06 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 07
08 I February 24, 2013
10 I February 24, 2013
12 I February 24, 2013
14 I February 24, 2013
16 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 17
18 I February 24, 2013
20 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 21
22 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013I 23
26 I February 24, 2013
28 I February 24, 2013
30 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 35
36 I February 24, 2013
Lahore to London
February 24, 2013I 37
T
he pre- eminent Pakistan School of fashion Design (PSFD), established in 1995, has now been transformed into a larger organization and renamed as Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design (PIFD). PIFD is now a chartered institute and its degree is recognized at national and international level. Institute is affiliated with Ecole de La Chambre Syndicate de La Couture, Paris for fashion Design Program, and with Mod’Spe a leading French school for Fashion Marketing & Promotions for School of Fashion Marketing, apart from other collaborations for student exchange programs for high standards and country, Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design is comprised of the following four Schools and offers 4-year Bachelor Degree programs in 6 disciplines: Pakistan School of Fashion Design Pakistan School of Fashion Marketing & Merchandising Pakistan School of Textile Design Pakistan School of Accessories & Products (Jewelry Design and Gemological Sciences, Furniture Design and Manufacture, Leather Accessories and Footwear) PIFD has established six Constituent Colleges in 2011 with the support of Ministry of Commerce, Govt of Pakistan in collaboration with Trade Development Authority of Pakistan with the vision to promote indigenous industry in order to capitalize on the strengths of the local economy. Collages are operating in the cities of Islamabad, Multan, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Hala. PIFD focuses on developing the student’s analytical, creative and technical skills so that they are made aware of the different possibilities and are capable of creating and promoting appropriate products for the global consumer of today. The School of Fashion Design now under PIFD has completed 16 years since its establishment. The school is proud to host an impressive track record of creating successful designers.
38 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 39
Maheen Karim – Snap Chat By Sumeha Khalid
The uber chic designer Maheen Karim talks to Pakistan Today in a candid snappy chat session about her likes and dislikes… Read on…
You love: Fashion
You hate:
Artificial people
Mode of chilling out:
With family and close friends
Dream date:
40 I February 24, 2013
Hugh Jackman
Dream destination: Sardinia
Something nobody knows about you: Let’s leave it at nobody knowing!
Guilty pleasures: Definitely desserts!
Qualities u look for in a guy: Maturity, sensitivity and ambition
You hate in a guy: Alpha male complexes
First thing you notice in a guy: How he holds himself in a crowd
Your kind of style: Elegant
Your list of must-haves:
These change every so often but nowadays: Celine Phantom Chanel Clutch Louboutin Pumps
You regret:
Never have regrets, one makes a decision according to prevailing circumstances, not hindsight.
Your kind of music:
Dire Straights, Atif Aslam...and I am a huge Bollywood music fan
Your kind of food: Italian for sure!
The one thing you want to change about you:
I am a nervous wreck before a show or important event... I need to change that asap!
On the romatic front:
Hopeless romantic!!!! Not sure if that’s a good thing.
In another life you’d like to be:
Me again! I feel God has been kind, life has given me many great experiences and InshAllah there will be more. I love my family and friends...there’s nothing I would change.
February 24, 2013I 41
Recipe
&
Shrimp
Avocado SummerRolls Ingredients: 9 large shrimp, boiled, peeled and halved lengthwise red leaf lettuce, rinsed, dried and torn to fit 2 medium carrots, julienned 1 medium seedless cucumber, julienned 1 cup red cabbage, shredded 1 avocado, sliced About 1 ounce cellophane noodles, optional (I divided my 3.75 ounce package into fourths and used one) 1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar (only needed if using cellophane noodles) fresh basil fresh coriander spring roll wrappers, round
42 I February 24, 20130, 2012
Method: Cover cellophane noodles with boiling water and let them stand for 10 minutes. Drain and toss with rice vinegar. In a round pie plate that’s bigger than the wrappers, add enough hot water to come half way up the side. Working with one at a time, submerge the spring roll wrapper in the water for 10-30 seconds until soft and pliable but not torn. Lay the wrapper on a large piece of parchment.
Place 3 shrimp halves, cut side up in the middle of the bottom half of the wrapper. Arrange other ingredients with the shrimp leaving at least an inch on the sides (the fresh ingredients should be no longer than 3 inches). Bring the bottom of the wrapper up and over the pile and begin to roll gently, making sure you get it tight but don’t tear the delicate wrapper. Tuck the ends in as you go. Set aside until all rolls have been assembled. Cut in half and serve with dipping sauces.
