Letter published in Daily Dawn 29 June 2007
At the outset, proclaiming Shah Latif as a poet is to diminish his significance. The ‘poet’ is one, endowed with imaginative power, who expresses his thoughts and views in a rhythmical expression arousing the emotions while exaggerating the object, of course to stress his point.
According to 18th Century political thinker, Edmund Burke, “poetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing”, whereas Shah Abdul Latif was not a poet in this sense of the word but was basically a committed reformer and truth-seeker par excellence whose verses do not contain any exaggeration which more often than not poetry contains.
Second, being an intrepid traveller and man of introspection, he was greatly dejected by extremely miserable conditions of the people of his beloved Sindh.
Thus in order to evade the tyranny of rulers, he camouflaged his passion and sang through verses his ideas of change in society. The message of truth, love for humanity, forbearance and contentment he delivered by chanting verses in folklore that the masses understood.
The period of Shah Abdul Latif (1689-1752) was the era of transition from Mughal suzerainty to the local rule. Sindh had initially lost its sovereignty to Akbar the Great in 1592, who annexed it as one of his provinces.
After the removal of Aurangzeb’s iron-clad hold, the local warlords started assuming control, first by obtaining authorisation from imbecile emperors and, finally, becoming sovereign rulers.
Although, prior to the Mughals, the people of Sindh were in perpetual hardship, especially during the despotic rule of Arguns and Turkhans (both aliens), in the Mughal period their position was even relegated to a subservient class.
They braved tremendous tribulations during this period. The transition even becomes more hazardous because of frequent Iranian and Afghan incursions during the period for the sake of loot and plunder.
Those were the chaotic times which left indelible imprint on conscientious and courageous Shah who, through his message, addressed the downtrodden to rouse them from slumbering indolence and endeavour to change their destiny through the poetic language and legend they were acquainted with.
It is equally mistaken to suggest that the message of Shah continues to inspire and influence the lives and activities of mystic-loving souls of Sindh the way it ought to have done.
It may have inspired a few academicians and scholars who have written on his life and works and discussed esoteric meaning of his verses but not the common people.
The laity, on the contrary, kept his message aside, too sanctified to be spoilt by following its meaning as they held him as a divine saint who can intercede for their failings. The multitude of people visiting the shrine of Shah regularly, praying for some mundane happiness, is a testimony that no lesson has been taken from his message for which the great reformers had endured the never-ending tribulations as on more than one occasion attempts were made even to assassinate him.
I plead with the admirers of this great social reformer to step forward and impress upon the slumbering masses to explore and appreciate the spirit of Shah’s verses in the right perspective so that they can benefit from their intrinsic message.
MANZOOR H. KURESHI
Karachi
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Soul of Sindh-Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai
TWO and a half centuries after his death, the celebrated Sindhi philosopher-poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689-1752 AD) continues to inspire and influence the lives and activities of the peace-loving mystic souls of Sindh. Intellectual activities, social, political or ideological discourses are considered meaningless without the recitation of his poetry. Shah Latif has become an essential part of the day-to-day life of the people of Sindh so much so that everyone wants to find out more about his life, his principles and beliefs and discover the true interpretation of his mesmerisingly meaningful poetry.
1."Foremost, Omniscent and Supreme, is world's Lord,
Of His own might in existence since aeons old,
Mighty Creator, Merciful, Sustainer, one and only,
His praises sing, He planned and perfected the universe."....
2.There is a call to gallows,
friends, will any of you go!
Those who do talk of love may know
3.O God, may ever you on Sindh
bestow abundance rare;
Beloved! all the world let share
thy grace, and fruitful be.
1."Foremost, Omniscent and Supreme, is world's Lord,
Of His own might in existence since aeons old,
Mighty Creator, Merciful, Sustainer, one and only,
His praises sing, He planned and perfected the universe."....
2.There is a call to gallows,
friends, will any of you go!
