Culture lost is Culture Perhaps (Sarwat Ali)

Pakistan, since the beginning, has been in a state of petrification with the fear of a cultural invasion almost overrunning the defenses of its ideological territories — from India and the West

The Pakistani culture is forever under threat. If one pays heed to the alarming voices raised from certain quarters, this situation of permanent embattlement finds Pakistan on the losing side, with not enough being done to safeguard the essentials of its culture.

Usually societies or countries which are weak worry endlessly about the contours of their cultural identity. The unequal relationship with other more powerful competitors creates a situation of insecurity. Pakistan over the decades has sought to shield the particularity of its culture under the garb of ideology and this has led to the fabrication of an abstract concept of a Pakistani culture premised on two counts. One, since Pakistan was carved from the larger unit of the Indian subcontinent, everything in the new country had to be different from India, and two, the regional cultures especially that of the five federating units were perceived to be militating against cultural homogeneity. This cultural homogeneity, too, was an abstract concept crafted more in the nature of an ideal culture which the five federating units were supposed to follow and uphold.

If the new country had resolved its political problems with the promulgation of a constitution that clearly defined the relationship of the federating units with the federation, then culture or even an ideology-based culture would have ran its natural course. But, in the context of the failure to settle political issues in a political manner, the onus was shifted to ideology and a culture based on it to resolve these issues. This led to the trumpeting of the role of an ideology-based culture with the result that it started to sound hollow and distractive after a while.

The dismemberment of the country clearly underscored the failure of a policy where culture was supposed to substitute for the resolution of political problems.

As it is, our cultural strength comes from its diversity and not from its homogeneity. The culture of the Muslims in India carried the baggage of a transnational religion that originates in one area and is then transported to other regions. The same issues must have been faced by the transportation of Buddhism from India to Japan and China and of Christianity from Palestine to Europe. Even the early Muslim culture was very heavily mediated by Iranian, Turkic and Mongol influences. The initial conquerors and settlers here were from these areas but gradually, over centuries, some kind of assimilation was arrived at from a position of strength. Since the Muslims were the ruling religious group, though in a minority, they established linkages with the majority on their own terms.

The Sufis were the ones who brought about a synthesis between the tenets of faith and the local traditions. They interacted with the common people and spoke in their language. They ate with them and invited them into the inner sanctum of their hospices. They wrote in the languages spoken and written by the people and they chanted the same tunes as them. They created a cross religious culture based on humanism, evolving a workable prototype that facilitated a continuum between ishqe majazi and ishqe haqiqi, hence providing a greenhouse cover for the plants of the arts to flower.

Some Sufi orders were more prone to this interaction while the others were wary of losing their identity altogether. But in all gradations of the faith, practices and orders, the humanistic ideal stood the tallest. It was on the basis of humanism and the ordinary concerns of a person of flesh and blood that poultice of solace and contentment was offered. The Sufis appealed to others as healers and friends and not as scholars talking down from the pulpit.

But this sulah-e-kul was thrown into a tailspin by the establishment of European hegemony and the ushering in of an order where brute force and self-belief in religious ideology was displaced by numerical strengths of communities. This drove a petrifying spear of insecurity through the Muslim community and they started to work on the construction of an identity from a position of weakness.

Pakistan was created to counter that insecurity but, since the beginning, it has been in the state of petrification with the fear of a cultural invasion almost overrunning the defenses of its ideological territories from India and the West. It is feared that the cultures of both these perceived enemies is powerful enough to not only change our culture but of also corrupting it, making the people wayward and immoral, away from our culture into a culture that is pleasure-loving and basically epicurean in nature.

Culture is something which is dynamic and changes all the time. In the past centuries, our culture has assimilated and changed beyond belief. The clothes we wear, the language we speak and the food we eat is very different from what was practiced before the coming of the Europeans to India. The subjects that we studied, the systems of government that we mouth so often as ideal and the system of thought and feelings are all conditioned by the system of education that we adopted two centuries ago.

And in today’s world, which is becoming smaller by the minute due to the technological breakthroughs, the insularity of culture has become a dangerous sport to follow. There is just no way that we can seal our borders and live the life we want to because ideas that travel through technology cannot be stopped, censored and curtailed.

