Beans Meanderings 2007 (Jan)

Sab's Contagious Laughter

I decided to post the January month separately. It was an important month for Sab who was visiting Apple to join in the First iPhone Launch session at Moscone Center in SF.

BeanZ Meanderings 2006

Sab playing Tabla at T2F

This post took me longer than I thought. Looking for 2 pictures took very long but we found them. Looking for a comment that I had copied somewhere, but forgotten where, took even longer. Got that too … eventually. 

What also took long was my reading the blog again and again … and specially the movie piece which brought back memories when Sabeen (occasionally with Mimi) would come to our house to watch films that I had kept aside to watch often (yes, I do watch some movies many times). And the Hair piece: a film that Sabeen and I had watched many times together. I had always told her to watch it live (I had done that when it first came out on stage in London) … and was so thrilled when she could see it.

Ok, so here is her 2006 post

Enjoy!

BeanZ Meanderings 2005

My Favourite Mac Lover

This session took me the longest time. Partly because she wrote a lot this time. Partly because I loved her writings and read the pieces s l o w l y again and again. Partly because finding the Article below took time and woke me up in the middle of the night to look for it where I thought it might be.

These are BeanZ 2005 Blogposts

Good luck reading these.
Enjoy her sarcasm, humour,
and wonderfully amazing feelings
about so much that was
happening those days.

This is her Competition Article

This is the South African Rapex Controversy Piece
(This is the way I received it in my email.)

Beanz Meanderings 2004

You can download her 2004 blog here

BeanZ Meanderings 2003

You can download her first blog now

It's always worth reading while you s••t!

Sorry about the title, but I didn't know what to say.

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OK, so you go to s••t at least once a day (more often if you have diarrhoea). You can waste that time with one end of you piling cr•p-on-cr•p … but how about using the other end for reading :) — This is intended for those that don't read: Please put up a shelf or a place to keep books in you toilet.

My toilet (like many of my friends) has a place that has books

Mir, Ghalib, Faiz

So there are three Shaeri books
that are permanently there

&

Then there are always temporary books.

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Here are the ones that live on the shelf these days.

I love Short Stories

(who wants to read a whole novel there!)

or pieces that you can randomly browse through.

Graphic Novels are great here. 

This one was a gift from Joe Sacco,

one of my favouritest graphic novelists.

(Thanks, Muneeza, for carrying it back for me)

 •

And one always has books that are favourites
and readable anywhere, anytime.

Mine, at the moment, is

which has become available among old books.

Try Amazon.

The Rape of the A*P*E* (American Puritan Ethic) is the ultimate sex book. It is the hilarious but true story of 27 salacious years of American history - the Sex Revolution - America's longest and hottest war. Allen Sherman: "There is a brief but telling instant when a boy is taking off a girl's underpants, during which she must give her assistance; if she doesn't lift her behind a split second, it is impossible. Ours was a nation of girls who would rather die than openly contribute to their own seduction. It is a tribute to the girls of 1940 that they learned how to lift their asses without seeming to be lifting their asses. Sometimes they did it with a ho-hum and a stretch, pretending to be utterly bored, meanwhile shifting their position just long enough for the expert panty snatcher to do his job. I have witnessed it many times, this fantastic arabesque girls do and every time I am overwhelmed with the sheer creative artistry of it. It belongs among the great moments of ballet.

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If you really like small pieces to read,

there's Blinklist, anyway.

It's a superb introduction and a collection

of books that you may love to buy later,

or be happy with the stuff already there.

Here's an example from today's FREE book.

Don't forget that you can read this

(and the following 6-7 pages)

or even have them read out to you.

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My request is to please read.

•

One of the ways that our nation is in a terrible way

is because they don't read.

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Some of you may not like to read

… for which I'd first suggest seeing a psychiatrist …

but there is a solution:

Audible

is exceptional.

I listen to AudioBooks very frequently and it is great when I am on a long drive (I don't drive, but my wife is the driving force in the house) or in the s••house. If you haven't tried it, go to Audible and try a FREE trial. Or, if you are not into subscribing, look at LoyalBooks and find free audiobooks.

• • •

While I was writing this blogpost a friend turned up

and saw my photographs.

She wanted to see the Metal Bookend and where did I get it.

I showed it to her (she loved it!) and told her that

this was available years ago in Karachi

when we were a slightly more civilised society.

•

For others, here it is

(Remember toilets with a chain and cistern above your heads)

• • •

Sad for me was the fact that

Sabeen wanted it to be given to her after I die.

