Coke Studio Kicks Ass

I first heard of Coke Studio late last year but, when I checked it out, I wasn’t particularly impressed with its first couple of episodes. It was good stuff, yes, and I did like the idea…it just wasn’t all that great.

Then came Season 2 and everything changed.

But Wait…What is Coke Studio?

For all you poor, lost souls who haven’t yet discovered the wonders of Coke Studio:

Coke Studio is a Pakistani television series featuring live music performances. The program focuses on a fusion of the diverse musical influences in Pakistan, including eastern classical, folk, and contemporary popular music. The show provides a platform for renowned as well as upcoming and less mainstream artists, from various genres and regions, to collaborate musically in live studio recording sessions. [Source: Wikipedia]

Think of it as a combination of Later…with Jools Holland, MTV Unplugged, Live from Abbey Road, and the numerous musical collaborations you get to see at award shows like the Grammys.

Oh, and it’s produced by one of my favourite musician-producers, Rohail Hyatt (official site).

Okay, That Sounds Exciting (I think)…Where Do I Start?

Start on YouTube (see links and embedded videos below) by watching the videos that have been uploaded there (don’t forget to rate, comment, and favourite as you see fit). These are available both on the official Coke Studio channel as well as on other users’ channels.

Then visit the official site to download the audio and video of all the performances. Once you’ve been suitably blown away and you still want more (which you will), watch the behind-the-scenes videos for Season 2’s episodes, read the artists’ profiles, and contribute to the site.

And if you still haven’t had enough, check out the Coke Studios Facebook page and the songs from the show featured on Babelsongs (‘Great music translated’).

Let Your Journey Begin…

Start with these three videos.

‘Chal Diyay’ by Zeb & Haniya and Javed Bashir:

‘Aik Alif’ by Saieen Zahoor and Noori:

‘Husn-e-Haqiqi’ by Arieb Azhar":

You can thank me later.

Enjoy :)

Ten Years of the LUMS Music Society

In early 1999, while I was a senior at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), we were planning for the annual student variety show called ‘So?’. Now the ‘So?’ is organized jointly by the all the student clubs who want to participate and, being president of Alpha Hour, I was a part of that year’s organizing committee. [I also co-wrote ‘Zahoor: A Musical’ – Dr. Zahoor being our Associate Dean at the time – that some of my classmate and I performed there but that’s another story.]

A lot of the performances at the ‘So?’ were musical ones. Indeed, we started the show with a song from Jahanzeb and Adil Sherwani, had lots of Ali Hamza in the middle, and even ended the night with the hugely popular cover of The Strings’ ‘Sar Kiye Ye Pahar’ as performed by Saad Ansari, Sameer Anees, Jahanzeb Sherwani, and Adil Sherwani.

It was around this time that we all realized that LUMS needed an official music society and so we encouraged the musicians who had performed at the ‘So?’ to start one. That’s what Saad, Jahanzeb, and Ali Hamza did and thus the LUMS Music Society was born.

Fast-Forward to the Present

The Music Society has come a long way since then: They now have their own fully-equipped recording studio (as opposed to the single room next to the gym that we started out with) and they organize all sorts of musical events, some of which you can check out on their YouTube Channel. Also visit their Facebook Group page for event listings, photographs, and discussions.

This year they’re celebrating their ten-year anniversary with a music conference on 9 May and a big concert featuring the likes of Noori, eP, Laal, and Aunty Disco Project on the 10th. They’ll also be launching their official website at that time.

My Association with the Music Society

I owe a lot to the LUMS Music Society because it was through them that I learnt how to play the drums and it was at their launch concert (called ‘The Jig’) in early 2000 that I first performed in front of an audience as a drummer. I even have a recording of the very first song I played at that concert (‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries) with Mehreen on vocals, Vex on bass, and Saad on lead. Yes, it’s terrible of me but I’ve forgotten who was on rhythm guitar.

