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Mohammad Farooq

Daily Archives: May 21, 2018

A legendary architect: Zaheer ud Deen Khawaja

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by Mohammad Farooq in Architecture, Biography, General, History, Humanity, Pakistan, Struggle, Tributes

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Architecture, Heroes, History, Icons, Pakistan, Personalities, Tributes

“Travelling is the best way of getting acquainted/accustomed to other cultures, which teaches us a lot about their customs and values said Zaheer-Ud-Deen Khwaja to me, one of the most renowned architects produced by Pakistan almost 20 years ago.” These words, were like pearls of wisdom for me along with many other exchanges with him, that helped transform my thoughts into something more diverse than they may have turned out to be. He had played a pivotal role as an architect who was internationally recognized and won many accolades/awards within his own capacity for Pakistan, but the selflessness this man had displayed throughout his life is worth exploring.

For me, having personal access to him was trivial courtesy of him being my mother’s mamo and brother of Safia Manto, my grandmother. I called him Zaheer Nana, out of sheer love and respect for a man who was revered by the whole family for his wisdom, knowledge, balance and impeccable honesty which may be unbelievable to my readers currently. He has been forgotten with time, achievements of his groundbreaking in many aspects, languishing and largely written off.

I discerned a few decades ago, the role of architects in that era wasn’t as celebrated and given equivocal footing, as say someone who was a writer, an actor or a poet for example. But, what Zaheer-Ud-Deen-Khwaja achieved was unprecedented at a time when broadcast media and the internet did not exist.

Zaheer-Ud-Deen Khwaja, was born in Kenya in the early 1920’s where his father Qamar-Ud-Deen was employed as Public Prosecutor in Zanzibar a British protectorate in those days. His father had originally settled in Karatina, about a hundred miles from Nairobi so due to rudimentary schooling available, the area was majorly populated by traders from Gujrat, India who ran the primary school there. So, his initial instruction medium of education was hence in Gujrati. Qamar-Ud-Deen, his father who was serving in Zanzibar as a Public Prosecutor, headed by an Arab Sultan died an untimely death when he was assassinated for being mistaken as a British Police officer due to his fair complexion in 1936.

The rather unforeseen seen death of his father, must have been a major catastrophic event in their lives, but their mother who was uneducated but a towering personality in her own right took over the family reins. Thanks to the representation of his uncle, Shams-Ud-Deen, a member of the Legislative council and an influential person in his own right, ensured that the widow of Qamar-Ud-Deen was provided financial help by the British Colonial Government, a pension for the entirety of her life, bursaries for the four sons till the age of eighteen and completion of their education.

Also, allowances were allotted for his three sisters till they got married. Considering these events, Miss Qamar-Ud-Deen took the momentous decision of migrating to Bombay (now Mumbai), India. After arriving in Bombay, aged 14 he found himself to be the head of the family, but his mother as mentioned earlier was a woman of virtue and considerable intellect who had an immense influence on her children, which left an everlasting impact on all of them during their respective lifetimes.

Restarting his education, he completed his High School from St. Mary’s High School, Bombay and decided to pursue Architecture on the advice of his cousin Zafar-Ud-Deen, although as per his memoirs he barely scraped through Art as a subject in his Senior Cambridge examinations!  He took admission in the renowned Sir J.J School of Art where he pursued his architecture. It was a time he remembered rather fondly, with his initial struggles in the first two years at university and the development of a close bond with his Professor Claude Batley who was the Head of the Department of Architecture too. During the third and fourth years, all the students were encouraged to visit the northern and southern parts of India, to get abreast of the finest traditional architecture and diversity it had to offer. By the fifth year, doing an apprenticeship was mandatory in a firm of architects and he was attending of 2 hourly classes in the morning.

He then appeared for an external exam of the Royal British Institute of British Architects, as the diploma offered by the college he attended was not accepted internationally back then. After successfully passing the external exam, he applied for a post-graduate scholarship on offer by the Government of India, which he received for a degree in Civic Design at the University of Liverpool, UK. While aboard the ship to the UK in October 1946, he was also accompanied by a future Nobel Laureate and renowned Physicist Professor Abdus Salam, Aslam Raza who later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and Ikramullah Niazi, a P.W.D engineer and the father of iconic cricketer turned politician Imran Khan.