February 24, 2013I 43
44 I February 24, 2013
February 24, 2013 I 45
Books
A study of Pak-Afghan Frontier The title under review is the history and ethnography of the North-West Frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan which is purported to be ‘a place beholden to imagination, myth and fiction’ By Syed Afsar Sajid
T
HIS book, authored by a duo of British and American research scholars, is one of the latest publications on a strategic subject of increasing interest to the West – the history and ethnography of the North-West Frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan which is purported to be ‘a place beholden to imagination, myth and fiction’. The thesis propounded, and elucidated, in it is that ‘the Frontier is a space of richly textured meaning, constructed through a history of movement of its inhabitants and their understanding of the world beyond’. It is intended to offer as a corrective to the simplistic understanding both of the region’s history and its current realities and thus deepening the understanding of the reader about ‘the ever-evolving complexity of this globally significant region’. Such an understanding of the frontier would seem to avoid ‘the homogenizing narratives which dominate both policy and popular understanding of this space while at the same time rejecting the idea that it is utterly fractured by
46 I February 24, 2013
Fragments of the Afghan Border By Magnus Marsden & Benjamin D. Hopkins Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi Pages: 301; Price: Rs.995/-
intractable divisions’.Besides the conventional elements of its content like ‘introduction’ and ‘epilogue’ etc., the work is divided into seven chapters captioned: The Problem with Borders; Managing ‘Hearts and Minds’: Sandeman in Baluchistan; Sitana and Swat: Patterns of Revolt Along the Frontier; The Past becomes Present; A Tour not so Grand: Mobile Muslims inNorthern Pakistan; Muslim Cosmopolitans? Transnational Village Life on the Frontiers of South and Central Asia, and Geographies of Profit and Security: ‘Return’ to Afghanistanand Beyond.Chapter 1 relates, inter alia, a boundary dispute between the Afghan kingdom and the Qajar kingdom of Persia over their border in Sistan. Chapter 2 highlights an episode of British imperial administration of the Frontier and its legacies in the region. Chapter 3 examines the history of religious violence in the region. Chapter 4 connects the book’s historical and anthropological parts whereas Chapter 5 and 6 focus on Chitral and its ‘internal heterogeneity and connectivity’ to the outside world. The last chapter (7th) is a continuation of the previous two besides ‘at the same time moving to a different location, namely Afghanistan itself’. The authors perceive the Frontier as composed of a ‘collage of interlinked and overlapping spaces’ that are ‘inhabited by a diversity of often-fluid communities, as well as complex and shifting identity formations’. The multiplicity of these spaces does also envisage
The authors perceive the Frontier as composed of a ‘collage of interlinked and overlapping spaces’ that are ‘inh abited by a diversity of often-fluid communities, as well as complex and shifting identity formations’
a multiplicity of their histories, communities and life-worlds alluded to as ‘fragments’ in the book – repelling and attracting one another simultaneously. The prevailing intellectual environment is stated to be focused on a premise that ‘Afghans and frontier people more generally are uncivilized and incapable of self-rule, but that the cost of civilizing them is prohibitively high’. They (the authors) have ventured to dispel this notion in the book and forced the question ‘of how policy-makers and institutions deal with a region marked by such fluidity’! They have argued for the need for those who make policies to acknowledge ‘the sophistication
of this region and its people, and in doing so to design commensurably sophisticated policy prescriptions and actions’. While a number of discrete episodes to explain the varied experiences of the Frontier have been presented in the book, these have also been picked up to elaborate common themes ‘that run along the Frontier geographically, historically and culturally’. The book aims to trace the lived experience of the Frontier from two different angles. First, the writers claim that rather than approaching the Frontier as a politically divided territory they have approached it as ‘an encompassing yet internally differentiated arena where diverse polities, peoples and cultural influences have interacted with one another’. Second, it explores ‘the ways in which the political boundaries, expectations of behaviour and everyday experiences of cultural heterogeneity are negotiated, experienced and perceived by Muslims living in the region today’. The writers are of the view that the Frontier is ‘a space that has often exerted a formative influence over imperial and national centres’ and that its people are not ‘some species of isolated rural dweller, or traditional tribesman, but rather are highly mobile citizen-subjects inhabiting a cosmopolitan world that they both critically conceive and creatively construct’. Thus the book provides an apt exposition and analysis of the region’s history-cumanthropology vis-à-vis the current global or topical realities.
February 24, 2013 I 47
Film
Murder 3
I
re-making a film of some other language in Hindi – and declaring the same before the film is released is actually a very clever move that director Vishesh Bhatt had made. So in case one has watched the Spanish thriller ‘La cara Oculta’ (‘The Hidden Face’) – one might actually not want to go through the Hindi version of it. ‘Murder 3’, you guessed it correct, isn’t worth that much the effort. Debutant director Vishesh Bhatt has done a moderate job of directing this thriller – but it is an exact copy (okay, re-make!) of its Spanish counterpart. ‘Murder 3’, also, ends on a note which is a bit abrupt. The film has its share of thrills and chills in parts, but doesn’t really leave a dent on one’s mind eventually. Vikram (Randeep Hooda), a wildlife photographer in South Africa, gets a lucrative contract which involves him shifting to fashion photography and moves to Mumbai with his girlfriend Roshni (Aditi Rao Hydari). The two have everything going their way with fancy palatial houses in Mumbai (that needs some clarification, though… where exactly in the city do you find such houses!), beautiful song sequences and so on. A fairy tale – just that the wonderland gets tainted by hints of suspicion. Roshni suspects Vikram to be cheating on her with his hairstylist Niyomi, and decides to leave him. She leaves a recorded video message and Vikram’s world comes crumbling down. The man whiles his time away in gallons of whiskey and a lot of work. Enter Nisha (Sara Loren), a curvaceous waitress at the bar Vikram frequents. Nisha is sympathetic towards Vikram and as she says, “… tanha mard ke aankhon mein aansoo mujhe
48 I February 24, 2013
pasand nahi hain” (I don’t like tears in the eyes of a lonely man). She takes the drunken Vikram home one night when the latter is hit in an altercation, and so begins Nisha and Vikram’s affair. She moves in with Vikram, in his house, after a bit. Roshni, meanwhile, has mysteriously disappeared and according to the police, Vikram is at the crux of it all. And then there are weird noises from the washroom
which almost robs Nisha of her sleep. Nisha is convinced that the house is haunted and tells Vikram of it all, who laughs them off. Obviously, there’s a lot more than what meets the eye. Randeep Hooda as the wildlife/ fashion photographer could have done much, much better with a different hairstyle. As far as acting is concerned, Hooda does a fair job.
February 24, 2013
I 49
50 I February 24, 2013