August 17-23 2014
AUGUST 17-23 2014
Feature
Talking heads
Cover Story
Students learn to debate critical world issues at the Model United Nations
The Four DaphnĂŠ Girls The men in Pakistani submarines and the art that kept them company
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Portfolio
A push in the right direction Murree provides a thriving market for unusual business ventures
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32 Regulars
6 People & Parties: Out and about with beautiful people
36 Reviews: Movies and Books 38 Human Resources: Tips for a mid-career makeover
Magazine In-charge: Sarah Munir and Senior Subeditor: Dilaira Dubash Creative Team: Amna Iqbal, Essa Malik, Jamal Khurshid, Samra Aamir, Munira Abbas, Omer Asim, Sanober Ahmed & Talha Ahmed Khan 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
Ghazala Humayun holds the Ghazo Summer Gala 2014 at The Pearl Continental in Karachi
Zeba
Photos courtesy PRIVﾃ右 Events AND PR
Guests and participants
Asma Shahid end
with a fri Samavya Pagaro
Artilal
Nazi Hussain
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Amber
PEOPLE & PARTIES
Photos courtesy PRIVﾃ右 Events AND PR
Farah, Haya, Sonya and Shnaya
Gia, Ayaz and Noreen
en Iftikhar
Rabia and Sambre
Anna with her daughter
Irum Farooqi
Shafaq
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COVER STORY
The men in Pakistani submarines found strange solace in art BY SAQUIB SAEED DESIGN BY AMNA IQBAL
COVER STORY Each of the Pakistan Navy’s four Daphné class submarines, Hangor, Mangro, Shushuk and Ghazi, arrived from France in the late ’60s and early ’70s carrying portraits in oil on canvas. While Shushuk had a Polynesian girl, Hangor carried a gypsy girl by a Hungarian artist named Charles Roka. Mangro, on the other hand, was far apart as she carried a replica from a German grand master’s work while Ghazi carried the work of some anonymous artist. These portraits were gifted by the subamrines’ French constructor, the Direction des Construction Naval (DCN) and adorned the vessels’ tiny wardrooms. Except Mangro, all others belonged to an art form called the retroKitsch — a term used derisively to condemn exaggerated forms of art or that executed in poor taste. For more than 35 years, these portraits remained an integral part of these submarines and provided strange solace to the men who traversed deep waters in their metal confines. After their decommissioning in the mid2000s, these portraits were removed to the submarine squadron’s wardroom ashore, where they still remain on display.
The men at sea
A portrait from Charles Roka's Kvinna series 24 AUGUST 17-23 2014
The submariners sailing in these Daphnés were the enfant terrible, operating far away under the oceans. Since the Daphnés carried only enough water for drinking, the submariners remained unshaven, unkempt, and unbathed for long periods of time. But the body odour did not seem to bother them much as the human sense of smell quickly adapts to persistent smells and only detects newer stimuli. They lived surrounded by pipes, cables, noisy equipment, greasy weapons, loud pumps, compressors and an air conditioner that struggled to cope with warmer waters keeping everyone sweating in 90% humidity. Below the decks were hundreds of tonnes of battery cells that smelt of bittersweet hydrogen. There were two hungry V8 diesels that recharged the batteries once or twice a day. While doing so they sucked out the air from within the submarine and made everyone’s ears pop. But the submariners felt happy as it was the only time they could puff on their duty-free cigarettes. They breathed an artificially generated atmosphere that was high on hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and low on oxygen. The air was thick from diesel and hydraulic fluid fumes and sour-tasting vented compressed air. It got worse when their vaporised sweat mixed with it. They sailed several hundred feet below with no means to escape in case of an emergency. A few days into their interminable sea trips,
these submariners needed something to remind them that they were human. That is when the DCN’s gift became so important.
