NEWS OF SUBSTANCE

LALTAIN THABAH DEY
By: NASSER YOUSAF

The lantern is wrecked, it's done for. This is now a common refrain, nay a taunt, among the present-day Pashtuns, especially the younger ones using the social media to vent their spleen on those they love to hate.

But why slog lantern, one not familiar with the political landscape of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may ask. Lantern is the symbol that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa based Awami National Party (ANP) has been using in the elections for the last about three decades. Earlier, the said political party was called National Awami Party with an acronym (NAP) that its surviving old followers still prefer using while referring to the grand old party.

NAP contested elections with a symbol representing a mud and thatch built shanty house called 'jhonpri.' It would appear that after having built itself a humble little abode, the party wanted to lit it up with the most basic and indeed primitive lighting system in the shape of a lantern.

Pitiless old Time has since much disheveled and disfigured ANP, a political party once pretty popular in many districts of the erstwhile North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Nevertheless, one identity that ANP has steadfastly held on to is the colour of its flag which happens to be 'red.' Red colour symbolises not only anger but also passion. ANP has over the decades, since it first emerged as an offshoot of the erstwhile Congress Party of India, unfailingly demonstrated that it had plenty of both but it kept its anger suppressed as its founders and followers passionately preached non violence.

While deeply religious in their private lives, ANP's founder Bacha Khan and his scions always prided themselves on their being the unflinching flag bearers of secularism. Not quite unexpectedly, by candidly professing their love for an ideal, Bacha Khan and his supporters attracted many unsavoury epithets from their detractors. But the Red-shirt leaders did not give up even at the cost of losing the sympathies and support of the largely conservative Pashtuns.

ANP finally attained one of its ideals, with the firm support of PPP, when in 2009 NWFP was renamed as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through a constitutional amendment. But while this happened, the party squandered away its hard earned repute as an incorruptible party. Incidentally, it was also during this period of the party's rule in the province when it had to face the full brunt of the Taliban scourge. Quite a large number of ANP leaders and activists fell victims to the conflict which was considered by many to be an insurgency of an unequaled intensity unleashed by zealots.

It doesn't rain, it pours. ANP's misery is multiplying by the day. After having successfully renamed the province, once considered an insurmountable feat, ANP seems to have lost its footing. The party has faced resounding defeats in the last two general elections in its strongholds at the hands of PTI. The stigma associated with monetary corruption, not having been challenged, has stuck. There isn't even a meek response to volleys of insults thrown at it even by those whose own hands are not very clean.

One may presume the party considers it too demeaning even to respond. It is impossible to conceive that ANP would have brought this ignominy upon itself when Bacha Khan and his illustrious son Wali Khan were at the helm in their respective times. What is even more inconceivable is the possibility of the old patriarchs ever showing ambivalence like their present-day successors did after a young man was lynched to death on the lawns of his university in Mardan.
On that occasion, ANP was seen siding with the clergy, although that gesture too failed to win the party votes.

One recently found Mian Iftikhar, a principled ANP stalwart who lost his only son to militancy, defending himself and his party against vulgar insults hurled at him by young Pashtuns on Twitter.

If only Pashtuns could understand, lantern will never get old. Lantern was the device which Bacha Khan held aloft to guide his clansmen on the path away from obscurantism, dogma, bigotry and philistinism. But the insult 'laltain thabah dey' (lantern is done for) is a metaphor that speak of darkness which sadly enough appears to be what lies in store for all Pashtuns.

focusonfrontier.blogspot.com

ARCHITECTURE (AN ARTIST's BAD DREAM)

AN ARTIST'S BAD DREAM

By: NASSER YOUSAF

After brooding for years, some four years ago I finally decided to bid adieu to Peshawar for good. It wasn't an easy decision, but a score of fateful events helped me take the long due step, with an unthought of alacrity. The city of my birth was under a relentless stranglehold of repressive check posts with no sign of any reprieve. To make it all that difficult for someone with my share of sensitivities, the people of Peshawar then, as now, appeared to have submitted to their fate without as much as a whimper, or a word of protest.

The ongoing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project wasn't one of the reasons compelling my exodus lock, stock and barrel. It was then in a nebulous stage with little hope of it seeing the light of the day due to scores of technical complications and a looming financial crunch.

In due course, however, all those bottlenecks were swept aside as with a magic wand and the project was launched with a lot of fanfare. The nearly 27 kilometres long stretch of bus route, consisting of tunnels and flyover, was projected to be completed in a record time of 180 days, or by the 18th day of April, 2018. Appallingly ambitious as the target was considered to be by some of the right-thinking people, the job has not been completed to date and in fact may take many more months.

Undoubtedly, the project will one day be completed as work on it is proceeding apace. I found this out during my frequent visits to Peshawar that my existential constraints force me keep undertaking. Unforseen delays in a work of such gargantuan magnitude in a developing country cannot be ruled out. The ever rising cost, earlier not taken into account, is not, or ought not to be, a matter of too big a concern either. What, however, is a matter of utmost concern is the eternal loss to the topography of Peshawar which has been torn apart and mutilated with an unexplained violence. All this, let's have no doubt, with absolute impunity!

With very few landmarks and little of the flora of olden times left, Peshawar wasn't our Garden of Eden, immediately before work on BRT began. But the old city, its now largely barricaded cantonment and the sprawling University Road still retained some of the scent and flavours of the years gone by. After it becomes operational, the few sensitive and caring people left in Peshawar, will find out to what extent had BRT disfigured the landscape and skyline of their city.

On a cloudy day, the lilac minarets of the Sunehri Mosque will present a stupendous panoramic view, and the green belt and treeline in front of the old marvel of architecture called Islamia College would refresh one's weary state of mind. Such rare sights offered by the smog-laden city of Peshawar have been eaten up by BRT. The old Peshawar Club Road and part of Khyber Road together with the fabled Khyber Bazaar are some of the other casualties. In fact, the real damage, rather destruction, starts right from the starting point of Bala Hissar Fort and then it keeps ploughing right through the entire insides of Peshawar pausing only briefly at where the contours of the runway come into sight at Tehkal. This said stretch is one greater mass of a flyover, in the shape of a roller coaster ride, that will keep hanging, in a state of suspension, on Peshawar for until the end of Time.

In fact, the miles-long flyover is like a chain that has been inextricably put around the neck, hands and feet of Peshawar, permanently crippling its movement, after the announcement of a sentence of life imprisonment. 'Is this a punishment for an unmitigated Biblical sin inflicted on the people of Peshawar,' one keeps wondering while assessing the scope of destruction.

Why couldn't we foresee all this, whither all those hundreds of engineers, architects and landscapers passed out from the many engineering universities in KP? Why didn't even one of them raise a finger at this architectural catastrophe of our times? If nothing else, BRT provides us some food for thought as to why our universities could not produce men, and women, with a better sense of imagination?

One has to admit that there is an acute poverty of artistic and aesthetic minds in KP. Had this not been so, BRT would not have passed through its first phase. BRT, with its faulty design and its resultant ramifications, is an artist's bad dream, but then our land does not seem to have given birth to that kind of an artist.

focusonfrontier.blogspot.com





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