The Express Tribune Magazine - April 5

APRIL 5-11 2015

Childhood Lost How child workers are trapped in a vicious cycle in Pakistan

APRIL 5-11 2015

Feature

The art of storytelling

Cover Story

Two Pakistanis based in New York create a comicbook to break stereotypes and tell their South Asian story

Childhood Lost How child workers in Pakistan are caught in a vicious cycle

36 Feature

Crazy for colour Ghulam Lashari strives to maintain the first art gallery in Dadu

28 Tech

The perils of plastic ATM skimming is the new wave of cyber crime in Pakistan

20 4

42 Regulars

6 People & Parties: Out and

about with beautiful people 46 Reviews: Books 50 Health: Glaucoma: The sneak thief of vision

Senior Subeditors: Dilaira Dubash and Sanam Maher. Subeditor: Komal Anwar Creative Team: Jamal Khurshid, Essa Malik, Mohsin Alam, Talha Ahmed Khan, Hira Fareed, Maryam Rashid, Eesha Azam & Sanober Ahmed Publisher: Bilal A Lakhani. Editor: Kamal Siddiqi For feedback and submissions: magazine@tribune.com.pk Twitter: @ETribuneMag & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ETribuneMag Printed: uniprint@unigraph.com

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Sara Shahid and Maida

Aden, Shireen and Natasha

PHOTOS COURTESY DODY

Friends of Shaukat Khanum host the annual Festival of Life in Lahore

Omer Khan and Nayum

Mehreen and Munifa

6 APRIL 5-11 2015

Abbas and Farnaz

Awais, Annie and Maryam

Daniyal and Natasha

Ahmad Kardar and Maheen Kardar Ali

Ali Tariq and Zarmina

Zara Sajid

Hassan Iqbal and Saad

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Taskeen and Zain

PHOTOS COURTESY DODY

PEOPLE & PARTIES

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Muniba Mazari

Fiza Farhan

Nadia Jamil

Aatekah Mir Khan and Waqar Ahmad

10 APRIL 5-11 2015

Nestlé Pakistan and Aurat Foundation commemorate International Women’s Day with an event in Lahore

Kiran and Anam

Faiza Ilyas

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Pantene launches its new hair product Pantene Pro-V in Karachi Neelo Valentines in Karachi

Nina Lotia and Aamina Sheikh

Alizeh Pasha

12 APRIL 5-11 2015

Anila Ali and Marium Fahad

Maheen Hassan

PHOTOS COURTESY XENITH PUBLIC RELATIONS

Erum Qureshi and Sameea Zafar

PEOPLE & PARTIES Nida and Soraiya

Revolutionising the after-school space in Pakistan — The Dot & The Line launches with a fun-filled event for families in Karachi

Hiba Masood with the children

14 APRIL 5-11 2015

Parents

PHOTOS COURTESY FARAH AHED PHOTOGRAPHY

Maheen, Lina and Minail

TECH

THE PERILS OF PLASTIC

ATM skimming is the new wave of cyber crimes

BY OMAR SAFDAR | DESIGN BY HIRA FAREED

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) skimming — an illegal activity in which account details are stolen from the magnetic strip contained on the back of the debit card using an electronic skimming device placed over the card entry slot — has been around for a while. The cyber crime recently shook Pakistan when customers of a prominent multinational bank had Rs50,000 stolen from their accounts after a hacking attempt from England on the bank’s ATMs. It is still unclear how many of the bank’s customers were impacted by the hacking attempt but one of bank’s spokespersons assured the affected customers that they would be reimbursed for the stolen money.

There are three main items involved in this skimming fraud:

Hidden camera It is used to capture a customer’s personal identification number (PIN) and is usually attached above or at the side of the keypad.

Keypad overlay It is placed directly on top of an ATM’s original keypad and takes the place of a concealed camera. Instead of visually recording users punching in their PINs, circuitry inside the keypad stores the actual keystrokes.

Skimmer It looks very similar to the original card reader and is usually concave in shape (curving inward), while the skimmer is more convex (curving outward).

Skimming incidents

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• In January 2014, 13 men were indicted in the US for using Bluetooth-enabled skimmers to steal more than $2 million (a little over Rs203 million) from gasoline stations.

• The Aite Group USA has reported that in 2010, the average loss from skimming was $30,000 (Rs3,058,650) which rose to $50,000 (Rs5,097,750) in 2011.