A living culture of the people relishes in the creativity of the arts giving them aesthetic satisfaction and elation through the sublimation of their own desires and ambitions; while the ideological abstract culture based on ideology pontificates and sermonises. People have to see their own image in the cultural projection of their country — in painting, music, literature, film and drama — and not a rarefied sketch of an ideal culture without the hue of local habitation and a name.

The craft of writing:Can creative writing be taught and learnt? (Ammara Ahmad)

Creative writing courses for aspiring writers seem like a new trend. These courses — usually — spanning two years — have no more than ten to twenty students in each batch, have accomplished writers as teachers ( big names like Salman Rushdie would prefer guest lectures while others may become artists-in-residence, though of course exceptions apply). Eventually, the students are required to submit a collection of poems, short stories or a novel as a thesis, which is then marked.

Most students abroad choose these programmes because they provide a chance to fully focus on writing without distraction. You have readings, evaluations, analysis, topics to write on, creativity boosting exercises and an academic atmosphere of peace away from the professional worries and family vows.

Just like other masters’ courses, these are also expensive. In a way these are easier to get into because often there are no mandatory GRE and other conventional application requirements — other than your published or unpublished manuscripts. Yet, such a policy also makes it harder to differentiate yourself on any standardised template because the number of seats is so limited and the selection criteria so ambiguous. Top schools can indeed be very difficult to get into. The “tilt” or “niche” of the school, say experimental fiction or Subaltern poetry also influences the student.

Bilal Tanweer, a MFA graduate from Columbia University, teaches creative writing courses at LUMS. “These courses deal with the craft’s aspects on a very basic level,” says Tanweer. “These include techniques writers use to build narratives. In writing workshops we try to study and develop an understanding of the various ways narratives in fiction are built and what are the advantages and limitations of each way.”

An MFA programme connects you to publishers, literary agents (who help in all aspects of publishing) and editors. The publishing circuits in the United States, the MFA Creative Writing stronghold, are huge, layered and highly professional. Although the publishers don’t reject your work simply because you don’t have a degree it does help one in learning some tricks of the trade and in building contacts with publishers and contemporary writers. This often results in publication success for many graduates. The tricks and tips provided for success can be very formulaic and while this isn’t necessarily positive for fiction writing, they can help in writing non-fiction and journalistic pieces.

A creative writer’s innovative and original style may only be marketable in the “long run”, and who knows, perhaps aspiring for relatively safe, formulaic, and lucrative is the realistic way to start for most writers. But an MFA from Pakistan might even beget such a result because of the limited market size. And looking westwards with Pakistani training may not garner you enough credibility.

Some of course believe that a creative writing degree is useless, partly because most great writers — from any given region or time — had no such degree. Though other arts like music, theatre and dance have had a concept of apprenticeship that goes back to hundreds if not thousands of years, writing has been free from such ostensible clutches. Some — though not all — of those who disapprove of this MFA credentialing trend also argue that talent is either genetic or natural, and cannot be taught per se.

Prof Shaista Sonnu Sirajuddin, the Head of the English Department at Punjab University, believes there is no formula for writing success and that all great writers were great readers. She added that the western curiosity regarding Pakistan due to the “War on Terror” has led to their hailing “B” grade and mediocre fiction as masterpieces; therefore the success Pakistani authors experience there now might not be based solely on the work’s literary merit. She adds that “You cannot put in what the good Lord has left out.”

Pakistan is churning out thousands of bachelors, masters and M.Phils in English Literature who eventually end up teaching English at various levels. A creative writing degree can push one a step closer to becoming an accomplished writer, but who otherwise will have more or less the same market for jobs as one with an post-graduate degree in literature. One can always go back to teaching at various levels of the educational food-chain. Also, an MFA may give one the time to reflect on one’s literary prowess (or lack thereof) and put it under the scrutiny of teachers and class-fellows. It should also further polish your grammar, expressions and teach you the structures of short stories, novellas, novels, poems etc. Reading is crucial for good writing and most courses include extensive reading lists as well as optional literature courses.

