strike
The case of messiahs
Young doctors really run our great public hospitals. For them a ‘service structure’ with a pay scale commensurate with their
education and work is the most important requirement
By Dr. Syed Mansoor Hussain
When was the last time anybody in the Punjab government, in the press or on TV referred to doctors as messiahs? Aha! The last time the Young Doctor’s Association (YDA) went on strike! In between nobody thinks much about the long hours and hard work these young doctors put in or the conditions they work under or the money they get paid. To understand what is going on it is important to realise that the medical community is not a monolith and is really made up of different groups with different practice patterns and obligations. 

In defence of imagination
Is art a representation of a true occurrence or an intellectual pursuit?
By Quddus Mirza
In the oppressive heat of Lahore, with the temperature rising up to 46 degree Celsius, an artist planning to paint a landscape at midday might find it impossible to stand for a few hours under the scorching sun. Alternatively, he could stay in his air-conditioned vehicle and paint the landscape by looking through the window. But will this image, with the artist not having experienced the heat of the site, represent the essence of the scene?
It may not, since something peculiar and honest is expected from the artist. Landscape painting is differentiated from photography because the picture through a camera is considered a meta-human documentation of an object/scene even though there is a man behind the lens who clicks the button whereas painting of the same spot is regarded a personal interpretation of reality. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  strike
The case of messiahs
Young doctors really run our great public hospitals. For them a ‘service structure’ with a pay scale commensurate with their
education and work is the most important requirement
By Dr. Syed Mansoor Hussain

When was the last time anybody in the Punjab government, in the press or on TV referred to doctors as messiahs? Aha! The last time the Young Doctor’s Association (YDA) went on strike! In between nobody thinks much about the long hours and hard work these young doctors put in or the conditions they work under or the money they get paid. To understand what is going on it is important to realise that the medical community is not a monolith and is really made up of different groups with different practice patterns and obligations.

Physicians that are employed by the government of the Punjab are roughly divisible into four distinct groups. The first are the ‘senior’ doctors that make up the ‘consultants’ in the teaching hospitals and the major tertiary and secondary care hospitals. Most of them are already well established. More importantly, many of them are in line for promotions to important positions like principals and vice-chancellors or as chairmen and heads of their departments. All of them are at the mercy of the Chief Minister (CM) of the Punjab and the Health Department for their present ‘postings’ as well as future promotions and, therefore, are inclined to ‘tow the official’ line.

The second group is what is what I will call the medical ‘gerontocracy’. These are the ‘senior’ medical officers that have spent decades working in the public sector hospitals. They have, over the years, developed a symbiotic relationship with their institutions, both in teaching hospitals as well as the government hospitals in the peripheral areas. Some of them pay off the medical bureaucracy to keep their positions intact and pursue either private practices or non medical business activities full time.

The third group is the members of the ‘medical bureaucracy’ that run the public hospitals. These physicians are also dependent on the Health Department for their postings to ‘plum’ jobs and are appointed often for their political subservience rather than merit. As far as I am concerned, the entire public healthcare system in the Punjab is at present run by what can at best be described as a ‘Sycophantocracy’ (If I may be allowed a neologism). Frankly, this group is to blame for the medical crises that occur every time the YDA has gone on strike. I will return to their pernicious role a bit later.

The fourth group is the ‘house physicians’. These are recent graduates that need to work for a year in an ‘accredited’ hospital so they can fulfil the requirement of obtaining full registration by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). Interestingly, all medical graduates do not go through a house job. The reason being that some women graduates that get married choose not to pursue a career in medicine and some of the male graduates decide to pursue non medical careers. But of those that do want to go on in medicine, many of them support the YDA points of view.

Concerning the YDA, most of these young men and women are less than ten years out of medical college and all have made a commitment to pursue a career in medicine and most of them serve as medical officers and registrars or as medical trainees. These are the people that really run our great public hospitals. They are all ‘high achievers’ who worked hard and did well throughout their educational careers. They expect that if they continue to work hard and pursue post graduate training they will be appropriately rewarded. Our future medical leaders and teachers will come from this group of committed professionals. For them a ‘service structure’ with a pay scale commensurate with their education and work are the most important requirement. Perhaps, the government should also pay them a large monthly bonus for being messiahs.