• In July 2011, a global investigation lead by Europol resulted in the outbreak of an organised crime ring suspected of skimming more than 15,000 credit and debit cards. The group, based in Bulgaria, with links to the US, South Africa, Kenya, Italy, Spain and Poland, was responsible for losses of more than €50 million (a little over Rs560 million).

• The US Secret Service estimates that annual losses from ATM fraud totalled about $1 billion (a little over Rs101 billion) in 2008.

APRIL 5-11 2015

Different types of skimming • Point-of-sale (POS) skimmer: This involves the theft of debit card information while making an otherwise legitimate transaction. There is a possibility that the person at the counter might have hidden a skimming device inside the POS machine.

If the merchant informs you that the machine is not working or the network is not responding, make sure to verify this.

Another technique adopted by skimmers is to use a handheld POS skimming device. This is commonly used by waiters in restaurants to swipe a card and record one’s data while taking it to the cashier to prepare the bill.

• Card trapping: The perpetrator places a device on the card entry slot of an ATM which physically captures the card to retrieve later. Meanwhile, the PIN is captured by either a camera or a keypad overlay. The consumer leaves the ATM believing that his/her card has been captured. The card is then used to make fraudulent cash withdrawals.

• Cash trapping: This is a method through which cash is trapped while being dispensed by an ATM during a transaction. A device is attached to the ATM so that when the cash is about to come out, it gets trapped by the device. In this type of skimming, a false front is placed over the shutter of the dispenser using adhesive tape.

Precautionary tips for users

• Inspect an ATM before using it. Be cautious if you see anything loose and/or damaged or if you notice scratches or adhesive tape.

• Before inserting the card into an ATM, just give the front panel a little push to ensure that it is part of the machine. If the skimmer gets detached, immediately inform the bank or the police.

• Cover the keypad with your hand while entering the PIN. • Regularly update your PIN via an ATM. • Try to use ATMs located inside banks since it is difficult for perpetrators to install skimmers in the presence of the bank’s security staff.

How merchants can be wary of fraud

• Ask customers to verify their identity in order to ensure that the card being presented belongs to the person using it.

• Banks should conduct surprise inspections of POS equipment to check if anything has been tampered with.

• Do not give access to POS equipment to anyone claiming to be a technician. Request the technical support engineer to show some identification first.

• Maintain a list of all the devices with serial numbers and develop a routine to inspect the devices on a regular basis.

• Randomly change employees handling POS equipment to eliminate collusion.

Methods banks should adopt to fight ATM skimming

• PINs should be time-barred, after which an ATM or the bank should prompt the user to change it.

• Banks need to ensure continuous monitoring of their ATMs’ cameras.

• ATM manufacturers have tried a variety of anti-skimming technologies which include green or blue semi-transparent plastic casings that protrude from the card slot to prevent thieves from attaching skimmers.

• Since most perpetrators focus their attention on lifting data from magnetic strips, more than 90% of European ATMs have shifted to the ‘chip and pin’ approach, also known as the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and VISA) standard. EMV is a two-factor authentication protocol in which the chip and PIN authenticate the user.

• Appropriate lighting should be used to facilitate monitoring capabilities of surveillance cameras.

• Cameras should be positioned in such a way that they capture the area around the keypad without recording or viewing the PINs entered.

Omar Safdar has served in the Pakistan Army for over twenty years and is a certified protection professional (CPP). He specialises in the fields of loss prevention and corporate security. He tweets @omarsafdar_CPP APRIL 5-11 2015

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COVER STORY

Childhood Lost

BY SABA KARIM PHOTOS BY ARIOF SOOMRO DESIGN BY EESHA AZAM

A child rolling balls of flour to make fish feed.

How child workers are trapped in a vicious cycle in Pakistan

A child’s hands are meant to hold books and pencils.

But throughout history we have witnessed how some children have been forced to pick up tools and brooms and shoulder some of the burden to turn the wheels of the economy. During the 1700s and 1800s children formed an active portion of Britain’s labour force. Most were employed as domestic servants, in textile mills or at railway stations, ship

yards or coal mines. Worst of all, children below the age of nine or 10, mostly orphaned, were bought by Master Sweeps to climb up chimneys and sweep them.

