Faizghar Newsletter

Issue: January Year: 2016 NEWSLETTER Content Faiz Ghar trip to Rana Luxury Resort .............................................. 3 Faiz International Festival ................................................................... 4 Children at FIF ............................................................................................. 11 Comments .................................................................................................... 13 Workshop on Thinking Skills ................................................................. 14 Capacity Building Training workshops at Faiz Ghar .................... 15 [Faiz Ghar Music Class tribute to Rasheed Attre .......................... 16 Faiz Ghar trip to [Rana Luxury Resort The Faiz Ghar yoga class visited the Rana Luxury Resort and Safari Park at Head Balloki on Sunday, 13th December, 2015. The trip started with live music on the tour bus by the Faiz Ghar music class. On reaching the venue, the group found a quiet spot and spread their yoga mats to attend a vigorous yoga session conducted by Yogi Sham- shad Haider. By the time the session ended, the cold had disappeared, and many had taken o their woollies. The time was ripe for a fruit eating session. The more sporty among the group started playing football and frisbee. By this time the musicians had got their act together. The live music and dance session that followed became livelier when a large group of school girls and their teachers joined in. After a lot of food for the soul, the group was ready to attack Gogay kay Chaney, home made koftas, organic salads, and the most delicious rabri kheer. The group then took a tour of the jungle and the safari park. They enjoyed the wonderful ambience of the bamboo jungle, and the ostriches, deers, parakeet, swans, and many other wild animals and birds. Some members also took rides on the train and colour- ful donkey carts. The ride back was full of poetry, live music, jokes, and parodies. 3 [Faiz International Festival (FIF) The Faiz International Festival 2015, a small step by the Faiz Foundation Trust, has proved to be a big leap for the people of Indo-Pak, the literary community and admirers of Faiz Ahmed Faiz on both sides of the border. The city of lights spread its arms wide to welcome and accommodate dozens of distinguished Indian, Paki- stani and foreign writers, artists, poets, intellectuals, teachers and prominent personalities who converged at the Alhamra Arts Council, The Mall. The entire length and breadth of the Alhamra Arts Council resonated with poetry of Faiz sung by many prominent singers of Pakistan including Mehdi Hassan, Tina Sani, Nayara Noor and others for four days. The two main halls of the Alhamra and its Adabi Baitahk were brimming with participants and audiences of the highly entertaining and educating sessions on various subjects. The string of programmes started right from 10:30 am in the morning and continued till 9:30 pm every day. The most enthralling element of this unique literary activity was the huge participation of youth volunteers who roamed the grassy lawns of Alhamra clad in Red Souvenir T-Shirts with Faiz’s prole picture on them. The walkways of the Alhamra were buzzing with the gleeful laughter and chats of the youngsters moving from one hall to another to attend various programmes. Literary and political talk sessions, a mushaira, dance performances, book launches, theatre, puppetry workshops and Punjabi plays were also part of this diverse festival. The audience was as diverse as the programme. Children under 10 years to senior citizens were all there The festival also exhibited a photographic exhibition from the archives of Faiz. 4 [19th November The festival started with ceremonial inaugu- ral speeches by the Governor of Punjab Malik Muhammad Raque Rajwana and the Chair- person Faiz Foundation Trust, followed by a play by Ajoka Theatre, Rozan-i-Zindan Se based on letters between Faiz and his wife written during Faiz’s time spent in prison. The performance was interspersed with dance performances by Suhaee Abro and Wahab Shah, visualizing some of the poet’s most famous verses. [20th November The second day kicked o with a keynote address by the eminent Urdu novelist and critic Shamsur Rehman Faruqi from Allahabad India, who spoke on ‘Faiz ki maqbooliat kay asbaab’. The programme for the rest of the day had some exciting sessions to look forward to, including Tahira Syed and Tasneem Zafar sharing memories of ‘Faiz and Malika Pukhraj’ with Arshad Mehmud; launch of ‘Faiz Ke Nayab Khatoot’ authored by Dr. Imran Zafar talking to Dr. Tariq Hashmi; ‘Novel ka fun’ with Mustansar Hussain Tarar and Ayub Khawar; launch of ‘R.D. Burman: The Man, The Music’ with the author Anirudha Bhattacharjee talking about the book with Ali Aftab Saeed and Mira Hashmi, and singing Burman songs on the guitar; Intizar Husain in conversation with Asghar Nadeem Syed; Ajmal Kamal and Mehr Farooqi talking about ‘What We Read: Fiction in Translation’; a tribute to Pakistani women political and social activists by some renowned women including Salima Hashmi, Zahida Hina, Khawar Mumtaz, Fehmida Riaz, Mariam Ortt-Saeed and Dr Fouzia Saeed; Yousuf Kerai and Shehroze Hus- sain taking the audience on a ‘Journey Through the Music of South Asia’; Ikramullah and Afzal Ahmed Syed talking with Musharraf Ali Farooqi on ‘The Writer and his Literary Culture’. 