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The Durrani affair is another bizarre reminder that our government is still fumbling. What we have is a grouping of what has come to be known by the ugly and insulting term “stakeholders”, who pull the wagon to which they are hitched in different directions. Sometimes the tug-of-war fails to move the wagon from the spot in which it is parked; at other times, it gets tugged in the desired direction, but not for long.

This is no way to run a railroad, obviously, but given the ramshackle system which has been more off the tracks than on it in the past, perhaps that is only to be expected. Of such a situation in which we find ourselves, it may be alleged that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. I would add that lucky are those who have just two hands. In our case, we have maybe half a dozen hands, each one of which operates independently.

The current government continues to claim that it has everyone “on board”: the parliament, the army, the opposition and the state bureaucracy. Nice claim, reassuring words, except that they are not all true.

After all, only the other day, after General (retd) Mahmud Ahmed Durrani was summarily dismissed, he said in an interview that in the matter of Kasab, the prime minister was “not in the loop”. Durrani, it should be pointed out, bore the official designation of national security adviser to the prime minister.

That does not surprise me because I know something about Durrani’s appointment to his exalted post. Durrani told me himself that during the months when the Americans were trying to cobble together a deal which would keep Musharraf with somewhat truncated powers in place, and a berth would be found for Benazir Bhutto as prime minister. All cases against Asif Ali Zardari, which would have kept him running around national and international courts for years, would be withdrawn as part of the arrangement. During those delicate and sometimes not so delicate negotiations conducted principally under Dick Cheney’s auspices, two people acted as important intermediaries: Husain Haqqani, who represented Bhutto’s interests, and Durrani, the conduit for some of the messages emanating from Musharraf.

Durrani, of course, knew Benazir Bhutto, though not very well. There was no personal link. She also was unable to forget — she had an elephant’s memory, like her father’s, for such things — that Durrani had been Zia-ul Haq’s military secretary for over three years.

I have Durrani’s own version of how he was appointed. As my family and I have known him since he was a captain posted at Sialkot, there always has been a personal link and our relations remained cordial during the two-plus years he was Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington — and a good one at that. When Durrani’ appointment was announced, I asked him how it had come about. This is what he told me. He said during one of Benazir Bhutto’s visits to Washington, he thought it would be right and proper to call on her at her hotel. An appointment was arranged and he was received by a smiling Benazir Bhutto. One of the first things she said to him was, according to what he told me, “What are you doing here? You should be national security adviser.” Durrani says he was taken aback but he smiled and made the kind of appropriate noises that one makes on such occasions.

The scene changes. Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi in the most mysterious circumstances on December 27, 2008. Durrani is called in by Asif Ali Zardari for a meeting. Sitting to his right in that room is Husain Haqqani. When Durrani’s face shows signs of unease because he obviously expects the meeting to be significant and not just social chit-chat (he has no personal links with Zardari), Zardari tell him, “That’s all right. He can remain with us.”

The next thing that Zardari comes out with causes great surprise to Durrani. Zardari tells him that he is going to “fulfil the promise that Bibi made to you. I want you to become national security adviser to the prime minister with the rank of federal minister.” Durrani accepts the offer on the spot.

Now a few cobwebs that I would like to clear. IH Burney used to say that one thing he would never do is question a Pakistani’s patriotism — and he never did, though others were not so kind to him. It has been maliciously whispered socially and written about in the gutter press and the blogs, the latter the new terror weapon, that Durrani is and has been a CIA “asset”.

This is contemptible nonsense. While it is true that he has many friends in India and Washington, including Shirin Tahir-kheli (who does not have the ability to persuade the US government to have a retired Pakistani general appointed to this or that high post in his country), Durrani is not the only Pakistani general or diplomat to have enjoyed such respect. General Jehangir Karamat is one of the most admired Pakistanis in Washington. Does that make him a CIA agent? Since independence, we have had some most distinguished Pakistanis serve as our representatives. More recently, Maleeha Lodhi enjoyed much respect here and was credited for her hard work. Does that make her a CIA “asset”?

It is time we stopped demeaning ourselves and questioning the patriotism of some of our best and brightest. Before I move to the next point, I would like to say that a similar campaign of vilification has been carried out against the present ambassador, Husain Haqqani. We should grow up and learn to respect our people and ourselves, otherwise no one will respect us.

