mehakjamal-blog

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Redesigning the cover of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini.

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Rafa love!

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Junkyard of Dreams.

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My Childhood City-Kashmir A walk down memory lane

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Adios Amigo

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,

open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one,

even as the river and the sea are one.

Only when you drink from the river of silence,

shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

then you  shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

then shall you truly dance.

  The Prophet

Kahlil Gibran

    The number of times I met Sajid can undoubtedly be counted on the fingers of one hand,but the impact they had on me can span many oceans.I sit now pondering over what to write about you from these brief encounters as your book in its bright blue cover  stares out at me,reading “Kashmir” in bold yellow letters.

  Whenever I met you,you always had the same crooked,amused grin on your face,as if you knew something we were all oblivious to.And I’m sure you did too.

You had an Agha Shahid Ali persona about you.A lovable yet eccentric aura surrounded you.Be it your love for your homeland or your incessant need to feed people,you two were birds of the same feather…..both gone too soon.The scene at Barcelona airport where he clutched his heart and screamed “Only my heart!” when asked if he was carrying anything that could be dangerous to the others passengers wouldn’t seem any different if it came from your mouth.

Your manic sense of humour had an indelible impact on me and my homepage on Facebook seems incomplete without your epic statuses lightening it up.Ironically the only ones that I remember are the ones about weddings.From you wanting to marry Mani Shankar Iyer if he were a girl to saying whether Kate Middleton would be allowed to wear a veil if she were in France.To your last one about Kashmiri weddings having too many cards,it chokes me up to realize that your beautiful life ended not far from one.

  The last time I met you was for tea at your home.It was spring and we  were experiencing an unusual bout of “Posh Taer” as it was raining.You were the perfect host even asking Aashna and me,“Waazwaan poora kha paate ho?”when we refused to eat.We discovered our mutual love for Darjeeling Green Tea but stood at opposite ends on our tennis views.You with Federer and me the die hard Rafa fan.By the way,you went to Wimbledon?How can you go to Heaven AND Wimbledon?Not fair Sajid!

  Melancholy surrounds me as I think of that momentous day,so filled with life and laugher.Little did I know that I’d be in that same room a month later but the atmosphere would be very different.The tears I shed for you seem so less to me that I wish I’d known you better so that I could cry more.The weather on your Chauharram was very erratic.It was almost as if God was confused, but I don’t think so….he was just angry at himself for killing the wrong guy.

  You can always tell how a man was from the friends he kept,and if so you pretty much rocked!The world (and Facebook) is a sadder place without you illuminating it but I’m sure heaven’s a happier one. Now that you stand at The Ghat Of The Only World,I’m sure Shahid could not have asked for any better company.Shahid and Sajid make a great duo!And yeah I bet the view is pretty darn good!

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Mono printing on cloth! Part Dos

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Mono printing on cloth! Part Uno

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Frida according to me.

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Explore, Experiment & Design to Create.

(via faquih)

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Paper Airplanes

In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was,

imagined a way of making it the ideal city,

but while he constructed his miniature model,

Fedora was already no longer the same as before,

and what had been until yesterday a possible future became

only a toy in a glass globe.

-Cities and Desires Invisible Cities Italo Calvino

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The Last Woman Standing

Should or should not women journalists be sent to war and conflict zones, has been a topic of great interest in the present times. That they often are molested and beaten up was always known, but this fact was always kept hush hush and under wraps. That was until CBS correspondent Lara Logan came out about her sexual assault while reporting from Tahrir Square in Cairo during February 2012. By speaking openly about it, she began a new revolution to increase the safety of women reporters in conflict hit areas.

She said and I quote, “I want the world to know that I am not ashamed of what happened to me. I want everyone to know I was not simply attacked – I was sexually assaulted. This was, from the very first moment, about me as a woman. But ultimately, I was just a tool. This was about something bigger than all of us – it was about what we do as journalists. That ancient tactic of terrifying people into submission or silence.”

This ancient tactic did not work this time. And this instance has become a painful reminder of what has been happening over years and never spoken about. Like a taboo.

Women journalists who have reported from war stricken areas over the years have their own stories to tell. Mother of four, Sky New’s correspondent Alex Crawford became quite a sensation after riding into Tripoli in a rebel pickup truck and broadcasting live news using a cigarette lighter socket to power her satellite. Wearing a tin hat amidst celebratory gunfire, she was the first to report from Gadaffi’s compound in Tripoli after his death. She became a trending topic on Twitter for the same.

Award winning Irish reporter from the Guardian, Maggie O’Kane, can tell a tale or two.  Along with the tools of her trade, her computer and satellite dish, which were cleverly hidden under Marlboros and underwear, to escape detection as she attempted to merge with the people in Bosnia during the Balkan war, she also carried something else. This something else was a pretty flowered dress. A touch of feminity can go a long way in wars. If she wore khakis and was walking down a road, a sniper wouldn’t think two seconds before shooting her. But if she had the dress on, he would pause for a few seconds and probably check her out. The army personnel are stereotypical macho men who try their best to show off. A commander would see her as a plaything and the more she batted her eyelashes and looked impressed, the more information she was likely to get. His men would think of her as ‘his chick’ and the fact that she was using sex to get information would be a given fact.

Tina Susman, the LA Times when rescued after being held captive in Somalia for three weeks, startled her rescuers by telling them that she hadn’t been raped. To them, the fact that a female reporter kept hostage for so long hadn’t been raped was hard to believe.