Besides completing his post-graduation at the University of Liverpool, he also got the opportunity to travel around the whole of UK and visited a host of other countries in Europe for which the Government of India generously provided financial assistance. By 1948, after being elected as a certified member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, he made his way back to Pakistan in October of the same year.

Upon his return to Pakistan, the scholarship he had been awarded by the Government of India contained a clause or a surety bond which bound him to serve them in an individual capacity to the field he was linked with. Apparently, at that point of time he was ironically one of the only qualified architect and town planners available within Pakistan! While job hunting for a few months, he landed up a job in East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) as Assistant Government architect in Chittagong at a salary of Rs 800. The time spent there was remembered fondly, along with this comradeship and close bonding with his Bengali colleagues of that time who never forgot him for his sincerity and kindness he had meted them with. After his marriage to his beloved wife Tahira, in December 1950 and with whom he shared a beloved bond of almost 55 years till her death in July 2005.

After a year’s stint in Chittagong and Dhaka, he was offered an important position of Architect and Town planner of Thal Development Authority (TDA) in West Pakistan to oversee a multi-million regional planning covering an area of six million acres of desert which he graciously accepted. As he narrated it in his memoirs, the five years spent involved in the development of this region was one of the golden periods which included designing of the Quaidabad hospital by him as well.

The Thal Development project is listed by the Britannica Encyclopedia is listed as one of the most important development projects in the world. After his association with TDA for five years, he embarked upon taking charge of Pakistan P.WD  in the then capital city, as Chief Town Planner and Architect on the direct orders of the then Prime Minister Huseyn Suhrawardy who wished to enlist his services in end of 1957.

Also in 1957, a Quaid-e-Azam’s Mausoleum Architectural Competition to build a budding memorial to the founding father of the nation was held for which he was assigned to select a jury of assessors for this momentous project. In a rather unfortunate turn of events, the design awarded as the winning one was not acceptable to Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah and she hired an architect of her own choice from India who designed the current mausoleum built in honour of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. During 1958, as the architect-in-chief of the P.W.D and later with the Karachi Development Authority (KDA), he was actively involved in the planning and execution of the Korangi township, and various other projects during the time spent there. In his period spent there, he dealt with the growing developmental issues of Karachi which was experiencing rapid urbanization due to being the economic hub of Pakistan and remains to this day.

Also, in an interesting incident narrated in his book with the founder of Dawood Hercules, Ahmed Dawood is shared in this snapshot:

capture

His achievements remain unprecedented, but he was a family man, a principled father, a dutiful husband to his beloved wife Tahira and a doting grandfather to his granddaughters Mahvash, Sarah, Anam and Alizeh.

The disintegration of society

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by Mohammad Farooq in Hope, Life, Society, Tolerance

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Curiosity, Darkness, Double Standards, Hypocrisy, Intolerance, Life, Media, Mind, Public, Societal decay

A crumbling heart, disintegrating voices, broken dreams that house only seething pain of the time gone by. The canvas of life displays various facets, giving us lessons to heed and learn from. Life is never linear, and it would be monotonous and stereotypical without its versatility.

In a world where persecution, immorality, injustice etc. remain ripe yet kindness and hope still exists in minute forms, considering the rapid societal decay and rising intolerance. Irrespective of the hatred and darkness perpetuating in our everyday lives, life offers us glances of hope and goodness.

Whatever happens, we see is the diminishing of values we once cared for and embracing practices that are mired in hypocrisy. We raze everything and crush it, remove its existence and persecute others because the power of adjudication is intoxicating.

Ironically, the denial is a double-edged sword, either we are mired in hypocrisy or refuse to embrace the positivity of light on offer. It gives us a path to redemption and yet the clinginess to above-mentioned practices stays stringent. Learning and adapting isn’t in the vocabulary of our society, we mock others incessantly, forgetting to glance into our own souls and finding the filth generated within is as disgusting.

