Our own Sesame
Finally something for kids to look forward to on PTV… 
Sim Sim Hamara, puppetry combined with joyful learning
By Waqar Gillani 
There is hardly any youth in Pakistan that does not remember Sesame Street aired on the state-owned PTV years ago. 
Now, many years later, there’s good news for all Sesame Street fans between ages four and nine — a new, Urdu-language version of the show, Sim Sim Hamara returns every Saturday on PTV Home. This humourous and educational programme will be presented by the Rafi Peer Theater Workshop (RPTW) in collaboration with USAID and Sesame Workshop, New York. 

 

It is a tragic fact that we as a nation have never been able to come to terms with momentous events in our own history. Whether it is military operations in Balochistan, the overthrow of elected governments, the use of Islam by military dictators for the most cynical reasons, we have shied away from fully confronting such episodes in our history. Our response instead has been to either concoct awkwardly woven narratives about our national past or to refuse introspection based on the premise that we must ‘forget the past and focus on the present.’

There is not a more painful example of the national silence than the civil war in East Pakistan of 1971. Never before had the Pakistani state declared an entire population a ‘threat to national security,’ nor had it ever systematically carried out such a horrendous ‘cleansing’ to purify the national body. Much ink has been wasted on debating the exact number of casualties during the conflict. What is important for our purposes is to acknowledge that our armed forces did go on a killing spree against our own citizens, who were supposed to enjoy the same rights and privileges accorded to the citizens of West Pakistan. No matter what the hyper-nationalist spin doctors want us to believe, no one will ever be able to justify the physical elimination of students and intellectuals, excessive bombardment of villages, and the systematic rape of Bengali women at the hands of the Pakistan military.

One is horrified to recount such dastardly tales, especially since these crimes were being carried out against a majority population. The only thing more disturbing was how the war in Bengal was met by a deafening silence in the Western part of the country and continues to remain sidelined as a peripheral moment in our country’s history. Soon after the debacle in Dhaka, most mainstream parties agreed that the country’s top military and civilian leadership had an importantly role to play in Pakistan’s dismemberment. Yet, the hegemonic discourses of ‘national security,’ ‘reconstruction,’ and ‘looking to the future’ meant that we as a nation were never able to fully comprehend the action of our state hundreds of miles away.

One may have some degree of sympathy for having the desire to move on, but not at the expense of forgetting the past. Viewing the Bengal episode as a geographically limited phenomenon has veiled how state violence and militarization pervade our entire society. As scholars of state theory argue, the violence committed by states in far away lands must at some point return to haunt those living at the core.

An example of such a surreal moment in our history came when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto launched one of the most devastating military campaigns in Pakistan’s history to ‘crush the insurgency’ in Balochistan. This decision was taken less than three years after the humiliation in Dhaka, and was led by General Tikka Khan, who gained notoriety as the ‘butcher of Bengalis’. Baloch bodies had become the new sites for state violence in the name of ‘national security’ and ‘sovereignty.’ In an ironic twist of fate, Bhutto’s government was removed by the military to ‘prevent a civil-war like situation’ and maintain ‘national cohesion.’

Since then, the coercive apparatus of the Pakistan state has been deployed to discipline all dissenting voices in the country. For example, the brutal suppression of labour unions in the 1980s was carried out in the name of ‘security’ and ‘national development.’ Elections were rigged by powers that be to ensure that ‘emotional’ and ‘irrational’ people of Pakistan did not provide thumping majorities to those who allegedly ‘threatened’ the country’s security. Even today, criticisms of our security apparatus are silenced under the chorus of ‘a conspiracy by external forces.’

It is often argued by governments that one should not level accusations against the state during turbulent periods. The war in Bengal was one such moment where citizens (of West Pakistan only) were expected to provide unquestioned loyalty towards the state. Yet, since the separation of Bengal, we have constantly lived in such a state of exception. Instead of delving into the reasons of the defeat, our state became obsessed with finding new techniques of managing populations and of extending the undeclared state of emergency to all spheres of our national life. The militarisation of our daily lives, with increasing checkpoints, the proliferation of secret agencies, and other such sophisticated regimes of surveillance, indicate how Bengal remains etched as a demon in the unconscious of our state, one it aims to fight without any serious introspection on its own role in exacerbating the crisis.

