Ludhiana to Lahore – The Partition

Resting Time

“He’s not dead, there is still life left in him.” “I can’t. I am really exhausted.”
Saadat Hasan Manto

Seeing the Channel 4 documentary on the 60th anniversary of the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan revealed once again the travesty and tragedy of an act which served only the privileged on either side. It is extraordinary how the partition has affected generations thereafter. My grandfather searched for my aunt who was separated during the partition and their long walk from Ludhiana to Lahore to a refugee camp. They eventually settled in Toba Tek Singh, not far from Layallpur (now Faisalabad). His relentless faith in searching for her remained steadfast until he found her in 1975 and she immediately recognised him. The reconciliation was joyous and painful “as if my heart had found my body again” is how my grandfather described it.

Compared to my mother’s life, married at age 13 and travelled to Kenya to be with my father, my aunt’s experience of survival and a troubled initial integration back into the family often brought the partition back into sharp focus for her. She grew up in an orphanage and trained as a nurse. She met and married a man of her own choice. She eventually left Pakistan with her husband and settled in Germany. She seldom wants to talk about her experience preferring to forget about it – her life is still hard but it’s full of joy and love. When my grandmother was alive and I visited Pakistan, she would insist that we go to the border and see the lowering of the flag ceremony and exchange of guards. “The Peacocks are at it again” would be her comment. She always had a special place to sit where tea would be brought over and sweetmeat shared between the Pakistani and Indian officials which we would also share. Following the ritual with her, we would then go and find a spot where we could be in close proximity of the Indian side and the people. She would then start her exchange: “There is no difference between us – we look the same and we are from the same earth” and the Indian side would respond likewise. The chat would turn into an hour, then two, she had more strength then I although she was nearing her mid-70’s. She would end her conversation with “Jinnah and Nehru did nothing for us, all they wanted was power.” Her dreams of unity were only dreams and she knew that. In the end, her desire was for absolute peace where the two countries could live side by side “like intelligent adults and not insane carnivorous children”.

How strange 60 years later, the events of August 1947 resonates amongst us outside of the Indian sub-continent. I am grateful to her and my mother for giving me such a rich education into our history, literature and poetry. Something that is so sadly lacking in the younger generations here, who know very little about the history of England let alone the Indian sub-continent and are hell bent on seeing it through ethnic and religious differences.

Seeing the documentary brought my mother and grandmother back to me. I hadn’t thought of my aunt for sometime and I fell asleep with her in mind, imagery of the partition came from the documentary kept on conjuring up passages from Manto’s various writings. The partition of India is so well documented, and for me the work of Manto is so revelatory that it leaves you speechless. I have a deep admiration for his work and also because my family settled in Toba Tek Singh, a place he made famous with a short story about a mental institution and it’s predicament due to the line drawn through Panjab. Manto was important then and he is still relevant today. I would like to share another short sketch by Manto with you, brilliant and succinct; the sketch reveals a particular character trait with a pure genius of observation that Manto possessed.

The Benefit of Ignorance

The trigger was pressed and the bullet spun out ill-temperedly. The man leaning through the window doubled over without making a sound. The trigger was pressed a second time. The bullet swished through the air, puncturing the water-carrier’s goatskin. He fell on his face and his blood, mixing with water, began to flow across the road. The trigger was pressed a third time. The bullet missed, embedding itself into a mud wall. The fourth felled an old woman. She did not even scream. The fifth and sixth were wasted. Nobody got killed and nobody got wounded. The marksman looked frustrated, when suddenly a running child appeared on the road. He raised his gun and took aim.

“What are you doing?” his companion asked.

“Why?”

“You are out of bullets.”

“You keep quiet. What does a little child know?”

Saadat Hasan Manto

Both sketches appear in “Partition – Sketches and Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto”. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan and published by Viking Penguin Books India 1991.

Originally published on AboutFilm on 31^st March 2007

Shakila’s About Film is an amalgamation of art and activism. Drawing on historical and current events, this blog aimed to provide an alternative discourse to creative and political viewpoints. About Film also incorporated into this endeavour an attempt at a perspective on ways of seeing; from Film, Culture, Art, Literature, Gender through to Politics, welcoming debate and discourse. About Film – created in 2007 – offered views, critiques, and opinions that were distinctive, creating a dynamic and powerful place for discussion. With topics as diverse as the partition of the Indian sub-continent through to the Cinema of Pasolini, About Film brought an original point of view inviting readers to be a part of this vibrant arena and add to its promising and thought-provoking content.

