Emmad's Lounge: Rashid Rana Exhibition at Mohatta Palace

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Rashid Rana Exhibition at Mohatta Palace - Labyrinth of Reflection

Rashid Rana solo exhibition at Mohatta Palace.

You may have noticed that all the Seminars, exhibitions, ceremonies and conferences have one thing in common. What is that ? I tell you. They all encourage idol and lazy people to attend their events. Why ? Because they know a major segment of their event will consist of a series of speeches. So more the idols the successful the event goes. No yawning or whispers among the crowd means people are listening attentively.

"Speeches make me feel sleepy" i heard somebody saying this phrase from the back row. But what i witnessed 10 minutes later was hard to believe ; somebody talking on phone amid a speech. I laughed to myself, because that guy was sitting next to me and he was no one else but my own friend. "Fair Enough"!

Btw i agree with the phrase "Speeches make people feel sleepy".

Well that was a funny part of an event. But this funny incident drew my attention to two very interesting points.

1. Speeches are the most unnatural ingredients in an event if they are not based on fair assessment of the person you are talking about, and good collection of words. Mere reading out out the written material kills the purpose of the speech.
Speech is an emotion conversation to oneself about someone. No emotion in a speech means you are not doing fair to the artist or you don't know that person at all.

2. A talented man does not fish for the compliments and always avoid public acclamation. To him, doing work is satisfying himself. And thats the reward of his hard work to himself. Since he does not perform his art for the sake of popularity or anyone particular,that's why attention or no attention is equal to him as long as his inner is satisfied with the amount of work he doing. And last but not least, a talented man speaks less and prefers to talk in short sentences.

Rashid Rana.

Rashid Rana, unfortunately I had never heard this name before. You may call it an ignorance or
blame the artist for not taking advantage of the fast moving media advertising. I heard the guests speaking about him, complimenting his art work, comparing him with other famous artists and mentioning his humble nature. From the speeches he seemed a exquisite artist.

Finally Rashid Rana was requested to come on stage to say few words. Automatically the audience started scanning for him in the crowd and wanted to hear his thoughts. I saw a shaved headed man wearing black suit, dark complexioned , very humble and timid smile, stood up from the First row, waved to the crowd and started sitting back on his seat as quickly as he had stood up. It was clear that he had no intention coming on the stage. The host who was probably his friend too insisted him to say few words. But all he could answer was " i am not prepared" The host left the rostrum went to Rashid Rana, took him by the arm and almost dragged him to the stage. He stood behind Rashid Rana like a SHO so that he might not retreat and slip away from the stage. And remained in the position till he felt was mandatory.
Seeing no way to escape, the lamb like timid Rashid Rana stood before the mic for a short while, raised his head to the beautiful sky, scanned the crowd, took his time, collected his words and spoke with very soft luring voice, honest in his words and genuine in his tone. He mentioned about his inspiration, and his arrival from States to Karachi, little about his work and he left the rostrum.
He hardly took 3/4 minutes on the rostrum but spoke so genuinely that it seemed like he had shared one complete chapter from his life book.

"You may agree to the fact that we can not define Art in words. Art itself speaks, it has its own soul. It can only be felt, perceived and absorbed. Similarly we can not justify an artist,s imaginative powers. We can not put his creativity into simple colloquial words. The only thing that helps you
know his abilities is his Work and his spoken words. Whatever an artist sees and feels inside, he
coveys it through his work and that's how you get to know him."
Last but no least the chief guest to the exhibition was no one else but our current CEC Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, ( He took the oath as CEC on 23 July 2012, after being appointed by the President of
Pakistan. He is a retired Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and Senior Advocate
Supreme Court and is known as a peace activist. )

Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim.

The host introduced Ebrahim shab in following words :

" Ladies and Gentlemen our honorable chief guest does not treat himself as a VIP, he still picks up his phone himself, and when we invited him to the event, his 1st and prompt answer was "Yes I would come".

Indeed a great man !