This cruel act resulted either in death, irreversible lung damage due to soot or the formation of calluses on hands, elbows and feet. It wasn’t until Joseph Glass, an engineer from Bristol, England, invented a chimneysweeping machine that children were spared from performing this lifethreatening task. While the West has made considerable efforts to eliminate child labour — defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as work that deprives children of

their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development — from its shores, this hasn’t stopped companies from outsourcing manufacturing to lesser developed nations, such as Pakistan, where child labour is still endemic.

Pakistan’s underage workforce The last nationwide survey on child labour conducted in 1996 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, with technical support from the ILO, found that 3.3 million children out of 40 million children, between the ages five and 14, are economically active in Pakistan. The figure is composed of approximately 73% boys and 27% girls. According to the survey, the most cogent reasons parents or guardians

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59%

million or of child labourers can be found in the most important sector of agriculture, but the problems are not negligible in services (54 million) and industry (12 million), mostly in the informal economy.

SOURCE: MARKING PROGRESS AGAINST CHILD LABOUR — GLOBAL ESTIMATES AND TRENDS 2000-2012 (ILO-IPEC, 2013).

COVER STORY give for allowing their child to work included assisting in household enterprises, supplementing the household income and because no one else was available to do household chores.

For many belonging to Pakistan’s next generation, opting for labour at an early age is the only way to survive.

After his father passed away, 12-yearold Aziz’s family was left struggling to pay off loans so he took up work at a brick kiln near Jhallo Park in Lahore.

“Sometimes more than food and water, I dream of getting my childhood back,” says Aziz. “I look at other boys playing with cricket bats on the streets and I wish I could join them, even if it is just for one day.”

I take home $3 (approximately Rs300) a day on average, but the smile on my mother’s face when I see her at night makes up for what I have endured throughout the day

Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot, Multan, Peshawar and Loralai, amongst others, are key cities in the country where child labour is rampant. An ILO survey showed that in the absence of any effective legislation against child labour in Balochistan there are approximately 500 child mine workers in Loralai, some below the age of eight. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), there are approximately 1.5 million children currently employed, reports the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, an Islamabadbased child rights organisation.

Fareeha, who lives in Orangi Town, Karachi, has a similar story to share. After her 31-year-old brother, employed as a goldsmith, passed away due to jaundice, she took up work as a domestic helper alongside her mother.

“My father is unemployed and sleeps most of the time. When he is awake, he just roams the streets all day,” she says. But unlike Aziz and many others who suffer physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their employer, Fareeha says her employers have been kind to her. “She (her employer) treats us like her own family, gives us clothes and offers us the same food they eat, so I don’t miss going to school,” she adds. “We cannot afford to educate her with just a single source of income in any case,” reasons Fareeha’s mother, Mona. “So it is better that she comes to work with me and does something useful rather than getting involved in other harmful activities behind my back,” she adds.

Child worker Aziz

A child fixing a motorcycle headlight on the footpath.

APRIL 5-11 2015

According to Aziz, who works from the first light of day to midnight, his employer beats him with a cane every week. “I take home $3 (approximately Rs300) a day on average, but the smile on my mother’s face when I see her at night makes up for what I have endured throughout the day,” he says.

A lucrative option Despite a number of laws prohibiting child labour or regulating the working conditions of child and adolescent workers, including The Factories Act 1934, The West Pakistan Shops and Establishments Ordinance 1969, The Employment of Children Act 1991, The

Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 1992 and The Punjab Compulsory Education Act 1994, little progress has been made in the way of holding individuals accountable.

Employers, therefore, especially companies, continue to circumvent the law and hire cheap labour for greater profit margins in local and international markets.

Multinationals are notorious for hiring cheap labour in developing nations. The multibillion dollar sportswear company Nike, for instance, came under heavy criticism for being associated with child labour. In 2006, when the company was accused of supplying footballs stitched by children in Pakistan, it sacked its supplier and defended its position by claiming that verification of age in countries such as Pakistan is exceedingly challenging.

The sporting goods industry in Sialkot has been in the line of fire for decades for employing child labour to make goods that are sold in the international market for a fortune. The Adidas Brazuca used during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil was stitched in a factory in Sialkot, but it is still unclear whether children were part of its manufacturing process. “When I used to make the footballs, I would wish I could play with them one day as well,” says nine-year-old Kabir, who along with his father was involved in the manufacture of footballs in Sialkot until the factory they worked in was raided.

That hasn’t stopped Kabir from pursuing work elsewhere. He joined a carpet factory with his father to support his seven siblings. “The hours are still very long and my fingers really hurt with carpet weaving,” he shares. “When I hear that my carpets are being sold for thousands of rupees in malls, I dream that someday we will also be able to afford a carpet to decorate our home.”