Many of the new crop of Pakistani English authors such as H. M. Naqvi, Mohammed Hanif, Kamila Shamsie and Daniyal Mueenuddin actually do have degrees in creative writing. But since their literary careers have just started, their artistic merit and legacy is still to be determined. Though most of these authors agree that the training helped them, almost all also say that it is not necessary for becoming a good writer. The older generation of writers and poets like Ahmed Ali, Alamgir Hashmi, Dr Tariq Rahman and Zulfikar Ghose didn’t have such training of course.

“Of course it’s not imperative to have an MFA/BFA to write fiction— or to paint or to sculpt, for that matter.” says Bilal Tanweer. “These are just options available to artists to study with other artists and deepen their understanding of their art.”

When asked what difference the creative writing course made to his fiction, Mohammed Hanif responded “It doesn’t really make a difference, though it does give you the time to devote yourself to writing.”

But one doesn’t have to go all the way for the two years masters. Workshops that cost much less and last only for a few days, weeks or months are readily available in almost any western university and then there are online courses. Full-time courses are available and brief workshops are available in Europe and America (London School of Journalism, University of California Riverside, and so on). Literary journals (Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House) and non-profit organisations (Paris Writers Workshop, Lighthouse Writers Workshop) also hold regular workshops.

More and more creative writing courses have started in various universities. Although a full-time degree course has yet to materialise, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Kinnaird College, Beaconhouse National University (BNU), Indus Valley School, and Lahore School of Economics now offer short courses in creative writing. The British Council also holds workshops in creative writing.

“BNU offers two types of creative writing courses — Script Writing and Creative Writing for Mass Communication students.” says Asghar Nadeem Syed, the dean of the Television, Film and Theatre department at BNU. “We teach the basics of fiction, poetry and creative writing to the Creative Writing students in Mass Communication.” He points out that there is no such training available in Urdu and other regional languages.

Though Punjab University has no such course yet, its prestigious English department has been holding workshops under Zulfiqar Ghose’s guidance for three years now.

“The English Department feels very privileged to have had poet, critic, and writer of fiction Zulfiqar Ghose hold creative writing workshops for students on several occasions.” says Prof Shaista Sonnu Sirajuddin. His initial reluctance vanished when he saw the enthusiasm and keenness of the students to learn. Ghose loves doing these annual workshops, where he takes ten to twelve students to discuss their writings. Ali Sethi and Kamila Shamsie have also given talks.

Pakistani literature in any language will flourish only when there is a local market for it. Plus the class barriers, where students from poorer economic stratus cannot access writing training, need to be diminished. Liberal arts colleges like National College of Arts, Punjab University and even Allama Iqbal Open University and Virtual University should step forward to train young Pakistani creative writers.

An Irish Blessing:

May you always have work for your hands to do
May your pockets hold always a coin or two
May the sun shine bright on your window pane
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain
May the hand of a friend always be near you
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you

Inner Beauty (Dairine Bennett)

Inner beauty is to me
The hardest and easiest thing to see
Hard because of the world we’re in
Easy because my eyes aren’t dim
Don’t get down because of your reflection
Because inner beauty is like a contagious infection
When you find it, others do too
So to be beautiful, it’s all up to you
Everyone has it, though it’s not always found
You must believe in you and turn your life around
Because when you glow everyone will see
The true you and your inner beauty...

Demise (Ayesha Anwer)

Call me on a quiet evening
And I may not respond
Write to me on a dreary winter morning
And I may not reply
Call upon me on a rainy summer night
And I may not meet you
Cluck! Hump! Bounce! Grrrr...

Dear friend,
I left all those behind
Find me
in the shimmers of stars
in the blossoms of spring
in the shower of colours

Rules of Life

• Take in to account that great love and great achievements involve great risks.

• When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

• Follow the 3 Rs: Respect for Self, Respect for others and responsibility for all your actions.

• Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

• Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

• Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.

• When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

• Spend some time alone everyday.

• Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

• Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you will be able to enjoy it a second time.

• A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

• In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

• Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

• Be gentle with the earth.

• Once a year, go someplace you have never been before.

• Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

• Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

7 Gifts that Multiply Happiness (Steve Brunkhorst)

Did you know that there are gifts that will multiply your happiness when you give them away? Here are seven of those gifts. Giving these gifts will allow you to share with others your most unique treasure: your authentic self. Each gift will return to you many times. As you read about each of these gifts, think about ways that you could share that gift with someone today.