The girls from faraway lands The Pakistan Navy fortuitously purchased Ghazi, the almost new, ex-Cachalot of the Portuguese Navy, in 1975. She came with her own retro-Kitsch — probably given away to the Portuguese Navy in the ’60s by the DCN. Its artist remains anonymous, but the poster prints of this work have never lost their popularity across Europe. Even now, a poster sits in an English café called The Cat’s Café; another one is in Tunisia, while one turned up just a few months ago at an art auction in Munich. Lambert, the Englishman responsible for Shushuk’s portrait, worked for 40 years for Leyland Motors, a great name in the British automobile industry then. He famously had its female workers dress up and painted annually for the Leyland calendar. Lambert’s paintings were the sensual, and not too explicit, centrefolds of that era, adorning the typical working-class teenager’s room. For Shushuk, Lambert took on a different subject. He painted a fictitious Tahitian girl that he named Tehura. This is where Paul Gauguin, the grand French master, had left off with his Polynesian girl series, in the late 1890s, before his death on the Island in 1903. Lambert, unashamedly borrowed from Gauguin’s La Femme a la Fleur (The Woman with a Flower) and La Jeuene Femme a L’ventail (The Young Girl with a Fan). He peppered it up with a suggestive gaze, and added some sharp contours to the bodice that perilously clung on to her despite most submariners’ lasting wish for a wardrobe malfunction.
Walter Lambert's Polynesian girl, Tehura, that was found in Shushuk AUGUST 17-23 2014
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COVER STORY It smeared Gauguin’s work, incensed the critics and did nothing to improve Lambert’s reputation as an artist. But Lambert perhaps did far more good to the generations of submariners who sailed onboard Shushuk. His Tehura still remains a very well-known work that sells in poster prints all over the world. If Lambert was a showman, Charles Roka, the Hungarian artist of the same era was even worse, according to the critics of that time. He churned out Kitsch after Kitsch of the same gypsy girl — referred endearingly as Kvinna by his Norwegian admirers. One of his gypsy pieces, the steamiest amongst the four submarines, was onboard Hangor on the night of December 8/9, 1971, when she torpedoed two Indian Navy destroyers, INS Kukri and INS Kirpan. Kukri broke into two and sank within two minutes with the loss of 172 officers and men while Kirpan was severely damaged. In all, Roka painted this gypsy girl three dozen times before his death in 1999. In 2005, he was honoured posthumously by the prestigious Haugar Vestfold Kunst museum in Tonsberg, Norway, where his work, under the title Kitsch, was displayed for the first time by a gallery of such repute. It seems that Roka’s work has finally been recognised. Bizarrely, Mangro’s wardroom was saved from the onslaught of Kitsch. It had a well-made replica of an authentic piece by a German master, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, who was best known for his exclusive portraits of mid-19th century royalty in various European courts. In 1864, he painted a portrait of an aristocratic woman from Czarist Russia named Dmitrievna Mergassov who according to some was also the inspiration behind Leo Tolstoy’s tragic heroine, Anna Karenina. Judging from the sadness in her eyes evident in the painting — the original of which remains on display at Musée d’Orsay in Paris — she certainly looks the part. It seems that the DCN played it safe while refitting Mangro and experimented brazenly with the other three submarines. Its gift to Mangro in the form of Mergassov’s portrait gave our submariners something to hold in awe — they gazed at her quiet elegance and modest dignity. She had a melancholy gaze but perhaps too much of blue blood in her for an average submariner’s taste. Mergassov was clearly plain and Mangro perhaps was not the right submarine to take long trips on. But Winterhalter’s great skill with the brush could be gauged from the way he brilliantly captured her long dark braid with its intricate twists. The several layers of her
A popular retroKitsch by an anonymous artist hung in Ghazi 26 AUGUST 17-23 2014
flowing white taffeta gown and its blue ribbons also bore a dazzling testimony of his prowess.