The Incident of the Shaving of the Moustache that Changed the Political Face of Pakistan and Benazir’s Destiny

Picture a very Shakespearean drama and then place the Bhutto family as its main players. It surpasses all expectations of a volatile story full of greed, power hungry and manipulative individuals.

Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Murtaza Bhutto’s assassination comes to mind. A brutal killing by any measure, one that was pre-meditated and meticulously planned when a brother did not see eye to eye with his sister and brother-in-law, who happened to be the Prime Minister and the Minister for Industry respectively. Zardari along with Benazir has been accused of siphoning public and private monies out of Pakistan and into Swiss accounts. Anyhow, we all know that story.

Murtaza Bhutto was a radical leftist who was being supported by the Soviet Union at the time of his assassination. He had been in exile in Afghanistan but decided to return to Pakistan in the mid ’90s to be part of the political milieu and to partake in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Critical of Asif Ali Zardari, Murtaza lost ground with Benazir which in turn made him a strong and vocal critic of the PPP. Murtaza felt that the arguments were getting out of hand and decided to have a private meeting with Zardari which ended badly.

After a heated discussion, Murtaza and Zardari resorted to fisticuffs during which Murtaza managed to somehow shave off half of Zardari’s moustache. A deeply humiliated Zardari set about his revenge.

In a staged shoot out on September 20^th 1996, outside Murtaza’s home in Karachi, a gang of armed police officers hid in strategic places. As Murtaza’s car pulled up, he along with seven other members of his entourage got out. Murtaza was immediately felled by a sniper, who managed to shoot him through the neck as well as in several other parts of his body.

Murtaza and his companions were fatally wounded and were left to bleed for over two hours before they were taken to separate hospitals. Murtaza of course died soon after, along with his supporters.

No one has been arrested or charged with the killing of Murtaza Bhutto.

Image copyright: Abbas Ali Collection/historyofpia.com

Originally published on AboutFilm on 27^th January 2008

Shakila’s About Film is an amalgamation of art and activism. Drawing on historical and current events, this blog aimed to provide an alternative discourse to creative and political viewpoints. About Film also incorporated into this endeavour an attempt at a perspective on ways of seeing; from Film, Culture, Art, Literature, Gender through to Politics, welcoming debate and discourse. About Film – created in 2007 – offered views, critiques, and opinions that were distinctive, creating a dynamic and powerful place for discussion. With topics as diverse as the partition of the Indian sub-continent through to the Cinema of Pasolini, About Film brought an original point of view inviting readers to be a part of this vibrant arena and add to its promising and thought-provoking content.

Romila Thapar – A History of India and the Absence of Satan

Romila Thapar’s ‘A history of India Volume 1’ is worth every re-visit. I had the good fortune of coming across is some years ago, prior to that, I had very little knowledge of the historical make-up of the modern India, although her work stops at the arrivals of the Europeans in the sixteenth century.

Published by Pelican, the book ‘traces the evolution of India before contact with modern Europe was established in the sixteenth century. Professor Thapar’s account of the development of India’s social and economic structure is arranged within a framework of the principal political and dynastic events. Her narrative covers some 2,500 years of India’s history, from the establishment of Aryan culture in about 1000 B.C. to the coming of the Mughals in A.D. 1520 and the first appearance of European trading companies. In particular she deals interestingly with the many manifestations of Indian culture, as seen in religion, art, and literature, in ideas and institutions.

Thapar states that ‘the history of India in the first volume begins with the culture of the Indo-Aryans and not with the prehistoric cultures of India.’ She further says that ‘1526 marks the arrivals of the Mughals in northern India and they were (amongst other things) actively involved in the future of Europe in India.’

In her chapter ‘The Antecedents’, Romila Thapar says ‘wealth in India, as in every other ancient culture, was limited to the few. Mystical activities were also the preoccupation of but a handful of people. It is true, however, that acceptance of such activities was characteristic of the majority… whereas in some other cultures the rope-trick would have been ascribed to the promptings of the devil and reference to it suppressed, in India it was regarded with amused benevolence. The fundamental sanity of Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.’