To explain the concept of a service structure let us take the example of a young man who enters the Pakistan Military Academy and after four years comes out as an army officer. Over the next twenty five years he is assured regular promotions and increases in pay until he becomes a Major or a Lt. Colonel. At that point if he is ‘super-ceded’ he can retire with full benefits and can pursue another career. Similarly, young men and women that are inducted into the civil services expect regular promotions and an escalating pay grade to relatively high levels during their careers.

Unfortunately, young doctors have no such ‘service structure’ available to them. And in spite of repeated assurances by the present Punjab government, no attempt has been made to develop a proper service structure either. Ad hoc pay increases are not the answer. Frankly, unless the demands of these young doctors are met, future strikes will happen. Worse, we will see more of the brightest of our young doctors leave the country especially if the US relaxes its visa regime after the passage of the recent healthcare bill that will greatly increase the demand for foreign doctors over the next few years.

Now about some public misconceptions concerning this strike. First, there is the often repeated mention of an ‘oath’ that doctors are supposed to have taken that prevents them from going on strike. Perhaps all the erudite journalists and members of the government that keep talking about it can provide the lay public with a copy of this oath. I never took any oath when I graduated from medical college and nor did most people that I know of. So it is time to stop bringing up poor Hippocrates who has sort of been dead for quite a few centuries.

The next issue is of the responsibility for patient’s problems due to the strike. Here the sycophants running our hospitals are primarily responsible. First, they knew about the impending strike and made no contingency plans. Second, they provide bad advice to their political and bureaucratic masters that if the doctors go on strike all that needs to be done is hire other doctors. Here the obvious question is what were these ‘other’ doctors doing before they are hired, nothing? And if so, how are they expected to step in and take over some of the busiest emergency rooms and medical wards in the country without any previous training.

And finally, the political bosses, including the CM, that are willing to accept such bad advice are equally culpable. Here I want to iterate that the doctors on strike do share blame for the problems that patients go through. But who will bear responsibility for the grievous injuries to arrested doctors, the CM?

The real problem is, however, of a political nature. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) that is running the province for the last few years is a centre right political party. Like most parties of that dispensation, it does not support the concept of free medical care or of a strong and vibrant public sector. As such developing the public hospitals and the physician cadres that provide subsidised medical care for indigent patients is just not a priority for it. The PML-N would rather privatise all these hospitals and concentrate on building roads and iron bridges.

 

 

  

Musicians of Middle Eastern origin fusing their music with other musical tradition was the main feature of the World Music day celebrated by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop and the Alliance Française at the Peeru’s Café. It was refreshing to hear the sound of oud and daf, both mentioned so often but heard so little.

These instruments of music, mentioned in our classical poetry, especially in ghazal and masnavi are all of Persian or Arabic origin. There are often references to either the oud, the Chung, the rubab, the Ney in the works of the famous poets. It may be that these instruments were played in the courts or selected gatherings but the references to sarangi, tabla, sitar, tanpura and pakhawaj are sorely missing from major tradition in our Urdu/Persian poetry.

Even the flowers, trees, foliage, animals and birds mentioned are not indigenous but belong to the area from where these forms originated and blossomed. It may be that the idiom of classical poetry was derived and these were employed by our poets as metaphors drawn from classical tradition rather than from their own surroundings.

Then in the last 60 odd years the cultural interaction between Iran and the various Arabic countries, Central Asia and Turkey has been so restricted that we hardly know anything about their music or their musical instruments. The emphasis, even while highlighting the importance of developing better ties with these societies, does not rest on music, dance and theatre but on abstract notions of brotherhood.

After years one Iranian group appears in Pakistan to perform and one gets to hear the intonation of Iranian vocal music and see some of their instruments like oud, ney, tanbur, santur, daf, tombak, tar, dotar, sehtar and kamancheh.

It is difficult to recall any major musician from an Arabic country performing in Pakistan with the regalia usually associated with their prestigious forms. So it is a relief when a troupe or musicians arrive in Pakistan claiming to play oud, ney or rubab and it connects back to something that exists in the larger body of our cultural being that we have lost touch with. When French musicians whose origin lie in the Arabic countries come and play oud in Pakistan it is like reconnecting to our past or our derived heritage though twice removed.