The Durrani affair could be the tip of the iceberg. The problem is not Durrani but the lack of a sufficiently functional government. Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy, but who holds the levers of power? Unless this dichotomy is worked out, other Durranis will continue to be used as pawns in a power game that has to come to an end.

It is time the PPP government levelled with the people and admitted that there really is not going to be any UN investigation per se into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Why? Because the Government of Pakistan has failed to pursue the investigation with any seriousness, nor is it clear as to what exactly it wants. Over time, the impression, which is beginning to turn into conviction, has grown that the Zardari government is merely using the UN in pursuit of its own agenda. And that, of course, is something the UN will not permit itself to be used for.

There have been so many mixed signals from Pakistan that it is no longer clear to anyone in New York what the intentions of the government in Islamabad are. In fact, the very worst, the most cynical interpretation is being placed on Islamabad’s contradictory and changing position.

To begin with, when the demand for a UN probe was first made by the PPP, it was not in power. General Musharraf was. Once the PPP took office, its first order of business should have been the formation of a national judicial commission to investigate the assassination. It did no such thing and has shown no such inclination.

Strange statements have flowed out of responsible members of the PPP government. On July 23, 2008, it was said that the UN investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto could cost up to $100 million. On December 25, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, “It was Shaheed Benazir’s demand that her assassination be investigated by the UN.”

What an absurd statement! Does it mean that Benazir knew she was going to be assassinated and once that event came to pass, the investigation should be handed over to the United Nations?

On December 27, her grieving spouse stunned the world by declaring that that he “knew the killers of Benazir Bhutto”. I am not the first to make the point that failing to share information about the perpetrators of a crime amounts to collaboration. There has been no follow-up explanation of this extraordinary claim and no-one from among the leading lights of the PPP has had the courage or the decency to ask the leader for details.

Let me go back to the UN and how and in what manner it was first invited to get involved in the Benazir murder probe. On July 10, 2008, during a meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a broad understanding was said to have been reached on certain issues concerning UN help for Pakistan’s efforts to have the assassination investigated.

The meeting followed a request to the Secretary General from the Foreign Minister to establish an international commission to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN would be required to examine the modalities and structure of such a commission.

At the time, Pakistan claimed that a broad understanding had been reached on the nature of the proposed commission, unhindered access to all sources of relevant information and measures to safeguard the objectivity, impartiality and independence of the commission.

The UN was more guarded in its comments. “While we’ve made some progress in terms of arriving at a broad understanding of some issues, there is the need for further consultations with Pakistan, and possibly with other states, about the scope and the mandate of this proposed committee,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters. “We’re trying to help Pakistan as we can,” he added.

By early October, the Secretary General made it clear that the commission that Pakistan wanted the UN to set up would not be an investigative unit, but a fact-finding body. “This is not going to be an investigation,” he told his monthly press conference.

Ban said that during his discussions with President Zardari in September, they agreed that there would be “some sort of a commission under the United Nations.” Discussions were still going on technical matters such as who should be appointed commission members, how it should be funded and under what time frame and scope should it function.

“We’re trying to work out solutions,” Ban said, adding, “We’re still discussing it with the Pakistan government.” When asked why it was taking so long to set up the commission, he said that it could take “a little bit longer”, but will be done “soon”.

Pakistan in the meantime shifted its position as to the financing of the inquiry. Foreign Minister Qureshi said that as regards the funding mechanism, it should not be such that Pakistan alone would have to bear the cost. But, he said, discussions between the two sides were still going on.

The last UN press release makes it clear that there has been no progress on the issue. On December 26, 2008, Ban Ki-moon expressed the hope that an independent Commission of Inquiry into the circumstance of the killing of Benazir Bhutto could be established soon. He said his office had consulted the Pakistani government on the nature and scope of the Commission, which Pakistan has asked him to establish to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN was needed to examine other modalities and the Commission’s structure, including its scope and mandate.

The statement from the UN chief’s office after his meeting with Zardari said the UN “would see what it could (do) to support the request for an independent fact-finding commission,” adding that it would “explore further the precise modalities and brief of such a commission.”

A UN source who wished to remain anonymous said that he doesn’t know what goes on in meetings between Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ban or Zardari, but from the papers the impression at the UN is that the Pakistani government wants a commission which functions under its control. The UN is of the view that if it has to do the investigation, the commission should be under UN control and have a free hand to do its work. The commission should be able to visit any place, interview anyone and seek any related document.

