Thursday, November 10, 2011

Places in Pakistan: Madrassah girls, Phander, Ghizar dist.

Date: 22nd Sep, 2011.

This was a glorious day in terms of photography. There was ample sunlight and the morning was a bit colder than usual. The main theme of the day, after wolfing down brilliantly cooked trout fish, was to get the wagon for outward journey to Mastuj. The PTDC bus, by which we had arrived here yesterday, would be rumbling down here at 1 or 2 PM. It was early morning and we had lot of hours to pass. Zahid bhai, a blood pressure patient, was already not happy. He wanted to shoot more and more places. He thought he was stuck. I and Adeel wanted to enjoy the place a bit more. And I had an argument: The private wan would cost a small fortune: They were demanding anything between Rs.12,000 to 20,000. The ticket would cost a fraction of it. I was against spending a fortune on a place I did not know: Mastuj. In any case we would reach the place. So I asked Adeel to accompany me down to the market, which I think was around 5 Km from our rest house. It was downwards as our rest house was perched on the highest point of the place.

We started to walk, shooting and looking around the villages. It was a type of place I wanted to bring my wife to. She would have felt at home, among the brilliantly dressed women, kids playing around or going to school - it was school time. Most of the children looked very happy going to school. Many children in Karachi, on the other hand, look very sleepy and perturbed by their daily routine of going to school early morning. These children walked gingerly. I would shoot them on my return trip to rest house in the afternoon. But first I shot a frame of these two beautiful, shy madrassah children in their madrassah. The setting was beautiful: The mountains in the background, the wooden columns of the building, the scarf coloured girls. And unlike what most Western writers would have you believe, these were the very epitome of happiness. They were also properly educated and I did not found them lacking in knowledge as compared to their school-going counterparts.

2 comments:

Susanna said...

What a nice entry. You can almost feel the cold, sunny morning that occurs at this time of year. The shot of the schoolgirls is so beautiful. And what impressive mountains!

Ameer Hamza said...

The mountains are impressive but the best part were the attires of the girls and the wooden columns. I love this photograph. Probably one of the best from my trip in 2011.