Those who do talk of love may know
3.O God, may ever you on Sindh
bestow abundance rare;
Beloved! all the world let share
thy grace, and fruitful be.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Hunza and living long
Living a long time involves more than having the right set of parents and staying clear of accidents. Those are matters of chance. There are matters of choice, too -- ways of juggling one's lifestyle to promote longevity.
Dr. Alexander Leaf, professor at the Harvard Medical School, has hunted out the world's longest-living populations and tried to figure out why they are so durable. He looked at groups, not individual exceptions to a society's norms.
To find these groups, Dr. Leaf traveled to three remote areas -- the Hunza region in Pakistan, Vilcabamba in Ecuador and Abkhazia in the USSR -- where men and women routinely see their 100th birthdays and are alive enough to enjoy them.
Leaf wrote in National Geographic that the three widely separated groups have several things in common.
1. They live in the mountains, usually at high elevations.
2. The mountainous terrain has cut them off somewhat from the mainstream of modern life.
3. They give high status to the aged, who retain a full role in the community.
4. They eat lightly, and the diets include little or no meat.
5. Their everyday living demands almost constant endurance activity.
The physical capacities of these groups most impressed Dr. Leaf. He writes, "The old people of all three cultures share a great deal of physical activity. The traditional farming and household practices demand heavy work, and male and female are involved from early childhood to terminal days.
"Superimposed on the usual labor involved in farming is the mountainous terrain. Simply traversing the hills on foot during the day's activities sustains a high degree of cardiovascular fitness as well as general muscular tone."
Shamed by not being able to keep up with a 106-year-old on a six-hour mountainous hike, the doctor began running when he returned to the United States. He wasn't a mountain farmer, and figured this was the next best exercise for him at age 52.
Even before Dr. Leaf's article in National Geographic, much had been written about the people of Hunza. As much of it is fiction as fact, perhaps, but enough is known about the Hunzakuts to say that they are among the fittest residents of this planet.
The kingdom of Hunza, almost two miles high in the Himalayas, has no jails because there is no crime, no hospitals because there is no sickness, no banks because all trading is done by barter among neighbors. Men and women work the fields until well past the age of 100.
This is a land of walkers and runners. Anyone from here can cross on foot the single high mountain pass that connects Hunza with the nearest modern settlement, 60 miles away. Over and back is a day's journey.
The land of Hunza is self-contained both physically and emotionally. The people have a separate Hunzakut way of life. Unlike their ever-bickering neighbors on the other side of the mountains, the Hunzakuts haven't been at war in 150 years. Life expectancy in India and Pakistan is among the shortest in the world. In Hunza, men claim to father children after 100.
"We are the happiest people in the world," the Mir (King) of Hunza told Renee Taylor for the book Hunza Health Secrets. "We have just enough of everything but not enough to make anyone else want to take it away. You might call this 'the happy land of just enough.'" Hunza is a land that has enough of what it needs because the people don't ask for much, and because no one else wants it badly enough to fight for it.
The people there live long, happy, productive lives partly because they don't concern themselves much with time and age. This frees them from the hurry and worry that comes with alternately trying to rush time and hold it back -- both most fruitless and frustrating exercises. The people of Hunza have a grace that comes from flowing with time rather than trying to control it.
Renee Taylor writes, "Time is not measured by clocks or calendars (in Hunza). Time is judged by the changing of the seasons, and each season brings the feeling of newness, not a fear that time is slipping irrevocably away.
"In the West, on the other hand, where lives are dominated by clocks and calendars, we tend to view each passing moment as a little piece of life which has cruelly slipped away from us, never to return. Each such slipping bit of time brings us closer to old age and ultimately to death. We worry so much about growing old that we actually increase the process."
In Hunza, a person's life divides into three periods, the Mir says: "The young years, the middle years, and the rich years. In the young years, there is pleasure and excitement and the yearning for knowledge. In the middle years, there is the development of poise and appreciation, along with the pleasures, the excitement and the yearnings of the young years. In the rich years -- by far the best period of all -- there is mellowness, understanding, the ability to judge and the great gift of tolerance -- all of this combined with the qualities of the two previous periods.