Even though the actual performance of that song is mostly a blur, I remember that I started out too fast and was mimed to slow down by Jahanzeb who was sitting in the audience. I also made one major error – a hand-spaz miss-hit on the snare drum – that, not only did no one there notice, you can’t even hear it on the audio recording so it obviously wasn’t as big a mistake as I thought it was. I performed in two more songs during that show – Pink Floyd and Alanis Morissette covers, no less – the latter of which was on the bongos which were also new to me at the time.

A few months later, I performed at their first proper, on-stage concert (called ‘It’) in the central courtyard. This time I was on the drums (‘Dosti’ by Nazia and Zoheb), tambourine (‘Smooth’ by Santana and Rob Thomas), and bongos (‘Those Were the Days’ by Mary Hopkin). Later in the year I travelled from Islamabad to Lahore to specifically attend their first big concert (called ‘The Show’) which featured a professional sound system and hired musical instruments. They could afford all this now that they were officially sponsored by LUMS. I last checked-in on them in 2003 when I went to guest lecture at LUMS and they’d already grown quite a bit. Now, of course, they’re the largest club at the University.

In spite of all that, my strongest memory of the Music Society is still that of me, Ali Hamza and Saad packed into a hot, stuffy jam room as we rehearsed a rock version of Nazia and Zoheb’s ‘Dosti’. I used to have a recording of that performance as well but I seem to have lost it along the way, which is sad. That was the first time I came up with my own drum beat to a song (yes, we really changed it around from the original) and I remember being proud of myself for that because I’d grown quite a bit as a musician over those few months.

To Conclude

It’s been ten years since I graduated from LUMS and ten years since the Music Society was formed. Unfortunately, I’ll be missing both my reunion and the 10th anniversary concert because I’m going to be in Australia during both events. That sucks, I know, but I will be there in spirit. And, at the very least, I do get to blog about it and encourage other people to be there on my behalf. Here’s hoping some of you manage to do so.

New Edition of LUMS NEWSnet Published

The March 2009 edition of LUMS’s external newsletter, NEWSnet, was published recently and you can read all of it online. This edition covers about nine months worth of news and events and makes a good read.

Terrible Usability

What’s weird about it, though, is the format it’s been published in: it’s all image files. Basically, instead of taking the time to make a proper website for the newsletter or even make a PDF file out of it, they’ve converted each page of the newsletter into an image which they’ve then sliced into smaller images for faster transfer over the Internet. (Note: making image slices for online publishing is pretty standard for intricately designed websites but is highly unusual for publishing newsletters online.)

Publishing the newsletter in this way makes life a lot simpler for them because (a) making image slices is really easy and (b) the newsletter’s original design, formatting, fonts, photographs, page numbering, etc. are all preserved without them having to make any extra effort. However this is a silly way to publish a newsletter online. Why?

Well, first, the image-only format takes up too much bandwidth and is slow to transfer over the Internet (no matter how many slices you make, transferring HTML code is still quicker). Second, though it’s nice to be looking at a well-formatted page, you are basically stuck with whatever font size they’ve decided to publish the newsletter in (in this case, 9pm Tahoma). Third, reading text as text is much easier than reading text that’s an image. For example:

Text as Text:	Text as Image:
Jahanzeb Sherwani is Pakistan’s first developer (and LUMS alumnus) whose application has been accepted into Apple’s iPhone App Store. Jaadu is a groundbreaking application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you control your computer from wherever you ware in the world.

Finally, to nitpick a little: I hate the fact that you can’t click to zoom-in on any of the photos they’ve published and the newsletter’s masthead is far too large for an online publication.

The Options They Had

The thing is, I understand why LUMS would do something like this because the online version of NEWSnet is probably not a priority for them. Indeed, they most likely wanted to make as little extra effort as possible in converting the print version to a format they could publish online.

That said, they actually had three choices for that print-to-online conversion:

First, they could have made a proper website for the newsletter. This, however, would have required a bit of work on their part because they would have had to design the site layout, create a template, and then copy all the text and images into it.