1. Share appreciation

Tell someone how much you appreciate the faith they've shown in you. Thank them sincerely for being part of your life. Tell them how much they are needed. Feeling appreciated is one of the most important needs that people have. When you share with someone your appreciation and gratitude, they will not forget you. Appreciation will return to you many times.

2. Share time

Balance your time expenditures so you can spend time with the people that you love.  When we slow down and observe our thoughts closely, we will sometimes uncover gifts and talents we didn't know we had. Sharing time and talents can result in discoveries that bring happiness beyond measure.

3. Share knowledge and ideas

Tell someone about a great book that you read so they can benefit from it too. Teach a new concept or idea that you've learned. One of the best ways to strengthen new concepts in your mind is to share them with others. The more often you share what you've learned, the stronger that information will become in your memory. Sharing knowledge also provides solutions to problems. The more knowledge we share, the more knowledge we receive in return.

4. Share friendship

Acknowledge someone's strengths. Let them know that you are willing to be there when they need you. Visit someone you haven't seen for a long time. Telephone friends or relatives who live far away. Introduce two friends who don't know each other. Bringing one individual into another's life can result in tremendous changes for both people, and for you. We succeed with the help of others. People grow by growing together. If you'd like to have many friends, then share friendship with others generously.

5. Share kindness

Perform a random act of kindness for someone: a smile, compliment, or a favor just for fun. These will multiply and spread very rapidly. There is a powerful quote by Stephen Jay Gould who said, "The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days." Kindness is priceless. The love, kindnesses, and value we have given authentically to others will be our remaining treasures at the end of life.

6. Share experience

Keep written or photo journals of your life: things you've done, places you’ve traveled, things you've learned. Record successes and failures.  Share a happy memory. Also share the difficult times that have helped you become stronger and wiser. When shared, the value of these experiences multiplies. Our unique experiences and perceptions of life are priceless. Sharing experiences will build one of the strongest bonds with others. Our descendants can learn and benefit from our lifetime experiences for generations to come.

7. Share enthusiasm

If you are excited about a new success, tell someone. If you're ecstatic about a new project, show your glow. Your enthusiasm will inspire others to move forward with actions that bring rewarding achievements. Enthusiasm keeps us looking forward to the future. It brings many of those exciting days that we can savor with gratitude. That kind of glowing excitement for life is impossible to hide. It is contagious and will quickly spread to others. Think about this statement by Norman MacEwan: "Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." Sharing these gifts sends our thoughts on a far-reaching journey where they will touch many lives, and reconnect with our own.

Letter from a Soldier (Bina Shah)

(What would that soldier, captured by the Serbs, say, if he could write home to his family?)

I never knew this place could exist
back in the days when I was home and
the sunshine was a never-ending bliss
that warmed your back and kissed your throat, like a lover.

Here, time not measured by hours or minutes, but by
cigarettes, counted out into our waiting, humbled hands
by the guardthat has taken a liking born out of pity to us,
three boys much too far away from home.

It's dark here, damp, musty too.
I think they've got us underground
the same level as that
Albanian girl I saw whose body was thrown into a makeshift grave and
her bones are probably three feet left of my ear when I sleep at night
If you can call it sleep.

When I wake up in the morning, my head is still throbbing
with the sound of the guns that shouted all through the night.

I'm dreaming of California palm trees and ocean waves
to soothe my eyes that have been rubbed raw by the sight of
these foreign hills, this barren land,
the naked corpses.

"Join the navy and see the world"
but we've joined the army and seen hell itself
and I won't win any medals for telling you that I'm scared to death.

I never knew that people could turn on each other
with the savagery of crazed dogs
with no regard for age, youth, beauty.

And as I write these words to you, a hundred times over in my mind
because that guard can't give me any pen or paper

and he won't risk his job or his life

to put this in the mail for me

I can see them scatter in the wind, like so many ashes
that fall from my cigarette tip
and fail to ever set the world on fire.

Pakistan’s Human Cockroaches (Fasi Zaka)

Pakistan, you are a failed state. Not because of Zardari. Not because of America. But because you are a failed people, all of us undeserving of sympathy. We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don’t spread it to other people, other countries.

