Remembering Mushtaq Gazdar

It's never easy to deal with death. But when you are sitting far away in a cold and distant land, far from the warmth, chaos and people that surrounded you

back home, it takes on a strange, a surreal quality. A phone call from a cousin. Can you come over at once, we need you here. He lives not too far away but any journey in London takes at least half an hour. An eternity when you are burdened with the thought that someone dear to you may be no more. And how must my cousin, whose father it is, be coping, I keep thinking.

Haris has phoned his wife Prachi and his sister Aisha, telling them only that he had a phone call from Karachi about Mushtaq Uncle being in the hospital

following a serious heart attack, and that they all need to fly home immediately. But - "I think he's no longer with us," Haris' voice over the telephone to me is strained and odd."They never tell you that on the phone."

By the time I get there, Haris has packed, arranged for tickets to be picked up at the airport counter; Aisha is already home from college, Prachi is on her

way back from her office, a taxi is waiting outside. I see them off shortly afterwards, hoping and praying that Haris will be proved wrong, Mushtaq Uncle will be alive and well...

He isn't. As soon as I get home, I call my parents in Karachi to check. He died on the way to the hospital, a sudden, unexpected heart attack after an Arts

Council meeting. I remember the ongoing battle Mushtaq Uncle used to have with another uncle over cigarettes. How he hated tobacco smoke, and how insistent he was about getting people to put their 'death-sticks' out, always in his own good humoured and pleasant way.

His good humour and pleasant nature, his charisma, his sense of justice and social responsibility, generosity, gentleness, kind heart and his love for

and commitment to people, were just some of the qualities that endeared him to those who knew and loved him. Not least was his tenacity and courage in setting up his own, pioneering film production house in Karachi, Films d'Art, investing his own money, time, energy. For years it occupied the ground floor of his house in Sindhi Muslim Housing Society, at a time when independent film production was practically unheard of in Pakistan. It must have been a struggle

for him, but he never made an issue out of it. And he made it work, taking on commissioned work in order to finance his own projects. These always reflected his concern for what is now called human rights - back then, when he made his first films, this term wasn't very much in parlance.

Always strongly evident was his postive attitude towards women - his abiding belief in the necessity of female education and equal opportunity. One of his

films (A Rebel with a Cause) focuses on Zohra, a young girl in rural Sindh, who studied at a boys' secondary school because there were no girls' schools in her

village. She has gone on to become a bank manager at First Womens Bank, in Karachi.

One of the things that has always kept me going has been, in fact, has been Mushtaq Uncle's constant and consistent love, support and active encouragement in whatever I have been involved with - professionally, academically, or as an activist. He always felt I, and any of the other children, could to anything we set our minds to do and achieve.

My first camera, a black Yashica double lens piece that is probably of antique value now, was a gift from Mushtaq Uncle, a left-over of his days in Tokyo, where he did his second diploma in film-making, in the 1970s. It was this gift, presented when I did well in my 'O' Levels, that set me on the path to amateur

photography, and in a way led to where I am now, studying television documentary in London -- strange to think that over thirty years ago, he was here too, for his first film-making diploma, in the 1960s.

In fact, he got married to my youngest phuphi, Saeeda, while still in the UK- one of the family stories that caught my imagination while growing up, was about

their romance and marriage. They met while studying at Karachi Universtiy, and when he saw the young Saeeda, Mushtaq decided that this was the girl he would marry. This was followed by another story, about how they were married - their nikah was solemnised over the phone. There are photos of Saeeda, beautiful in her gharara back in Karachi where the groom-less wedding was held, before going out on her own to join Mushtaq in the UK. That's where Haris was born.

Saeeda Gazdar went on to become a well known short story writer and poet in her own right, but she also worked extensively with her husband, scripting many of

his films and providing the ideas and inspiration for several of them, the most recent being 'Gharistan', a long play about the rights of women in the family,

which was shown on PTV in 1997.

The first documentary I remember seeing was his 'They are Killing the Horse' (1978), although his first film was 'The Fury of the Mighty Indus' (1973), on the floods in Sindh that year. 'They are Killing the Horse' stands out as a powerful, indictment of the system of treating psychological disorders through

'traditional' practices rooted in superstition in the guise of religion. The film, made in black and white, crosses the line between feature and documentary. It is based on the story of a young woman called Noori (named after the young ayah who used to look after us) who after doing an MA is forced to sit at home and help her mother - 'We don't educate our girls so they

can go to the office and work"). Noori's only entertainment is reading in a bricked up terrace or pacing on the rooftop watching pigeons in flight.