I wrote this on its bottom and shared it with Ragni Marea.

How awful that she was assassinated.

We all miss you, Sab.

Immensely.

It's her birthday today …

Sabeen Mahmud

20th June 1974 — 24th April 2015

Sabeen writes her name

•

Faiz Ahmad Faiz,
a poet that she adored

•

With a picture of Eqbal Ahmed
a person she admired a lot

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She laughed at everything …

… and cried at this!

'Meanderings' was her blog (2003-2007)

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They loved each other …

… as did we all love her!

She gave us her greatest gift

and made everyone go crazy about her favourite meal: Aaloo Bun Kabab

Loved Arts and the Artistes

 as well as conversation, music, and books!
And Apple, too.

These were the last two pictures I took of her on the day she was assassinated
1. Announcing the event
2. Closing the event

•

She was not part of the Baluchistan event at all
but was busy working for
'Dil Phaink'
which she couldn't see in London
but where people loved it and loved her ideas.

•

This is how I felt at her assassination

Curly lines crossed my mind
Red blotches of her blood were everywhere I looked

The Green showed that there was enough life
in her dead body
that we all looked up to and hopefully will follow.

This is at the square in DHA where she was shot!

She was Herald's Person of the Year

Pakistan Chowk has a bench named after her

Sabeen, you are alive in all our hearts.

A dozen years when you started this …

… so here's a happy birthday to PN/T2F

I should have gone there to wish it a Happy Birthday but I was not invited … Of course people are not 'generally' invited here, but this time they were.

Which explains things, too.

After all it was a celebration where people who hated the others for what had been done to them (from removal at their official capacity to the event where they were forced out without reasons) were now in smiling glee with those people. What could I have done there? It's hardly good form to bring that up in a crowd. Or even otherwise.

Wish you were here to have a great day, Sabeen.

The pain lasts forever!

ستارہ، چاند، تتلی، پھول، شبنم، چاندنی، جگنو

اداسی میں کوئ شےٴ خوشنما اچھی نہیں لگتی

•

Ayk din Sabeen nay müjh say kahā …

"Dilchaspi to müjhay āj ki nazmoñ say bohat haé

                     — laykin koee achchi pürāni ghazal sünaiyay"

 

So here, Sab, is a random ghazal I played out from my tape* to you. 

 

The ghazal is by Ameer Rampuri, a student first of Shauq Kidvai and then of his brother (my  Great Grandfather) Vahid Ali ‘Abr’ Kidvai.

 

Ameer Sahab came to our house in Allama Iqbal Town (Karachi). That was a very rare and memorable occasion for us. Nuzhat and  I asked him to recite a few ghazals. Among others he recited was this one. 

Sabeen fell in love with his tahtul-lafz recitation and his wonderful language. I hope the readers will, too.

 

—————

 

* To people reading this: This was recorded on my 10” Revox Tape Recorder (NOT a Cassette Tape), which is how I have recorded most of my Poetry/Qavvaali/Prose collections.

The best news!

Free again …

Yesssssss!

In 3 months it'll be 3 years since you left us

In 5 months it will be what would have been your 44th Birthday

•

We all miss your smile.

•

T2F lives and will continue to live

and do all the things you wanted it to do

and many things you were hoping it would do.

•

Looking back …

Iqbal Ismail

On the 19th December my dear old friend,

 Iqbal Ismail, left this world.

I found out when I saw the announcement his son, Solu (Sulaiman), sent me and phoned to ask me why I was not at the funeral. I said I hadn't known - I don't read the newspapers anymore - and had just heard it from him.

Nuzhat and I rushed over to his place to meet his wife and the children and grandchildren. We talked of old things, our lives together, our school-boy links, and more. I'll write a blogpost about him soon.

We got to talking about my being at the National Medical Centre for the time that I had my rather severe heart-attack and was treated to a quadruple bypass. Iqbal had walked in with the owner, a friend of his son Solu, and I was introduced to the hospital team as the owner's friend. I was given a luxurious treatment after that.

(Ardeshir Cowasjee died there; Sabeen Mahmud was dead when she arrived there after being assassinated; my dear friend Dr Shamim Ahmad died there while I stood next to him; and Iqbal died there, too.)

Sabeen & I at NMC

On my way back home I looked at my medical records out of sheer curiosity and found this piece of paper inside, written by Sabeen who handled the medical accounts while I was at the hospital. She was methodical in most ways that I am not (although my wife is good at these things, she wasn't in the right frame of mind at that point). Here is the sheet:

Miss you like crazy, Sab!