Only in the RPT Festival, musicians from all over the world have performed in Pakistan. Many Middle Eastern musicians live in the western countries either because of problem of censorship at home or for better opportunities for their art to flourish. It can only be that these musicians are second generation, born of parents who migrated for whatever reason.

There has been a very strong cultural connection between France and countries of North Africa like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya and even deeper traditional links with the countries known as French-speaking ones in West Africa. This connection somehow has survived, rather thrived and forms now the expression of French speaking culture in the broader international context.

It was delightful to hear Abaji who played oud and then a mixture of oud and the acoustic guitar that he has created himself, bouzouki and the flutes. He is an Armenian and possibly has antecedents who roamed from place to place as singing minstrels. He also played the dudak. The second number was by Mohamed Abozekry, who became the youngest professor of the eastern lute, oud and specialised in the instrument under the apprenticeship of Naseer Shamma considered tobe the greatest player of oud and is of Iraqi origin. He with Heejaz Quartet including Hogan on the guitar, Anne Laure on the percussion, which included dub and the tabla performed a mixture of Arab, Spanish and African music.

Of late, there has been a trend of fusing the various musical traditions together. The Rafi Peer festivals have been a major venue for such a happening and, in programme there was fusion between the various musicians with Chand Khan and Suraj Khan, the sons of Hussain Buksh Gullo. It was a spontaneous act and the various musicians discovered the commonalities between their musical styles while performing. The evening was rounded off by a qawwali by the Mian Miri qawwals.

On World Music Day, the purpose is to promote music in two ways. Amateur and professional musician are encouraged to perform on the streets. The slogan Faites de la musique (make music), a homophone for Fete de la Musique, is used and many free concerts are organised, making all genres of music accessible to the public. Once sanctioned by the official Fete de la Musique organisation in Paris, all concerts are free to the public. It’s not required that musicians play for free, though many do so.

The day has become important not all of a sudden but gradually as the media has picked it up as a day to be acknowledged and celebrated. Fête de la Musique (World Music Day) coincides with the summer solstice in France and has since spread over a hundred countries or cities like Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Israel, China, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Colombia and Venezuela to name a few. New York celebrated its first festival in 2007, and recently Iraqi Kurdistan in Sulaymaniyah city celebrated its first.

Despite the tolerance about the performance by amateurs in public areas after usual hours, the noise restrictions apply, and can cause some establishments to be forbidden to open and broadcast music out of their doors without prior authorisation. In Pakistan the occasion is celebrated with a concert or two but has not become a public event with the streets being filled with music and adoring fans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parents and teachers often complain that, even though good books and songs written in Urdu for children have been around for several years, there is nothing available in Urdu on the new media that can attract their little ones, at least those with access to the internet. Those days are going away fast!

If you want your children to enjoy an animated ‘Aaloo mian Aaloo mian kahan gayay thay…Sabzi ki tokri may so rahay thay’ rhyme, or ‘Chota sa Makora’ ala Incy Wincy Spider, and many more, or stories such as ‘Moti Murghi’, ‘Chira Chiri ki kahani’, ‘Mir Sultan aur jadoo ka jhoola’, etc. turn to Toffeetv.com. This group has been creating online magic for children for the last one year.

Toffeetv.com, incidentally, was born on the fourth of July 2011, and has been growing with leaps and bounds…literally. It can now stand firmly on its feet and has a huge appetite, asking for more, and more, and more. With a name like Toffee TV, what else do you expect? And there is another reason to celebrate its birthday…Toffee TV has already attracted a million viewers during its short life!

Let us meet the dynamic young women behind this wonderful enterprise: Rabia Garib and Talea Zafar, supported by Nikhat Zafar and Talha Ghafoor. Rabia, the IT expert, and Talea, the digital graphics designer, were co-workers before setting up Toffee TV. Nikhat helps with research, writing stories and also giving her voice to a character in one of their forthcoming series, while Talha helps with their website.

