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The Millennial Olympiad 2013 kicked-off with a bang at Roots Millennium Schools, I-9/3 Millennium

Campus, Islamabad on Friday. A two day mega event was inaugurated sponsoring several competitions and 1000 plus Participants from over 20 Institutions and 10 Cities taking part in 20 exciting competitions which include; Live Art, Debating, Dramatics, Chess, Gaming, Table Tennis, Wall Climbing, Photo Essay, Fashion, Film Making, Singing, Law Moot Court, Creative Writing and dance. The Millennium Olympiad is an initiative of the ambitious and enthusiastic students of Roots Millennium Schools, Millennium Campus, I-9/3, Islamabad. It is a platform on which participant students from across country have registered and the platform

allowed them to prove their mettle within various domains of co and extracurricular activities.

The opening ceremony was presided over by His Excellency Javier M. Carbajosa, Ambassador of Spain in Islamabad and Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq-TI, Chief Executive Roots Millennium Schools.

The ceremony marked the pledge by charged speakers that the aim of the Millennium Olympiad is to inspire youth to help shape a world based on justice, solidarity, liberty, dignity, harmony and prosperity for all. The dedication, support and guidance of the Roots Millennium Schools faculty members; Principal Mrs. Safia Farooqi, Headmistress and Students Counselor Flora Mehmood and PRO Hira Rashid were acknowledged and highly appreciated by Mr. Faisal Mushtaq and the student body.

His Excellency Javier M. Carbajosa during his address appreciated the initiative of the students and encouraged the youth of Pakistan to become the agents of change through engagement in student initiatives on national and international forums.

Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq stressed upon the significance of youth for ideas, initiative and Implementations; he encouraged school environment conducive to support the personal and professional development of the leaders of tomorrow as his fiercely motivating speech inculcated the spirit of patriotism and nationalism.

The opening ceremony was followed by an evening of entertainment and music on the unique checkered theme dubbed ‘Check me Out”.

The event included a formal dinner as well as a Fashion show on the eastern theme. The event was judged by some of the most renowned fashion names in the fashion industry of Pakistan. Participants also dressed in costumes representative of the eastern theme and participated in a ramp walk. The second day of the Millennium Olympiad will go on to include a Concert by the famous Bhangra Band ‘Sahara UK’ with an expected audience of over 1000 students.

Millennial Olympiad 2013

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Hina Butt begins her day early in the morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and her son’s school books in the other. The epitome of a working mother, Butt is the much-talked about and discussed CEO of a wildly successful pret brand Teena, a brand that appeals to women of all ages who are looking for outfits that add some pizzaz to their routine look.

She explains: “Vibrant colors, bold patterns and contemporary cuts are part of my design philosophy and I think it’s an aesthetic which attracts women of all ages, I design for the woman of today who is too busy to fuss for too long in front of the mirror. She needs a look which works during the day time and in the evening, and is effective, simple and truly impressive. This is what my label provides: an opportunity to every woman to look great.”

Like every career mom, Hina Butt is constantly running out of time as she rushes from her design studio to her son Muhammed’s school to meetings with clients who are anxious to only deal with the charismatic designer who is easily her best muse. “It’s not easy but I think my secret to multi-tasking is to have a kick-ass team at my disposal which is self-motivated,” she says about her multitasking. “Working with them

has made my life so simple because I have the best possible person for the job working on it at all times.”

Hina Butt’s advice for other female CEOs is simple— “Don’t be daunted by the competition out there and under no circumstances should you let male competition intimidate you. Women are in many ways better suited to running businesses and pursuing creative interests.”

Hina Butt has big plans for her brand in the future. Having established herself in Lahore with record high sales at all the multi-brand stores in the city, the young entrepreneur is now planning to expand aggressively to Islamabad and Karachi. Eventually, she plans to open her own stores and launch diffusion lines under the parent brand of Teena.

“I think we set limits for ourselves,” said Hina Butt. “And I am no longer willing to limit myself. I want to soar and grow Teena by Hina Butt until it is truly a brand of substance and power.”