Most child workers are victims of physical and sexual abuse.

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9.3%

million or of children in Asia and the Pacific work as labourers, but SubSaharan Africa continues to be the region with the highest incidence of child labour (59 million or over 21%).

SOURCE: MARKING PROGRESS AGAINST CHILD LABOUR — GLOBAL ESTIMATES AND TRENDS 2000-2012 (ILO-IPEC, 2013).

Battling child labour With growing global awareness — the ILO launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour — and media scrutiny, it is becoming increasingly difficult for countries and multinationals to blanket child labour. Many have faced severe consequences as a result. “The economic repercussions cannot be overlooked by Pakistan,” says Dr Ali Khan, chairperson of the Social Sciences and Humanities Department at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “A recent example includes Walt Disney, a leading US entertainment company, which stopped placing orders with Pakistani textile houses due to labour issues in the country. The annual loss [suffered

by Pakistan] as a result of this decision is estimated to be between $150 million and $200 million,” he says.

As a result, the government of Punjab partnered with the ILO to implement a seven-year project to eliminate child labour, particularly from brick kilns, worth approximately Rs5,159 million. This project involves

Abolishing bonded labour Pakistan has ratified a number of international covenants and conventions that proscribe slavery, forced labour and debt-bondage. The Bonded Labour system (Abolition) Act of 1992 was introduced with the avowed purpose of abolishing the bonded labour system, with a view of preventing the economic and physical exploitation of the labour class in the country and for matters connected to it.

In Pakistan, 3.3 million children out of 40 million children, between the ages five and 14, are economically active.

“integration, networking and coordination among various provincial departments and district offices, strengthening legislation, capacity building of project/government staff to ensure effective service delivery through monitoring and knowledge sharing and promotion of good practices with other provinces,” states the ILO. The project takes into account the results and lessons learnt during ILO’s 20-year collaboration with the government on various child labour and bonded labour interventions in Pakistan, reports the ILO. Unlike many initiatives that aim to simply free children from bonded labour, this project aims to rehabilitate freed bonded labour and empower affected families economically.

According to the government of Pakistan, so far 8,000 child and bonded labourers have been rehabilitated. “The government of Balochistan is also using its resources to address similar issues in the province,” adds the ILO. Under the 18th amendment, child rights fall under the domain of provinces. Along with Punjab, K-P’s provincial government also presented the K-P Prohibition of Employment of Children Bill 2015 and K-P Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Bill 2015 before the assembly on March 24 and aims to end the employment of children in the province.

Attempts have also been made at an individual level to break free from child labour. Iqbal Masih from Muridke, in Shaikhupura district in Punjab, is a striking example of a child slave who became a child activist fighting bonded labour. At the age of four he was sold into bondage by his family to pay off the Rs600 they had borrowed from the owner of a carpet factory. After Masih miraculously escaped from his slavery twice, he joined the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and helped more than 3,000 children escape a similar plight. At the age of 12, however, he was shot dead but has managed to inspire countless others to carry forward his legacy in the country.

Poverty around the world is known to exacerbate child labour and create inter-generational poverty traps. Children who forgo an education to contribute to the family income give up the dream of a better future. These children are exploited by employers who support and encourage child labour to further their gains. In the long run, however, this will adversely impact the country’s economy with a smaller skilled labour force.

Today, not only Pakistan but many developed nations who outsource manufacturing are guilty of robbing the country’s youngest generation the right to a childhood. While children will have their entire lives to work and earn once they turn 18, they only have a few years to enjoy the innocence of childhood.

Saba Karim has studied anthropology at the University of Oxford and currently works in Doha, Qatar.

The art of f storytelling Two New York-based medical residents use comic art to break stereotypes and tell their own South Asian story

BY SARAH MUNIR DESIGN BY SANOBER AHMED PHOTOS COURTESY: ZINDAN FACEBOOK PAGE

Creative arts are increasingly being used by the South Asian diaspora, including Pakistanis, to tell the world their unique stories. For two New York-based medical residents, Omar Mirza and Khurram Mehtabdin, a love for their ancestral roots and the desire to share that story with a global audience led to the creation of Zindan — a non-fiction comic series set in 17th Century northern India where South Asian superheroes save the day.

