Transcript of an Audio Interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH) Conducted by AAA Project Researcher Samina Iqbal (SI) on 23 M
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Transcript of an audio interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH) conducted by AAA project researcher Samina Iqbal (SI) on 23 May 2017 at Hashmi’s residence in Lahore, Pakistan. 23 May 2017, Part 1 SI: Mrs Hashmi, we'll start part 2 for this interview. The last interview we finished where you were talking about Faiz Ahmad Faiz in the jail for first four years from 1951 to 1955. And then he was again arrested in 1958 and spent five years—five months, sorry—in the jail. And then he came out and so we are close to 1959. SH: 1959…haan (yes). That's when he joined the Arts Council. SI: Okay. So if you can tell us about his joining of the Arts Council and what did you see at that time. You were probably then… SH: By that time I was in my second year of college, Lahore College, and then I went to NCA. So it was that period. Sponenberg was the principal of NCA. I had done Fine Arts for two years at Lahore College. My parents were very keen that I go to NCA which was a new place; newly organised; not very many students—certainly not any girls. I was only the second batch that had girls and there were just four of us. And there were two girls in the previous year. SI: It was still not college at that time? SH: Yes it was. It had become the National College of Arts in 1960. SI: 1960, okay. SH: Or was it earlier? SI: I think it was… SH: 1958 or 1959…yes, probably 1958. SI: Okay. SH: Because when I joined in 1960 there were two classes ahead of me. SI: Okay, so you were in the third batch. SH: Yes. I was in the third batch. And my father joined Lahore Arts Council, as it was called, at Alhamra. SI: As the director? SH: He was known as the Secretary of the Arts Council. It was a small building. And he turned what was the drawing —dining room, sort of thing—into a small auditorium with about 120 or 140 seats, and built a stage. And the upstairs—one part became an art gallery and the other, there were classes; music classes. Feroz Nizami was teaching music, the great composer. And they had Ustad Sharif Khan teaching sitar. And slowly it started becoming the hub of cultural activities in Lahore. SI: It was the same place where the current Alhamra Arts Council is? SH: Yes, but it was not the current building, of course. It was a very small building. It was a private house actually that had been…because they formed an association of six to eight people. Chughtai was a founding member; my father was a founding… SI: Abdul Rehman Chughtai? SH: Yes. And Dr M.D. Taseer, Agha Abdul Hameed, Madam Noor Jehan, Imtiaz Ali Taj— these were the founding members. It was an association. And so by law actually they owned the building and the grounds. SI: The association you mean? SH: Yes. SI: What was the association called? SH: It was called the Arts Council. It was sort of similar to what you would call an NGO today. A society actually, it was. So immediately he started activities. The first play my father had insisted that it must be Rafi Peer. Because for years Rafi Peer had moaned and groaned about how there was no theatre. So my father challenged him and said ‘okay so’…and I still remember it was Uqba ke Mezbaan, which was a play that he had written. And Safdar Mir acted in it and Ruqaiya Hassan acted in it, and Rafi Peer sahib himself was acting in it. And I still remember that the play was yet to be completely written before it had started to be staged and so Peer sahib tried to get out of the opening, on the date that was announced, because he was still writing the play. But I remember my father read him the riot act and said no, it will open on the day that we have announced. So literally it was, he was writing the last scene and the actors were kind of going on to the stage—it was that situation. But it gave Peer sahib the kind of confidence he had lost because for years he had not staged a play. He was, of course, heard on radio a lot. But not seen on the stage. So this was a great moment actually. And then after a succession of plays started with—there was Gas Light, the translation of Gas Light with Khursheed Shahid and Yasmin Imtiaz, Enwar Sajjad. These people started…Khalid Saeed Butt and Nudrat Altaf… these were the people who started appearing in plays. So there were very lively plays. Art classes started and there was no place where…they could only do it outside. So my father built what was known as 'the Hut' which was in one of the lawns and it became a gallery space as well as a teaching studio. So you had Khalid Iqbal, Anna Molka Ahmed…you had Colin David, who was still actually a student but he started teaching. SI: Moin Najmi? SH: Moin Najmi. These were all teachers there, and then came Murtaza Bashir. He came from London. My father had persuaded him to come back to Pakistan. So he joined and the place in the evenings was absolutely alive. Then the music concerts started. We heard Roshan Ara Begum, Amanat Ali, Fateh Ali, Nazakat Ali, Salamat Ali. Mehdi Hassan was heard for the first time in a concert there; Haji Sharif with his vichitra veena—not on sitar, he was first known as a veena player. And then my father got people from the other parts of the country. So that is where we first heard Khamiso Khan. Nobody had heard the alghoza in Lahore. And it was soon realised the potential of the place because of Queen Sirikit of Thailand, when she came to Pakistan. When Jackie Kennedy came to Pakistan—they all came to Alhamra and they all heard music and they saw pageants—you know, the story of our dress was put up for them. And I also as a student at NCA—you know wore the Lahore Museum's collection of Swat clothes and jewellery. SI: This is the time when you were actively getting involved as a teenager? SH: Yes as a teenager. And my mother decided to start the puppet theatre there for children. So my father wrote plays. We recorded the plays. And the puppeteers were myself, my sister, my cousin Salma. We had among the people who lent their voices, Ruqaiya Hassan, Sikandar Shaheen, some other well-known actors also gave their voices to these plays. And they were done on Sundays. First, we did them outside, then we did them in the hall and they were always packed. Today people like Seema Iftikhar remember coming to see the plays. And Bunny Saeed remembers—Nighat Saeed Khan remembers coming to see the plays. SI: So this is all in the early 1960s? SH: Yes. SI: Because the Hut was inaugurated in 1960. SH: So 1960 to 1962—it was those years—and then in 1962 when my father became ill. By that time Amir Mohammad Khan was the governor of Punjab, the Nawab of Kalabagh, and by that time my father was very much out of favour. So he started being, you know, there was CID around. My father got very tired of that. It so happened that at the same time he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize and he was ill so he decided that he wanted to move away for a while. I had gotten admission at the Bath Academy of Art so it was a good moment for my parents to decide to leave Pakistan. SI: And move to England. SH: This was the summer of 1962. Myself and my father we left to go to Moscow. And my mother stayed on to pack up the house, to sell the things and vacated the house that we'd lived in since 1947. SI: If I can just take you back for a minute; your years at the National College of Arts while you were a student, can you talk a little bit about it? Who were your class fellows, who were teaching you, and what was the time like? SH: Well, the switch from Lahore College which was very sheltered, very conservative way of studying art because they had people like Jamila Zafar, who became Jamila Zaidi later; Naseem Qazi, Jalees Nagi—they were our teachers. And I remember that there was a nude model, not that we had access to the nude model, but part of the studio was partitioned off. And I think it was Naseem Qazi who was making a relief with a nude model because we would peep in and have a look at this woman standing there. SI: So the seniors would have access to… SH: I think it was only the teachers who were doing this at that time. 23 May 2017, Part 2 SI: So Mrs Hashmi, correct me if I'm wrong, your teachers like Jalees Nagi and Naseem Qazi, they were the first graduates of Punjab University, right? SH: That's right. SI: So this is a fact that graduates of Punjab University were actually teaching at National College of Arts. SH: No, no this is not National College, this is Lahore College for Women.