Reading rigours
Dear All,
So much to read and so little time... As I become older, I feel increasingly inadequate as to the breadth and depth of my reading. The fact of the matter is that there are still so, so many books in the world that I have not read. So many classics, so much new talent...

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) have been mostly involved in a love-hate relationship. In fact, their ties bear little love and more hate if one looks at their past attempts to work together as part of a coalition government.

The PPP-MQM alliance often appears unnatural. It seems the two reluctantly agree to stay together, enduring an uneasy relationship to stay in power. All this, while they are drifting apart until a complete break. This has happened in the past and there is no reason to believe that the situation would be any different this time. However, such opportunistic alliances in Pakistan often survive until shortly before general elections because the coalition partners want to remain in power as long as possible.

As a matter of fact, right after winning a substantial number of assembly seats in urban Sindh in every election and also as a habit, the MQM has never been averse to sharing power with any partner. It has partnered the PPP and the different factions of PML, led by Nawaz Sharif and his rival Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, in coalition governments. It has offered backing to military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and become an ally of political parties with conflicting agendas. Five times in recent years it has been in power as part of different coalition governments. Its opponents claim that the MQM cannot stay out of power now as it needs to be part of the government to protect its interests and win elections.

In view of past acrimony between the PPP and the MQM, it was predictable that the two would sooner or later start distrusting each other despite being part of the coalition government in Sindh and at the Centre. It happened recently when Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, the Sindh home minister and PPP leader considered close to President Asif Ali Zardari, lashed out at the MQM in presence of an amused Syed Qaim Ali Shah, the Chief Minister, and accused it of committing a fraud while manoeuvring to have 3,500 criminal cases against its members withdrawn under the oddly named National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Not known to take things lying down, the MQM retaliated with its own verbal assault against the PPP. One of its top leaders Salim Shehzad wondered aloud whether his party’s principled stand to oppose the NRO was the reason for the PPP to suddenly declare war on the MQM.

This verbal sparring could have gone out of control had the leadership of the two allied parties not decided to put a halt to it as washing their dirty linen in public was becoming quite an embarrassment. Dr Mirza, who is husband of National Assembly Speaker Dr Fahmida Mirza, had even threatened to disclose within a week all the cases that the MQM had suppressed by hoodwinking the Sindh government and the judiciary. He had also appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, already burdened with politically-oriented litigation, to reopen and investigate all cases wrapped up under the NRO. The MQM had offered itself for accountability and challenged the PPP to do the same.

Though a kind of ceasefire seems to be in place, the issue is far from resolved. The uncertain ties between the PPP and MQM have suffered damage and their trust deficit has increased. There never really was much trust among the two parties in the first place. Though the PPP leader and minister of state for ports and shipping Nabeel Gabol insisted that his party’s alliance and understanding with the MQM was intact, there are certain issues that are a source of friction between them.

One major source of friction was the fate of the NRO, a controversial piece of law that was cleverly designed by former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, to prolong his rule with support from PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and MQM head Altaf Hussain. In the style of a monarch, he offered amnesty to politicians willing to play ball and dropped all cases of misuse of power and corruption against them provided they backed his candidature for a second term in office as president. The General was willing to throw away public money to win political support and politicians were ready to oblige him for their own narrow self-interest.

Unlike certain PPP leaders who were confident that their alliance with the MQM was intact, the latter was less forthcoming on the issue. The MQM deputy convener Farooq Sattar, who is also a federal minister, declined comment on reports that his party’s policy-making coordination committee would meet after Eidul Azha in Karachi and London to decide whether to stay or part ways with the PPP-led coalition government as a mark of protest over the PPP’s campaign against the MQM. There were also reports that the MQM leadership wanted its federal and provincial ministers not to attend their offices until a final decision on the matter of its alliance with the PPP was made.

The public spat between the PPP and MQM has shaken their coalition government in Sindh and created a wedge that could widen if corrective measures weren’t taken. As Dr Zulfiqar Mirza alleged, PPP considers MQM a child of the establishment. It is convinced that the MQM’s unprovoked criticism of the Zardari government and refusal to back the NRO were done at the behest of the country’s powerful establishment comprising the military and civil bureaucracy. The MQM leader Altaf Hussain had surprised everyone by refusing to help the PPP in seeking passage for the NRO in the parliament and for publicly asking President Zardari to resign. A poem by a member of the MQM coordination committee, Mustafa Azizabadi, in which he spoke about December as the moment of truth for the government also annoyed the PPP leadership.