The constant anxiety of our ruling elites, the hyper-militarisation of our society and the subsequent violence in everyday life is a direct result of our refusal to rectify our past actions or to make a concerted effort to ensure they are never repeated. While our history is filled with instances that can embarrass us, the violence in Bengal stands out as a unique event in our national history. It represents the extent of violence our state can commit in order to defend its own power and privilege. All rhetoric of rule of law, democracy, human rights, respect to women, etcetera, can be discarded and a horrendous regime of violence can be constituted for the perpetuation of the status quo. Bengal, then, hovers over our heads as an example of what can possibly happen to us if we move beyond the framework set by the Deep State. 

The idea that a new Bengal is not possible due to the presence of a ‘free media and judiciary’ or a vibrant civil society seems particularly absurd at a time when an undeclared war is being waged against the Baloch youth while hundreds of families across Pakistan are waiting for their loved ones who went ‘missing.’ One must also actively fight the idea that Bengal, Balochistan or Pukhtunkwha represented peripheral regions and do not play a direct role in our daily lives.

Apart from the moral argument that silence on such crimes committed in our names implicates us in that process, we should also try to comprehend how these killing fields are also structuring our own daily lives. As stated earlier, the perpetual focus on national security has led to a proliferation of secretive agencies across the country, as well as an increase in religious militancy, and has played a decisive role in sabotaging the mandate of the ordinary people. One must also mention that state violence is also rampant in core regions such as Central Punjab, especially if one happens to be on the wrong side of the class divide.

Four decades after the creation of Bangladesh, the war in 1971 remains an enigma for a majority of Pakistanis. It is now time that we boldly discuss what happened during that turbulent period in our history. This is not an attempt to open a scholarly debate among historians. This is a plea to understand the nature of our state at its most vicious instance, and to then raise questions on the relationship of our state with marginalised nationalities and oppressed classes. Moreover, it is crucial to examine why the fundamental nature of our state not only has not changed, but has in fact become more entrenched with each passing years.

Finally, the shattering of our silence on this event has the potential to also shatter the discourse of national security that has veiled the cynical abuse of power by our state and has hindered the possibility of imagining a fundamentally different relationship between state and society. The whole notion that systematically wiping out Bengali activists or raping women were the only options left to the Pakistani state when confronted by the ‘Indian threat’ seems cruel, insensitive, and flat out ridiculous.

In fact, our only consolation in such times is the belief that those who were at the helm of affairs were blinded by greed and power, and that perhaps we as ordinary Pakistanis are capable of knowing better.

 

 

 

Dev Anand who died last week was one of the triumvirate of the leading men who set Indian cinema on the path of exponential growth after Independence. In terms of work, he was able to outlast the other two, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, actively making films and working long after the youthful years by switching his role from acting, to scripting to production and direction. He was never the critic’s favourite yet he kept bouncing back with box office hit after hit, silencing his high-brow friends in a world where the audience response is the final arbiter of success and failure.

He understood commercial cinema but wanted to make something more of it. His cross over taste in music resulted in some of the most famous songs being composed and sung in his films, some picturised on him as well, and that advantage he did not surrender till very late. This combination of superb music with some gloss of popular contemporary issue reflected through character/ theme was the magic formula he held tightly on to.

Initially he was helped along by his brothers, Chetan Anand who was already making films and then Vijay Anand who was to join later as script writer and director. Chetan Anand did take part in the dramatic and literary activities at the Government College, Lahore, in an age where the radio was about to be established and the stage was beginning to question the parameters of commercialism. The blooding of drama and theatre at the hands of Patras, Taj and Sondhi brought in an enhanced vision to the activities of the stage. The lack of imminent commercialism made the radio play to prosper in such a manner as to show an alternative to the successful Parsi plays of Bombay and Calcutta.

So it was not a mere chance that when the Indian Peoples Theatre Association decided to make a film it chose Chetan Anand to direct Neecha Nagar. The film included Rafi Peerzada, another Government College alumnus. The second film under its banner was K. A. Abbas’s Dharti Ka Lal on the Bengal famine and the third Kalpana by Uday Shanker. These films were based on a new kind of realism which treated cinema as an insight into reality rather than a glamourised escape from it.