“What the Pakistan government is trying to do is to write the terms of reference for a UN commission,” the source said. That is not acceptable to the UN. So as an alternative, the UN has offered to provide experts borrowed from various countries to join a Pakistani commission, but Islamabad wants a UN commission, while it wishes to limit its investigative work.

Islamabad has been backtracking in various other ways too. When Qureshi first made the request in July 2008, he said his government would bear all costs. Later, when rough estimates were given, Islamabad had second thoughts and urged the UN to seek help from other nations, a long drawn out process and a classic example of delaying tactics.

To this grim story, a bit of comic relief was provided in January by PPP’s unelected and unelectable secretary general Jahangir Badar, who declared that the UN would begin its investigation in January. He made the statement after returning from New York.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net

he other day, I asked someone who had phoned from Lahore how the city was. He replied, “You can see for yourself.”Cities change of course but while in Europe, they change for the better, in our part of the world, they go to seed. The old is not preserved and the new sticks out like a sore thumb because of its ugliness and disharmony with its surroundings. The old city of Lahore is an overpopulated slum. The various official beautifiers of Lahore have confined their efforts to The Mall, though only from Charing Cross to the Sherpao Bridge, whose design was altered from straight to forked in deference to the residential sensitivities of the inhabitants of Jarnailpura.

Lahore has always been a living city and few cities have known more devastation and glory than Lahore. I have been leafing through Old Lahore , a book published in 1924, made up of “the reminiscences of a resident” by the name of Colonel H.R. Goulding ISO, VD, late ADC to the King Emperor. It also includes a historical and descriptive account of the city by T.H. Thornton, BCS, “for many years Secretary to the Punjab government.” Colonel Goulding – in whose memory one of Lahore’s roads is named, unless it is now called Shahrah Subedar Sumandar Khan – recorded his memories of the city by way of articles published in the Civil and Military Gazette from 1922 to 1924. They were later put together in a booklet by E.D, Maclagan, whose family links with Lahore went back to 1846. His father, an engineer, used to occupy quarters over the Hazuri Bagh gate of the Lahore Fort. Thornton and J. Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling, produced summaries of the history of Lahore, which were printed in 1860 in a guidebook. Kipling was principal of the Lahore School of Art, which then became the Mayo School of Art and today we have it as the National College of Arts. We have of course failed to produce a Goulding or a Kipling or a Thornton. A. Hamid though has recorded his reminiscences of the old city of Lahore as it was in the early post-independence years. His pieces that appeared in my English translation in Daily Times have since been published as a book by Vanguard, called Lahore Lahore Aye .

It is hard to believe that the Ravi once flowed miles from where it lingers now, more like a drain than a river. Writes Colonel Goulding, “It was possible in those days, when the river was in flood, to launch a canoe in the neighbourhood of the present Veterinary College (old Bank of Bengal) and to paddle down past Anarkali’s tomb as far or father than the Chauburji on Multan Road.” During Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign, the Badshahi Mosque was used as a magazine for military stores. Not until 1856 was it fully restored at the orders of Sir John Lawrence, chief commissioner of the Punjab, who was formally thanked by eminent members of the Muslims of Lahore, led by Kazee Hufeezood-Deen, Nowab Abdool Rahman and Nowab Ahmud Ulla Khan, plus 67 others. They also recalled that “in consequence of the religious prejudice of the Sikh nation which is opposed to the tolerant wisdom of sovereigns and the laudable practice of kings, the offering of worship and prayer had become suspended, yea altogether ceased for some time.”

The crest of the ground on which Government College was built in 1877 was occupied in the former days by an old Sikh barrack which was later utilised as the government dispensary and quarters of the apothecary in charge. The residence of the principal was the government dak bungalow for the use of travellers. Around the same spot, stood a Presbyterian church in which the city’s early missionaries conducted services. The college was opened on January 1, 1864 in Dhian Singh’s haveli inside Taxali Gate, its first principal being Dr G.W. Leitner. The Lawrence Gardens once housed a rifle range before it was moved to Multan Road. Lahore’s first English language newspaper founded in the 1840s was called Lahore Chronicle , edited by Henry Cope. Both he and his paper, as well as the press, were located in Dai Anga’s mosque near the Lahore railway station. Rudyard Kipling was found a job at the Civil and Military Gazette by his father because he was unfit for civil service given his “defective eyesight”. The young Kipling was told by the editor to begin by “filling in telegrams and cutting things out o’ papers with scissors”. The model for Kim was not an Indian but a European boy, who “hatless and barefooted, with all the cunning of a typical street Arab, roamed about at will” around Anarkali and the Zamzamah. He lived in the bazar near Kapurthala House.