A journey through unchartered waters
Franz Xaver Winterhalter's portrait of Dmitrievna Mergassov that hung in Mangro
Why did the DCN choose Madame Mergasso and why did it experiment with retro-kitsch for all others? Why not a Renoir replica with its burst of colours, or a Claude Monet, or a Delacroix, or a Degas, or a Tolouse-Lautrec? By carrying these grand masters’ works, even if they were replicas, DCN would have given us a piece of France itself. Instead they gave us 1960’s trash. But it was just as well for the Kitschy art. The submariners loved it. It was a time when they took pride in owning art and loved them simply for the lack of knowing anything better. But they could not be faulted for their desire to discover, to experiment, and to develop a taste for the new, the exotic and especially the forbidden. Learning to become a submariner at a time when less than 10 nations in the world owned and operated submarines was a challenge, and our submariners took it in their stride; much the same way they took these Daphné girls in and made them a part of their proud submarining tradition. Thick skinned that they are, never the ones to believe in what the righteous might have to say, they simply adored these Kitschy paintings just as they loved their submarining profession. There were a few exceptions of brief religious command tenures in the 90s when these girls found their makeshift homes in lockers ashore — only to be recalled with the change of command. For the most part, these girls faithfully served the submariners. Looking back at those decades with these girls, the ’60s remind us of a progressive time in our nation’s history. That was a time when we were asserting ourselves in the world as a fast-developing, modern, progressive and a tolerant new nation. That’s when we stood taller than South Korea and Malaysia of that epoch. We did not have fixed ideas on morality and public piety either. We loved when something looked good and we did not seem to care about much else. That is indeed what art is supposed to do — inspire us and make us happy. Fortyfive years later, we are still talking about these Daphné girls and that says much about their lasting effect on our submariners.
Saquib Saeed is a proud submariner who, like his predecessors, wistfully stared at all the Kitschy ladies at sea. AUGUST 17-23 2014
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FEATURE
Talking heads
Initiatives like Model United Nations expose students to the power of meaningful dialogue By Javeria Khalid Petiwala
Social conditioning might lead you to believe that the louder you are, the more likely you are to win an argument. But initiatives like the Model UN (MUN) — a conference that emulates the United Nations by inviting student participants as delegates who represent political positions on behalf of the countries they represent — teach you otherwise. They expose young minds to alternative approaches, especially the art of addressing global issues with 28 the help of well-informed, wellAUGUST 17-23 2014
researched and strongly articulated dialogue. For Pakistani students, this skill is particularly important since the country’s reality often forces them to form strong opinions on key world issues from a young age. Exposure at global platforms like the MUN, where they cannot only express themselves but also hear out the various sides involved, hence, provides them with valuable insight. According to Sagar Jagani, a student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and a two-time
Nida Haroon from IBA holding the Chile placard at winner of Harvard World MUN, the most prestigious MUN in the world, these conferences have made him more tolerant and respectful towards others. “With every conference, I have developed my ability to work with people from diverse backgrounds and appreciate different points of view,” he says. Although he has been debating since third grade, he stresses that the
the Turkey MUN. Photo Courtesy: MUNTR MUN is different as it not only requires you to be a good public speaker but also a good diplomat. As of 2012, over 400 MUNS are organised annually across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Participants ranging from middle-school students to graduate students are selected as delegates for the six General As-
sembly committees, the Economic and Social Council and the Economic and Financial Committee. The delegates are required to prepare draft resolutions, plot strategies, negotiate with supporters and opponents, resolve conflicts and navigate the rules of procedure as applied in respective UN bodies. Before stepping into the shoes of ambassadors, students are re-
quired to research global concerns that affect the international community, including everything from peace and security to human rights, food and hunger, the environment, economic development and globalisation. And each delegate is required to represent a country other than their own at almost all MUNS. “The fact that you are being assigned 29 AUGUST 17-23 2014
Pakistan’s IBA delegation at the Turkey MUN. Photo Courtesy: MUNTR multiple countries and debating topics that might be regional but affect the entire world is fascinating,” says Raza Ayub, a senior at IBA who chaired the 2013 MUN in Turkey. He cites the militancy in Afghanistan as one of the issues that affects countries worldwide. “It helps you get a more holistic view of the problem rather than what it means for a single country.” Along with help30 ing them develop a more nuanced unAUGUST 17-23 2014
derstanding of the world they live in, MUNs also help participants develop their research, leadership, teamwork and public-speaking skills. The first Pakistani MUN was held at LUMS in 2002 and the concept has since grown, with many other schools and colleges getting on board. The conferences have now started hosting chairs from various countries such as Indonesia, Paris and the Netherlands.