Second, they could have made a PDF version of the newsletter and made it available for download. PDFs are the Internet-standard way of publishing newsletters online because they preserve your design, layout, fonts, page numbering, and so on. They are also much better from a usability standpoint because readers can zoom in and out to adjust the print size and, if the text within them is rendered as text, they are also much easier to read.

Finally, they could have done what they did: convert the pages into images and publish those online. This, while the second-easier option for them (making the PDF is easier), is the least user friendly option for readers (or, in this case, site visitors).

Why, then, did they do it this way? I’m not sure. Image files certainly look better than a simple link to a PDF file from the LUMS homepage. And they could have been trying to cater to their six site visitors who don’t have PDF file reading software installed on their computers or in their browsers. Regardless, their choice of publishing the newsletter in this manner is, in opinion at least, a bit of a cop-out. And though I understand why they did it, the reasons for doing it aren’t very convincing to me.

Some Good Things

Among the things they did do right, however, is the fact that the newsletter’s content is both short and very interesting. Also the design and layout of the newsletter itself is quite good. So, even though it’s a pain to read, I have actually skimmed through bits of the newsletter to see what’s going on in the world of LUMS.

Where is the Outrage?

The BBC’s Ilyas Khan has written an excellent article on how casually top Pakistani officials continue to treat the local fundamentalist militant threat that has grown so quickly over the last year.

Khan uses the official reaction to the recent attack on the Manawan police academy in Lahore to make his point:

Eight hours of siege, eight policemen killed, nearly 100 injured, and at the end of the day what do we know about the stand off at the Manawan police academy?

Very little, as usual.

And just as usual, analysts have continued to point out on television news shows that Pakistan has yet to stop being casual about the militant threat.

…

The question is, why do top Pakistani officials continue to make off the cuff remarks about a problem that appears to be ripping the country apart?

I don’t know the answer to that question but it saddens me to see a lack of outrage from many of those top officials. Certainly they claim to be upset by what’s happened, but they’re obviously not upset enough to do anything concrete and long-lasting about it. All they seem to want to do is apply another roll of duct tape to the problem in the hope that it’ll hold everything together.

I mean, seriously, why are analysts, journalists, and reporters the only ones – aside from the general public, of course – who are openly discussing the gravity and long-term implications of attacks such as these? And why are they the only ones who seem to be saddened by the loss of life that accompanies each and every one of those attacks?

This lack of acknowledgement (of gravity) from the top is an issue because openly admitting that you have a problem really is the first step you have to take before you can start to solve things. And it’s that very acknowledgement that doesn’t seem to be coming from the people who can actually do something about it.

Some Optimism

Mosharraf Zaidi, meanwhile, is optimistic that this most recent attack will finally get the bureaucracy to do something about the situation. In his most recent article and blog post, ‘Counter-Terrorism Through the Civil Service’, he writes:

The attack on the Lahore police training facility yesterday, which as of the time of this article’s writing had not ended, should wake Pakistan up. There is an existential monster that Pakistanis are unable to acknowledge because of the weakness of their Muslim faith. This weakness is exacerbated by the average Pakistani Muslim’s dependence on unholy mullahs whose money-ing by General Zia, radical Saudis, and the joint efforts of the CIA and the ISI is now proving to be the single gravest threat to the sustainability of Pakistan as an operational entity.

The ostrich-like reaction to terrorism is driven by the average Pakistani’s inability to debate the mullah, and an unwillingness to invest the effort and time required to tame that mullah. Abandoned and let loose by the “shurafa” that once were able to tame the mullah, and to speak his language, the mullah’s new master–the comfort of Land Cruisers and bottled water–has no scruples.

Do make sure you read his entire blog post as well as the comments the post has generated. The comments on all of Zaidi’s posts are always worth a read.

What Happens Now?