Governor Salman Taseer may not know that the house where he now lives is built around the tomb of Muhammad Kasim Khan, a cousin of Akbar the Great, who was a great patron of wrestlers and is tomb was known as Gumbaz Kushtiwala. During Sikh rule, it became the residence of Jamadar Khushal Singh. The Mall was first aligned in 1851 by Lt. Col. Charles Napier, chief engineer of Punjab, to run from Anarkali to Mian Mir (the cantonment). The high court is the site of the shrine of Shah Chiragh, in front of which stood the only chemist shop in Lahore, Richardson & Co, the predecessors of E. Plomer & Co, which still bears the same name.

Lahore finds mention in Ptolemy in A.D. 150, who calls it Labokla. The Chinese traveller Hwan Thsand who passed through Lahore in 630, speaks of a large city populated by Brahmins. There is something to Lahore that has made it different from other cities of the subcontinent. It was Akbar’s capital for 14 years and he had gardeners brought over from Iran and Turan to cultivate vines and various kinds of melons, records Abul Fazal. Also introduced by Akbar was the manufacture of silk and woolen carpets. One of the two Englishmen who passed through Lahore in 1626 called it “one of the best cities of India, plentiful of all things, such a delicate and even tract of ground as I never saw before.” In closing, I would say that were Sebastian Manrique, a Spanish monk who passed through Lahore in 164, to come to life and return, he would have to rewrite his description of the city as he found it 367 years ago. Consider: “What I most admired was the moderate price at which things might be had. A man might eat abundantly and royally for two silver Rials per day. The abundance of the provisions and cleanliness of the streets surprised me much; also the peace and quietness with which everything was conducted, as well as justness and rectitude of people towards each other, so that merchant and merchandise remain perfectly secure from thieves.”

With the exception of cigarettes, which bring no benefit of any kind to anyone, there is nothing under the sun that does not produce some good.

Take 9/11.

Of course it put everyone living in the West with a Muslim name and what are euphemistically called “Middle Eastern looks” under suspicion as possibly being a distant cousin of the uncle of the man who had a brother-in-law, whose wife’s sister’s husband’s maternal uncle once shook hands with Osama bin Laden’s driver when OBL was living in Peshawar under the CIA’s benign care back in the Mujahideen’s heroic jihad against the infidel Russkies.

That was the bad news.

So here is the good news.

In brisk business and in a good deal of demand is an outcropping of Muslim comedians in the United States, Canada and England. Some time ago, three of them went on an Axis of Evil tour of Europe and were a sell-out.

Even the staid Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has run a documentary featuring Muslim comedians and some of their acts. Not all the faithful think what these people are doing is funny. Some of them consider these fellows — and there are a couple of very funny girls too — traitors to the faith, never missing a chance to rile against them, accusing them of denigrating Islam and making fun of their own people. One bearded gentleman, who spotted one of these comedians boarding a flight, shouted after him, “You are going to hell. That is where you’re going.” The man ended up in London, which, despite its wet summers and double-decker buses, is not quite the site of that great bonfire in the sky.

The American Muslim stand-up comedians — which means guys and gals who stand out there and make jokes, just as our own Omar Sharif does — who have become famous — or infamous as some of the brothers would have it — are: Ahmed Ahmed, Azhar Usman, Dean Obeidallah, Maysoon Zayid, and Tissa Hami. The PBS documentary pointed out that “many of these comedians do jokes about misconceptions of Islam and Middle Eastern and South Asian groups, using their humour as activism for their races and faith.”

Racial profiling and the going over given to Muslims at American airports is the staple of most of their jokes. Maysoon and Tissa, the two women, joke about their experiences as Muslim women. One of them wears a headscarf while she performs, which also serves as a prop for some of her jokes.

Azhar Usman, who is of South Asian origin, takes the stage and greets his audience with a resounding Assalam Alekum, then asks if they know what that means. “It means,” he goes on, “that I am gonna kill you.” His show, billed Allah Made Me Funny, has toured major US and Canadian cities, as well as Europe. There have been invitations from several Arab countries.

