I found it a little sad that though Giorgio Armani died at age 95, his multibillion-dollar fashion empire has got no heirs, because he didn’t leave behind any family. Armani was not just a designer but a brand. I remember that one of the details I remember about Pervez Musharraf was that he wore Armani suits. I’m sure that was not a habit he picked up in the FC College hostel, because Armani suits were expensive even when Musharraf was a hostelite (and yes, they were being produced even then). However, he may have learned to dress well over there, for Formanites were snappy dressers in those days, not too long after Partition, when Lahore was famous as the fashion capital of united India and FC College as the centre of fashion in Lahore.
I’m sure other colleges, like Government College or Islamia College, held themselves as examples, but I don’t think anyone had the dedication of the Formanite who made his tailor see an English film so that he could observe carefully the cut of the hero’s suit and cop it. So back in the day, I’m sure Formanites of Musharraf’s generation would have been satisfied with knock-offs if they could have got any.
If Giorgio Armani passed away at home, as did Anwar Ali, though much younger, being 76. He was a comedian of the first water, and though in retirement he grew a white beard, which belied it, he had a fine wit and a mild stage presence that made people laugh. He was perhaps too mild to ever get the applause that other stage comedians did. I can’s recall him overindulging in the sort of broad slapstick others did.
As our stage is mostly about comedy and pretty broad and innuendo-laden at that, all our actors are comedians. That has meant we have lost some pretty fine dramatic actors, who could not fulfill their destiny because our stage could not provide them that sort of work. They tried to find a place in TV dramas, and PTV found them the sort of scripts that gave them scope but couldn’t really get them a living.
Anwar Ali was not one of those. He was unabashedly a comic and did comic roles on TV too. But he was perhaps underrated as a comic, and though his very presence was comedic, he did not touch the heights of the profession. Though he had not been performing for some time (and no one ever got to see him perform while sporting a white beard), the world of comedy is poorer for his departure. The current crop of actors have lost someone from whom they could have learned the art of being bawdy without being vulgar.
There are all sorts of lessons waiting to be learned out there. I’m sure there’s a lesson in the 40 tons of military equipment the UAE sent from Al-Reef Airport to Ramon Airport in Israel. That, by the way, was used against the Gazans in the assault about to be launched. I suppose the first lesson is that the UAE has so much equipment to spare. The second lesson is that the UAE has signed the Abraham Accords, which clearly takes precedence over anything else.
I wonder if someone is supplying Israel equipment though the UAE, some country which would face a lot of embarrassment as well as pushback if it was found supplying the equipment. As the UN General Assembly session approaches, more and more countries have said they intend to recognize Palestine, to the point where the only way Israel can disrupt the process is by recognizing Palestine itself.
This has the advantage of making Palestinians take the two-state solution off the table. Palestinians would be forced to reveal their true intention, which would be to have their own land, their own country, without any foreign tumours on top of it.
The last holdout would then be the USA. After Israel recognizes Palestine, I’m sure there will be some far-right extremists who will insist that the USA not recognize, and who will regard Israel as selling out. And you know what? They’ll all be influential Trump supporters.
A lot of people noticed that Eid Milad fell on Defence Day. A coincidence? Perhaps. They’re determined by two very different calendars, so it is just possible for the days never to coincide. Just a thought: until 1966, September 6 was not even a significant date. But Eid Milad had been commemorated for centuries before that.