Though the MQM tried to do damage control by describing the poem as the individual’s personal opinion, the PPP leaders weren’t satisfied with the explanation. The MQM also insisted that the anti-MQM views expressed by Dr Mirza were his own and not of the PPP leadership, but there were few takers for this version of events. As a friend of President Zardari, it is widely believed that he spoke for the president and did so in presence of Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, thus leaving no doubt that his outburst against the MQM was deliberate and well-thought out with full knowledge and approval of the PPP leadership.

The PPP could manage to run the Sindh government with a simple majority in the provincial assembly even if the MQM were to pullout of the coalition. It was a wise idea to take the MQM along and give it a share in the coalition government in Sindh as the representative party of the Urdu-speaking Mohajir with a strong vote bank in urban centres such as Karachi and Hyderabad. This was necessary to have a stable government in Sindh and keep the streets of urban Sindh calm and quiet. The PPP also needed the MQM’s votes in the parliament to lend stability to the federal government. It may not be able to afford the parting of ways by the MQM, particularly at the Centre where its other smaller coalition partners are forever demanding their pound of flesh in return for support to President Zardari and the federal government. The MQM too would want to remain part of the government and this was evident from its relatively less aggressive reaction to the PPP’s verbal assault against it. It is, therefore, likely that the two parties would try to mend fences and attempt to remain allies as long as possible. However, things could go wrong, more so if a serious move is made by the forces of establishment to remove President Zardari from office or drastically curtail his powers.

Sharafat Ali Khan who died on December 2, 2009 was not very advanced in years. He must have been barely in his late 40s but it had been a while since he was seen and heard performing on stage or television or radio.

The explanation is quite simple -- he died because there was hardly any opportunity for him to perform. Weeks would become months and then years before he would get a chance to sing and express himself as a vocalist that he had been trained to be.

Son of Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, he was born with the inherent disadvantage of being judged against the greatness of his father. Salamat Ali Khan had such a dominant presence that it was difficult not to be eclipsed while singing next to him. And despite years and years of being with Salamat Ali Khan, Sharafat stayed in the shadows not fully breaking through the charmed halo and expressing himself in person. He was always the one who assisted the great Ustad especially in the period when he had a stroke and was not singing as of yore to his full potential.

Ustad Salamat Ali Khan had split from his elder brother Ustad Nazakat Ali Khan and for a few years sang alone till Sharafat was old and educated enough to be part of the duo that was famous and almost at the very top of those who sang kheyal, tarana, thumri and kafi. It was not easy for him because he often struggled against the prodigious genius and reputation of his father but he managed to be the support and an adequate one for the next 20 odd years till Salamat Ali chose to sing with his younger son Shafqat Ali.

Sharafat Ali's real talent never flowered. He was always judged in comparison. As the son of a great father and a vocalist who had promise that never got realised. He played too long as the second fiddle. As Salamat Ali Khan toured the subcontinent and then the world, Sharafat Ali Khan tagged along as a footnote to the great man. He ended up not more than the one who also ran without creating a niche for himself as a vocalist. Though he had the right credential and the rigorous training to qualify for it.

Salamat Ali was a ruthless teacher and Sharafat Ali had to bear the brunt and rigidity of the discipline. But he was plucked too early to sing on the command of the father who was coming to terms with the breakup with his brother. In the late 1970s and then the whole decade of the 1980s the duo sang, with Salamat Ali erasing the effects that the breakup with his brother may have had on his music.

Salamat Ali Khan and Nazakat Ali Khan always sang together and they were trained in such a manner that artistically they were inseparable. But the discord among the two families even saw this bond weakening and finally snapping. As is clearly evident from the book that Salamat Ali wrote it was quite a shock and took him many years to recover and re-craft his singing without the help of his brother. Both were self-taught. Though as hereditary musicians, they switched from dhrupad to kheyal on their own initiative and had courage and ability to soon become a dominant force in that area. Both had struggled to create their own style and the moment they parted the possibility of it crashing down was lurked menacingly. Salamat Ali Khan recovered sooner with Sharafat in tow while Nazakat Ali was never able to regain that former glory. His son Rafaqat Ali then chose to become a popular musician. And in comparison Rafaqat has been rewarded in a manner that his father or uncle never were.