“I was really impressed by the importance of MUNs in Pakistan and I see it as a really good practice for students to try to resolve contemporary issues,” says Ma Non, a student of International Law at Aix-Marseille University in Paris, who came to Pakistan in January this year to chair the International Monetary Fund (IMF) committee at the MUNIK V organised by IBA. Ayub, on the other hand, feels that
The fact that you are being assigned multiple countries and debating topics that might be regional but affect the entire world is fascinating. It helps you get a more holistic view of the problem rather than what it means for a single country A senior at IBA Raza Ayub
The LUMS team at the Harvard World MUN in 2013. Photo Courtesy:Sagar Jagani debating in Pakistan has a long way to go. He elaborates that delegates at Pakistani MUNs often resort to unnecessary criticism and screaming to get their point across, which is in stark contrast to the maturity and pragmatism he witnessed at the Turkey MUN. To be at par with the global MUNs, it is crucial for Pakistani students to take part in international conferences. “These conferences have meta-
morphosed from socio-political think tanks into associations that nurture agents of positive social change,” says Jagani. Nida Haroon, winner of three international MUN conferences, shares that by the time conferences end, you end up becoming friends with many strangers who are intrigued by your country and lifestyle. Food, films, Eid customs, Basant rituals and cultural
and social diversity usually feature on top of her list of things one must experience in Pakistan. “There is no better feeling in the world than breaking stereotypes,” she says. And what better place to do that than at a MUN where the entire world is listening.
Javeria Khalid Petiwala is an undergraduate student who loves fiction, writing and travelling. AUGUST 17-23 2014
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A push in the right direction Pushcarts have become a popular mode of transportation for tourists in Murree Text and Photos by Danial Shah DESIGN BY sANOBER aHMED
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To attract customers, especially children, the pushcarts are painted in bright colours and decorated with reflective stickers.
Until 1947, the Mall Road in Murree was restricted by the British for natives or nonEuropeans. Today, it’s hard to spot a European but the place is bustling with local tourists who provide a market for enterprising ventures. One such example is the pushcart service, popularly known as ‘bacha gari’ (children’s car), which was initially introduced on Mall Road as an attraction for children but is now a preferred mode of transportation among tourists of all ages.
(Above) The service that was initially introduced for children is now availed by customers of all ages, especially those who wish to avoid the steep walk up the hill.
“I came to Murree to find work 10 years ago. [Although] my hometown is [also] full of green mountains, it’s hard to find work there,” says Zahir Shah from Dir, Swat. He now earns a stable income with the help of his pushcart, transporting people who prefer the ride over walking up the steep hill. The carts are built in Rawalpindi and cost around Rs12,000 to Rs15,000 each. Each iron cart consists of two seats, with leg space in between, and can easily accommodate four children or two adults, depending
(Below) During off seasons, customers are hard to come by and the men fail to even meet their average daily income of Rs500.
The carts are built in Rawalpindi and cost around Rs12,000 to Rs15,000 each
The Mall Road in Murree is a popular tourist destination for locals which attracts men from surrounding areas to earn a livelihood though unusual means.
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on their weight. To make them look more appealing and noticeable, they are painted in an array of colours and decorated with reflective stickers. “I bought mine for Rs4,000 a long time ago. The demand for it is now shooting up and so are the prices,” says Shah. Since Mall Road is teeming with potential customers, the men start their service early in the morning and continue late into the evening. “Most of my customers are children, women or senior citizens who prefer this facility,” says Altaf Hussain from Chilas, who has been running the service for seven years now. Charges for the ride vary according to the length of the route and the time duration for which it is hired. On an average, the men make Rs500 per day, and on busy days around Rs1,200, which is barely enough to pay the rent for a room which is often shared by five men to cut costs. In an attempt to control the Mall Road traffic, however, one has to first obtain a permit from the Cantonment Board to run the service, which costs Rs2,000 for a six-month duration. But the vendors claim that this is a small price to pay as they can easily cover the cost in approximately four days of service.