Hina Butt’s ambition is to develop her brand into a fashion and lifestyle house with furnishing, couture, pret and fabric lines. She believes that despite the numerous players in the industry, there is a huge vacuum for a brand which provides high quality and reasonably priced products for all women. “If you look around you, every other woman is making clothes at home and is becoming a self-trained designer, but there is a dearth of entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses seriously and are going all the way.”

For Monica Peracha, her fashion business is a lot more than just something to keep her busy. Ever since she was a little girl playing with dolls and dressing them up, she has known that becoming a designer was her destiny. “Designing clothes has never just been a hobby or something for me to do on the side,” says the young designer who has already received international acclaim for her work.

Monica Peracha, who designs under the brand

The Movers and The Shakers:

3 Budding CEO’s Taking Over The Fashion IndustryBy Irene Johnson

42 I March 24, 20130, 2012

name Monica Couture, is an avant-garde designer who believes in using trendy fabrics and materials to create cutting edge and high fashion attire. Unlike other designers who prefer sticking to safe and mundane fabrics such as silk, cotton and lace, Monica Peracha is constantly trying to push the normative parameters by bringing in unusual materials and e m b e l l i s h m e n t s . Upon talking to the savvy young designer, you realize this is all part of her business strategy. “When

I decided to launch my own label, I realized that the only way to succeed in today’s super competitive world was to develop a brand which was easy to differentiate from the rest,” said Monica. Hence emerged Monica Couture, a brand which created waves all the way from Paris to London to India and of course our very own Pakistan.

“I think over the years my brand has become even more universal and contemporary in its appeal because the more I have traveled the more ubiquitous my approach has become and the more refined my aesthetic.”

Monica Peracha believes the biggest challenges for a woman entrepreneur are being able to do justice to the numerous demands on one’s time. “If you are not organized and efficient you can easily become a nervous wreck with your children pulling you in one direction and your husband sulking in the corner and clients getting upset because their deliveries are not made on time. To avoid such a mess, keep your house in order, make sure that you start work much before the deadline and you have a good team to assist you.”

Peracha feels that there are many players in the fashion industry who still try to take advantage of women in business and her advice to all those young girls who are planning to launch their labels is simple:

“Stay firm, keep your eye straight on the goal and don’t let anyone or anything intimidate you. Women are in many ways more competent and able than men and can manage businesses in a much better manner than their male counterparts.”

As a young CEO, Saira Rizwan faces numerous challenges on a daily basis. She manages a busy work schedule where brides-to-be and eager fiances’ wrestle for her time and are eager to sit down with her

for a one-on-one appointment. Always the perfectionist, Rizwan ensures that she is involved in every aspect of her designing from selecting the fabrics to sketching out the designs to draping the fabric on the mannequin. “Being so picky about every detail of one’s business makes it difficult to ever compromise and this can be a tall order for any woman who has so many balls in the air,” says the elegantly dressed designer who is a mother of two children. “I think working mothers work three times as hard as our male counterparts.”

Though Saira Rizwan always knew that becoming a fashion designer was her destiny, she chose to begin small from a room in her house and concentrated on building her brand slowly and gradually. “I think I did the right thing by opting for a small yet consistent growth pattern because I was able to test the waters and develop a dependable team without constantly being harassed.” As a CEO of one of the country’s most promising brands, Saira Rizwan says the biggest challenge for any business leader is to learn how to develop a team one can depend upon. “The people working with us are our greatest asset and it’s important to understand and realize that it is hard to build a business by oneself.”

Today, Rizwan has a big team of designers and assistants who facilitate her in creating collections for the many fashion shows and catwalks she takes part in. One of the first highs of her professional life was when she was offered the chance to participate in London Fashion Week, and she received great applause from the audience and critics alike. “I think every business requires appreciation and recognition and for me my show at London Fashion Week gave me the push I needed,” she said. “It was the first time I enjoyed the high of doing a runway show and hearing the applause. It was a high I wanted to keep coming back for.”

As a young CEO, Saira Rizwan spends her days trying hard to balance the numerous demands on her time; be they from her children, her husband or her design team. She believes that for a working mother the best thing to do is to be super-organized and efficient when it comes to managing time. “I have worked out time slots for everything,” she said. “If it’s work then all I do in the hours I spend at work is work. If it’s time with my children then I give them my hundred percent and if I am with my husband then I switch off my phone and I only concentrate on him.”