5 We Read: Fiction in Translation’; a tribute to Pakistani women political and social activists by some renowned women including Salima Hashmi, Zahida Hina, Khawar Mumtaz, Fehmida Riaz, Mariam Ortt-Saeed and Dr Fouzia Saeed; Yousuf Kerai and Shehroze Hussain taking the audience on a ‘Journey Through the Music of South Asia’; Ikramullah and Afzal Ahmed Syed talking with Musharraf Ali Farooqi on ‘The Writer and his Literary Culture’. In the gallery a group of artists attended a public art workshop entitled ‘Inheritance: Where the Mind is With- out Fear’ conducted by the well-known Indian artist activist Shilo Shiv Suleman, assisted by Nida Mushtaq, of the Fearless Collective. Naeema Butt’s Pehlaj Theatre also held a workshop the same day on ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’. This is a unique idea being pioneered by Pehlaj Theatre in Pakistan, providing media for people to explore collective struggles, analyse their past and present circumstances, and invent a map of struggle through theatre. In the evening a Punjabi play, ‘Chog Kusumbay Di’, written by Najm Hosain Syed and directed by Huma Safdar, was performed. The day at Alhamra concluded with a mushaira arranged by PTV in which some major poets partipated. The mushaira was later telecast on PTV. Evening performances kicked o to a start at Falettis Hotel. Adeel Hashmi and Asad Anees mesmerized the audience with a unique amalgamation of poetry and piano! Later on the charts was an evening with Tahira Syed who performed items of Faiz and also her mother Malika Pukhraj’s most popular ghazals and songs. 6 [21st November The third day of the Faiz International Festival drew larger crowds as intellectuals shed light on the literary and political facets of Faiz’s personality and his work in eleven dierent sessions. The day started with the Dr Abdus Salam Memorial Lecture on ‘War and Peace in the 20th century’ delivered by noted British-Pakistani writer, journalist and lmmaker Tariq Ali, who was introduced by veteran rights champion I.A. Rehman. This was followed by a session with the eminent Indian lm maker Muzaar Ali discussing the journey of socio- logical stereotyping and socio-political commentary in the perspective of the great work “Umrao Jan” with Sarmad Khoosat and Mira Hashmi. The quintessential literary genre of ‘Short Stories’ that is by far the simplest and most complex in its own right was explored by Afzal Ahmed Syed, Annie Zaidi and Musharraf Ali Farooqi in the session “Short Stories and Prose Poems”. The second session housed the launching of the book “Zaikay Frontier Ke” by Dipa Singh Bagai which is a cross-border and cross-cultural demonstration of food for peace and preservation of culture. The book is the rst Urdu-Hindi, Pakistan-India mixed venture which includes some of the most famous recipes of the curator of the vegetarian cuisine of the Hindu Pathans of Dera Ismail Khan, by the late Pushpa Kumari Bagai. Padma- vati Dua, Shilpi Gulati, Atul Bagai and Vinod Kumar Dua were on the discussion panel for this one of its own kind cookbook. Dr Arfa Syeda introduced the book ‘Zikr-e-Faiz’ in conversation with Syed Mazhar Jameel. She discussed various spaces and the relevance and criticality of Faiz’s work during those times in context of the sociopoliti- cal history of the not just the country but the region at large. Zehra Nigah and Salima Hashmi uncovered some golden incidents from the dusty archives of memory and history in the session ‘Aaj tum yaad behisaab ayay - Remembering Faiz’. While Usman Peerzada, Arshad Mehmud, Farooq Qaiser and Navid Shehzad discussed the journey non-conformist Pakistani literature has lived through and transformed over the years, sharing their memories in the session titled ‘Kuch yadain kuch batain’. 7 Abid Hassan Minto took the audience through the past, present and future of the leftist political ideology in Pakistan, the rise and fall of the Communist Party and the way the practice and perception of the ideology has evolved in the country and worldwide in the session ‘Politics of the Left: The Way Forward’. Tariq Ali, Alia Amir Ali and Aasim Sajjad Akhtar were the other panelists in the discussion. Mihir Sharma, Annie Zaidi and Quddus Mirza had a thought provoking discussion moderated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi about ‘Public Appeal and Critical Praise: Economies of Arts, Past and Present’. The audience enjoyed the illustrative Dance Performance by LGS students and Adnan Jahangir over ‘Ae Zulm ke maato lub kholo’. This was followed by a unique performance of orchestral readings accompanied by a range of Eastern and Western instruments.

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