"The keynote of life is growth, not aging. Life does not grow old. The life that flows through us at 80 is the same that energized us in infancy. It does not get old or weak. So-called age is the deterioration of enthusiasm, faith to live and the will to progress."
The Mir adds, "Here, there is time to think only of the necessary things. To worry over such an intangible thing as the ticking of a clock or the turning of a page on a calendar, this is foolishness.
" There is no such thing as retirement in Hunza. A Hunzakut works all his life, because if he doesn't he doesn't eat. But far from being necessary drudgery, it is a joy for the Hunzakut to work. Nearly all of them are farmers. They spend long days scraping small amounts of food from the rocky slopes. They're up before dawn and don't come home from the fields until the sun is setting, stopping only twice during the day.
The people of Hunza can work this way -- often for a hundred years straight -- because of the way they look at and pace their work. Renee Taylor says, "Perhaps aside from the magnificent nutrition of the Hunzakuts (mainly coarse, stone-ground wheat flour and apricots), their mental attitude (is) the key to their extraordinary longevity."
They believe that without work, a person is as good as dead. "From the day a Hunzakut is born," the Mir says, "he is never coddled. He keeps active until the day he dies... The idleness of retirement is a much greater enemy to life than work. Our people continue to work by choice." Renee Taylor observes that "the ability to relax is at the bottom of everything. Watch the Hunza people at work or at rest. They are completely relaxed, completely at ease." This is because they don't fight their work. They enjoy it. The Mir explains, "Cheerfulness is the best mental tonic. If you enjoy your work, you will do it in a relaxed manner, while hate and grumbling will create tension and the nerves will become jumpy.
"Here in Hunza, each task is done with love. A man is lucky to have a field to work. He is lucky to be able to feel the warm sun and know that his muscles move in rhythm with his work. He is lucky to be able to see the beauty which lies all around him.
" All Hunzakuts are endurance athletes who practice all day. They have to work the fields and move long distances on foot. Otherwise, they have no food and no contact with the outside world. Every other day, a runner travels over the high mountain pass from Hunza to Gilgit. He picks up the mail and runs back. The round trip is about 120 miles. Other Hunzakuts frequently walk the distance, preferring walking to riding a horse.
The Hunza people have dug such a well of endurance that they have plenty of energy left for playing after they're through working. Renee Taylor watched a volleyball game while in Hunza. It matched the young men of the valley against older ones. The youngsters were ages 15-50. The veterans were all over 70. One man was 125. Taylor writes, "Both teams played a strenuous game in the scorching heat of the afternoon sun. If any player was fatigued at any time during the game, it was not discernible. They all seemed as relaxed and comfortable as though they were playing a friendly game of canasta." The younger men won, but only by a couple of points. It could have gone either way, and age was not the deciding factor.
The writer was amazed at the ability of the older men, and said so to the Mir. The Mir replied, "When will you people learn that our men of 100 feel no more fatigued than our men of 20? Be careful what you say, or soon you will have our people of over 100 feeling three times their age. And then they will think they are growing old." Age is not a death warrant. It's an opportunity to grow, to keep moving, to keep enjoying nature and people. Shirali Mislimov was the world's oldest man when he died at 168. The Soviet citizen had said, "There are two sources of long life. One is a gift of nature, and it is the pure air and clean water of the mountains, the fruit of the earth, peace, rest, the soft and warm climate of the highlands.
"The second source is people. He lives long who enjoys life and who bears no jealousy of others, whose heart harbors no malice or anger, who sings a lot and cries a little, who rises and retires with the sun, who likes to work and knows how to rest." Larry Lewis of San Francisco ran and worked until a few months before his death at 106. He always hated the word "old." "Never say a person is so many years old," Lewis once snapped at a reporter. "Old means dilapidated and something you eventually get rid of, like an old automobile or refrigerator. You're like a violin, a portrait, a wine. You mellow, but you never grow old."