So there you have it: a reason to be pessimistic about the whole situation and yet there’s always a glimmer of hope that maybe this time people will be motivated enough to actually do something concrete to fix the problem (or at least start to fix the problem). The lawyers certainly did with their long march. How long before the rest of us wake up and really do something about the militancy problem too?

Here’s hoping there is cause for optimism over the next few days as officials tell us exactly what happened during the Manawan attack and what they’re going to do about it. As one expert commentator on Geo News said a couple of days ago: until the government actually captures, punishes, and makes an example of the people who are carrying out these acts of terrorism, the militants don’t really have any incentive to stop doing whatever it is they darned well want to. This, then, is the opportunity for the government to do just that. If they want to send a message to the militants, now is the time.

Here’s hoping…

Maliha Got Married

If you’re wondering why I published only one blog post in February that’s because I spent most of that month in Pakistan attending (and, of course, helping organize) my younger sister Maliha’s wedding. This is her and my brother-in-law, Ibaad, at their wedding in Islamabad:

From Maliha and Ibaad's Wedding

Yes, I know I’m about a month late in blogging about this but I’ve only recently gotten the time to organize the photos from that trip. This is me ‘n Nadia in Karachi, which is where Maliha and Ibaad now live:

From Pakistan Trip Feb-09

You can view all these photos on my Picasa Web Albums page in these two albums:

1. Maliha and Ibaad’s Wedding
2. Pakistan Trip Feb-09

Enjoy :)

The Islamization of Pakistan

This month’s Newsline has a couple of excellent articles on the Islamization of Pakistan.

First there’s an article called ‘The Power of the Pulpit’ by Mohammad Hanif, author of ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ which was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award.

Hanif writes:

Mullahs, maulvis, imamas, or ulema-i-karam as many of them prefer to call themselves, have never had the kind of influence or social standing that they enjoy now. A large part of Pakistan is enthralled by this new generation of evangelists. They are there on prime time TV, they thunder on FM radios between adverts for Pepsi and hair removing cream. In the past few years, they have established fancy websites with embedded videos; mobile phone companies offer their sermons for download right to your telephone. They come suited, they come dressed like characters out of the Thousand and One Nights, they are men and they are women. Some of them even dress like bankers and talk like property agents offering bargain deals in heaven.

Then there’s an article called ‘The Saudi-isation of Pakistan’ by Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of High Energy Physics and the Head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Hoodbhoy writes:

The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.

Both are excellent, though long, articles that I highly recommend you read.

Politics – Change & Struggle for Change

So a number of interesting things happened in politics this week. I’m not good at writing about this stuff [1] so you get pictures, video, and links to other sites.

I Can Haz Change?

The big news, of course, was the US presidential inauguration and Aretha Franklin’s hat. I guess Americans finally have earned the new puppy that coming with the Obamas to the White House :)

The Struggle for Change

Meanwhile, Nadia and I attended a protest rally in Melbourne over the weekend:

And though the people who attend rallies (myself included) all have their own particular agendas, mine was summed up by this poster:

And The Struggle Continues

Finally, if you’re in Lahore, consider attending the peace rally being organized by the newly-formed Amn Tehreek  (peace movement) at 3pm on Saturday, 31 January (click the image for details):

It’s easy to have a “nothing I do will make a difference anyway, so why bother?” attitude towards all this, I know. But if there is one thing that has the potential to make a difference – however small that influence may be to begin with – it’s attending rallies such as this one (at least to start with). Because if you don’t, then you might as well stick your head in the sand, renew your silent majority membership, and lose your right to complain if the future doesn’t turn out the way you wanted. (I extend the same argument to voting in elections, by the way, which is why I love the fact that, in Australia, voting is compulsory.)

- - - - - - - - - -

[1] I have a hard time writing about politics because this is not something I talk about often. As a result, I have far too much to say and far too little space to say it in. I also have a hard time cutting to the chase which, funnily enough, I have no problem doing when I’m writing about other topics (…must work on this). Besides, I find that, when it comes to politics, others say what needs to be said much better than I do. People like Mosharraf Zaidi, for example.