With its vibrant colours and meticulously sketched out characters set against grandiose backgrounds, Zindan (the Persian word for ‘prison’) is the perfect amalgamation of Mirza’s love for comics and Mehtabdin’s passion for South Asian and Middle Eastern history. The story revolves around Timur and Zain, two orphaned brothers who find themselves struggling for survival when the prison they call home falls in the hands of an evil, greedy king. Throughout their journey, they come across people from various cultures and religions.

“It’s a love story from me to my culture,” says 29-year-old Mirza, who was born and raised in the United States but still calls Lahore home. “If I write about the American experience, I might have a different perspective but the real, unique story is about my ancestry,” he says, referring to his Pakistani lineage. His former roommate, friend and co-creator of the series, Mehtabdin, agrees. “South Asian history and culture is a beautiful thing and

Omar Mirza and Khurram Mehtabdin at the New York Comic Book Marketplace 2015. we want its story to be told,” he says.

Moreover, the series is an attempt to showcase an element of South Asian Muslim identity to the world, which is different from the one that floods their newsfeeds and television screens daily. According to Mirza, art allows one to talk about things that might be brushed under the rug otherwise. “There’s a lot of strange and downright weird stigma associated in our culture regarding brown skin and its need to be fairer,” says Mehtabdin.

“That’s not an accurate representation of the majority of South Asia. Why not show the world that brown-skinned South Asians can have morals and do good?”

Work on the first issue of Zindan started in October 2013 when Mirza and Mehtabdin brainstormed ideas for a weekend and chalked out a rough sketch for what they wanted the series to look like. The next step was to find an illustrator who could breathe life into their story with the right imagery. Their prayers were answered in the form of Sajad Shah, a Miami-based comic artist who has been in the industry for several years. “I had always wondered why there weren’t any more ethnic heroes. Or why there were no more stories told about this particular time period (Mughal) [which] was so epic,” says Shah, who decided to come on board after a few initial exchanges with Mirza. “This was our way to do that,” he adds.

By pursuing their childhood passions of writing and drawing

Poster of the character of Timur 2014.

The Zindan team — Adelso Corona, Sabine Rich, Sajad Shah, Omar Mirza and Khurram Mehtabdin — at NYC Comic Con. along with successful day jobs, the team also hopes to change the conventional approach towards arts in a vast majority of South Asian households. “I hope Zindan becomes a vehicle to further this idea of creativity among Pakistani households,” adds Shah, who is an electrical engineer by training and the only one of his four brothers who continues to pursue sketching on the side. “Be a doctor, be a lawyer, be an engineer, but you can still be anything else you want to be,” adds Mirza.

However, the process is neither short, nor easy.

Along with balancing rigorous day jobs, the duo has to communicate with various team members located in different parts of the world and make sure the final product is in sync with everyone’s style. Hence, once Mirza and Mehtabdin chalk out every single scene and dialogue, the script is sent to Shah who draws out each character in pencil and decides the angle, pacing

There’s a lot of strange and downright weird stigma associated in our culture regarding brown skin and its need to be fairer. That’s not an accurate representation of the majority of South Asia. Why not show the world that brown-skinned South Asians can have morals and do good?

One of the creators of Zindan Khurram Mehtabdin

and look for each scene. As soon as the illustration is complete, the sketches are sent to inker Adelso Colona, who goes over them with black ink and forwards it to Venezuelan colourist Alonso Espinoza, who shades each character and scene according to the mood and time period in which it is set. Finally, the sketches come to letterist Jessica Jimerson who adds the bubbles and the accompanying words.

“Our team is scattered all over the world but technology and the Internet has made it possible for us to collaborate and work together on something we all care about,” says Mirza. The team not only coordinates and communicates virtually but has also used various social media platforms to build an audience for Zindan.

While they store at a few local comic bookstores, most of their sales take place through their website.

The team is also keen to enter the Pakistani market soon and is currently exploring various distribution channels.

While Zindan has been showcased at various conventions such as the Boston, Baltimore and the New York Comic Con, where it has been received positively by comic aficionados, Mirza admits that the venture is not financially lucrative. “I would be happy if I could just make a successful comic and earn enough [money] to keep making it,” he says. However, he realises the challenges that independent comic books are up against in a world dominated by giants like Marvel, backed by Disney, DC and Warner Bros and wants to set up a publishing studio in the long run to foster talent and provide a platform for collaboration between various artists.