Originally published on AboutFilm on 15^th May 2008

Shakila’s About Film is an amalgamation of art and activism. Drawing on historical and current events, this blog aimed to provide an alternative discourse to creative and political viewpoints. About Film also incorporated into this endeavour an attempt at a perspective on ways of seeing; from Film, Culture, Art, Literature, Gender through to Politics, welcoming debate and discourse. About Film – created in 2007 – offered views, critiques, and opinions that were distinctive, creating a dynamic and powerful place for discussion. With topics as diverse as the partition of the Indian sub-continent through to the Cinema of Pasolini, About Film brought an original point of view inviting readers to be a part of this vibrant arena and add to its promising and thought-provoking content.

Longevity in Dance: Elixir on Digital Stage

Mirror Within

Mirror Within is a new collaboration between Shakila Taranum Maan and Nahid Siddiqui commissioned by Sadlers Wells as part of their Longevity in Dance: Elixir on Digital Stage programme. This short film is a progression of their ongoing dialogue, representing Siddiqui’s concept of the Mirror Within as she practices the art of Kathak.

When Nahid Siddiqui approached me to make a short film on her for Sadlers Wells ‘Elixir on Digital Stage’, I jumped at the chance and images immediately began to form in my mind.

Nahid and I started to talk to each other daily as we only had weeks to put the project together. We began with big ideas including Nahid’s development of the dance form itself. We talked about her as a British Pakistani; we talked about her recent experiences of being in Pakistan and living there during Covid; artists with no safety nets were driven to poverty and worse. We talked about how artists are perceived within the South Asian community, particularly the Pakistani community, what does dance mean to them, if anything at all.

This sparked a memory for me as I had wanted to look at women’s position in the sub-continent and within the British Asian context. One such community that has impacted women in the sub-content significantly are the Afghans. When the Taliban recently returned to power, it was clear that their war against women was going to continue and strengthen. They had learnt how to use the media and even weaponize it.  Women refusing to wear the Burkha would be punished by their eldest male relative being imprisoned. The black Burkha that had been introduced via the Middle East (it comes in separate sections allowing women some freedom of movement, but it remains stifling, with the heavy fabric inducing heat etc.), replacing the blue cotton rich Burkha which was cooler often referred to as the ‘shuttlecock’ but is now being forced upon women. This does not allow them to have their hands to be outside of the garment; they are forced to be covered from head to toe in a loose fabric with a square crochet panel to look through.

The recent events in Iran have since further enforced the significance of women being forced to cover their bodies in order to desexualise them.  The murder of Masha Amini by the Morality police and of Hadis Najafi, a young 20-year-old soon after was a stark reminder of the fragile nature of women within states whose foundations are religion. It is clear that there needs to be a call out globally to separate religion from state. The urgency of this is critical and I am certain we will see many more such women and men who are currently protesting risk their lives.

I only had 10 minutes max to put these ideas across coupled with the challenges of a tiny budget – how what this going to be possible? I had to shoot on location and took the opportunity to put this to Nahid; that we would film outside, we embrace nature and shoot in the fields, forests, hill sides and by riverbanks. Although Sadlers Wells had offered their studio, shooting outside meant that I did not have to design the lighting and that I was challenging myself to create frames using nature as the backdrop. Nahid immediately agreed. The shoot dates unfortunate fell in the hottest week that the UK had known since records began and some days, we were shooting in 36 degrees heat! On two occasions we were lucky to be by a river draped with weeping willows and woodlands which gave us shade and saved us from the baking heat.

In the pre-production, I spent a weekend with Nahid where we threw ideas at each other – I wanted to explore light and shade, and we agreed to explore the body as a shadow. We called it our shadow dance section.

We discussed colours and agreed on red, black, blue, purple, and yellow. We talked about the depth and sharpness of colours, and we knew that the blue had a be a deep sky blue; I wanted this against the green of leaves and grass. The yellow was an earth yellow, a deep purple I wanted to use against the parched grass that was not a dirty brown, and the black was obviously a ‘kodak’ black!

I found a river in Iver, Bucks, the hill at the Northala Fields off the A40 near Southall, and a wild path in the back of the woods in Hillingdon. The seed was planted by Nahid when she said that Kathak is nature, and the sound of the ankle bells evoke the chirping and flight of birds”.