Chay Magazine Issue 2

The second issue of Chay Magazine is now out. This seems to be a small edition – only five articles, all of which are listed on the front page – but that’s five more articles on this topic than would otherwise have been written. Good job, folks!

Meanwhile, they are now accepting submissions for Issue 3, which is on the topic of sexual diversity.

Further Rant on BBC Article on Zeb & Haniya

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I had a few issues with Syed Shoaib Hasan’s recent BBC News article on Zeb & Haniya.

As expected, that article was picked up by a number of Pakistani blogs like PakPositive and Vajood and I thought it might be useful to include here the comments I left on one of those blogs because it further explains my issues with the article:

I don't understand the relevance of Nadeem Paracha's comments in this article. Was this a news report about Zeb & Haniya or a review of their music? This is aside from the fact that saying their music is "good, not extraordinary" is actually quite useless because it doesn't mean anything. I mean, really, what does it mean when you say that someone's music is "good"? That's too general, too relative, and basically a cop-out. And why does Paracha "caution" people about their music? Is he afraid they'll like it too much and will think it's "extraordinary"?

The reason I'm getting so irritated by this is that this is the only time I've read an article about Pakistani musicians in which their music has been reviewed by a "leading music critic" or by any critic for that matter. And, personally, I don't think it's a coincidence that the only time this has happened is the only time a female duo has been discussed. I don't remember *anyone* talking about the quality of the music of *any* male artist, duo, or group in an article like this *ever* in the past. Do you?

BBC News Report on Zeb & Haniya

The BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan just published an article on Zeb and Haniya on the BBC News website. And while it’s awesome that Zeb & Haniya are getting this kind of international news coverage, I don’t particularly like the angle that Hasan has taken with this story.

As it stands, the article has the “Ooh, look! Pakistanis aren’t all terrorists – some women are allowed to sing!” tone and that really pisses me off. This despite the fact that political commentary in a story like this was inevitable. The phrase “girl band” in the title, ‘Pakistan girl band creates a stir’, ticks me off as well.

The article then makes a needless reference to Bollywood in its first sub-heading (“Ooh, look! They watch Indian movies…they must be normal people!”) and contains this sentence:

Addicted to their Bollywood movies and Pakistani pop music, many are at ease with privately imitating their idols.

Right. That exactly what all Pakistanis are like.

Hasan also keeps calling the duo “Pakistan's first all-female music band” which is not accurate.

Worst of all, though, he goes and quotes the eminently patronizing Nadeem Farooq Paracha who is, apparently, “Pakistan’s leading music critic”. I’m not sure why Hasan did that because Paracha’s sole contribution in the article is to put Zeb & Haniya down (in his usual eminently patronizing style) which is particularly irritating as this is supposed to be a news report and not a music review.

I mean, WTF? Why couldn’t this have been a straightforward article about a couple of female musicians who are doing well in Pakistan. Wasn’t that news enough? What was the added benefit of talking about how good or bad their music is? (This is like writing an article about a new female politician in Pakistan who is doing quite well and then getting a quote from a political analyst who says something like “her policies are good, but they are not extraordinary”.)

All those issues aside, though, I’m glad the article was written because at the very least it gives widespread and much-deserved coverage to Zeb & Haniya and their music.

Chay Magazine Call for Submissions

Chay Magazine is calling for submissions for its second issue which is about "The Politics of Sex": 

This issue will address themes of sex and sexuality as they interact with the daily politics of human life. We are looking for feature articles and non-fiction that deal with: 

 

1. Gender Roles


2. Sex/Sexuality, Feminism and Activism in Pakistan & Abroad

 

The deadlineis is 15 December.

