 6pm.

• Exhibition of works of Mughees Riaz -- "A River Runs Through It" at Ejaz Art Gallery till May 12.

• Talent Hunt Show (singing) at Alhamra, The Mall

every Saturday at 7pm

• Sufi Dhol: Every Thursday night there is music and dance performance at the Shrine of Baba Shah Jamal. The music usually starts around eleven o'clock while dancing usually takes place around 1:30am.

• Play: 'My Mother Said I Never Should' by LGS. Today is the last day. Timings: 6:30-8:30pm. Venue: LGS

• Film Show at Lok Rehas today from 5-7pm. The film is 'Good Bye, Lenin!' Language: German. Subtitles: English.

Awards: BAFTA

nominee.

'Pay attention' has become the buzzword in schools these days. It is used habitually by teachers in classrooms. For most students though, 'attention' remains an abstract and an elusive concept as they fail to grasp what paying attention really means. Now students are being invited to actually learn to 'pay attention.'

Avantage Peak Performance Club, the newest facility in Lahore's trendy Y block of DHA, offers fun-learn solutions to attention-related problems that have boggled students and teachers alike for decades. Avantage is a brain-train gym for children that has introduced for the first time in Pakistan, computer-assisted game-like mental exercises aimed at building children's basic learning skills.

Attention, focus, concentration, memory, listening skills and processing speed, which have always been instrumental in ensuring success in academic, social and professional life, have always been ignored by parents and academicians -- they are now concrete and controllable concepts, only a few work-outs away.

Based on years of professional experience, the brain-train gym is the brainchild of a clinical neurophysiologist and his better half, a communicologist and a feature writer.

Explaining the gist behind the brain-train gym, Faryal Shahzad, CEO APPC says, "Work-outs at Avantage help healthy, average children between the ages of 3 to 16 years and enhance their over-all performance."

Usually, children who are weak in studies are branded as dumb, careless or work shirkers. Tuition academies are the only solution available for these children, where the same pedagogic doctrines and theories are drummed into tender minds while parents have no idea that children need a boost in basic skill development much more than this type of drumming. I think, it is unfair to send children below 12 years of age to tuition centres. We should instead work on children's basic learning skills to improve their over-all performance.

Lack of awareness among school authorities is blamed for playing havoc with children's future, as school administrations or teachers are not trained to track the reason behind a child's inability to pay attention to studies.

"I am contacted by parents with complaints against some of Lahore's top school administrations, which ask parents to take their child to psychologists as they are suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other disorders without being aware of the signs or symptoms of such problems," the CEO added.

"We organise free awareness-raising seminars for teachers at Avantage and invite groups from all schools of Lahore to attend these seminars in order to acquaint themselves with what these learning deficiencies really are. We are the only facility in Pakistan that conducts computer-assisted ADHD diagnosis on world-renowned software that gives exact results."

Commenting on the efficacy of mental exercises Dr. Shahzad Yousaf, the medial director says that researchers and scholars recommend brain training exercises to improve cognitive functioning of children and adults, just as physical exercise improves physical health. The extensive mental workouts stimulate brain neurons and strengthen neural networks, thus enhancing learning abilities", Dr Shahzad expounds.

Avantage Peak Performance Club provides exciting training modules ranging from simple tasks to challenging brain exercises designed for different ages to help children learn to pay attention, stay focused, improve memory, self-control, perception and much more. A mental gym that claims to be the 'culmination of Aamir Khan's cause in Taare Zameen Par', offers special exercise modules for children with ADHD, dyslexia, ADD etc as well.

All exercises employed at Avantage comprise world-renowned American and Canadian software that are being used all over the world as cognitive intervention and behavioural remediation programmes. Avantage is also affiliated with Advanced Cognitive Enhancement Centre, Canada.

Describing the results of training at Avantage, a mother Mrs Malick says, "I have sent two of my children to the gym, and my son's improvement was exciting as he continued to show enhancement in his classroom and patience at home while dealing with his siblings and it is great achievement for me."

Narrating her experience at the gym, Sarosh, a student says, "First I thought these were workstations equipped with exciting and enjoyable games as we have at home, but I have learnt a lot to understand things which were earlier very complicated for me and my focus has improved a lot."

A schoolteacher of Cambridge system and mathematician says mental workouts are helpful in teaching basic cognitive skills to students and the gym is playing an important role in this regard.

The gym administration plans to pool efforts with different schools and NGOs to embark on a comprehensive drive to propagate importance of mental workouts in academic and professional life.

However, the gym chief executive Faryal Shahzad says that the initiative to engage other schools to groom and sharpen brain skills of students got lukewarm response as private schools are more interested in producing 'students with good grades' than intelligent learners.

"What we are doing at Avantage is human resource development at the grass root level, a concept that has become the catch phrase in the corporate world," says Faryal.

"We can find many examples around us when brilliant students end up as mediocre professionals due to lack of reasoning, conceptualisation, and decision making skills," Faryal adds.

The city of Lahore has a whole history within. Great people and huge buildings have a pivotal role in making Lahore a historical place. Although the intellectual activities from Lahore are fading out with the passage of time and so are its great people, no doubt its buildings too have almost lost their beauty and importance but their mystery, however, still remains intact. One such place is Miani Sahab.

This is the oldest and the largest graveyard of Lahore and the second largest of Pakistan. The soil of this graveyard has accommodated many famous personalities of their times. Different people have different views about the history of Miani Sahab but the most reasonable are two.