Rabia has been working in Internet Technology for over a decade now. Involved with television in the past, she has worked for internet magazines, and is Co-founder and CEO, Rasala Publications. She is also Editor-in-Chief of CIO Pakistan. CIO is apparently the “world’s largest technology business leadership magazine brand.” I used to see the unassuming Rabia standing behind her video camera tripod, filming events quietly and unobtrusively.

Talea Zafar is the other bright and energetic face of Toffee TV. Although she has not had a formal art education, she brings to life songs and stories for children with her endearing illustrations and animations.

“I more or less self-trained for 2D animation since I was familiar with Vector graphics,” she says. Vector graphics is the creation of digital images that place lines and shapes in a given two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. Talea has also mastered the Maya 3D animation software. This is a comprehensive, creative feature for animation and modelling, also used for visual effects, post-production, etc. “But,” she says, “it is not possible to use it single-handedly, as Maya has some demanding requirements and an entire team is needed to make use of its powerful tool-sets. “I use Flash and Toon Boom, which has an animator-friendly set of features… ‘The Simpsons’ cartoon being just one example of using Toon Boom,” she smiles her dimpled smile. ‘The Dimples’ is what I would like to name this duo, as both Talea and Rabia have them, which, I am sure, play an important role in endearing them to their young (and old) fans immediately.

Both these single women have had close interactions with children within their families. “I used to sing songs, and tell stories to my nieces and nephews. My niece Alina used to come to my office and sit in my lap, wanting to hear something from me, and four years ago when I sang Kali kali Bakri (Ba Ba Black Sheep…) to her, I began to think seriously about Urdu songs and stories for children…” says Rabia about her inspiration for starting Toffeetv.com

Initially Toffee TV was only web-based, but after just two months of going live, Rabia and Talea started to hold events for children at the T2f…that wonderful platform in Karachi where ideas are born and shared, discussed and displayed.

Sania Saeed, the celebrity television and theatre artist is a regular story-teller at these events, held on alternate Sundays. An accomplished actor, she is able to connect beautifully with children of all ages, entertaining as well as educating them at the same time.

There are two other volunteers besides Sania: They are architects Huzefa Ali and Hira Ilyas Bawahab, also regular story-tellers, who use their theatre and miming skills to good effect.

I was invited to attend a recent Toffee TV event. They were using one of my books for children that day. While Sania read it out, Talea involved the children in a recycling activity with plastic bags, as this particular story is based on the devilish plastic bag and its killer antics. This gave me an opportunity to witness, first-hand, the interest and the enthusiasm of the children, their parents and grandparents, who had filled the room.

Another brilliant story-teller / performer, Fawad Khan, was also there that day to narrate the age-old ‘Ali Baba Chalees Chor’ story. He dazzled everyone in the room with his entertaining style and, despite the fact that it was a lengthy — almost forty-minute — performance, the audience remained spellbound. This also got me thinking about the wonderful, albeit hidden talent and potential that is available, and Toffee TV could continue to discover or draw on such persons to entertain children.

Besides songs and stories on Toffeetv.com, there are craft activities that the children can follow and create themselves; a 13-year old ScienTwist called Hamza who experiments; a soon-to-be-aired mini-series titled Angootha chhaap and family, of which one can view the trailer, and much more. Our ‘magic duo’ also regularly visits a Children’s Cancer Hospital located at Ayesha Manzil in Karachi, where they take storybooks and toys for the children and help in spreading the word that the hospital is looking for funds for a new building in Korangi.

“We are still in Beta Mode,” says Rabia modestly; meaning Toffee TV is still processing, testing, experimenting, debugging. Alpha, Beta, or Gamma…there should be three cheers for Toffee TV and its magic team!

caption

Rabia Garib plays the guitar and sings too while Talea Zafar hums along.

 

 

 

In defence of imagination
Is art a representation of a true occurrence or an intellectual pursuit?
By Quddus Mirza

In the oppressive heat of Lahore, with the temperature rising up to 46 degree Celsius, an artist planning to paint a landscape at midday might find it impossible to stand for a few hours under the scorching sun. Alternatively, he could stay in his air-conditioned vehicle and paint the landscape by looking through the window. But will this image, with the artist not having experienced the heat of the site, represent the essence of the scene?