These were words I posted on a social networking website. I have an unusually negative mindset these days. It happened after I saw the video of the two teenage brothers brutally clubbed to death by a crowd frenzied with blood thirst in Sialkot. The police watched gleefully. The video has blurs at certain parts, but even this sensible sensitivity does not prevent one from seeing mists of blood flaying from the heads of these teens as they are hit relentlessly, and remorselessly, again and again.

The murderous crowd was truly representative of the richness of Pakistan. Some wear jeans, others shalwar kameez, some were bearded, others clean shaven. The Pakistanis had gotten together to have some fun.

Do not be shocked. This wasn’t isolated, it’s just that the crowd wanted to make sure their orgasmic moment could be captured for later viewing, at one’s pleasure. We blame our ill-educated brethren for the barbarity we witness, but that’s a self-serving lie.

The middle and upper classes are immune to education it seems. They hold opinions of everyday violence even if they have never raised their hand at anyone. If you believe Jews are the scum of the earth, all Ahmadis deserve to die or that Hindus are inferior, well why not two teenage boys?

I want Pakistanis to feel shame, in fact a substantial loss of self-esteem would be great. This is the only way for us to begin to doubt ourselves and the incessant excuses we make. Yes, the world is right to add restrictions on our visas, to see us as dangerous. If for even a while we felt we were the cockroaches of the human race, maybe we would get to the point we stopped the lies we tell ourselves and let this continue.

The fact is, if we had real democracy, there would be no internet in Pakistan, women would not be allowed out of their homes, education would come to a standstill and we would begin a programme of killing off every minority. Thank you corrupt generals and politicians, you keep this at bay with some sense of being answerable to a world that still has some humanity in it, even if you don’t.

And please, no excuses, no excuses. Don’t give us that, “If only there was true Islam they would be better”. I think a thousand years is enough, we can’t wait longer. And there was no America in existence for most of that, or even western colonialism.

You want to know just how sociopathic we are? In response to these killings some are happy to say we deserve earthquakes and floods. Typical. Don’t change yourself, but give credit to the indiscriminate and inhumane forces of nature. The floods are a tragedy, an atrocity and should never be used to bolster an argument that really only demands self-reflection.

And please, in your self-reflection don’t call us animals, most of them are benign vegetarians. Also don’t blame Sialkot; they were just unlucky because they are subject to scrutiny. There is so much more out there.

There is such a sense of sickening moral superiority in Pakistanis, it needs to be addressed. All we care about is foreign policy, eager to point out the hypocrisies of the world, silent on our domestic, or even local life. Why should the world take what you say seriously, why should you be a regional power, or a leader in the comity of Islamic nations?

Truth is, there is only one way to get change, and it’s not hanging the people who killed these boys. It is raising your voice to contradict people who advocate death for others, no matter who they are speaking of. To internalise that murder of any kind, for anyone is wrong. Sounds easy? Well just try it.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 24th, 2010.

On Greg Mortenson Controversy (Teru Kuwayama On behalf of Central Asia Institute)

I first met Greg Mortenson in Kashmir, in 2002. At the time, his fledgling non-profit organization, Central Asia Institute, had built a handful of schools in the mountains of Northern Pakistan, with a specific commitment to providing education for girls in one of the most conservative regions of the Islamic world.

Over the years, I've watched him do the impossible, completing one project after another, across the most challenging terrain on earth; CAI now has almost 90 schools across Afghanistan and Pakistan, with over 20,000 students in its care. He is now frequently called upon by senior US military commanders, who want to understand how CAI has been able to work peacefully in areas where the US military forces have borne relentless insurgent attacks.

Given my experience in this region, I can honestly say that there are few people who can truly comprehend the scope of CAI's work the way I do; even fewer who understand how unusual it is that he has done it all without any of the trappings associated with international aid organizations. CAI has no extravagant fleets of UN-style land cruisers, and no highly-paid teams of western consultants living behind the walls of armored compounds in Kabul or Islamabad. By most standards, it remains a tiny crew of completely "unqualified" aid-workers - a rag-tag band of taxi drivers, porters, and former soldiers and insurgents - led by a mountain climbing nurse from Montana, Mortenson.

These days, a lot of people are trying to understand the secret to Greg Mortenson's impossible accomplishments. I can suggest one possible explanation: common sense, uncommon compassion, and 16 years of 22 -hour workdays.