Occasionally they swoop onto the rooftop to peck at crumbs and strut about looking for mates, their mindless gregariousness a stark contrast to Noori's

loneliness.

Noori, who gradually falls victim to her frustration and boredom, is not, however an entirely fictitious character but based on true psychiatric studies,

provided at the time by Dr Haroon Ahmed. Mushtaq Gazdar's documentation of various shrines and the pathetic condition of the mentally insane who are left

chained there, sometimes for years at an end, is powerful footage, a testimony to a reality that is ignored by society.

The constructed sequences of Noori's story, visualised in flashbacks as her older brother relates her story to a psychiatrist (after all other avenues have been exhausted and Noori 'supposedly freed' from the 'jinn' that was possessing her), are interwoven with real footage of conditions at the shrines. Also interwoven are scenes of the streets of Karachi, of young students at the university where Noori supposedly went to study . At one point the viewer gets a glimpse of what it must be like to walk anonymously through the streets in a burqah, as the camera wends its way forward, its lens peering through the veil.

There are lasting images also of a Moharram procession where the blood stained chaddar of the Zuljanah is the final straw in the snapping of Noori's mind, and the powerful sequence, the public flogging of a prisoner sentenced to 15 lashes by a military court for molesting a five year old girl. The rise and fall of

the whip on the man's buttocks, the quivering flesh, the writhing body tied to a frame in the public ground, the relish with which the punishment is delivered are unlikely to leave a viewer's mind as the dull thud of the cane ecomes the only sound in the sequence, climaxing in the girl's scream.

Many of these refrains - the metaphor of Muharram as a symbol of the fight for justice, of good versus evil, the concern for the rights of the people -- are

echoed in Gazdar's later films. The Moharram theme is taken up most directly in 'Ten Days of Lamenation' (1981) Like 'Horse', this too was made during Gen.

Ziaul Haq's martial law. It ends with another powerful flogging sequence, juxtaposed with the flames of confiscated drugs going up in smoke.

Although it is apparently a purely sociological picture of the rituals and meaning of Moharram for Muslims, especially Shias, there are clear references

to dictatorship and usurpers. The largely observational commentary, at some risk in those times, stresses how Hazrat Imam Hussain gave up his life

rather than obey a usurper. It reminds us that most Muslim countries are currently ruled by "kings, monarchs, military dictators, and self made presidents with no mandate from the people". Their encouragement of the catharsis brought about by the ten days of lamentation, it is suggested, is rooted in the thought that a hundred thousand mourners or lamenting souls

are no threat to their rule.

His 'Song of Wishes' (1980) is an ironic visual interpretation of Allama Iqbal's 'Lab pe aati hai dua', its Englsih translation (by the famous Marxist

historian Syed Sibte Hasan) rendered in a piping childish voice (Aisha, then about ten). The black and white images of poor children contrast sharply with

the full colour pictures of well to do youngsters at school or play. But the poor children are not condescended to or looked down upon. The camera captures them laughing, playing, being children. And although the film has been criticized for its too obvious contrast between the rich and the poor, it succeeds in its aim of drawing attention to the fact that, rich or poor, all children are after all children, and deserve and need special attention and care.

'Concert on the Footpath' ('Footpath pe upna dera') is also visualised on poetry - N. M. Rashid, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi and Shah Latif Bhitai's - translated into English by M.H. Askari. The narrative commentary (mostly Aslam Azhar) focuses attention on the forced migration of the rural poor to cities where the inhabitants are unaware of, or indifferent to the

plight of these displaced souls. The film follows four musicians who come to Karachi from interior Sindh. Although it does not give them a direct voice,, their silence and dignified faces are eloquent testimonies to their situation, juxtaposed as this is with the poetry, images of stark poverty and contrasts with the rich people in cars or at weddings to whom they play and who give them handouts. Now that he is no more with us, a proper retrospective of his work would be a fitting tribute to this pioneer among Pakistani film-makers.