Bill Turns To Stone

Last winter thousands of ethnic Albanians braved low temperatures and a cold wind in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to welcome former US president Bill Clinton as he attended the unveiling of an 11-foot statue of himself on a key boulevard that also bears his name.

Clinton is celebrated as a hero by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority for launching NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the brutal Serb forces’ crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. This is Clinton’s first visit to Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia last year.

Many waved American, Albanian and Kosovo flags and chanted “USA!” as the former president climbed on top of a podium with his poster in the background that read ‘Kosovo honours a hero’. The statue stood on top of a white-tiled base in the tiny square surrounded by communist-era buildings.

Nations raise statues of great men who are sometimes later blamed for the destruction and plunder of the same lands; the disgusted people then happily spit or beat with shoes the images of the heroes of their past. In recent history, we have witnessed such delightful spectacles in Russia and Iraq.

To name boulevards after sinful Bill is one thing but to erect statues in his tarnished name is paying undeserved homage to Oval Office erections. There was one flaw with the piece of public art: White House intern Monica Lewinsky’s marble lips were not shown attached to a readily excitable part of old Bill’s anatomy.

Even if the sculptures were to be condemned as un-Islamic in Pakistan, we need statues of our semi literate semi great men in public squares because the public needs to vent out its anger on powerless stone demigods.

TGH Photography Exhibition (DAWN article)

A Professional’s Touch

By Mahnaz Hasan

Capturing the world through the lens is all in a day’s work for a seriously hardworking Lahore amateur

Images have their own language. While the artist, transforms even the mundane into a work of art, the photographer uses images to communicate volumes to you — in a sweeping glance. As was the case during a recent exhibition at the Alliance Francaise, Lahore. Titled, One for the Road it was photographer Tahir Gul Hasan’s first solo exhibition.

Hasan, a self-starter in photography about thirty-five years ago, has refuse to embrace the discipline as a profession. He likes the freedom of being an amateur (Latin for “lover”), who can indulge in his other passions — music, writing and travel. He did, however, study the F/64 giants, the Magnum greats and the Surrealists, but drew his own conclusions and came up with his own perspective. One for the Road was the collection of street photography, which attracts him more than any thing else.

“I am only interested in capturing fragments of the ‘Inner Reality’ when they unfold before me,” explains Hasan. He prefers older equipment to the digital because he believes that “a dose of pain always yields creative gain” — which lends him a margin of creativity with a medium that has inherent limitations.

Tahir Gul Hasan’s exhibition (comprising forty-one exhibits) was a keen observation of the human condition, which he has converted into a story to be told. He appeared to pick out the human element in the spectacular and the sophisticated and present it against a pitch black background that not only lends a strong contrast to the image, but also boldly states his message, be it in the inherent abstraction and purity of black and white photography or in a playful splash of colour depicting interesting subjects.

While the Autumn in Paris, Shadow and its Butterfly and River Gilgit are brilliant examples of nature in its pure glory, the Eiffel Tower Toilettes, Old city/New city and The Wooden Bridge presented the mundane against the sophistication of modern day life.

His abstracts and still-life presentations are simple but beautiful in black and white as well as in colour. Star and Stripes, PIA No: 1, Flower and its Soul and Mad Cow at Ease displayed simple subjects with a fresh perspective, which only an amateur is perhaps capable of.

Hasan’s street portraits were the most interesting. No Jacket Required, Hubble-bubble and Boy in Trouble, Woodcutter’s Children, Lord of the Rings and Parts for Sale are brilliant examples of his rendition of the realities of ordinary existence, where he appears to be smiling at what he has captured — with the eye of a kindred soul.

One for the Road does not overwhelm your senses, as it is an uncluttered but creatively expert presentation of familiar mundane reality that you don’t have to spend hours to understand. The collection at the exhibition, was his favourite bests from his work so far — let’s watch out for more!

Reference:

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/050320/dmag5.htm

For more on this exhibition, please read 'Pictures In My Mind' by Tahir Gul Hasan

http://writersblocktgh.blogspot.com/2011/07/pictures-in-my-mind.html

Cocaine-Filled 123 Condoms

Switzerland is such a peaceful little country that all the ill-gotten money and gold robbed by dictators and crooks lies in its numbered bank accounts, and they insist on providing full privacy and secrecy to their transactions. Since nothing criminal that is worth reporting ever happens in Switzerland, whenever something does happen, the press never fails to report it.

Recently, the border guards arrested a Nigerian drugs smuggler in Switzerland, with not one or two but 123 condoms stuffed with cocaine weighing 1.7 Kg in his stomach.

A spokesperson for the federal border guards said “the 123 condoms represented the equivalent of a 5.5 metre long string of sausages or 3.5 litres of milk in volume. It’s exceptional because the contents of just one of the condoms could have killed the carrier.”

Now obviously, the man was not dreaming of death when he agreed to do the dastardly deed but rather of life and money. He was among six people in a French-registered car who instead of stop when asked to, jumped a red light to speed past a border post near Geneva. They later received free medical care in the form of X-rays, which revealed that four of them were carrying a total of nearly three Kilograms of cocaine in their stomachs, in five centimetre condom packages coated with a waxy substance.

Two other similar cases were uncovered in Switzerland in the past four months in which nine people were arrested from France and Spain. Swiss border guards recovered all of the swallowed cocaine capsules after several days.

What is this world coming to? People are misusing condoms and using the device for a forbidden pleasure that ranks quite low on an average person’s must-do list: getting high on contraband drugs.