(From Long Run Solution by Joe Henderson)
Dr. Alexander Leaf, professor at the Harvard Medical School, has hunted out the world's longest-living populations and tried to figure out why they are so durable. He looked at groups, not individual exceptions to a society's norms.
To find these groups, Dr. Leaf traveled to three remote areas -- the Hunza region in Pakistan, Vilcabamba in Ecuador and Abkhazia in the USSR -- where men and women routinely see their 100th birthdays and are alive enough to enjoy them.
Leaf wrote in National Geographic that the three widely separated groups have several things in common.
1. They live in the mountains, usually at high elevations.
2. The mountainous terrain has cut them off somewhat from the mainstream of modern life.
3. They give high status to the aged, who retain a full role in the community.
4. They eat lightly, and the diets include little or no meat.
5. Their everyday living demands almost constant endurance activity.
The physical capacities of these groups most impressed Dr. Leaf. He writes, "The old people of all three cultures share a great deal of physical activity. The traditional farming and household practices demand heavy work, and male and female are involved from early childhood to terminal days.
"Superimposed on the usual labor involved in farming is the mountainous terrain. Simply traversing the hills on foot during the day's activities sustains a high degree of cardiovascular fitness as well as general muscular tone."
Shamed by not being able to keep up with a 106-year-old on a six-hour mountainous hike, the doctor began running when he returned to the United States. He wasn't a mountain farmer, and figured this was the next best exercise for him at age 52.
Even before Dr. Leaf's article in National Geographic, much had been written about the people of Hunza. As much of it is fiction as fact, perhaps, but enough is known about the Hunzakuts to say that they are among the fittest residents of this planet.
The kingdom of Hunza, almost two miles high in the Himalayas, has no jails because there is no crime, no hospitals because there is no sickness, no banks because all trading is done by barter among neighbors. Men and women work the fields until well past the age of 100.
This is a land of walkers and runners. Anyone from here can cross on foot the single high mountain pass that connects Hunza with the nearest modern settlement, 60 miles away. Over and back is a day's journey.
The land of Hunza is self-contained both physically and emotionally. The people have a separate Hunzakut way of life. Unlike their ever-bickering neighbors on the other side of the mountains, the Hunzakuts haven't been at war in 150 years. Life expectancy in India and Pakistan is among the shortest in the world. In Hunza, men claim to father children after 100.
"We are the happiest people in the world," the Mir (King) of Hunza told Renee Taylor for the book Hunza Health Secrets. "We have just enough of everything but not enough to make anyone else want to take it away. You might call this 'the happy land of just enough.'" Hunza is a land that has enough of what it needs because the people don't ask for much, and because no one else wants it badly enough to fight for it.
The people there live long, happy, productive lives partly because they don't concern themselves much with time and age. This frees them from the hurry and worry that comes with alternately trying to rush time and hold it back -- both most fruitless and frustrating exercises. The people of Hunza have a grace that comes from flowing with time rather than trying to control it.
Renee Taylor writes, "Time is not measured by clocks or calendars (in Hunza). Time is judged by the changing of the seasons, and each season brings the feeling of newness, not a fear that time is slipping irrevocably away.
"In the West, on the other hand, where lives are dominated by clocks and calendars, we tend to view each passing moment as a little piece of life which has cruelly slipped away from us, never to return. Each such slipping bit of time brings us closer to old age and ultimately to death. We worry so much about growing old that we actually increase the process."
In Hunza, a person's life divides into three periods, the Mir says: "The young years, the middle years, and the rich years. In the young years, there is pleasure and excitement and the yearning for knowledge. In the middle years, there is the development of poise and appreciation, along with the pleasures, the excitement and the yearnings of the young years. In the rich years -- by far the best period of all -- there is mellowness, understanding, the ability to judge and the great gift of tolerance -- all of this combined with the qualities of the two previous periods.
"The keynote of life is growth, not aging. Life does not grow old. The life that flows through us at 80 is the same that energized us in infancy. It does not get old or weak. So-called age is the deterioration of enthusiasm, faith to live and the will to progress."
