Asian Coalition for Housing Rights

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In-House Inspiration

CAN Coordinator Nad visits Tibet Heritage Fund in Leh, India and takes in the heavens in the Himalayas ..... mid July 2014

Photo from Sokley July 2014, Cambodia "Greens Shop"

Yutaka ... Waiting for Winter in northern India Tibetan region

Rice Children from CAk Indonesia

Poetry and Development from Arif Hasan

Development

We play games
You and I and they
Play at reconciling what is irreconcilable
Agreeing on irrelevant details and grand concepts
But glossing over love and understanding
That the concepts embody

We play games
You and I and they
To preserve our little domains
And prevent them from blossoming
Into flowers that will free the world
Of you and I and they

We play games
You to survive and I to negotiate your survival
And they to plunder us both.

Karachi, February 1989

Lyari Expressway

Lessons from Tradition

(October 25, 2002)

We have lived in a state of perpetual autumn
Working for the coming of spring
Once again we realize the truth of what the sages have said
“Do not expect spring to come before the winter winds have laid waste the garden”

Negotiate they said
And so there were negotiations
All games designed to gain time and distort the truth
We forgot what Hafiz has told us
“Fields sowed with the seeds of opportunism yield no harvest”

We will retire once again to nurse our badly mauled egos
And our devastated partners to re-build their badly shattered lives
Both are reparable if we follow what an old saying says
“This life is a voyage across the desert so build as many oasis possible
on this road to eternity”

The evening sun is dying in the arms of the Western sky
staining the Arabian Sea crimson with its blood
Its reverse will be enacted next morning when the night will die
Riaz says “Nothing ever changes except the material, for man remains a barbarian”

These words of wisdom are disjointed and helpless in our situation
And poetry, this play of rhyme, meter and images
A tool to gloss over anguish
Traditionally pessimistic, sad and nostalgic
Honest to the core
Cannot be a cure for more than an individual turmoil

Tradition commands “You must leave the world a better place than you found it”
Philosophy, poetry and polemics apart
This is all we can try for.
But then, how do you sustain and transfer to generations the madness
Coupled with a longing for knowledge
That this effort requires?

Lament of a Relocated Person

They came with bulldozers
And a gun carrying police force
They gave no notice
They held no dialogue
They turned the house I built Brick by brick
Over thirty years
Into unusable rubble.

The utility connections
Legally acquired
Paid for by my wife’s savings
Through years of bisi committees
Are now just dangling wires and pipes
Disconnected from the life of the city
Soon to be buried under new construction.

They have dumped us in the wilderness
Where my child has no school
And my wife no job
And I spend hours in expensive commuting
With no time for them.

They have dumped us in the wilderness
Far from the joys, sorrows and friends
Of our childhood and adolescence
And from the spaces whose evolution
Gave us a new vision
And transformed us
From members of different clans
Into equal citizens of an expanding city.

They have robbed us of our identity
Made us poor again
Told us by their actions
That we are the residue of the city
Who can own no land
For it only belongs to the rich.

POETRY AND DEVELOPMENT

The gardener cannot know the secrets of the garden
Until he has been bruised by the thorns that protect the flowers.

Because of the drought the peasant knows it has not rained on the mountains
Although he has never seen them nor ever will.

We meet, you and I, like a pair of lips and a wine glass
Let us think of the day when the wine bottle will be empty.

You hesitate to walk with me for I cannot identify a destination
I am in search of answers and you of results.

Wisdom, the sages say, makes complexity simple
Yet simplicity is not accepted by the merchants of knowledge for it has no market.

Because of this perpetual conflict with myself
I seek relief in writing poetry

And poetry is more honest if not more meaningful than my work.
What a painful contradiction!

Arif Hasan
Karachi, July 1992

IT HAS BEEN A LONG JOURNEY

It has been a long journey,
From the winding brick paved lanes of Panipat, (1)
Where Boo Ali Qalandar (2)
Preached the unification of God and Man,
To the wide avenues and squares of Paris,
Where Voltaire ridiculed all mysticism.

It has been a long journey,
From demonstrating passionately against injustice
In the streets of Karachi,
To discussing intellectually the concept of universal brotherhood
At meetings in the heart of London
The former devoid of reason, and the latter of sincerity.

It has been a long journey;
From waiting at the crossroads with a garland of jasmine flowers
For a hypocritically shy and coquettish beloved
To embracing chance acquaintances in public places.

It has been a long journey;
From struggling to create self-sufficiency and empowerment
In the cities and rural areas of an impoverished Asia,
To negotiating dependence in Washington and
The capitals of Europe.

It has been a long journey!
So many contradictions that I am tired.
Maybe our future generations will reconcile them.

1. A small town near Delhi where my family originally came from.
2. An eleventh century mystic

ARIF HASAN
Karachi, 1993

AT THE TOMB OF SHAH ABDUL LATIF AT BHIT SHAH
(i)
Once again
A man of the world,
Angry, anguished and frustrated
Has come to love’s destination.

There is ugliness around me here –
So much discord
In colour, architecture and environment.
Superstition, hypocracy and commerce
Are with it hand in hand.

Yet this dust is sacred
As I too wish to loose myself in the pain of men
For I cannot fight its causes.
But unlike him
I have no faith
In the will of God
Or in the goodness of fellow beings.

Arif Hasan
Bhit Shah, March 1981

Dusk,
And the earth gives up its heat

Dust,
Stirred up by the animals returning home
Pain – so much pain
The pain of injustice
The pain of being
The pain of Shah Latif.

Reflections in the dirty pool
The colour of the sky
And the form of trees
The glow of glow worms
And the croaking of frogs
What emptiness
What loneliness of spirit
What anguish
And what turmoil in my heart.

And then the sound of music
The heart rendering wail
At last this desolation has been expressed
And my tears released

Weep now, for tomorrow in Sukkur
There is business to transact

(i) Shah Abdul Latif, a 17^th century mystic, is considered as one of the greatest poets and musicians of South Asia.
In his own province, Sindh, and in other parts of Pakistan, he is considered a saint. It is because of him that Sindhi folk stories were rendered into poetry and put to music.

Arif Hasan
Bhit Shah, July 1973

Arif Hasan
Arif is one of the ACHR network's most prolific thinkers, writers and practitioners . His articles, books, research studies, lectures and travel notes reflect his deep understanding and affection for and curiosity about all things Asian. Arif's new website contains his articles, reports, research monographs, seminar papers and powerpoint presentations, as well as descriptions of his many books and photos and drawings of his various architectural and planning projects. It also has an image gallery with downloadable photos of Karachi over time and photos of places where Arif has worked in Pakistan. There is a section of the website on maps, which includes historic maps of Karachi, maps related to the evolution of the city and its infrastructure and urban development and maps of Pakistan relating to ecology and environment. The subjects covered by material on the website include: Human Settlements, Karachi, Culture and Heritage, Architecture and Planning, Environment and Ecology, Development and Poverty, OPP and URC, Disaster Management and Political Writings.
The website project has been supported by IIED in London.
www.arifhasan.org