Danial Shah is a travel writer and a photographer. He tweets @DanialShah_
(Above) With no reported health problems associated with the service, even older men pushcarts to earn a livelihood. (Below) The service can be availed at any time during the day, even late in the evenings.
FILM
The Ma[i]n Problem The Other Woman is ordinary despite its extraordinary cast BY AYESHA ABDUL RAZZAK
The Other Woman might come as a disappointment for Cameron Diaz and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister of Game of Thrones) fans since Bollywood films such as Love Ka The End and Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, focusing on the same vengeful women genre, appear to be better made. This romantic comedy with its trite plot ends up being more annoying than amusing. The movie begins innocently enough featuring a tough commitment-phobic lawyer, Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz), who is rather excited about introducing her new boyfriend Mark King (Nikolaj CosterWaldau) to her father. When Mark cancels, she decides to surprise him at his home in Connecticut where she stumbles upon his wife Kate (Leslie Mann) forcing her to make a hasty retreat. This much is covered in the promo of the film as well. It is when the two discover Mark’s third mistress, Amber (Kate Upton), that the story begins to unfold and 36 the three join forces to exact revenge on AUGUST 17-23 2014
Mark. And just when you hope that things are going to get a tad bit interesting, The Other Woman resorts to clichés such as the typical food poisoning act and other predictable antics, making the movie a tedious watch. Diaz does not have a winning role to play either. Although she is funny with her one-liners and suave lawyer talk, it’s her counterpart Mann who steals the show. Mann’s naive and ridiculous humour actually makes you laugh out loud. From her comment “Is this one of those strip-ograms?” when Diaz shows up at her house trying to open a window to when she tracks down Diaz, her slapstick humour is perhaps the only enjoyable bit. Unfortunately, even the incredibly attractive Coster-Waldau is forgettable in his role as Mark. The fault mainly lies with the writer, Melissa Stack, who apart from the two leading ladies, fails to create a significant character for Mark. There is
no real personality development which accounts for lazy writing. The fact that he suspects nothing also makes him appear incredibly foolish. The only pleasant surprise in the movie, however, is the short yet sweet role of co-star Taylor Kinney (from NBC’s Chicago Fire) as Phil, Kate’s brother. He goes on to become Diaz’s love interest by being exactly what she isn’t used to — honest and upfront. Overall, The Other Woman is littered with stereotypes which make it very predictable. It even concludes on a low note with the women’s final act being thoroughly disappointing. It’s merely a movie with big names, including the bodacious Nicki Minaj, but has little else to its credit. Rating: Ayesha Abdul Razzak is an aspiring filmmaker and enthusiastic photographer with a diploma in Mass Communication and a BA from Deakin University in Visual Arts. She tweets @Caffinolic
BOOK
The Lives of Others A startling inside story of a hacker collective that captivated internet junkies, news media and global citizens BY MAHEEN SABEEH
On February 6, 2011, millions of Americans were tuning into television for what was described as the biggest sporting event of the year — Super Bowl Sunday. The day was significant, not just for sports aficionados, but also for digital security expert Aaron Burr. Sitting in his living room in the suburbs of Washington, Burr wondered why his iPhone — which usually buzzed every 15 minutes with an email notification — had been silent for the past half an hour. His effort to refresh his email was met with a dark and alarming pop-up window stating that he could not get mail. In
those initial moments, as anxiety set in, Burr knew that he was in trouble. Burr, also a former military man, was the victim of his own undoing. After earning thousands of dollars by teaching executives how to use social media tools like LinkedIn and Facebook to ‘gather information’ or spy on people, he decided to investigate a hacker group called Anonymous in a bid to drum up business. It was a miscalculated error that cost him both, personally and professionally. The story of Aaron Burr’s descent is just one facet of this riveting bestseller. Author Parmy Olson, also a writer for Forbes, declares with sharp precision what the book covers — “a page in the cyber history when a small army of young men used the internet to disrupt large corporations and governments, taking them completely by surprise.” Olson accomplishes this task beautifully by talking to the seven people at the centre of this collective. In this, however, she is clear that the sources quoted in this book don’t represent Anonymous as a whole. Among key sources that revealed their roles in the burgeoning success of Anonymous and its offshoot organisation, LulzSec, are young men like Hector Monsegur, a 28-year-old New Yorker known in the nefarious cyber circles as Sabu and tempestuous personalities like William, a young teenager whose morals were becoming “increasingly ambiguous as he constantly watched and laughed at gore, rape, racism, and abuse.” Not all of the book’s observations are negative though. Members of Anonymous had starkly different personalities. For some, the point was to be ambiguous and have lots
Available at The Last W Word Books for Rs1 180 Rs1,180.