Balraj Sahni, a contemporary of Chetan Anand at the college, too, was very active in the dramatic and literary circles of the college and had read from the same book. Later he joined Shanti Niketan and then the BBC in London before returning to Bombay to team up with his former college mates to establish the missing strand of a more meaningful cinema. Chetan Anand was to continue with the same approach and in his highly acclaimed career which was commercially inconsistent, he made  many a landmark films — the most outstanding being Haqeeqat as a realistic appraisal of war. The film deals with the theme of war in a totally de-glorified manner and brings out the immense potential of destruction that it can unleash. The film now a classic with Bombay industry won many an international kudos for its very strong anti-war statement.

Dev Anand’s Hum Dono too was about the tragic and absurd fallout of war on human relationships.

Dev Anand followed his brother to the Government College and then the film studios of Bombay, where he met Guru Dutt and formed an association that through more downs than ups was responsible for introducing a great many new faces and names to various disciplines of film-making in Bombay.

The post-Independence era saw a sudden boost in film-making as this popular medium increased its outreach as well as its influence to become the second largest film industry of the world. As he launched his company Navketan, with a directorial debut of Guru Dutt, it also spawned talents like S.D. Burman, Sahir Ludhianvi, Raj Khosla, Jaidev, Jhonny Walker, R.D. Burman, Zeenat Aman, Tina Munim, Fali Mistry, Ratra and Prabharkar.

Dev Anand’s first film was Hum Aik Hain made against the partition of India and released about then. But first box office success was Ziddi — and he then went on to make a number of films on the lives of the working classes which was actually a transition from the socialistic realism to a new brand of Hindi commercial cinema under the influence of international directors like Huston, Capra and Vidor. Some of the most popular films made by Dev Anand were with his younger brother Vijay Anand, who scripted Taxi Driver and then went on to direct Tere Ghar Ke Sammne, Kala Bazaar, Guide and Tere Mere Sapne.

Vijay Anand was greatly responsible for shaping Dev Anand’s film personality of a boy next door — part lover, part clown and part do-gooder. He thought that filming should be brought as close as possible to the making of a newspaper. He satirised and reconstituted generic styles including the deliberately awkward pastiches invoked by various sources like Carry Grant and Gregory Peck.

His long innings made him pair with heroines over five decades. His own contemporaries like Suraiya, Kamni Kaushal, Geeta Bali, Meena Kumari , Madhobala, Nargis. Then of the 1950s, Nimmi, Vijantimala, Waheeda Rehman, Nutan; and then of the 1960s, Suchitra Sen, Saira Bano, Nanda, Sadhana, Sharmila Tagore, Asha Parekh. In the 1970s, he paired with Hema Malini, Rakhee, Mumtaz, Zeenat Aman, Tina Munim, and in the 1980s with Moon Moon Sen.

The only time Dev Anand came to Pakistan was with the official entourage of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee which crossed the border in a bus from Wagah about 12 years ago.  The visit was marred by violent protests and he was not able to meet his admirers/fans. But he wished to visit the Government College and it was granted, an emotional return to his alma mater after a gap of more than 50 years, albeit made painful by the forced distancing between India and Pakistan. It must have meant something more to a man who has gone on to become one of the most popular film heroes of the past 50 years.

Balraj Sahni too had come on the centenary celebrations of the Government College in 1964.

Dev Anand did the usual things — teary-eyed, he touched the bricks and walked through the corridors, at once living the present and the past, remembering an incident or a face at every nook, revisiting the years again with the urgency of the youth.

Dev Anand’s homecoming was thus to pay homage to the institution which taught him how to toddle on the path that led him to his destination. At the end of a long career he could look back with satisfaction at the starting point of his journey, least of all because he had never thought that he would ever have the opportunity to go back to the Government College in this lifetime.

He authored a candid autobiography, “Romancing with Life” and won the Padma Bhushan, Dadasaheb Phalke Award and Filmfare’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the best actor award for Kalapani and best film and best actor award for Guide.

