lingo of my inner voice

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

WSF Day 4 and Closing Pelinary.. are you watching?

28th March 2006

Day 4 started pretty late but with full swing. SriLankan Theatre Arts Group presented two symbolic plays on emotions Love and Power. It was interesting to see a play with so less props, costumes and only body language, expression, sounds and songs backed up by a single dhol(drum) beat. The first play discussed that we find love everywhere but it is in ourselves, it is in unity and inter-faith harmony. We can only burst the baloon(negative effects) of Globalization by coming together and fighting against social evils like famine, terror, child abuse, environmental pollution, ethnical conflict and diseases(which were shown as human graves in the play).
It is with love that we actually remain alive. The second play named 'Truth' discussed that we have fear from truth but still we try to find it. People stop us from knowing truth as if someone will find it then he will start blackmailing. He will start abusing others with his power. This makes power so worthy that people are always after it. But if everyone unites and forget about getting the power then they can defeat the power itself and eradicate it's ill-effects from society.


Second seminar that I attended was about a resolution shaped up after a meeting in Mumbai about Pak-India Friendship and to discuss it in Karachi during WSF was a step further in realizing that team. We all exchanged email addresses and I hope something positive will come out of it.

Then for few minutes I attended a seminar on 'Alternative Media' They discussed that media shapes up public's mind but the commercialized aspect is taking it into a wrong direction. Heads and corporate nexus operates it in this age of no-liberalism and try to glamourous the headlines to sell advertisments and above all newspapers. News looks like news but is in reality nothing less than trash or fluff. I didn't find anything worthy in the seminar and on the top of it the venue was very noisy and I was damn tired so I just left it in half time.

After asking every single volunteer, I didn't get any credible answer where the short films will get screened. But to my good fortune, I met with the director and he told me the venue and also asked to write something soon for his future projects. First short was titled 'Dair Pehley Hi Ho Chuki Hai'(It is already too late) directed by Tahseen Ahmed. The film discussed the problems facing by Pakistan and also criticized the defence budget of the country. It said that governments won't be doing anything but it is the work of local public of both countries to find the hidden enemy who is killing them. One Air Fighter cost $4 million and it costs only $1 to immunize a child which means that by cutting this expense 4 million children can be immunized. It costs $90 million to buy a Mirage but only $30 per annum to give a child primary education which means that by cutting this expense $3 million children can be educated. It costs $300 million to buy a defense submarine but only $5 to give pure drinking water by which 60 million people in the world can drink pure water which will also decrease the disease rate.

Second Film 'Split Second' was directed by Kazim Shah. I liked the details in this film and was very well executed with such low budget. It discussed about violence.. some die for money, some die for honor and some die out of sheer stupidity.

By large, the day eas spent in watching pieces of arts.

29th March 2006

The closing pelinary was very disappointing. Representatives from different countries expressed their thanks to Karachi for their hospitality and were amazed to see the participation of different classes in the forum from all over the Pakistan. According to them, they saw a new Pakistan. They said Another World is Possible and stepped out of the stage. Indian representative narrated a very good story about her journey that once she told a rickshaw person to drop her to WSF and when the rickshaw person came to know that she was an Indian he even charged lesser money from her. The cultural show was quite amazing which had Rajisthani Folk Singers. All the people stand together on the theme song of WSF 2006 Karachi with holding each other hands directing towards the sky and I just left the arena. I wasn't there to see such scenes but to listen something informative and I was also late for some another important work.

Nonetheless, WSF was a great learning and interactive experiences where I made some new friends and atleast interacted with people from such diversed cultures and classes. Indian, Srilankan, Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Phillipinese and Australian people were very nice and courteous. They loved the culture, sufi poetry and not to forget khatti chaat and theeki biryani. I also became friend of a kid who was a street child. He was so sweet. I shot a photo of his as you can see, that innocent soul thanked me for that, he said "Uncle aap ka thank you aap ne mera photo khecha tha naa" and I couldn't do much more for him :(

WSF 2006 Karachi discussed about various topics including Peace, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Globalization, Inter-faith Harmony, Povery Eradication, Labour and Peasent Problems, Human Rights, Child Labour, Women Empowerment, Nuclear Issues, Corporate Issues and ofcourse Social and Cultural issues as being a social forum. Total 200 rallys, 20 exhibitions and 40 conferences were held. The one thing that I hated about the forum that they kept on promoting Anti-Globalization which is such a wrong perspective. We should try to eradicated the negative effectgs but Globalization in itself is a very good thing. The only problem is that how to use it effectively. Without the phenomenon of Globalization, no World Social Forum couldn't have existed in the first place.

The wall you see in the picture below is an creative project idea of cultural committe at WSF where everybody wrote messages on small tiles and then pasted it on the wall which will now be displayed in some public space. Pictures of some tiles will be uploaded tomorrow at HOPE blog.




PS: More WSF Pics will be coming soon at my deviantart gallery

Scented Words posted by Raheel Lakhani :: 6:58 PM :: 3 Comments:

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