It may not, since something peculiar and honest is expected from the artist. Landscape painting is differentiated from photography because the picture through a camera is considered a meta-human documentation of an object/scene even though there is a man behind the lens who clicks the button whereas painting of the same spot is regarded a personal interpretation of reality. The artist also uses a few props, such as brush, canvas, paint and mixing oils but, compared to camera, these are perceived as mere tools and not technology.

Historically, the painters were supposed to recreate not only their optical response but a sensation of the atmosphere and an emotional reaction in their chosen subject — landscape. An example is Vincent van Gogh who roamed the fields of Arles in the South of France under a scorching sun and sought to capture that blinding light and heat in his canvases, using cadmium yellow mostly.

There is another anecdote recounted by John Berger in his essay on J. M. W. Turner. According to Berger, the English painter of sea and storm, in one of his train journeys from France to Britain, put his head out of the window in the moving carriage so he could feel the strong wind, pouring rain and heavy blizzard. One may not believe in the story but, looking at his paintings in which all details merge into swirls of winds, rain, snow and fire, one understands the connection between his act and his canvases.

In that sense, a painting made in car would be different from the one which is executed outside, exposed to the heat and the sun, as the artist is not only seeing his subject but experiencing the pleasure (or pain) of being in that surrounding. Thus his creation is not like a camera snapshot but a direct representation of the place. This version is normally accepted when we admire a work of art, because we know the artist has not only looked at his subject but added his ‘feelings’ in the process of making it.

If analysed, this is a romantic notion of art held dear and cherished by us. In fact, what we appreciate is the element of honesty in the act of art making. If we see a landscape, we presume the artist has spent hours at the exact location, an ordeal that he must communicate through his canvas. We are not pleased by his visual rendering alone; we expect something more — his personal experience of that place which we can identify and connect with. That is why, in our art circles, a painter working at the actual spot for his landscape more valued than the one who prefers a photograph as a reference.

Actually this kind of attitude considers art to be a true occurrence rather than an intellectual pursuit. If one believes in art being a conceptual endeavour, then it is more important what an artist presents than his process. Thus his end product becomes more significant compared to his sources and procedures. One can extend this example beyond landscape painting to the practice of artists who portray subjects and people they have not experienced, encountered or do not have the capacity to do so. For instance, a male artist can support the cause of feminism in his wok or an artist living in Iran may decide to take up the subject of Apartheid without ever being in South Africa or a painter living in a tropical country may fancy depicting a snowfall.

Not only visual artists but writers too enjoy the privilege to imagine situations and characters they haven’t experienced or met; like a middle aged author may write the story of a pregnant unloved woman in her early twenties; or a writer living in India may choose to compose his novel based on the life story of a hermit from Hungary; or a female novelist can create her fiction on the inner self of a cat, or may be the ‘sentiments’ of a non-living entity, such as a car, pen, or a belt (like the short story Tape Measure by Nadine Gordimer).

All these or imagined narratives are utilised by the writers because, for them, the origin is not important nor is the honesty of their experience essential. Their creation is more crucial — the story, which makes a reader believe in the truth of what is told. In that sense, the artists are not obliged to follow their personal history or purity of their encounters because what is necessary is their interpretation of the subject, regardless of the fact that they have seen it through their own eyes or received it from a distant source. Or if their work deals with the tradition of a society, it hardly matters if they belong to the same culture (the link which, in majority’s opinion, gives the license to use it), because they can negate their familiar surroundings and concentrate on something that is not their immediate experience.

Once our artist learns to enjoy and our audience starts to respect this freedom, perhaps our art will come out of its straightjacket of locality or the obligations of indigenous culture. One may recognise that just as it is difficult to stand in the devastating heat for painting a landscape, in the same manner, it is demeaning to be restricted to a single location or vernacular characters in one’s creative practice. The artist ought to be free to employ his imagination in order to amend, edit and alter reality and create a truth that is beyond — and better and lasting than — the mere experience of mortals.

caption

‘Sunset Wheat Fields Near Arles’; Vincent van Gogh.

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