Zindan senior editors Nadeem Mirza and Sayeda Abbas role playing as Timur and Tara.

Sarah Munir is a freelance multimedia journalist. She tweets @SarahMunir1

The city of Isfahan where Zindan is set.

FEATURE

Ghulam Qadir Lashari, founder of the Romesa Gallery in Dadu, has always been an avid painter.

The gallery serves as a makeshift classroom for students interested in learning how to draw and paint.

Crazy for colour An artist in Dadu strives to maintain the district’s first art gallery

BY GULSHER PANHWER PHOTOS COURTESY: SUJAG SANSAR ORGANIZATION

Ghulam Qadir Lashari is often called ‘crazy’ or ‘mad’ by locals in his home district of Dadu, Sindh. The artist and teacher accepts these labels with pride, saying such names only reaffirm his ‘commitment to colour’. “People call me and my friends crazy for spending our meager income and so much time on our artwork,” he explains.

Lashari and his four colleagues are the founders of Romesa Gallery, an art gallery tucked away in a small rented building in Dadu since 2007.

“The gallery is named in honour of a Sindhi queen of Tando Bago, a town in Sindh,” Lashari explains. “I wanted to express my love for the soil of Sindh, especially Dadu, by documenting important personalities and our cultural heritage through my paintings.” The entrance to the gallery 42 features two walls covered with paintings, including APRIL 5-11 2015

portraits of renowned late poet Ustad Bukhari and scholar and founding father of the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Allama II Qazi. The gallery includes a small verandah, which doubles as Lashari’s office and a meeting space for his friends, and a library of books that visitors or students can peruse. Two rooms form the main gallery.

The gallery welcomes many young visitors who have gone on to become drawing teachers or painters. Music-lovers also have a home here — Lashari’s colleague provides 10 children with musical training here; another colleague uses the gallery as a makeshift classroom for 12 underprivileged children.

Lashari, born in 1947, says he has always had an affinity for painting. In 1958, his teacher at Dadu’s Polite High School, Warial Soomro, encouraged him to pursue the hobby and work hard at transforming it into a profession. “I immersed

myself in my art and after I completed my education in 1970, I found work as a drawing teacher at the same school I had learned to draw,” he says.

After he retired from teaching in 1997, Lashari decided he did not want to spend his time idly. He organised an exhibition of his paintings in Karachi, Hyderabad and Dadu and paid for all expenses himself. After he received a favourable response, he approached the district coordination officer of Dadu to help organise another painting exhibition.

It was through these exhibitions that he reached out to younger artists and promoted his craft. Lashari has continued this outreach through the gallery by holding regular events and painting competitions here.

The gallery is named in honour of a Sindhi queen of Tando Bago, a town in Sindh, I wanted to express my love for the soil of Sindh, especially Dadu, by documenting important personalities and cultural heritage through my paintings Founder of Romesa Gallery Ghulam Qadir Lashari Lashari bears all the expenses of the gallery. While he says friends such as Hakim Ali Shah Bukhari, Ahmed Suhag, poet and senior advocate Muneer Gozai, Noor Muhamda Soomro, Sher Muhamad Bhurgri, Saleem Jamali and others encourage him, he bears all the costs of maintaining his pet project. He has also compiled a book of Dadu’s history through his paintings and is working to have this tome published.

Lashari says he dreams of expanding the gallery to include a hostel and other facilities where students from Dadu and other parts of the province or country could pursue an education and meet likeminded artists. “I aspire to make Romesa Gallery the Shanti Niketan of Sindh,” he says with pride, referring to the nerve centre of West Bengal’s art and culture, pioneered by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, and now a flourishing university town, attracting thousands of visitors every year.

Gulsher Panhwer is a consultant and freelance columnist focusing on environmental and cultural issues.

Lashari has also compiled a book of Dadu’s history through his paintings.

Lashari’s colleague provides 10 children with musical training 43 at the gallery.

APRIL 5-11 2015

BOOK It had the makings of the perfect firestorm: a woman ‘sentenced’ to be gang-raped by 13 men for the crime of falling in love with a man from outside her tribe. A little over a year after the Nirbhaya rape case — wherein a young medical student was brutally raped on a bus in Delhi — made headlines around the world, journalists leapt on the story of a 20-year-old member of the Santhal tribe of West Bengal after she fled her village and turned up at a district hospital alleging she had been tied to a tree and raped by members of her village council.