Google News Pakistan

Google News now has a Pakistan edition :)

Impressed With Shehzad Roy

I've never been a big fan of Shehzad Roy's music but I've always appreciated what he's done: the music he's made has generally been good, his collaboration with Sukhbir was fun, he was instrumental in getting Bryan Adams to perform in Pakistan, and his Zindagi Trust non-profit is making a real difference. [Official website]

I am, however, seriously impressed with his latest album, Qismat Apnay Haat Mein, which he launched in Karachi's Juvenile Jail last month. Roy is still fun, funny, and interesting but boy has he matured. And some of his new stuff is good, hard-hitting, and brilliantly political.

Take, for example, the first single from that album, 'Laga Reh'. Rarely do you get such a enjoyable, sarcastic, in-your-face, and yet immensely motivating song all in one. Here's the video:

And the album's title track -- which has also been uploaded to YouTube -- actually has the phrase "I'm allergic to bullshit" in it! :)

Of course, the entire album isn't political -- only four of the songs are -- but it's awesome that he's doing something like this and I highly recommend you go buy the album. (Though I have to admit I only like about half of the album myself!)

Umar Saif & Distributed Web Caching in Pakistan

One of my seniors from undergrad alma mater, the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), is working on a project that implements a distributed web caching system in order to increase download speeds in developing countries.

Mason Inman explains in an article in the MIT Technology Review:

Internet access is growing steadily in developing nations, but limited infrastructure means that at times connections can still be painfully slow. A major bottleneck for these countries is the need to force a lot of traffic through international links, which typically have relatively low bandwidth.

Now computer scientists in Pakistan are building a system to boost download speeds in the developing world by letting people effectively share their bandwidth. Software chops up popular pages and media files, allowing users to grab them from each other, building a grassroots Internet cache.

Sounds like a good system (the article goes into detail about how it works) and here's hoping it's a great success.

Zeb & Haniya's Album Released

Zeb and Haniya, the awesome musical duo that I know and have had the pleasure to jam and perform live with, have just released their first album, 'Chup', in Pakistan. If you're in Pakistan, go buy it -- I highly recommend it.

For the rest of us, their first video for the song 'Aitebar' is available online:

Enjoy :)

Feature on Asim Butt & His Art

Raza Rumi recently wrote a good feature on one my LUMS BSc classmates Asim Butt on the 'All Things Pakistan' blog:

What distinguishes Asim Butt from his generation and perhaps the preceding generations of artists is the sheer originality of his vision and an iconoclasm that is neither trumpeted nor made visible until the subtext of his lines is closely studied.

More on Asim:

• Wikipedia page


• BBC feature


• Saatchi Online Gallery

Ramchand Pakistani

Speaking of stuff that's related to Pakistan (see my previous post), I'm really looking forward to watching Mehreen Jabbar's film 'Ramchand Pakistani' which I've heard good things about.

Ramchand Pakistani is derived from a true story concerning the accidental crossing of the Pakistan-Indian border during a period (June 2002) of extreme, war-like tension between the two countries by two members of a Pakistani Hindu family belonging to the 'untouchable' (Dalit) caste, and the extraordinary consequences of this unintended action upon the lives of a woman, a man, and their son.

I don't know when we'll get to see it in Melbourne but I hope it's sometime soon.

[Also see 'Ramchand Pakistani' on IMDb]

Jazbah.org

Laila Kazmi's Jazbah.org -- a site about "Pakistani women who have worked hard to achieve great goals and made significant, positive impacts in their societies" -- has been around for a number of years but I've never gotten around to mentioning it on this blog. That's mainly because, even though it's a great resource, it's not updated very often and most of the profiles on it are a few years old.

However I visited the site again recently thanks to the Muslimah Media Watch -- I was commenting there on how it's only blogs like MMW and PakPositive that ever seem to talk about all the good things going on in developing countries -- and figured I should give it a mention. It's a good site and the events and books sections seem to be active, which is cool. Make sure you take a look.

Film Club in Lahore

During my undergrad I became president of Alpha Hour -- LUMS' extracurricular club that showed movies, invited guest speakers to campus, and arranged discussion groups on interesting topics.

