The Varied
Faces of the Year 2005
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
In good old days, prior to
the ban on the screening of Indian movies in Pakistan,
there used to be a picture house in Rawalpindi,
called Rose (Nigar) Cinema. Though housed in a
dilapidated building, it was well known for screening
classic, old Indian movies. Sometime in the year
1962, I vividly remember an evening at the Rose
for three distinct things: one watching Ashoke
Kumar’s QISMAT. Second my impending B.A.
examination and I watching a depressing movie;
and third, an old man sitting next to me who would
initially resort to muffled sobbing, and then
to a non-stop crying to my great annoyance at
the very start of the movie. I felt constrained
to get hold of him during the interval and ask
him, “ Buzargo, it is just a movie, a sad
one no doubt, but not so much that a man of your
mature age should give himself to baby-like crying”.
Even after 46 years, I remember what he said in
reply. “Buchay, son, who says I am watching
the movie. I was a well-off businessman in Bombay
during the Second World War, and this movie, Qismat,
I watched twice with my family there. The Indians
butchered my wife and my son in 1947, and Pakistan
refused to accept my assets’ claim. The
movie transports me back to those happy days of
my life. Ashok and Mumtaz Shantie in the movie
are still the same, but I am not. And the triggering
point in the movie for me is that hawker-boy,
reading aloud the headlines of the newspaper.
The entire building in the background that you
might not have noticed, once belonged to me. Now
I am an utter destitute. The movie is a three-hour
re-live experience for me. I feel my wife sitting
by my side, and I hear my son pointing at the
hawker-boy, and saying; ‘Look baba, that
is our building’ ”.
The parting year 2005 leaves many of us, like
the nameless old man I once met, sitting on the
heaps of debris, and hearing voices of those dear-ones
who, now, lie buried underneath, and we still
seeing with mental-eyes those faces that once
looked at us with wondrous eyes. (I see clearly
the Rawalakot Degree College where I started my
teaching career in August 1968, now leveled to
the ground by the earthquake). The year 2005,
like a fashionable and freakish host, in Shakespeare’s
words, “Slightly shakes his parting guest
by the hand, and with his arms outstretched, as
he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever
smiles, and farewell goes out sighing”.
Alas, in the year 2005, neither its advent had
been a healthy welcome filled with smiles, nor
is its exit.
The Observer, in a light vein, writes that the
year 2005 will be remembered for the disappearance
of the VHS, driven off the market by DVD, thus
making this year as VH1’s most watched year
in its 20-year history. The network posted 16%
increase in total viewers compared to 2004’s.
Who cares? Some call it the year of cellular phones.
Another called it the year of Google and Amazon.com.
Whatever… A South African newspaper blurted.
The year 2005 will undoubtedly be remembered for
economic hardships, and most South-Asians subscribe
to this view. Financial stringencies have turned
virtually every citizen, in that part of the world
to an economic analyst. Most agree that the year
2005 will be remembered as the year of tornadoes,
hurricanes, earthquakes, and in case Nature rested
after playing havoc, then of man-made disasters,
(London blasts, Iraq blasts, Karachi blasts, Delhi
market blasts, to name a few).
There was no welcome smile when the year 2005
announced its arrival. In fact, it found millions
picking up the pieces from one of the deadliest
natural disasters in modern history, the work
of December 26, 2004 the Andaman Sea tsunami.
Banda Aceh, in Indonesia was among the worst hit
places by this disaster. In the words of Kuwayama,
“It was beyond destroyed, it was annihilated,
with ruins extending as far as the human eye could
see”. Some 216,000 people were found dead
or missing in some 11 countries. The Economist
opined that natural disasters could not be bigger
and deadlier than this. But, no. What more, and
far deadlier demolishing devices Nature carried
in its womb, ready to be delivered was seen on
October 8, 2005, (the October earthquake that
now is described as the, “Tsunami in the
mountains”). The damage it caused was so
severe that photographer Teru Kuwayama felt compelled
to write, “I found myself almost sleepwalking
through the wreckage”. Some 85,000 perished,
three and a half million or more became homeless,
and tens of thousands still remain stranded, waiting
for an impending death due to the advent of a
brutal winter.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, (NOAA), the year 2005 can pride
itself for having given to the world a record-breaking
hurricane season, (26 storms and un-precedented
14 hurricanes, of which 7 were major hurricanes,
and 3 of them of category 5 storms with sustained
winds of 156 miles per hour or more (Katrina,
Rita, and Wilma), till they ran short of names);
it also had been a year of blistering heat waves,
lingering drought and a crippling Northeast blizzard.
Even its ending doesn’t appear to be portending
well. It is closing to the all-time high global
annual average temperature. Based on the preliminary
data, the year 2005, will likely be 1.0 F above
the 1895-2004 mean, which will make 2005 one of
the 20 warmest years on record for the country.
