History Haters

OCTOBER 1999 - Quite recently, attempts to obtain some professionally taken photographs of Madam Noor Jehan, resulted in the inevitable failure. There are none. This I recall only because the local paper had a file photo of Elvis Presley on duty in Germany reading his mail, undoubtedly from his many adoring fans. That someone had the sense to take that picture and others even if they were from the publicity department of the recording studio or film company is not important. Elvis was a star and they were recording his every move.

Many years back, the mid eighties I think, a similar exercise looking for Madam’s pictures revealed the same results. At the time we were planning a programme on her life, dividing her career into four distinct phases beginning with the immortal ‘awaz day kahan hai.’ Madam didn’t have any pictures and couldn’t for the life of her remember if she had any tucked away. The run around from the studios where she has spent the better part of her life revealed nothing. Nobody had even heard of such a thing and asking for stills was taken to mean a general failure of the upper storey. We got funny looks. PTV had absolutely nothing in terms of photographic record and Madam’s innumerable visits and recording sessions to the studios had apparently never been put on film. The concept that they had a living legend amongst them had not crossed their heads. The story was no different at Radio Pakistan where all enquiries received the contempt they deserved. In fact the general feeling seemed to be that we really had no business to be asking for such an item in the first place.

In the end we did what all Pakistanis do – improvise. We got into the cut and paste business, lifted from old articles, magazines, badly printed periodicals and despatched a photographer to Kasur. He was able to, with the help of some old timers, arrive at more or less the place where Madam took her first steps. The shots of the lanes and by lanes of Kasur which I am sure Madam could not have recognised, filled her eyes with tears and she was very pleased with the effort. That collection of slides was I think at the time, the most definitive work on Madam’s life, photographically speaking that is. Now, years later, there is even less available. Her birthday was of course ‘celebrated’ last month and this year is crucial because we all know she is fighting a battle for survival in Karachi, too ill to even travel to Lahore. We have failed to honour her memory. What to talk of her work, we don’t even have a half way decent collection of her pictures and Noor Jehan is not the only one who has been treated so shabbily. The list of those who sand and played their lives away and were not even officially recognised is too long to reproduce here. We all know that list and we are all responsible for it because in Pakistan, it is always someone else’s problem, someone else’s burden and someone else’s responsibility. One would have thought that a country which can build airports might have mastered the technology that makes it possible to build archival material. Apart from the many reasons we have for treating history with contempt, there is the added one of our indifference to things that really matter. That is why our heroes and heroines – the real ones, those who reside in the hearts of the people, receive the worst treatment and are paid the customary lip service when they are safely six feet under. Wait and read the platitudes that will pour forth from everywhere once Madam is no more with us. Led by Mr. Mushahid Hussian I am sure, they will pay homage in words so hackneyed and hollow that they would echo hours after spoken, and that will be about it. A serious effort to actually put together her life story will never happen. PTV has cold feet and the rest of the so-called media, knows nothing about the value of such things. All that you have are some memories and some bits and pieces of information, articles, the odd picture and a whole lifetime gone away in a flash.

We twist history and we cannot be bothered to preserve it. The ruins of Ketas form the biggest piss pot in the world. Elsewhere, from Karachi to Peshawar, we defile, deface and destroy whatever history we can lay our savage hands on. Where we can’t, we simply defecate and move on. In Lahore, we have religiously attacked the great fort and the sight of the country’s cattle lording it over and sloppily demolishing tons of food is too disgusting to repeat. The fort has constantly suffered at the hands of the rulers and their ever-obliging sycophants whose tribe knows no bounds. The Shalimar Gardens have started to cave in and last month, we successfully after the third attempt, were able to pull down the ancient water filtering system. There was no official word on this sacrilege. In Malakand, the rocks bearing legendary and colourful descriptions of the British regiments that were here have been mercilessly erased and defaced. On the pipe line in Nathiagali, similar engravings have been defiled. Even Buddha’s grand statue at the foot of the Swat valley has been rubbed out and defaced. Monasteries and stupas have been plundered and most of the Gandhara civilisation resides in drawing rooms of Peshawar and other parts of the country. On the KKH Chinese decorative lion heads placed at bridges have been broken and thrown away. Elsewhere, old Dak Bungalows have been pulled down and replaced with concrete monsters and any signs of history anywhere have been swiftly dealt with by a large body of people who neither wish to know where they came from and certainly don’t wish to know where they are going. There is a strange apathy to the past and from all accounts, to the present as well. When we perish, there will be nothing left of us and we will be a footnote in the history books. Those who have no value for the past have no future as well. Pass the nihari comrade.