iBlog by Sasha

By Sasha Scheherzade Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's approximately 200 paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain are spread starkly on canvases, as was her stormy relationship with her husband, fellow artist and love of her life, Diego Rivera, who she married... twice!!! During her life, 'self portrait' is a subject that Kahlo always returned to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. Had she lived, she would have been coined the Selfie Queen of present times. Kahlo and Rivera had a tempestuous relationship that was marked by multiple affairs on both the sides. Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940) - Kahlo is depicted in a man's suit, holding a pair of scissors, with her fallen hair around the chair in which she sits. This represents the times she would cut the hair Rivera loved when he had affairs. The lyrics of a song painted across the top of this potrait whi

By Sasha Scheherzade If love has a name, it's Diliris Ertugrul. Why? Believe it or not, this casts magic strong enough to captivate viewers.  One with doubts will understand after tuning in the first episode. Diliris Ertugrul tells a passionate account of The Kaıs, a brave and humble Turkish nomadic tribe. The Kaıs are a warrior tribe that on one hand has embraced to become targets with rough weather and the Mongols and Crusaders on the other hand. It is a chronicle of courage, inspired from historic foundation of the Ottoman Empire, at the end of the 13th century in Northwestern Anatolia in the town of Soğüt (modern-day Bilecik Province) by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman. The plot of the play is in stark contrast with any modern-day western spiel that either instills fear of the obscure or forge acceptance of paranormal figurines conjured through accidental lab mutations and later lauded as heroes. This tale revolves around a nomadic tribe of shepherds, who requ

By Sasha Scheherzade April 24th marked the death anniversary of late Sabeen Mahmud (shared) and amidst the people going through this pandemic drama-in-real-life, it slipped quietly by. Gunning her down was a cowardly attempt to silence a brave woman who provided this chaotic city of Karachi with a  much needed wonderful community space for shared discourse and healthy dialogue between the have's and have-nots. It was everybody's retreat. It was my retreat. My kid and I met some like-minded happy souls and participated actively in toddlers's music, craft workshops, Sheemajis theatrical activities, Pervez Hoodbhoy's very piquant lectures and soulful Qawwalis. I made some great new friends, conceived my first Readers' Group, conducted active book sessions and stayed inspired. After the quietus of the ingenious and brave Daughter of the ever chaotic yet all embracing Karachi, which was a traumatic demise for the peaceful people of my city, I stopped m

By Sasha Scheherzade A native language spoken by a parent/father or mother tongue, is one that an infant gets exposed to from the time of birth. In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language or mother tongue or any language that is spoken at home. . Pakistan is fortunate enough to enjoy a geographical location that not just traditionally but linguistically rich with an equally diverse nation that is known for being dynamic in all cultural aspects out of which mother language comes first and foremost. Nearly 74 mother languages are spoken in Pakistan according to stats shared by UNESCO Islamabad. The five chief regional languages Punjabi, Pushto, Sindhi, Siraiki and Urdu have more than 10 million speakers and almost all mother languages belong to a Indo-Iranian group from the Indo-Europeon family.  Ethnologue ,  an online reference print publication lists 74 spoken lang

By  Sasha Scheherazade Not many artists have achieved success where documenting the traumatic experience of one of the most horrific and grandest migrations in history is concerned. The colonial British powers that brought Pakistan and India into being nearly seven decades back, was not without an engineered and very violent partition of the boundaries.       "I have relived 1947," says Jimmy Engineer, "although I was born seven years after the inception of Pakistan, but to me it seems that the very time of partition, with people migrating from Indian border to Pakistan by whatever means they could, is still etched afresh a memory as if I had lived through this whole process of partition, died and my rebirth happened in the year 1954," says the artist par excellence, who has proclaimed himself  as The Servant of Pakistan.   Seeing Jimmy Engineer's work on his Independence Series one can observe the trauma encountered by some 20