In one of his verses, famous Urdu poet Munir Niazi talks about the solitary individual’s attitude of dissatisfaction, no matter where he lives. Actually he points out that it is in the nature of man to always remain discontented with his surroundings. It was this urge for change that evolved into great feats of civilizations — construction of cities, clearing of forests, converting clay into pottery and brick, cutting stones and thus erecting incredible works of engineering such as the pyramids and the Great Wall of China.

Apart from adding new creations, man sought changes in geography, like digging out Panama and Suez Canals in the last century. These sea passages not only reduced the travel time for ships, but amended the world map too.

Even if one is not endowed with the gift to erect huge pieces of sculpture, architecture or alter the layout of the earth, one still seeks to transform his immediate space. If not in the form of physical inventions, then moral, ethical or artistic interventions are ways to modify the previous order of things. Great leaders, artists, writers and intellectuals try to transform their situations through their words and works.

If a person is unable to actively alter the surroundings, he hopes and struggles to move to another place. This phenomenon is nothing new, but in recent times the urge to leave one’s place also means changing one’s identity —both on a societal and personal level. Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic observes this tendency in her essay Karaoke Culture: “Today people are more interested in flight from themselves than discovering their authentic self. The self has become boring, and belongs to a different culture. The possibilities of transformation, teleportation, and metamorphosis hold far more promise than digging in the dirt of the self”.

Perhaps the desperation to change one’s nationality (and identity) has never been as pronounced as it is today. This process of transformation is taking place on two different — though not separate — levels. The desire to reside in another country, find a lucrative job and a secure home is that of the traveller who is happy to shun his cultural baggage while transporting his actual baggage to, in most cases, a Western city. Only when it is not possible does the transformation takes place in the world of ideas and imagination.

Yet one can not differentiate the two kinds of journeys because both are interrelated; often one precedes the other or they both commence simultaneously. Before planning his voyage, the man’s mind is already set on faraway lands. The actual movement is a continuation of the process completed in the mind. Bani Abidi probes that connection of concrete and concept through her works in her solo exhibition ‘Section Yellow’ at the Grey Noise Gallery Lahore. In her inkjet prints and video installation, the artist maps how the ordinary citizens of a country are longing for travelling to other regions. The visuals of empty chairs at a waiting lounge, queues for submitting visa applications, props (such as neckties, attestation of documents) to complete visa application formulate the narrative. The desperation and desolation on the faces of visa candidates are evident in her video installation ‘Distance From Here’. The whole scenario is captured so effectively that all the characters, who have performed in the video as prospective immigrants, seem incredibly convincing in their roles.

Abidi uses ordinary items to describe great desire and disappointments. A mundane object, the plastic sleeve or file cover acquires great weight (both in physical and conceptual terms) when one is waiting his turn in the queue at the visa office. Especially with the new wave of security panic, no one is allowed to take anything except his documents in these files and covers. So these pieces of stationary become most crucial while one is in the middle of making one’s dream true. More so because these contain one’s fate and great fortune, to be unfolded in front of a hostile and unfriendly foreign visa officer.

Abidi has portrayed these as substantial objects, seen from side — a view so uncommon that one hardly reads them as file covers. A range of these file covers of different makes and dimensions is shown in a series of inkjet prints, which suggests how the artistic potential can be found in familiar and common things.

In fact, the aspect of locating aesthetics and meanings out of ordinary items is a recurrent motif in Abidi’s work (being shown from Nov 26, 2011-Jan 13, 2012). In another body of work, she has created a range of intercom pieces normally installed in our houses. The juxtaposition of this functional product in different designs alludes to the sense (or lack) of security in our surroundings, in which man is safe only when confined to his home.

Interestingly, if seen together, both the intercom devices and works about travelling abroad are interconnected — man having to talk to machines to enter a house or a new country. Both the queues of visa applications and the combination of intercom devices become symbols and signify a Kafkaesque condition — when a man strives to leave his destiny but encounters a web of complications, which discourages and tires him.

The work of Bani Abidi, with its formal subtleties is a testimony of our times since it conveys the experience of a majority through art. Only her own situation as a perpetual mover between India and Pakistan and seeker of travel permission is a minor detail.

