Fox on Fox

Mansoor Ijaz, self-proclaimed expert on Muslim affairs, a fox foreign affairs expert with a hitleresque mostache when questioned by fox on president musharaf's claim that osama was no longer in pakistan, the army having flushed all the possible hideouts, the guy goes and i paraphrase...well we have known for quite some time that osama might be under protection of some very powerful people in the border region....maybe on the iranian side...

so basically this guy tows the openly hostile US policy against iran but even the most basic knowledge of the region would reveal that iran would not harbor osama due to a lot of reasons primary being osama's anti-shia cadre....

when questioned on the attack on saudi consulate in jeddah, he accuses Iraqi insurgents to have done this...he in the same breathe accused the saudi royal family of tacit support for the insurgents...the logic defied common sense...he blamed the porous border between iraq and saudi arabia and that "they could be getting into saudi arabia" via the Red Sea....

...so the porous border between iraq and saudi arabia is the red sea is it....the border is in the north and red sea in the south....so despite this geographical impossibility, what route would they take (a) board a boat across the mediterranian sea cross into Eygpt and then sail across the red sea (b) cross jordon/syria and beat israeli intelligence to enter saudi arabia...

or simply cross over the heavily guarded "porous" piece of no-mans-land into the holy land..

something tells me that mr. mansoor ijaz does not know his facts...sad enough that he is of pakistani origin...

what the hell am i doing commenting on fox news anyway...back to work i suppose

the little wonder

The little one is watching the news with me…. She’s had been badgering me for don’t know what and I was not paying any attention to her…..

then realizing that I had just come back home from work and this was the only time I would be spending with her…I fake some interest to find out..

“yes baba, I will be needing hundred rupees”

“ok dear but how come you need the money”

“oh we are having a bomb blast at school tomorrow”

at this stage, i stop watching the TV…if she wanted my attention, she sure got it..

“excuse me honey, what did you say?”

“yes, a bomb blast in the school yard, we have it very year before we break for winter holidays” she says to me ..her eyes still focussed on the TV...

…then she realizes and adds.

“sorry baba, I meant bon-fire at school…not a bomb blast…I must have been watching the news story ”…and lets out her squeaky laugh

PTV does it again

I am in music heaven

PTV ran a tribute on Begum Akhtar and B4U, an indian channel shows a music video....a sikh guy covering bullay shah on acoustic guitar…and sounding pretty good ….good clean simple fun song with a brilliant concept of the translation available on the screen

This give me a new project...search for this sikh guy…it is a track covered and made a mess of by Ali Azmat who sounds like a hyena on crack…the kafi is “bulley-a, kee jaana main koon””…(bullay-shah..who knows what you are)

PTV music producer Khwaja Najmul Hasan has to his credit a lot of classic(al) music programs…I think it is a genre that he is comfortable with and has covered professionally with great results

….So it was a pleasant surprise to see PTV covering Begum Akhtar on a tribute series that they are doing on “muslim” singers of the subcontinent, (somehow the hindu ones are not really something that PTV consider worthy…old habits die hard I suppose and covering hindu singers may still be considered taboo…how sad really that an art form should be looked upon with such jaundiced approach)

anyhow a big thumbs up for the program is thanks to Nayyara Noor who sounded incredible…and a begum akhtar number she covered in the early 80’s, “kalee ghatta chayee….” which contains an excellent line beautifully done by this great lady “ay papeehay chup ho ja zara…tairay pee pee karnay say vo bayvafa yaad ayay hay”….shahreyaar zaidi, nayyara’s husband admitting on stage that it was nayyara’s version of begum akhtar’s classics at college that convinced him that she was the one for him

…I thought this was pretty sweet of him to admit on TV….surprisingly Tina Sani also gave an above average performance…what disappointed me was that it was a windy day and the sound producer did not detect the noise on his headphones to make some corrective action.

secondly mehnaaz and tahira syed could not do justice to begum akhtar and were pretty flat in their performances… tahira syed and this guy who were introducing begum akhtar and her lifestory overdid themselves for their over-enthusiasm made the written script sound a bit fake….the program seemed like genuine labor of love as far as production and selection of guests is concerned...most people look genuinely pleased with the performances

this is a series of 9 episodes and we have to suffer some more of the PTV antics of having the heart in the right place but doing doing justice to the content and being politically incorrect with a lot of things like what I mentioned above about PTV looking at music from the religious point of view...

So why did I say that I was in music heavan…well the sheer mention of begum akhtar is enough for me...even if i listen to a really bad cover by a local singer of any of her classics...i could hear the original in my head...