Another topic of debate which always comes up is that do men and women write differently in war zones? It is assumed that women generally go into the human aspect of things while men tend to suppress their feelings. Men write about the hard, gruesome stuff, while women tend to write about the feelings of the people and try to build an emotional connect with them. Women in war torn areas are more likely to talk to reporters of the same sex rather than opposite one, as they are more comfortable with them and in some cases, religious ethics come into play where women aren’t allowed to talk to Gaer Mehraam (Unrelated men). Though there are exceptions like Roy Gutman, who won a Pulitzer for his humanitarian coverage of the Balkan war, most people would argue that men and women do tend to approach war differently. So justifies Janine di Giovanni of London's Sunday Times, that many of her male colleagues get a high talking about 62mm mortars, AK-47’s and Kalashnikovs, rather than how war affects the place and the people.

 CNN's Christiane Amanpour has reported from many of the world's battle zones and her dark blue flak jacket has become familiar to American television viewers. "Christiane has a real flair for reporting emotional impact and emotional drama, but that's not to say a man couldn't do it," says Eason Jordan, senior vice president of international news at CNN. "It's too broad a generalization to say that women report one way and men another. But I would say that particularly from the Balkan region, women certainly have done exceptional work on reporting the human drama."

Even our own Barkha Dutt from NDTV went to Ladakh during the peak of the Kargil war, when few dared to do so.

Women have been branded just as wives, mothers and girlfriends for far too long. Just the fact that they can put it all on the line and go to war stricken areas to do their job breaks the stereotype. In doing so, they move away from their traditional roles and become equal to their male colleagues. Also the stereotype that women need special treatment, better food and facilities is diminishing.

When a woman is raped or molested anywhere, the first thing which is questioned is her clothes. In the case of most journalists, it is not so as they dress according to the social climate of a place. So it is sickening to hear some voices saying that Miss. Logan was assaulted just because she is pretty. If that is the attitude of the people, tomorrow they will say that she was raped ‘because she is a woman’.

The fact of the matter remains that even though men are prone to sexual attacks as well, women seem to be more vulnerable due to their branding of the ‘fairer sex’.

As Susman says, “Rather than questioning the wisdom of sending women into potential perilous duty or worrying for their safety, editors and news organizations should focus on preparing women (and men) for the threat of sexual violence and helping them avoid it.” says Susman. “I’ve rarely heard anyone say of men, “They’re too macho and always run toward the action, so maybe we shouldn’t send guys into war zones.’’

Where there is a Lara Logan, there was also a Daniel Pearl. Thus the International News Safety Institute (INSI) has been set up for the safety of both men and women who so bravely act as message bearers to us and the proceeds from the sale of the book (No Woman’s Land) will go towards it.

Every war reporter has their own style, whether man or woman. To rob them of their basic privilege of expressing themselves based on gender is a sheer offence to the human society. The INSI is a new hope for women reporters all over the world. And we hope that one day, they too will share their stories with us as their colleagues have done in ‘No Woman’s Land’ and help a new generation of women journalists to stay safe while bringing home the news. 

                                                                                                                                               Mehak Jamal

                                                                                                                                               FST 102   

        References:-

http://www.stylist.co.uk/people/women-on-the-front-line#image-rotator-1

http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=1513

http://themediaonline.co.za/2012/08/on-the-frontline-with-female-reporters/

http://www.unwomen.org/2012/05/no-womans-land-a-new-book-recalls-the-frontline-experiences-of-female-reporters/

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Who put the stone in my hand?

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Who put the stone in my hand? Of many a lost childhood in Kashmir…

  Ring around the rosy,

Pocket full of posy,

Ashes!   Ashes!

We all fall down!

  What do you do when protection turns into violation? A violation of your privacy, a violation of your dreams, a violation of your LIFE! This sadly is the situation that many young kids face in the Kashmir valley. A child here grows up seeing long hartals(bands), unnecessary beatings & killings and stones retaliated by bullets.  Fake encounters, bomb blasts and riots become a part of their day to day lives. These are some of the elements that paint this melancholy picture. Unmarked graves, half widows and frequent disappearances of young men just add fuel to the fire.

How does all this affect the psyche of a young kid you may ask? Long hours of idleness during curfews turn in days, which turn into weeks, which turn into months. Politics is served along with tea, kids being conditioned to think in a certain way. The major sentiment: hate. Hate towards those who confine them, their dreams and their desires. The army, the government, the country.  Education comes to a standstill. Hours are allotted each day so that civilians can move out to buy food, or move out at all. The highway remains blocked, a majorly non vegetarian population lives without meat for months together, the rare sight of chicken comes as a treat to their eyes.

 Out of sheer boredom, out of absolutely nothing better to do, out of frustration from sitting idle, a kid picks up a stone. He (mostly boys) may not know what the meaning of it is, but you need to while away time, and recreation comes in rather weird ways. And so the saga begins…

Of course this doesn’t happen always but when a fire is ignited, every spark emitted leads to a new chapter in their lives. What starts the fire? A little fuel like when a young boy like Tufail Ahmad Mattoo(17) is killed while returning home from tuitions for no apparent reason. This incident spirals out of control and the valley remains in deadlock for months together. I myself having seen this in the summers of 2008,09 and 10 can say from experience that it’s not all that fun, being cooped in your house with having nothing constructive to do. Many kids make it out of this stalemate and make their lives better, but some don’t, some can’t, the trauma still haunts them.

And the stone remains where it was. In their hands…

Mehak Jamal

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Natural Building with bamboo, mud, coconut fibers,rice husk etc. Glass bottle detailing and sculpting as well. 

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A touch of sunshine. 

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Can an object be called that very object if its purpose becomes redundant?

What do you call a lock which can't keep anything out...or in.

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Nandi Hills.