As it were art music had few takers and Sharafat Ali chose to stick to his music without really venturing forth and making a compromise with the changing forms and taste in music. Some may say that he did not have the capacity for change while others may call it foolhardiness. Call it what you may, one did not see or hear him pander to popular taste and contemporary trends in music. Had Sharafat Ali been a great vocalist perhaps these and such choices may have been couched in more glorious terms but since he always stayed in the shadows his lack of compromise was easily mistaken for lack of an enterprising spirit. It is far easier to criticise lesser artists than a well-known one and Sharafat Ali's reputation may be susceptible to that criticism. The fact remains that he stuck to his guns when his other brothers and even his children were showing signs of impatience and breaking away from tradition.

Dear All,

So much to read and so little time... As I become older, I feel increasingly inadequate as to the breadth and depth of my reading. The fact of the matter is that there are still so, so many books in the world that I have not read. So many classics, so much new talent...

Despite this sense of inadequacy, I make a huge effort to not allow reading to become a tedious activity or a sort of 'must do' chore. I really want to enjoy reading, to love the process, to savour the words, to experience that wonderful sense of anticipation that comes with picking up a new book, and diving into the story, enjoying the prose, being caught up in the story.

Of course there are hits and misses, favourites and dislikes. Salman Rushdie, for example, is somebody whose books I have always had immense difficulty finishing. I find him difficult and, after a while, rather tedious and pretentious. But I do keep trying: I started reading 'Shalimar the Clown' more than three years ago and do someday intend to finish it. My friend Waheed has lent me his copy of Rushdie's 'The Enchantress of Florence' (inscribed to him by the author himself), but three months later I still have not even started on it. Yes, yes, I know Rushdie is supposed to be a literary genius, but I find him difficult going. Maybe I'm just not mature and literary enough yet...

Much more to my taste is Sue Townsend and the Adrian Mole books. Although now I have started buying most of my books at very low prices from Charity shops and libraries, I always go and buy the new hardback version of any new Mole book. He is the character who started out as a pimply northern teenager in the Thatcher years in 'The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 fl'. From his early days of writing terrible scripts and sending them to the BBC, to his attempts to be 'an intellectual' in the midst of a chaotic and disorderly working class family, Adrian was a truly lovable character and absolutely hilarious. Townsend took him through the 80s, the 90s and the new century, through the end of Conservative rule, the rise of rampant consumerism and the age of the celebrity chef, through the Iraq war and the crises of new labour.

The latest Mole book is called 'The Prostrate Years', and in it Adrian is diagnosed with prostate cancer, his wife leaves him, his dad is now in a wheelchair, the bookshop he works at has to close down and his family is still messy and chaotic. Yet this is a humorous book and one that you want to keep on reading. Ok, death and disease and unemployment are not in themselves funny, but Adrian is such an endearing and genuinely kind (although quite foolish) character, that you just want to stay with him and laugh at the way things unfold. Adrian's is a bittersweet story but one in which you remain engaged and persist in imagining some sort of happy ending for him even though it always seems improbable.

And sometimes there are books that you feel terribly excited about acquiring as soon as they are released and which turn out to be crushing disappointment. A case in point is the new Dan Brown book 'The Lost Symbol'. This turned out to be absolutely nonsensical. So much so that sometimes one had to marvel at the sheer audacity and relentlessness of the contrived narrative and page turner construction of the test. It was dreadful, just dreadful. I am still recovering from the experience.

But sometimes you just come across books by chance -- not because they are new and well-publicised or old and well known, but just because you happen to be at the same place at the same time. A chance encounter turns into a delightful experience and a wonderful discovery. This happened with me and a book by Linda Grant called 'When I lived in Modern Times'. I found it in an Oxford bookshop (every book priced at only £2) when I visited my friend Nafisa who shall soon be finishing her doctorate at the University. This book was published in 2000 and is one of the best modern novels I have read. It follows the story of a young Jewish Londoner Evelyn Sert who travels to Palestine where "Jewish refugees and idealists are gathering from across Europe to start a new life in a brand new country." The book is astonishing because of the vivid picture it paints of Tel Aviv -- the new and determined, modern city -- and the intellectual and power struggles that rage there between those with an extremist vision and those with a more intellectual, progressive vision. It is a battle of ideas that you can recognise from so many different situations and contexts that it is familiar yet totally illuminating. An astonishing book, truly. Highly recommended.

On the subject of recommendations, I must mention that although he is not a big literary celebrity, anything by William Boyd is wonderful reading. He's one of my real favourites.

And although I generally do not enjoy most American writers, I have to say I am really enjoying Dominick Dunne's 'The Two Mrs Grenvilles' which I am now reading. After that I will try to read the Rushdie book. Because social pressure makes me feel that I must.

So wish me luck.

All the best,

Umber Khairi