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Pakistani born author, Bapsi Sidhwa’s books Water and Their Language of Love were recently released in Lahore by the

publishing house, Readings, at prices that are quite affordable. Sidhwa has received many awards for her work including the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz – Pakistan’s highest national honor in the arts.

Water: Where Colonialism and Culture Meet

Adapted from the script of Deepa Mehta’s critically acclaimed film, Bapsi Sidwha’s novel, “Water”, is about the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief. Set in 1938, in the twilight of colonial India, the novel focuses on a group of women condemned

by Hindu law to spend the rest of their lives in an ashram on the bank of the Ganges due to their status as widows. Sidwha draws a stunning contrast between the muted grey walls of the ashram, where women are told that they are ‘half dead’ without their husbands, and the luminous world outside.

The story opens with Chuhiya, a six year old girl, whose childhood is cut short when her poor Brahmin father decides to marry her off to a 44 year old Hira Lal. Sidhwa narrates the atrocity of child-marriages as Chuhiya, being pre-pubescent, lives in her parent’s home and unsuspectingly carries on with her life after her wedding ceremony, completely unfazed by the possibility of widowhood. Her arrival creates turmoil in the ashram as she ironically acts as a voice of reason, questioning archaic traditions and unraveling the crude reasoning behind them. Amidst the bleak scenery and the emphasis on uniformity in appearance lies an entire spectrum of characters,

suggesting that a woman’s identity extends far beyond her marital status, lineage and social duties. There is the devout Shakuntala who lives by the scriptures and spends her days assisting a holy man, the limpid-eyed Kalyani, the only widow whose head is not shaved, the boisterous eunuch Gulabi, connecting the ashram to the outside world, and the vicious housemother, Madhumati. Inside the ashram, the fallacy of the system is revealed as Madhumati is running an underground brothel with the help of Gulabi, offering Kalyani’s services to satisfy her own monetary needs.

Chuhiya becomes a catalyst in the lives of the women of the ashram; her impudence and high spirits encourage Shakuntula to question her devotion to a religion that turns widows into penniless outcasts. Kalyani too is inspired to rebel and begins a love affair with Narayan, a handsome law student inspired by Gandhi’s nationalism. Where the movie rivets its

Bapsi Sidhwa’s Water and Their Language of Love

“I feel if there’s one little thing I could do, it’s to make people realize: We are not worthless because we inhabit a country which is seen by Western eyes as a primitive, fundamentalist country only. . .I mean, we are a rich mixture of all sorts of forces as well, and our lives are very much worth living.”

–Bapsi Sidhwa, Massachusetts Review, 1990

By Nadia Khawaja

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audience through cinematography, Sidhwa creates anticipation though poignant speeches and complimentary imagery, shifting between romantic melodrama and spiritual inquiry.

Heavy with symbolism, the novel efficiently parallels the trials and tribulations of widows under Hindu fundamentalism to that of India under the British Raj. The insistence for Indian nationalism and equality are persistent voices throughout the novel and they pervade into the walled ashram as well, depicting the culmination of Indian resistance against colonialism. In the deeply moving final scene, Shakuntula’s bravery in freeing Chuhiya perhaps serves as a precursor to India’s eventual freedom from colonial rule.

Their Language of Love: Bapsi Sidhwa Compiled

In her first ever anthology of short stories, Bapsi Sidwha presents the dialogue between the self and society, the local and the transnational – her narrators and protagonists are almost always the marginalized outsiders, be they

women, immigrants, expatriates or religious minorities, struggling to find a place for themselves in a community that strictly prescribes to established norms. The themes of resistance, cultural validity and questioning the dictates of society, are spread across a number of stories.