(… and all the others, mentioned, too!)

Our Favourite Films at T2F

صبین

کیا عجب وقت ہے، روتا ہوں کبھی ہنستا ہوں

دن   گزرتا   ہے   مرا   یاد   کیے ٴ  تم   ہی   کو

 Kyā ajab vaqt haé rota hōn kabhi hañstā hōñ

Din güzartā haé  merā  yād kiyay  tüm hē ko

•

So this time we are going to have Public Film Screenings, the way you wanted. We started with Disney (1) and have one this Saturday with our favourite: Cinema Paradiso - a film that we both loved so much.

There will be the full list of films we had chosen in our correspondence and discussions. All of them! Some of the new ones that were not on those lists that we exchanged, but we watched them together and were thrilled by them, will also be added.

And there'll be Popcorn, too, for the Audience to buy.

•

[A few days after Sabeen's assassination, while I was at her house, I decided to look through her VideoDiscs and put them in order alphabetically. When I got to her Cinema Paradiso that she had bought in the USA, I opened it … and found that the disc was not there. So I opened all the boxes to see if someone had left it in another box, Nopes. It still wasn't there. I then went to her video player and opened it to see if she had been watching it at some point and had not taken it out again (though that would have been unlike Sab). Nopes. All I can say is that someone obviously stole this disc (since the cover and the booklets were still in the shelf) and so her set now lies incomplete.] 

As Faiz said …

Bahār ab aa keh kyā karay gi, keh jin say thā jashné shayr o naghma

Voh gül saré shākh jal gaé haéñ, voh dil tahé dām büjh gaé haéñ

Sabeen & Faiz

Dearest Sab, you always loved Faiz Sahab and read his Nuskha Haé Vafaa (نسخہ ہاےٴ وفا) often. We discussed his life and his politics. And you made (with me and the ETeam, which included Nuzhat's research and Jehan Ara's brilliant marketing) the wonderful Faiz CD-ROM, Aaj Kay Naam (آج کے نام) where every bit of your work was not just delightful and amazing but also remarkably fabulous.

Aaj Kay Naam

The CD-ROM

We had to invent things: No MP3 was available then; no Videos that could play full-screen at that time and were really stamp-sized. But our thanks to everyone working all night and more, we did all that. I can't forget that you had the Mac Cursor changed into a Pen Nib on that CD-ROM (I was stumped by your finding a way to do that!) …

The remarkable programming on Authorware … and its painful translation into a Windows-version was all done by you, despite your hatred for the Windows version. We all hated it, anyway. I remember that you'd written somewhere that you were 'forced' to do that because you were the youngest member in our strong pro-Apple team. Hahaha. But you did it!

The Brilliant Authorware - No Longer Available

In all of our efforts to have the CD-ROM out on time you worked very very hard. Programming the software, designing the screens, putting together my videos, and constantly talking to Muneera for the lovely booklet she produced, with Faiz's Nikaah-Naamah on the cover. Glad you brought that from Salima's house. And his only English Poem. And his audio-tape for his grand-children. Wow!!!

Our Golden Booklet

Despite everyone saying that you should go and see your grandfather - a person who loved you and someone you loved so much - since he was in hospital; but you continued working way into the night. Everyday. Until the CD was almost done.

You did see him in the last couple of days, but we lost him on Eed … and much before the CD-ROM could be launched.

•••••

There were many poems of Faiz that you read again and again. One was Raqeeb Say … a poem of the kind that I have never found the equivalent of in English or Urdu. It was sung so beautifully by Noor Jehan.

The other was a ghazal that we were crazy about and always asked Arshad Mahmud to sing it for us, whenever we met. It was, for us, a Karachi-ite ghazal to the core (although he wrote it in Lahore).

From Dasté Tahé Sang

When Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan visited our house (along with their delightful accompanists, Sudhir Nayak and Murad Ali), Arshad sang a couple of shayrs again for them.

•••••

T2F lives and will live on. Today I have taken over as its Executive Director and will continue for a while until another younger person - we hope to find one sooner (not later) - takes this over from me and stays on, following your legacy and improving and adding to its value.

Thank you, not just from me but everyone in Pakistan, for having conceived this place. We all so wish you were here.

•••••

Sabeen's Grave Today

I am reminded often of what LBJ said, when he took over as President of USA after JFK's assassination: "All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today."

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