According to the first view, during King Jahangir's regime, Sheikh Mohammad Tahir, a religious scholar, came from Sirhind to live here in the subcontinent. Sheikh Mohammad Tahir was a religious mentor. Since he used to preach Islamic teachings, thousands of people came under his patronage and became his disciples. The chain of religious disciples turned into a community within a few years and thus this area became their residence. Religious scholar is called 'Miani' in Punjabi language and since the very people used to live here, the place was named 'Miani'.

Sheikh Mohammad Tahir continued his religious teachings for many years in this area but never demanded anything in return for his services. He trained many people for a long period. The place remained inhabited till his death. At the end of Islamic Empire, this area was robbed and destroyed. A treasure of books along with the Holy Quran, were destroyed. They usurped a lot of expensive and rare books but when they found this material useless, they threw it out of the village and set the whole community to fire. As a result of this activity, the area got abandoned and the only remnants were Sheikh's shrine and his school for religious teachings. After this destruction, people of Lahore made this place a graveyard which is mostly covered with four walls.

According to the second point of view, Miani was first famous as 'Miani Panj Dhera' but as time passed by, the name remained shorter and now it is only 'Miani'. During Akbar's era, Hafiz Jaan Mohammad was the chief lord of this area. He was a religious personality and father of Abu Mohammad Qadri. The duty of the lord was to collect money from the residents in the name of religious activities and then divide it among the scholars. His son Abu Mohammad Qadri took the rank after his death. According to the historical perspective, some disagreement among the scholars regarding a religious matter's interpretation aroused during his period as a result of which common people refused to obey the rule of Abu Mohammad. People left the place and Abu Mohammad alone with his few disciples ruled the area. Another scholar, Mir Ali, came here from Makhand in the meanwhile and started living in this village. Thus the empire was distributed among the two rulers and the area was inhabited anew. Mir Ali sent for five coffins of his religious mentors from Makhand and got them bury here. Grave is called 'Dhera' in Punjabi and so these five coffins were called 'Panj Dhera'. First the graveyard was reserved only for the religious personalities but with the passage of time, it became common for all.

According to an estimate, the place carries almost 800 renowned personalities of Pakistan. These include Saadat Hassan Manto, Ahsaan Danish, Major Shabbir Sharif Shaheed, Dulla Bhatti, Ghazi Ilm Din Shaheed, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Wasif Ali Wasif and many others. Many Sufis and saints are also a part of this soil. Among them are Sheikh Tahir Bandagi, Haji Noor Mohammad, Pir Asif Ali and Nizam-ud-din.

Miani has been divided into seven blocks due to its splendour. Each block is named after some famous writer, scholar or Sufi. Miani Sahab is situated in the middle of Lahore. It is located on Bahawalpur Road. Mazang road is also linked with it. The graveyard stretches over acres. It stretched over 175 acres of area in the last century but now only a 100 acre is left. The rest is consumed by different communities and Qabza groups. Moreover, the vehicle workshops have spread to a large area and the graveyard has a fair enough reason to be renovated but the establishment has perhaps some more important issues to solve so the matter undergoes long delays constantly.

Miani has even a worse side. There is a place in the graveyard that is ruined all over. There are big holes all around the area. The whole atmosphere of this place stinks badly and piles of garbage and dirt can be seen. Such an irony of fate could only be found in Miani Sahab that human bodies are buried together in big holes; uncovered and without any recognition or epitaph. "Those who die in accidents and bomb attacks or other such violence are mostly buried here and these dead bodies are usually carried by Edhi Welfare Trust. These people have no family or inheritance," tells a grave digger. These holes are named after numbers e.g. No 79 or No 119 etc.

The graveyard maintains many shrines which people visit. They bow their heads, pledge to them, and distribute food among the poor in the name of Sadqa and Khairaat. A local grave digger Nawaz Mohammad says, "Fares are held on famous men's shrines and large number of people annually participate in these fares. The shrines are especially decorated with different kinds of colourful illuminations on such occasions. People dance here and get intoxicated and infatuated." These fares are an important source for swindlers to blackmail people and cheat them.

The shrines of Miani are famous for their interior. They are a perfect model of Multani art and craft. There is calligraphy on the walls with names of Allah and the Holy verses written on the walls creating a charismatic effect.

The trees of Miani reflect its history. Many of these are centuries old. Some trees have gained gigantic proportions. They, with their somber shadow, transform daylight into darkness. In the evening their fearsome appearance provokes horror. "People associate their superstitious beliefs with the trees as well. They hang black cloth on them and drive nails on them to perform rituals like Kala Jadu and all in order to destroy their enemies," describes the sweeper of Miani.

The shortage of space for more graves in Miani is the biggest problem of the day. The space is getting scarce mainly because some rich families have reserved huge areas for their own family members, no matters how much of it is vacant. Another reason for shortage of space is concrete graves. Splendid tombs and shrines preserve huge areas of land leaving no space for more dead bodies to be buried. Huge squares of land are given to the lawns and grounds of these shrines.

The presence of beggars, pick-pockets and drug addicts in Miani has spoiled the image of a graveyard. A place where people come to offer fateha for their loved ones and pray to God seems to be a place for picnic and other acts of petty crimes. "The authorities know them and their activities. They are aware of their presence in the graveyard but they don't take a step," states a grave digger.

Despite all these dark sides of the picture, Miani is still reflective of Lahore's old history. It is, in a way, our cultural heritage and we cannot deny this reality.

1. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

2. The Ice Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa

3. Raja Gidh by Bano Qudsia

4. Moth Smoke

by Mohsin Hamid

5. Rakh by Mustansir Hussain Tarar

6. Basti by Intizar Hussain

7. Darbay by A. Hameed

8. What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin

9. The Geometry of God by Uzma Aslam Khan

10. The End of Innocence by Moni Mohsin