Though her stories reference her own history and identity, she is conscious of remaining relative as an author today – in ‘Ruth and The Afghan’, the story of an American woman’s encounter with, yes, an Afghan, Sidhwa draws back to the days of Zahir Shah, exposing the changing dynamic of global conversation. While world politics has definitely taken a turn, in the story ‘Breaking It Up’, Sidwha reveals that some social orders are resilient to change. Zareen, the narrator of the story, arrives in the US upon hearing the news that her Parsi daughter is contemplating marriage to an outsider, an American Jew, reminding us that cross-cultural marriage is as much of a taboo as it was thirty years ago. Reader’s of An American Brat might find the story line quite familiar and the author’s note acknowledges that

this short story was indeed the inspiration for her novel.

Similarly, the story titled ‘Defend Yourself Against Me’ is actually a chapter that she wrote for her prominent novel, Ice Candy Man, but it never made its way into the text.

Sidwha possesses a knack for conveying social truths through the character’s personal introspections. The plight of a character often serves as a metaphor for a greater social crisis or dilemma as in ‘A Gentlemanly War’ in which the protagonist’s paranoia about the Indians bombarding Lahore during the 1965 war reflects the fear unsettling an entire nation. Her thoughts upon her eventual return to the

city can be read as an appeal to the readers. “What...prevented the Indians from occupying Lahore, sparing it the butchery, rape and looting

that were bound to follow?” she asks. She then answers herself: “I believe that the underpinnings of this strange miscalculation was an unacknowledged compassion. The ties...of friendship, shared languages, neighbourhoods and customs...”

The theme of cross cultural relations takes on a different note in “The Trouble Erasers” as a child listening to a traditional Zoroastrian narrative wonders why the hero is Muslim.

Perhaps the story that best epitomizes Sidhwa’s collection is ‘Sehra-bai’, wherein an elderly woman “goes through periods of intense reminiscence.” Like Sehra-bai who “is aware that her mind is reliving an old memory, yet the memory is so immediate that all the emotions that accompanied her then are with her now,” Sidhwa’s retells past times with urgency and passion. At times, the collection might seem fragmented and some of Sidwha’s thoughts might come across as incomplete. This compilation is definitely not Sidhwa’s best work but it is worth a read.

1. Water, 2. Their Language of LoveBy Bapsi Sidhwa , Publisher: Readings, Lahore

Pages: 1) 170; 2) 249; Price: 1) Rs295/-; 2) Rs350/-

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Dr. Zaheeer Ahmad Siddiqui is a distinguished professor at GC University, Lahore. The two eponymous publications in view comprise collections of his sundry articles bearing their individual titles.

Allama Iqbal aur Farsi Zaban-o-Adab

The topics discussed in this book are all focused on Allama Iqbal and various aspects of his person and art, e.g., his affiliation with GC Lahore, his reliance on the Persian poetic tradition, his concept of love and reason, the moral fabric of his poetry vis-à-vis the literature of Persia, his disapproval of kingship in the line of Persian literature, his views on communism, his connection with Sh. Najmuddin Raazi, Zarwan and Zartosht, and the concept of Satan in different religions and literatures.

Tashakh-khus-e-Pakistan aur Farsi Adab

The enlisted contents of this publication include the author’s views on the significance of the Persian language (anterior to the Urdu language) as a repository of the Muslim culture and civilization in the Sub-continent, in relation to the genesis of Pakistan; Pakistani literature and the question of

national identity; the national anthem and the flag of Pakistan; human history vis-à-vis the world Muslim population, and Pakistan; the freedom of thought in the context of Islam and Pakistan; a survey of the Persian literature in Kashmir, and the Islamic system of governance with reference to the Muslim world and Pakistan.

The two books bear a close relevance to the ground realities

underlying the issues – social, cultural, political and ideological – raised and discussed in their respective texts.

The earnestness of the writer’s intent and the lucidity of his style are the distinctive features of the twin compositions. It is expected that readers – both the casual and the initiated – will find them useful and informative.

The Persian Language & Literature, Iqbal and PakistanBy Syed Afsar Sajid

1. Allama Iqbal aur Farsi Zaban-o-Adab, 2. Tashakh-khus-e-Pakistan aur Farsi AdabAuthor: Dr. Zaheer Ahmad Siddiqi

Publisher: Takhleeqat, LahorePages: 1) 209; 2) 108; Price: 1) Rs200/-; 2) Rs110/-

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