It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to know Greg, and to play a small role on the team at Central Asia Institute.

The Softer Side of Mr. Jinnah (Ali Farhad)

More than 61 years have passed since the death of founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. But even today, nothing about Jinnah seems ordinary —not his legal career, politics, personal life, his legacy and even the property he left behind.

The great South Asian intellectual Eqbal Ahmedonce described Jinnah as an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of India’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to separate statehood, creating history, and in Saad R. Khairi’s apt phrase, “altering geography”.

Much has been written about Jinnah’s legal career, politics, his role as a founder of Pakistan and his vision, but even today, very little is known about Jinnah’s personal life. This was probably because Jinnah never had time to write a diary or an autobiography and whatever little he wrote was formal and matter of fact.

For most of his life, he remained reserved, taciturn and secretive. He wrote his will in May, 1939, but it was only after his death that Liaquat Ali Khan, his close associate and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, came to know that he was its trustee and executor. His only child, Dina Wadia, has hardly ever spoken about her father in public. So furious was Jinnah with Dina that he disowned her after she married a Parsi man against his wishes, and yet he left two lacs for her in his will. Akbar Ahmed’s movie Jinnah had just ten to fifteen minutes on Jinnah’s personal life, which are nowhere near enough.

Jinnah’s first wife, fourteen year old Emibai from Paneli village, died just eight months after he left for London at age sixteen in 1892, to join Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, which conducted business with his father in Karachi. It was a forced marriage, as Jinnah’s mother was afraid that if he went to England, he might end up marrying an English girl. He barely knew Emibai.

Jinnah’s second marriage with the most beautiful girl of Bombay - Ruttie: The Flower of Bombay - was like a fairy tale. It began in the summer of 1916 in Darjeeling or “Town of the Thunderbolt” (how appropriate considering what was to happen there).

Jinnah had established himself as a lawyer and a politician by then and had become friends with Sir Dinshaw Maneckjee Petit, the son of one of the richest and most devoutly orthodox Parsis of the 19th century. The Petit`s chateau overlooked Mount Everest and it was there Jinnah met his only daughter Ruttenbai Petit or Ruttie as she was popularly called. Merely sixteen at that time, Ruttie was a charming young girl. Stanley Wolpert writes in Jinnah of Pakistan:

“Precociously bright, gifted in every art, beautiful in every way. As she matured, all of her talents, gifts and beauty were magnified in so delightful and unaffected a manner that she seemed a fairy princess”.

A dazzling beauty and full of life, Ruttie had exquisite taste and affable manners. Quick-witted, she was easily one of the best dressed and most popular women among the elitist circles of Bombay. She was intellectually far more mature than other girls of her age, with diverse interests ranging from poetry (Oscar Wilde being her favorite, whom she often recited) to politics. Her large collection of books, which remained in Jinnah’s possession after her death, reflected her deep interest in poetry, literature, history, occultism, mysticism and sorcery. She was an excellent horse-rider. She attended all public meetings and was inspired by Annie Besant’s Home Rule League. A fierce supporter of India for Indians, Ruttie was once asked about rumors of Jinnah’s possible knighthood and whether she would like to be Lady Jinnah. She snapped that she would rather be separated from her husband than take on an English title.

Jinnah on the other hand also had a special interest in acting and in Shakespeare’s dramas. While in London, he had acted in some Shakespearean plays and even considered seriously taking up acting as a profession. It was his dream to play Romeo at The Globe in London. Khwaja Razi Haider thinks it was probably Jinnah’s deep interest in Shakespeare that gave him insight into the intricacies of the human character, which he was to use for grasping the essentials of Indian politics.

Jinnah was thirty-nine and Ruttie sixteen, but the age difference proved no obstacle in their love. Love has no logic. He was enamored by her beauty and charm and she was awe- struck by “Jay”, as she called him. Jinnah asked Sir Dinshaw for Ruttie’s hand in marriage, who became furious and refused. Jinnah repeatedly pleaded his case but Dinshaw never gave in, as Jinnah had a different faith and he was more than twice Ruttie’s age. Their friendship ended and Dinshaw forbade Ruttie from meeting Jinnah while she lived in his house. He even got a court injunction restraining Jinnah from meeting her (a pity no biographer has yet traced the court papers). The couple continued to meet secretly, and patiently waited for two years until February 1918 when Ruttie turned eighteen, and was free to marry. She walked out of her parental home to which she was never to return, and converted to Islam at Bombay’s Jamia Mosque, under the Muslim Shiite doctrine, on April 18, 1918.