Although, I must admit my journey hasn’t been that smooth recently none’s is to be honest. A flare-up in my rheumatoid arthritis left me compounded in misery and frustrated and I wondered, why not write! Much to my fascination, the Divine has His ways of creating a realization and to illuminate our lives with hope.

Time and time again, God gives us many examples of how hope can reinvigorate and the implications it can have on our lives. The point is; embracing hope and giving birth to the positivity are essential ingredients towards creating happiness. Solace stays unachievable till we let hope enamour and light incandescently shine within our lives.

I see the society’s affinity to darkness as a startling resemblance to the barbaric thought framework we have adopted that lends credence to the streamlining of rising intolerance and judgmental mindsets. Inspiration is devoid, the goodness masked by opportunistic and materialistic practices that is strikingly prevalent but still the dream of societal streamlining is still alight.

Intolerance is rife, opinions marked as threats to dogmatic beliefs that engulf our mainstream society and takes us into unchartered territory where our very existence comes under threat. However, you know opinions are divisive, they steer discontent and give rise to problems not under our control.

Duplicity and double standards run amok in a society where a hint of independence and creativity can become your worst enemies. If we exercise silence for our own safety, the term hypocrite surfaces and monikers are labelled as something or the other, the connotation which I neglect to mention here.

Thinking is labelled as a curse, which gives arousal to sensitivity but why be this way people ask, care less and be indifferent we are told. Then, I think inculcating indifference would save us the pain of sensitivity, makes sense obviously why care at all!

Society would say to disown what you have within, what heralds our existence and empowers those emotions. It wants us to be a functional puppet driven by dogmatic practices and be under their influence, make us speak their language so we don’t stand out of the ordinary.

On a majority basis, we are incongruent as a society, diabolical and predated by our own moral ineptitude. However, societal depredation is continuous, it is clear from the unenviable practices abound that the hope for change is a distant dream.

But amongst this intolerance, there are silent white knights doing their work for societal uplift and not garnering attention to ensure their work isn’t undone. These unsung heroes are the agents of hope upon which society’s existence hinges upon.

Irrespective, what shapes our narratives is the mother of all evil’s; the broadcast media. Instead of contributing positively, all we see on television are jousting matches and a high-pitched chorus worthy of a circus display. The jokers i.e. the anchors devoid of basic etiquette are leading the charge by asking stupid questions, which would give good script writers a nightmare.

Interestingly, the public is in awe of such displays of bullshit that gives them nothing but crap to digest and add to the existing corrosive mindset. When humans digest trash, it will constrain their thinking ability and ensure their compatibility with the dogmatic beliefs.

A curious mind will always be outmaneuvered, because it numbers in the finite while the buffoons unquantified are considered fit to lead society and set the path for all of us to follow. It is like walking on tight ropes, with your eyes blindfolded uncertain of the consequences ahead.

Cheers to a society, that has buffoons at the helm and sidelines the curious ones as heretics and agents of chaos!

Alibaba acquires 100 percent stake in Daraz

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by Mohammad Farooq in E-Commerce, Technology

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The financial details of the transaction were not revealed and Daraz would continue to operate under the same brand following the sale to Alibaba, said Rocket Internet.

Source: Alibaba acquires 100 percent stake in Daraz – Profit by Pakistan Today

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Abraaj Group Arif Naqvi Depression Feelings Health History Hope Hypocrisy International Finance Corporation (IFC) Life Media Mental Torture Netizens Pakistan Saadat Hassan Manto

Me

Mohammad Farooq

Mohammad Farooq

Busines Journalist and ex-Senior Sub-Editor at Profit by Pakistan Today. Bylines in Dawn, Livemint India, Huffington Post, Express Tribune, MIT Techreview Pakistan,IGN Pakistan, . Interested in Technology affairs, history buff and Part qualified accountant.

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A lot has been going on…

  • A man for all seasons: Shahid Jalal August 19, 2020
  • The Merchants of Death June 18, 2020
  • The renaissance of reading books again September 25, 2019
  • Privilege is abusive July 31, 2019
  • Why does Manto arouse antagonism amongst the intelligentsia? June 14, 2019

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