The Nirbhaya case struck a raw nerve due to the brutality of the attack and the story of a girl, Jyoti, who was working tirelessly as a medical student to pull herself and her family out of the squalor they lived in. As Sonia Faleiro notes in 13 Men, “It was easy for middle- and upper-class women to see themselves in [Jyoti].” But this story from a remote, forested corner of Birbhum district in West Bengal had another angle: “It played into Indian stereotypes about ignorant tribals and their brutal systems of justice.” It didn’t help that the Santhal tribe is traditionally insular and considers all non-tribals, even fellow Bengalis, to be ‘diku’ (outsiders) and insists on speaking Santhali, a language understood by practically no one outside their tribe. This just made the tribesmen seem even more untrustworthy — backward — as far as the media was concerned.

However, for members of the Santhal tribe living outside their ancestral villages, the story didn’t make sense. Santhals “believed in sacrificing personal freedom for what they saw as collective welfare. They genuinely felt that an individual was only as strong as the group, and that a group was only as respectable as each individual.” The woman at the centre of this rape

Inconvenient truths

Sonia Faleiro went beyond the headlines of a rape case to ask an uncomfortable question: did it really happen?

BY SANAM MAHER

case — named ‘Baby’ by Faleiro to protect her identity — had grown up at the knees of the men and women of her tribe. When Baby’s brothers found out that she had been summoned by the village council for having an affair with a married Muslim man, they trusted the elder tribesmen so greatly that they agreed to leave Baby overnight under the protection of the tribal chief until her ‘trial’ the following morning.

As Faleiro found in the course of her investigation, many Santhals and their advocates believe Baby trumped up charges of rape against the tribesmen at the behest of corrupt political leaders looking to buy out tribal land for corporate interests: “The accusations seemed like a convenient way to discredit tribals and take from the villages what was rightfully theirs.” Local media coverage of the Santhal ‘kangaroo courts’ confirmed to many that the press was keen to discredit the tribal council system and thereby, the tribes’ right to govern themselves.

In no way does 13 Men disservice brave women who come forward to name their rapists, nor does it make light of the fact that in India, a woman reports a rape every 30 minutes. Faleiro does not suggest that Baby is lying. Instead, she asks the reader to consider the ramifications of the simplistic narrative that takes over when the media gets wind of a story like Baby’s. The focus here is not the rape, but the ways in which a woman’s experience is bartered for corporate and political gains. T Sanam Maher is a senior subeditor at The Express Tribune magazine desk.

She tweets @SanamMKhi

46 APRIL 5-11 2015

Author Sonia Faleiro

Lost in dreams

The message in Manal Shakir’s Magic Within is hard to extract from a perplexing plot

BY KOMAL ANWAR

Author Manal Shakir

d More on trouble relationships:

48

This is where I leave you Jonathan Tropper’s novel revolves around a middle-aged man who, among other things, has to deal with his crumbling marriage after catching his wife having an affair with his boss.

APRIL 5-11 2015

Despite its supposedly engaging subject matter, Manal Shakir’s first novel Magic Within fails to leave a lasting impression on the reader’s mind.

Although the book offers respite from clichéd sugary romances by taking the route of ‘imaginary’ infidelity, it is unable to win over readers due to poor execution and a perplexing plot.

The story’s main characters are two unhappy couples, Adnan and Reena, and Zain and Shara.

Adnan is a workaholic accountant and an introvert with a love for photography and sight-seeing who is married to Reena, a socialite who likes to keep herself busy and happy at the cost of ignoring her husband’s preferences. The two met at a wedding and instantly fell for each other but their varying interests became a source of constant struggle and misery after they marry. Shara and Zain, on the other hand, seem to be even more dissatisfied with their marriage. Zain has extramarital affairs and his infidelity is rooted in his fading interest in Shara, whom he initially married for her good looks and soft-spoken nature.

The novel’s plot, therefore, revolves around how these characters find a ‘dream-like’ escape from their marriage. Adnan dreams of a mysterious circus, Mazhar’s House of Masti, where he is forced to perform but either fails to do so or wakes up before finding out what happens. One day, he encounters a young woman in his dream who eventually turns out to be Shara. Both develop an attraction towards each other and find comfort in each other’s company. Although Adnan is initially unnerved by the same dreams every night, he gradually begins to love them as they show him the way

The Blessings of the Animals Katrina Kittle’s book on marriage follows a veterinarian as she re-enters the dating world when her husband leaves her for a young co-worker.

to a fresh start. For Shara, the dreams become more and more real, almost making her afraid to sleep at night.