of laughs at the expense of others, hence the term, Lulz. For others, it was about real issues which manifested in the form of attacks on government websites in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Jordon and support for WikiLeaks. In the end, We Are Anonymous makes for a delectable read because it is also about unlikely friendships, dramatic, inevitable betrayals and the complex nature of alienation and human suffering. As the author states herself, “Commentators see Anonymous as another example of disaffected youth, a generation using the internet as an outlet to express their angst, the same way punks did with music in the 1980s. The difference this time is that authorities cannot dismiss their outlet for expression in the same way they could once dismiss music.” Maheen Sabeeh is a freelance contributor. She tweets @maheensbh
Author Parmy Olson
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HUMAN RESOURCES
Mid-career Makeover Reinventing yourself professionally might seem like a young person’s game but the truth is that no one gives it much thought if you make a career switch in your early 20s. In fact, people the world over are taken far more seriously when they opt for a midlife career change. The need to rebrand yourself can be due to several reasons such as the desire to take up more challenging work, shifting to a more meaningful profession or analysing and aligning oneself with future market trends and jobs. Although the idea seems intimidating initially, the first thing you need to do when you decide to change things is to believe that you can. If done properly, it can not only increase your chances of employability but also ensure professional success.
Tips for mid-level professionals to reinvent and rebrand themselves for a career change
By Shiraz Ahmed
DESIGN BY OMER ASIM
Step up your game: Your personal brand — the way you are viewed by your organisation and the industry — must be compelling, authentic and well-known. Here are three steps for you to follow:
1 2 3
You’ are a brand: Every brand serves a purpose so think of yourself as a brand and not a product. Forget about the job title and instead ask yourself, what value do I bring to work? The bitter truth is that the company will only invest in you depending on their needs and demands. It is up to you to then mould that learning and make sure your skill set is worth their time and money. Learn from big brands but do not copy them as success lies in authenticity. Develop skills and make connections: Take time out to invest in the development of knowledge, skills and credentials that you will need for the next step. If you wish to be a teacher someday, then start taking classes now. In addition, your network is crucial to your success as the people you spend time with shape who you are. Your colleagues, friends, clients and customers are, therefore, powerful branding vehicles for you.
Leave a digital footprint: Make yourself visible! We are lucky to be living in the age of social media where one blog, a movie clip or an app can make us a star. Your digital presence is as important as your real life impression. Build your profile internally and externally by listing your skills, volunteer projects, panel discussions and conferences that you have been a part of. You can also write for big brands and become a part of various communities.
Given the rapidly developing job economy, it is natural to question yourself and what you are doing from time to time. But with a little luck, flexibility, and a forward approach, you can set the right tone for your career for many years to come. Shiraz Ahmed teaches at leading business schools in Karachi and is a corporate facilitator and a public speaker. He tweets @shirazwasif