While I was president, though, it ended up being more of a film club than anything else. Every Friday evening, then, I'd borrow the video projector, book the school's largest auditorium, and screen a couple of films. We'd show all kinds of stuff and, by the time I handed the club over to my juniors, it had become pretty popular.

The movie screening formula that I used also worked nicely: I'd show a popular movie or cartoon first (usually a comedy, romantic comedy, or action movie), take a half hour break, and then show a more serious movie (usually a drama, artsy movie, or cult classic). The first session usually filled the 370-seat auditorium, especially when we showed films like Titanic or Star Wars: Episode I. The second session, meanwhile, was targeted mostly to film buffs and/or hostel residents (I was both). I remember in particular our second-show screening of Apocalypse Now because, by the end of the movie, there were only eight people in the room :)

Coming to the point of this blog post: Having run a film club in the past, it made me really happy, then, when a friend e-mailed to tell me about the Punjnad Film Club that has recently started in Lahore ("alpha hour - all jumped up on volunteer adrenaline", he wrote). We have a number of cinemas in Lahore but all of them focus on mainstream movies (mostly blockbusters) and PFC is a breath of fresh air for people who want to watch other kinds of movies as well. Here's hoping they're wildly successful.

Good Times: Trekking and Playing Music

UPDATE: The Karakorams.com site has been taken offline so the photos embedded and linked-to from this blog post are no longer available. I am trying to find other versions to put here instead...but don't hold your breath. [Ameel; 25 August 2009]

A couple of friends recently posted some photographs of treks that I've been on and gigs that I've participated in over the past decade and it got me feeling all nostalgic. Since those photos were posted on Facebook, I figured I'd post some of them here while linking to other, public ones as well.

Trekking in the Karakorams

First off are some trekking photos. I did a lot of trekking and travelling while I was in college -- there's nothing quite like travelling with lots of friends while on a tight budget -- and most of those treks are nicely documented on Karakorams.com (which I helped develop, by the way). Here are photos from my three favourite treks.

My first real trek was to Fairy Meadows, which is a camp on the north side of Nagna Parbat. You can find many photos from that trip on Karakorams.com but this one is my favourites (click for a larger version):



This was taken bright and early on the second day of our trek. Alefia, who'd been feeling really cold and had woken up a couple of hours earlier, got tired of our laziness and came to wake us up. You can't quite see me in there but I'm the hint of a face in the darkness of the tent. Yasir wrote an article about this trip and even he mentions this photo :)

Our second trip was to one of the Rakaposhi base camps and, for this one, both Yasir and I wrote articles -- though mine is more of diary-type recounting of events which, when I read now, I'm itching to edit! I like two photos from this trek. This one is of me, Saqib (one of the two friends whose posting in Facebook prompted me to write this), and Alefia with the Rakaposhi peaks in the background:



And this one, which shows the ridge we had to climb across to get to our camp:



The path across this ridge was broken in four places and that photo is of one of the easiest crossings! You can find the rest of the Rakaposhi photos on Karakorams.com as well.

My third trip was to the Deosai Plains, which is one of the highest plateaus in the world. There are lots of really good photos from this trek but this one of Hasan as he positions his tripod to take a photo is my favourite:



Deosai really is a stunning place and I urge you to take a look at the rest of the photos as well.

Playing Music

Moving away from trekking: Back in 2005 a bunch of us in Islamabad got together and performed a couple of really fun gigs at Civil Junction.

What was possibly more fun than the gigs themselves were the jam sessions that we had at my house in the weeks leading up to the events. Sheharyar posted some of the photos from those sessions on Facebook and here are a couple.

This one is of me and Nadia -- we did most of the drumming and "percussing" for the band and, no, Nadia isn't normally surrounded by a motion blur:



The second one is a wider shot of the room -- the drawing room of our old house in Islamabad -- which had awesome acoustics. Sheharyar is the one with the guitar and mic:



Ah, good times. Here's to many, many more in the future...