The Mir adds, "Here, there is time to think only of the necessary things. To worry over such an intangible thing as the ticking of a clock or the turning of a page on a calendar, this is foolishness.
" There is no such thing as retirement in Hunza. A Hunzakut works all his life, because if he doesn't he doesn't eat. But far from being necessary drudgery, it is a joy for the Hunzakut to work. Nearly all of them are farmers. They spend long days scraping small amounts of food from the rocky slopes. They're up before dawn and don't come home from the fields until the sun is setting, stopping only twice during the day.
The people of Hunza can work this way -- often for a hundred years straight -- because of the way they look at and pace their work. Renee Taylor says, "Perhaps aside from the magnificent nutrition of the Hunzakuts (mainly coarse, stone-ground wheat flour and apricots), their mental attitude (is) the key to their extraordinary longevity."
They believe that without work, a person is as good as dead. "From the day a Hunzakut is born," the Mir says, "he is never coddled. He keeps active until the day he dies... The idleness of retirement is a much greater enemy to life than work. Our people continue to work by choice." Renee Taylor observes that "the ability to relax is at the bottom of everything. Watch the Hunza people at work or at rest. They are completely relaxed, completely at ease." This is because they don't fight their work. They enjoy it. The Mir explains, "Cheerfulness is the best mental tonic. If you enjoy your work, you will do it in a relaxed manner, while hate and grumbling will create tension and the nerves will become jumpy.
"Here in Hunza, each task is done with love. A man is lucky to have a field to work. He is lucky to be able to feel the warm sun and know that his muscles move in rhythm with his work. He is lucky to be able to see the beauty which lies all around him.
" All Hunzakuts are endurance athletes who practice all day. They have to work the fields and move long distances on foot. Otherwise, they have no food and no contact with the outside world. Every other day, a runner travels over the high mountain pass from Hunza to Gilgit. He picks up the mail and runs back. The round trip is about 120 miles. Other Hunzakuts frequently walk the distance, preferring walking to riding a horse.
The Hunza people have dug such a well of endurance that they have plenty of energy left for playing after they're through working. Renee Taylor watched a volleyball game while in Hunza. It matched the young men of the valley against older ones. The youngsters were ages 15-50. The veterans were all over 70. One man was 125. Taylor writes, "Both teams played a strenuous game in the scorching heat of the afternoon sun. If any player was fatigued at any time during the game, it was not discernible. They all seemed as relaxed and comfortable as though they were playing a friendly game of canasta." The younger men won, but only by a couple of points. It could have gone either way, and age was not the deciding factor.
The writer was amazed at the ability of the older men, and said so to the Mir. The Mir replied, "When will you people learn that our men of 100 feel no more fatigued than our men of 20? Be careful what you say, or soon you will have our people of over 100 feeling three times their age. And then they will think they are growing old." Age is not a death warrant. It's an opportunity to grow, to keep moving, to keep enjoying nature and people. Shirali Mislimov was the world's oldest man when he died at 168. The Soviet citizen had said, "There are two sources of long life. One is a gift of nature, and it is the pure air and clean water of the mountains, the fruit of the earth, peace, rest, the soft and warm climate of the highlands.
"The second source is people. He lives long who enjoys life and who bears no jealousy of others, whose heart harbors no malice or anger, who sings a lot and cries a little, who rises and retires with the sun, who likes to work and knows how to rest." Larry Lewis of San Francisco ran and worked until a few months before his death at 106. He always hated the word "old." "Never say a person is so many years old," Lewis once snapped at a reporter. "Old means dilapidated and something you eventually get rid of, like an old automobile or refrigerator. You're like a violin, a portrait, a wine. You mellow, but you never grow old."
(From Long Run Solution by Joe Henderson)
Indus River Basin
The snowcapped peaks of the Karakoram mountain range rise above irrigation systems in the Hunza region of Pakistan's Indus River Basin.
Photograph courtesy David Archer/University of Newcastle
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