Some tend to classify the year 2005 as the year
of the consequences… the year in which we
reaped a bumper crop of misfortunes and disasters,
the seeds of which we had planted ourselves in
the form of our own tainted policies. With the
exception of China and India, few countries can
feel complacent about how they fared in the year
2005. President Bush had optimistically mapped
out his strategy for the year 2005 in which he
had jubilantly told the reporters, “I earned
capital in the campaign, political capital, and
now I intend to spend it”. He also had specified
his goals: Social Security, tax reform, the economy,
education and the war on terror. According to
the Newsweek, Dec. 26, he “lost his first
two bets to tough GOP opposition. High gas prices
hurt him. And the war in Iraq cost him his shirt.
According to Gallup, Bush’s approval ratings
on Iraq fell from 47 points after re-election
to 32 in September”. And now at 39 points,
the upswing can get stalled due to new disclosure
that Bush authorized spying on US citizens after
9/11 and the Senate’s wrangling over the
renewal of the Patriot Act. All in all the year
2005 had been nightmarish for the President.
Thousands of miles away, President Musharraf also
appears to be riding a political storm at the
end of the fateful year 2005. He could wait for
a few days and let the year 2005 close on a somber
and calmer note. He did not. The October 8 earthquake
had given the people of Pakistan a mission to
rebuild the northern part of the country, till
someone whispered in President Musharraf’s
ears that it was a God-sent opportunity to pick
up from where he had left on the construction
of the Kalabagh Dam. The guns had not silenced
in Waziristan that they began blurting fire-balls
in Kohlu, the capital of Marri tribe in Baluchistan
The plate of year 2005 had already been so full
that it could not take any more. Kalabagh, no
doubt, is the need of the hour, but it should
not serve as a springboard for the Baluchi and
Sindhi nationalists, helping them to use it for
launching Bangladesh-type seceding adventures.
“Consensus or no consensus, Kalabagh Dam
will be built”, a statement by the President
has sent a wrong signal to those who are sworn
to oppose him, and even to those who like the
MQM, and some of the Federal Ministers, are there
as fair-weather friends, to enjoy the benefits,
but are not willing to risk losing their voting
bank on this issue. Whatever good the President
and his PM, (exclusive of some of his ministers)
had achieved got washed away, first by the earthquake,
and now by the Kalabagh issue. The nation stands
beaten by Nature as well as by its politicians
and Sardars at the end of the year 2005.
The year 2005 also presented to the world some
of the worst racially motivated scenes. Tensions
between the white and Muslim youths broke out
in violence in Sydney, Australia. France also
remained wrapped in riots. Iraq is embroiled in
Shia-Sunni civil war, and Pakistan also had not
been free of it. Overall, it should not be hard
to picture the faces of the year 2005. Except
for two faces, and both from India, one hardly
sees any other face with a smile on it. One is
that of Amitabh Bachchan. He definitely had been
“Muqaddar Ka Sikandar” in the year
2005. He raked money till he too fell. Even at
63, he acted in 13 movies and generated revenue
of over Rs.1 billion. He not only paid back his
debt of 90 crore, (900 million), but also pocketed
a good, few crores for his rainy days. What though
the health is lost, all is not lost: the unconquerable
will… to make money. The second face had
been that of benign and gentle, Manmohan Singh.
He remained unscathed by the year 2005, at least
not in any mentionable way.
Like the end of year 2004, the last days of the
year 2005 are also casting lengthening shadows
on the year 2006. There are mixed signals of hope
and despair for the new year. The new discoveries
of eavesdropping show that 47% of adults now fear
of losing privacy to Homeland Security laws…
a bad news. The new elections in Iraq and Afghanistan
hint that 71% of Iraqis now think that they are
happy with their personal lives and 60% believe
things will get better in 2006. … a good
news. With 34-37% increase in gas prices, 37%
of adults now worry they would not be able to
pay their heating bills because of energy costs,
and 7% of Americans have already stopped taking
their prescription pills to save money. …
a bad news. 83% of Americans contributed to a
charity in the past 12 months, and 64% of them
believe that religion is under attack… a
sense of compassion staying healthy and alive
is a good news. However, it is a bad news that
56% of travelers now believe that terrorism is
their top travel concern, and 16% of them include
hurricanes in their list of apprehensions as their
major concerns too, which is not good news. A
good percentage of people regard the Avian Flu,
and the fear of the outbreak of a pandemic a greater
threat than the threat of terrorism. Living under
constant fear is not good news.
The familiar faces of the year 2005 are not hard
to visualize; the faces of northern Pakistan and
Kashmir, of New Orleans, Sri Lanka and northern
Sumatra; the face of a North African teenager
in Paris; the face of Cindy Sheehan and Patrick
Fitzgerald and of Arthur Miller (man is not a
piece of fruit. You eat the orange and throw the
peel away, as he wrote in Death of a Salesman);
the face of a drill bit on an oil rig; the faces
of peasants looking for wood to cut for cooking
fires; the face of an African doctor walking to
see villagers with AIDS; the faces of Americans
and Europeans flying helicopters in foggy mountains
of Kashmir and digging out the dead and the wounded
after the earthquake; the face of Safida Bibi
who astounded the world by staying alive even
after staying buried for 64 days. These are the
faces of hope and hopefully of a happier new year.
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