 

 

 

 

 

Our own Sesame
Finally something for kids to look forward to on PTV… 
Sim Sim Hamara, puppetry combined with joyful learning
By Waqar Gillani

There is hardly any youth in Pakistan that does not remember Sesame Street aired on the state-owned PTV years ago.

Now, many years later, there’s good news for all Sesame Street fans between ages four and nine — a new, Urdu-language version of the show, Sim Sim Hamara returns every Saturday on PTV Home. This humourous and educational programme will be presented by the Rafi Peer Theater Workshop (RPTW) in collaboration with USAID and Sesame Workshop, New York.

This 72 episode series, aims to combine aesthetic traditions of the rural and urban Pakistan. Set in a make-belief mohallah (neighbourhood), with a shady banyan tree in the centre, is where the characters of the show gather for a daily chitchat. It’s a beautiful ground for children to play in.

“We won this programme through international bidding in 2010. It is an educational project funded by USAID and supported by the Pakistan government,” Faizan Peerzada, who heads the project, tells The News on Sunday adding, “Similar educational projects are being run in India and Afghanistan”.

This four-year, USD20 million project was awarded to RPTW last year as part of the Kerry-Lugar aid to Pakistan. “Having a strong background in puppetry, we decided to bid for this project that encourages joyful learning among children of early age.”

An RPTW initiative, Pakistan’s Children Television, producing Sim Sim Hamara, focuses on sending out basic education message through television series, radio, and an extensive community outreach programme — that is designed to support Pakistan government’s national education policy.

The Sim Sim community is home to Rani, Elmo, Munna, Baji, Bailly, and Haseen-o-Jameel. They are the lead characters of the programme. Rani, a six-year-old girl, possesses a passion for natural science and reading, and is always eager to discover new things. Munna, a five-year-old boy with larger-than-life ambitions, has many dreams, and loves to sing and dance. Baji, an epitome of a traditional Pakistani woman, is passionate about healthy diet. Bailly, an eight-year-old donkey, aspires to become a singer. Elmo is a lovable three-year-old monster with a questioning mind. And Haseen-o-Jameel, a forever young non-traditional alligator, is simply there to amuse children.

Phase one of the programme consists of 27-minutes-long 72 episodes. The second phase will comprise 13 episodes in regional languages along with some live shows and radio programmes. The RPTW has set up a purpose-built studio, sound system, animation department and a puppet-making department.

“The programme is derived through nationwide consultation, seminar and workshops involving provincial education departments with the purpose of joyful learning and preparing and inspiring children to go to school in their formative years,” Peerzada says.

He adds Pakistan needs such programmes based on cultural diversity.

Fifty-year-old Peerzada, who has created 3,000 puppets in his career and is a painter by passion, further discloses that the structure of Sim Sim Hamara is like Sesame Street but there is more live action in it. “We want to make it a memorable programme. We don’t want to just produce programmes for four years but to make the experience similar to that of Sesame Street — that has lived with the Americans now for generations. We want to make it successful and sustainable and add new dimensions and ideas to children’s programmes in Pakistan.”

There are more than 200 people involved in the project, including scriptwriters and translators. “It’ll help in capacity-building of human resource for starting such projects and programmes in future.”

Mentioning children programmes like Kalian, Ainak Wala Jin and Putli Kahani that focused more on adults than children, he says, “We have not paid attention to our children. Projects such as Sim Sim Hamara should have been initiated 15 to 20 years ago.”

Through fun and play, the series is expected to touch on issues of gender equality, diversity, self-esteem and self-worth and emergency preparedness. It’ll cover language and literacy; mathematics, science, and cognition — and health, hygiene, nutrition; family and social relationships. Art and culture will be important ingredients of the show as well.

RPTW has been involved in television and radio programming, puppetry, theater, and the arts with schools and communities across Pakistan for around 35 years. It established a museum of puppetry in 2004 and at average 100,000 school children visit it annually. It has organised around two dozen international performing arts festivals since 1992.

While its partner group Sesame Workshop is a non-profit organisation of writers, artists, educators, researchers, producers, and psychologists, its programmes and initiatives reach children and their caregivers in 150 countries and delivered through multimedia platforms with the best known Sesame Street.

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