The river was chosen for the ‘blue’ sequence. Although the sequence is short, it was important for it to be impactful for me to visualise the Burkha and the Chaador. Nahid was in blue from head to toe. As she stood amongst the weeping willow, she wrapped herself tightly with the blue cloth. Her face, hands, body disappeared.  She began to look like a shroud. She tilted to her right and this was so striking, we immediately explored it – I told her to more slowly to her left and then in the edit I was able to emphasis the disassociation with jump cuts bringing out the melancholy of the sequence. Nahid then held her hands out and opened the fabric to display the Chaador and said “no one does with a Chaador – not like this, it cannot happen – “ishara kafi hai” – meaning those who see this shot will understand its significance; its defying comment.

Nahid had asked Hassan Mohyeddin to compose the music for the film. Her brief to him was to have it as minimal as possible. Hassan’s score to the film is multi-layered but sparse; haunting and transformative helping to carve shapes, pivoting between a trance, melancholy and sounds of nature.  Editing to the beat was extremely satisfying.

I wanted to film Nahid from the back as much as I could throughout – it’s fascinating how the back shoulders, neck, spine speaks, guides the viewer to closer to the subject and proposes a different understanding of the character. I explained the parameters of the frame and as Nahid formed the shapes, she kissed the edges of the frame with her fingertips, elbows and with slight movements of her body.

It was very clear to me that since I made A Thousand Borrowed Eyes in 1996, Nahid had moved deeper into her understanding of Kathak and its relationship to nature. She has been working on a book and developing her philosophy of the dance form and clearly linking it to nature.

”A dancer is a painter, a sculpture, a mathematician, and a creeper; exactly like a creeper has to be directed to grow, the dancer through the hard work and strict training carves the path of her destination – nature is our Guru”. Nahid Siddiqui

Like in A Thousand Borrowed Eyes, ‘Mirror Within’ gave me the opportunity to push myself and capitalise on the location’s potential. I had wanted to film Nahid against a delicious golden setting sun, but as the temperatures were so high, the setting sun presented its light as an extremely white burning light; I used this to show the edges of her body breaking and lines being like ‘noise’ that looked like they too danced.

The sun also helped us with strong shadows for our ‘Shadow Dance’ where we used the river and Nahid’s reflection within it; Nahid created a dance sequence lasting 5 minutes with grace and used the water as her partner with small darting around; dragon flies creating rings that by accident synchronized with the music.

For the ‘yellow’ sequence Nahid wanted to present a very traditional form of Kathak dance, where she depicted a woman embellishing herself; putting Kajol in her eyes, colour on lips, a tikka on her forehead, bangles on her hands and so on. I placed a mirror in the hedges by the side of woodland for this sequence. By chance a small shaft of light fell on Nahid’s forehead that she called her third eye – she used this to accentuate her movements depicting the embellishment.

In the last shot, Nahid wanted to emulate the sequence from A Thousand Borrowed eyes as she walked away from the gaze of the viewer. Here Nahid wore yellow and was draped in deep purple fabric which contrasted with the sun burnt grassland. Nahid’s vocal play out in another worldly manner lingering on much after the film ended.

Play the film:

Mirror Within – Nahid Siddiqui – Commissioned by Sadler’s Wells – Longevity in Dance: Elixir on Digital Stage (sadlerswells.com)

Credits

Dancer/Choreographer – Nahid Siddiqui

Music – Hassan Mohyeddin

Camera – Shamim Bhatti

Production Still – Nabila C Maan

Production Assistant – Sehur Chowdhary

Researcher – Cecile Scaros

Director/Editor – Shakila Taranum Maan

Commissioned by Sadler’s Wells © 2022

Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage presents Longevity in Dance, an eclectic mix of bold, playful and poignant films and interviews that challenge perceptions of dance and age.

The full programme includes commissions featuring Internationally acclaimed artists Charlotta Öfverholm, Nahid Siddiqui, José Losada Santiago, and showcases new films by award winning choreographer and director Eleesha Drennan, Sadler’s Wells Company of Elders and a fly on the wall documentary about iconic dancers Malou Airaudo and Germaine Acogny.

This beautiful collection looks at what makes us spark, the passing of time, our connection with nature, and the legacy we pass on. It’s a celebration of life through dance, and the inherent desire to keep on dancing.

https://www.sadlerswells.com/digital-stage/longevity-in-dance-elixir-on-digital-stage/