While the plot may seem intriguing, it fails to establish any real connection between Adnan and Shara in their dreams. As a significant part of the story simply describes activities at the circus, the reader is left wondering how this relates to the lives of the two individuals. Eventually when the two meet in real life, Shara refuses to have a relationship with Adnan. She believes the dream was not about finding a new partner but about finding a new path in their lives. Thus, Adnan is left with no choice but to resolve his differences with Reena.

Overall, the storyline is very weak; the constant drift from reality to fantasy makes it confusing. Elaborate descriptions of the circus beautifully bring it to life for the reader, but feel completely unnecessary and ultimately have nothing to do with the story’s central theme of marriages and fidelity. The ending is trite and predictable.

It was daring of Shakir to produce a book on a theme like this, often considered a social taboo in countries like Pakistan. The story is a clear departure from the genre’s standard ‘happily-ever-after’ ending. If the marriage isn’t working, then seeking love in a complete stranger is not the real answer, Shakir seems to suggest. Instead, leaving a troubled marriage or revising the broken relationship should be the appropriate solution. T Komal Anwar is a subeditor at The Express Tribune magazine desk. She tweets @Komal1201

Gone Girl Gillian Flynn’s thriller is about a man who is the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance.

While a search for the wife begins, the reader is given insight into the ups and downs of their marriage.

Glaucoma The sneak thief of vision

BY HURMAT MAJID

See why it is important to get your eyesight tested regularly

In a 2007 study conducted by the Pakistan National Eye Survey Study Group, glaucoma was found to be the fourth major cause for blindness in subjects tested across Pakistan.

Glaucoma is a condition that causes gradual damage to your eye’s optic nerve and worsens over time. It is often associated with a buildup of pressure inside the eye, whereby the eye fluid is not circulating normally in the eye and excess fluid is not being drained effectively — a condition known as ‘intraocular 50 pressure’.

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This increase in pressure in the eye can damage the optic nerve, which is responsible for transmitting images to the brain. If glaucoma goes undiagnosed for a long time, it causes permanent loss of vision within a few years.

Although the direct cause of this blockage is still unknown, it is known that it can be inherited. Therefore, doctors advise that if a family member is diagnosed with glaucoma, you should regularly visit an eye doctor for an eye exam. The less common causes of glaucoma include a blunt or chemical injury to the eye, a severe eye infection, a blockage of blood vessels in the eye, inflammatory conditions and occasionally, eye surgery to correct another condition.

Glaucoma is usually known to occur in both eyes, but it may affect each eye to a different extent. There are usually few or no symptoms of glaucoma, but the first sign is often the loss of peripheral or side vision, which can go unnoticed until later in the disease.

Increasing pressure in the eye can cause sudden eye pain, headache, blurred vision or the appearance of halos around lights. If you experience any of these symptoms, it is important that you immediately visit an eye specialist.

Making a diagnosis: “It is very rare that a patient will come to us and tell us that they are experiencing symptoms of glaucoma, as this is a disease often accidentally diagnosed when a patient comes to us complaining about some

DESIGN BY MARYAM RASHID

other eye related issue,” says associate professor Dr Tanveer Chaudhry of Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi.

The disease is diagnosed through a test called Optical Coherence Tomography, a non-invasive imaging test that uses light waves to take cross-section pictures of your retina. A Visual Field Test, which measures how far up, down, left and right the eye sees without moving and how sensitive vision is in different parts of the visual field, is also used to diagnose glaucoma.

Treatment: There are three different forms of treatment available for the disease, including eye drops, laser surgery and microsurgery. While eye drops reduce the formation of fluid in the front of the eye or increase the outflow, laser surgery slightly increases the outflow of the fluid from the eye or eliminates fluid blockage. Meanwhile, microsurgery — a minimally invasive operation for creating a new channel to drain the eye fluid — reduces the intraocular pressure of the eye. The surgery has an 80% success rate and in some cases, must be redone.

Most people with glaucoma do not go blind if they follow their treatment plan and get regular eye exams. “The most important thing is to increase awareness about the importance of regular eye checkups,” explains Dr Chaudhry. “It is not enough to go to your optician and get your spectacles updated. You need to visit an eye specialist at least once a year.” T Hurmat Majid is a subeditor at The Express Tribune.

She tweets @bhandprogramme