The very next day, Jinnah and Ruttie got married in a quiet ceremony at Jinnah’s Malabar Hill house in Bombay. Located in a most highly-priced area today, with Maharashtra’s Chief Minister as its next-door neighbor, Jinnah House remains a dispute between India, Pakistan and Dina Wadia. Jinnah owned another house at 10 Aurangzeb Road, Delhi, which he sold just before Partition for Rs 3 lacs. The Dutch Ambassador to India lives there now. The Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad, who signed as Jinnah’s witness, and a few other friends, attended the wedding. Maulana Muhammad Hasan Najafi was Ruttie’s witness. Jinnah presented the wedding ring to Ruttie, a gift from Raja Sahab, and paid Rs 125,000 as haq mehr . Nobody from Ruttie’s family attended the wedding. Interestingly, the Nikah Nama stated “Ruttenbai” as the bride’s name instead of Marium, her Islamic name. The honeymoon was first at Raja Sahab’s Nainitaal mansion, and then at the Maidens Hotel, a magnificent property just beyond the Red Fort.

Gandhi’s grandson Raj Mohan Gandhi writes about the wedding in his book Understanding the Muslim Mind:

“For the first time in his life, a girl had absorbed Jinnah’s emotions. Living for sometime now in a large but somber Malabar Hill house, bowing to ladies (on occasional parties) and praising their sarees but otherwise keeping a distance from them, (he) fell in love with Ruttenbai. Joy and laughter entered Jinnah’s life. The Malabar Hill house became brighter.’ She presented him with a daughter, Dina. But, ‘Alas the happiness was not destined to last; Sarojni’s veiled prediction of trouble came true” .

Sarojni Naidu was a huge admirer of Jinnah, wrote several poems and prose pieces on him, and many historians believe she was in love with him. She wrote this about the wedding in a letter to Sir Syed’s son, Syed Mahmud:

“So Jinnah has at last plucked the Blue Flower of his desire. It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis; but I think the child has made far bigger sacrifices than she yet realises. Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her; the one really human and genuine emotion of his reserved and self-centred nature. And he will make her happy.”

The first few years of the marriage were a dream for Ruttie and Jinnah, the happiest time of their lives. They traveled across India, Europe and North America together. Ruttie watched with a great sense of pride the feverish political activity of her husband. She would be seen in the visitors’ gallery when Jinnah was due to speak, accompanied him to the High Court, and even attended the Nagpur session of the Congress in December 1920. According to Wolpert:

“They were a head- turning couple; he in his elegant suits, stitched in London, she with her long, flowing hair decked in flowers. There was no limit to their joy and satisfaction at that time. Their only woe was Ruttie’s complete isolation and ostracism from her family.”

Kanji Dwarkadas, a veteran leader of Congress and a close friend of the couple, who looked after Ruttie during her last days, wrote in his book Ruttie Jinnah: The story of a great friendship:

“For Jinnah, who was not generous in many matters, no expense was too great to satisfy the extravagant claims of the baronet’s spoilt child. During a visit to Kashmir, she spent Rs 50,000 in refurnishing the boathouse and Jinnah gladly paid all the bills. He treated her wonderfully well, and paid without a murmur all the bills necessitated by the luxurious life she led. Ruttie’s fabulous beauty, spontaneous wit, and immense charm have been praised to the neglect of her serious interests.”

Even though Ruttie was much younger than Jinnah, she made him a very happy man. They had no separate existence and Jinnah found her a great source of inspiration. He resigned from the Orient Club where he used to play chess and billiards. He was so deeply in love with Ruttie that he would return from the law courts on time each day and talk to her for hours on end.