One popular stand-up woman comedian is Shazia Mirza, whose family is from Pakistan, though she grew up in England. She jokes about 9/11, sex-hungry Muslim men and the fact that she remains a certified virgin. Some of Shazia’s jokes run like this: “The women in my family all use the same passport.” “I said, Oh, come on, Germany, join the war, it’s not the same without you.” “My name is Shazia Mirza — at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence.”

She has received many death threats from “pious God-fearing Muslims”. One of her routines, “The Last Temptation of Shazia”, has her performing in front of a board plastered with printouts of the hate mail she receives some of which she pulls down and reads from. She says in her travels through Europe, she has been mistaken for everything ranging from suicide bomber to a character in a Harry Potter book.

In an interview with Priya Jain for Solan.com, Shazia said, “I stand up onstage for an hour and a half and make people laugh and tell them mostly the truth — most of the stuff is true, it happened to me — and then I go home and pray. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t take drugs, I don’t eat pork, and I’m a good Muslim. I don’t understand why people say I can’t be a comedian. I don’t relate the two at all.”

In one of her shows in Texas, Shazia said, “If nuns are all married to God, then God must be a polygamist.” It did not go down very well with the very Christian crowd.

The three Axis of Evil comedians — Dean Obeidallah, a Palestinian-Italian American, Ahmed Ahmed, a Muslim Egyptian American actor who couldn’t land “terrorist” roles because of his excellent English, Aron Kader, a Palestinian-Mormon American actor and Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American who bunked a PhD programme — spoke to Wajahat Ali of Altmuslim.com.

Obaidullah told Ali, “I’m surprised Fox News doesn’t give hurricanes Muslim names at this point just to screw with us even more. Why not? Just pretend. Just blame us for a tornado, ‘Today they say it’s due to hot and cold air, but I think it’s due to Al Qaeda’.”

On a serious note, he said, “I hope it encourages and inspires more Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims to get involved in the entertainment field, and all forms of the media. So often we sit and complain how we are demonised and portrayed horribly, the only ones who will ever clear our name is us. The burden is on us. No one is going to do us a favour.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net

egum Para, who passed away in her sleep in Mumbai in December of this year, was born on Christmas day 82 years ago, in Jehlum. Her father, Mian Ehsanul-Haq, was a judge who at some point in his life went into the judicial service of the princely state of Bikaner, now northern Rajasthan, where he became chief justice of its highest court. Although Begum Para never came to live in Pakistan, except after 1974 for some time when she lost her husband, the handsome actor Nasir Khan, Dilip Kumar’s younger brother, much of her family moved to Pakistan after 1947. Her father was a fine cricketer of his time, a talent he bequeathed on his son. MU Haq, who was seen as a dead certainty for the 1954 cricket tour of England but, because of an unfortunate misunderstanding with Skipper Abdul Hafiz Kardar, was left out, an omission that broke his heart. Years later, MU Haq built himself a magnificent house in Karachi that he named “Midwicket.” He died earlier this year, mourned by all those who knew him and knew of his lifelong devotion to cricket and the great service he rendered to the promotion of the game, particularly in Karachi. The bitterness of the 1950s with Kardar must have gone mellow over time because in 1976 when I applied for a membership with the MCC, handing over my completed application to Skipper when he came on one of his visits to London, my proposer (I learnt only recently from MCC) was Asif Ali and my seconder MU Haq, both of course MCC members in good standing. MCC’s total number, I should add, is not allowed to exceed 15,000. Current membership waiting period: 30 years.

But to return to Begum Para, the land-owning family of her father came from Jullandhar, the city that has given birth to an amazing range of talented people. KL Saigol came from Jullandhar, as did Dr Jehangir Khan, the only cricketer to have felled a sparrow at Lord’s with one of his sizzlers. That shaheed-e-cricket bird is now immortalised behind a frame in the Long Room at Lord’s, along with the man who sent it to cricket heaven. Jullandhar also produced the stylish hockey player and even more stylish journalist, HK Burki. There is something to certain cities when it comes to the production of remarkable men. Take Amritsar, for example, when one thinks of literature. Consider the names and marvel: Saadat Hasan Manto, Bari Alig, A Hamid, Saifuddin Saif, Zaheer Kaashmiri, Ahmed Mushtaq, Shad Amritsari and Javed Shaheen, to name a few. And although he was not a poet, there has never been a political wit like Sardar Muhammad Sadiq, who also came from Amritsar.