Unfortunately, their happiness was short- lived and the marriage started to crack after 1922-3. What caused the ruination of the Jinnah-Ruttie marriage? Was it Jinnah’s busy political life and his inability to give enough time to Ruttie, their age difference, or their incompatibility of temperaments? He was cold, introverted and domineering. She was young, extroverted, glamorous. There is no clear answer but the fact remains that Ruttie and Jinnah still loved each other despite the rift in their marriage. It is evident in every letter Ruttie wrote during that period, and every book written on their relationship. She moved to London with Dina in 1922 and from there too, her heart was still set on her life with Jinnah. She wrote in a letter to Kanji in India:“And just one thing more - go and see Jinnah and tell me how he is - he has a habit of overworking himself and now that I am not there to tease and bother him, he will be worse than ever.”

After her return, the couple tried one more time to save their failing marriage and took a five-month tour to Europe and North America together. But the rift grew and by January 1928 they were virtually separated, when Ruttie became seriously ill with cancer. Shortly before her death, she wrote a letter to Jinnah from Marseilles, France where she had gone for treatment. It turned out to be her last letter to him.

S. S. Rajputana,
Marseilles 5 Oct 1928

Darling – thank you for all you have done. If ever in my bearing your once tuned senses found any irritability or unkindness – be assured that in my heart there was place only for a great tenderness and a greater pain – a pain my love without hurt. When one has been as near to the reality of Life (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon.

I have suffered much sweetheart because I have loved much. The measure of my agony has been in accord to the measure of my love.

Darling I love you – I love you – and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you – only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls.

I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it.

Darling Goodnight and Goodbye
Ruttie

I had written to you at Paris with the intention of posting the letter here – but I felt that I would rather write to you afresh from the fullness of my heart. R.

It is a pity that none of the letters that Jinnah wrote to Ruttie have ever been made public. M.C. Chagla, a former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and a diplomat at the UN, has described the last days of Ruttie and Jinnah’s marriage in his book “Roses in December”. Chagla knew the couple very well, as he assisted Jinnah at his chambers during that time. He idealized Jinnah but severed all ties when he began working on the idea of an independent state for the Muslims of India. He writes:

"By 1927, Ruttie and Jinnah had virtually separated. Ruttie’s health deteriorated rapidly in the years after they returned from their final trip together. Ruttie lived at the Taj Hotel in Bombay, almost a recluse as she became more and more bed-ridden. Kanji continued to be her constant companion. By February 18, 1929 she had become so weak that all she could manage to say to him was a request to look after her cats. Two days later, Ruttie Petit Jinnah died. It was her 29th birthday.

She was buried on February 22 in Bombay according to Muslim rites. Jinnah sat like a statue throughout the funeral but when asked to throw earth on the grave, he broke down and wept. That was the only time when I found Jinnah betraying some shadow of human weakness. It’s not a well publicised fact that as a young student in England it had been one of Jinnah’s dreams to play Romeo at The Globe. It is a strange twist of fate that a love story that started like a fairy tale ended as a haunting tragedy to rival any of Shakespeare’s dramas."

The second time Jinnah ever broke down was in August 1947 when he visited Ruttie’s grave one last time before leaving for Pakistan. The architect of Pakistan paid a high price for Partition by leaving two of his most beloved possessions on ‘the other’ side of the border, the Jinnah House on Malabar Hill where he had the happiest moments of his life, and his beloved wife Ruttie who remains buried in Bombay. Jinnah left India in August 1947, never to return again, but he left behind a piece of his heart in a little grave in a cemetery in Bombay.

Live a life that matters (Michael Josephson)

Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end.
It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?
What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success, but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence, but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.
What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. While you meet something beautiful, the first thing you should do is to share it with your friends anywhere. So that these beautiful things will be able to spread outliterally around the world.

Life Lessons

1. Draw near to God and he will draw nearer to you.
2. All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen.
3. Fear not, for God is with you; be not dismayed for He is with you forever and wherever you go; He will always strengthen you; He will always guide and help you; He will uphold you when ever you fall, He is your God. Have faith in Him.
4. God has put something noble and good into every heart that he has created.
5. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.
6. Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
7. The difficulties of life are intended to make us better human beings not bitter human beings.
8. Time is too slow for those who wait, too fast for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
9. If you want something you never had, do something you have never done. Don't go the way life takes you. Take the life the way you go. And remember you are born to live and not living because you are born.
10. Listen to your own heart, never doubt yourself and do whatever you truly value most and in what you believe.