In those days, Muslim girls from “respectable” families were not supposed to become actresses. That was a profession said to be the preserve of girls from the “bazaar.” But this incandescent beauty, Begum Para, was a rebel and once she got it into her head to join the movies, she was not to be stopped. As it was, she was already in Bombay, having gone there to visit her brother Madsrurul Haq and his actress wife, the dusky Bengal-born beauty, Protima Dasgupta. Bombay of those days was the magic city that all romantically-inclined youngsters from Indian towns, small and big, dreamt of running off to. I remember old Mir Muhammad Ali, owner of Shabeena Hotel, the only den of minor sin in Sialkot, saying, “I love the Quaid-e-Azam but what sort of country has he given us! There is nowhere for young boys to run to now.” When news that Judge Ehsanul-Haq’s daughter was in Bombay to become an actress, some saw it as a huge scandal and felt that it had brought embarrassment to the family. However, when the family realised that young Para was not to be dissuaded, it fell in line and did not stand in her way.

Begum Para managed to make it, given her smashing looks and her determination to become a star. She was not what may be called a “great” actress but she was a trooper. Her first movie, according to my film encyclopaedist friend Muhammad Rafiq in England, was the 1944 Prabhat production, Chaand , with Prem Adib playing her lead. This was followed by Chhamia a year later and then in quick succession: Shalimar and Sohni Mahniwal (1946), Duniya Ek Sarai, Lutera, Mehndi, Neel Kamal and Zanjeer (1947), Jharna, Shaahnaaz and Kidar Sharma’s Sohag Raat (1948), Dada (1949), Meharbaani (1950), Ustad Pedro (1951), Laila Majnu , Naya Ghar (1953), Aadmi (1957) and Do Mastaane (1958). The three movies, Dada, Dara and Ustad Pedro starred Sheikh Mukhtar, the Anthony Quinn of Indian cinema, who played a Bombay street lord, with the T-shirt-wearing, ebullient Begum Para as his sidekick. These three movies were great hits. As happens in the hard-hearted world called the movies, Begum Para’s star was setting as new and different kinds of actresses, with more dramatic talent than looks, had emerged. Begum Para retired gracefully and never looked back. Everyone had forgotten who she was when, in 2007, she agreed to make her last movie, Sanwarya . She was very ill by then and would come to the set in a wheelchair but stay all day without showing any complaint. She would regale the cast with stories that dated back half a century, long, long before any of her listeners was born.

The family linkages of Begum Para are fascinating. He elder brother, Masrurul Haq, had gone off to Bombay in the late 1930s to become an actor. There he had met and fell in love with the comely Bengali actress Protima Dasgupta, who was born in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, in 1922. Begum Para’s older sister Zarina’s daughter Rukhsana Sultana is the mother of the Indian actress and show business personality Amrita Singh. Rukhsana Sultana married Shavinder Singh, the younger brother of the novelist Khushwant Singh, and the son of Sir Sobha Singh of Lahore. Begum Para’s son Ayub Khan is an actor and so is his wife Niharika, who played a faded movie star, with advice from her mother-in-law, in Khoya Khoya Chand. She said, “I couldn’t give Niharika my own examples as I was not like the ‘good’ actresses. I always played negative, bold characters – would wear backless blouses, in those times it was quite bold.” In an interview last year after the release of her last film, which did not do well, Begum Para said, “I’m 80 now. It was a great experience working after so long. Although I must admit, I felt a bit anxious about facing the camera after so many years.” In another interview, she said, “I have millions of memories from those days. I didn’t smoke as I never liked it. But I did drink even when it was considered taboo. I used to hold a glass of whisky openly, unlike other actresses who mixed whisky in colas and pretended that they were teetotalers.” Talking about her contemporaries, she said, “I miss my friends Nargis, Geeta Bali, Nadira, Shyama, Motilal, Sitara Devi and Nilofer. We used to often meet and paint the town red. I’m also getting old now so the telephone is the only way to communicate.”

No one will disagree that here was a woman who lived life on her own terms and brought sunshine into the lives of millions of her fans, including those American GIs in Korea who would stick her picture on the cover of Life in their bunkers.

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