We spent the morning with the class, encouraging them to draw their ideas and develop them more coherently. Ideas are great, but with out execution they don’t amount to much. I look forward to seeing what they come up with in each session. I also happened upon a little thesis booklet form 2010 in the lab. I saw my students from 2010 with their thesis projects, which was fun.
After class, we walked a block over to Tollinton, which was hosting a handicrafts fair. I learned about several interesting projects, including an Ajrak (block printing) project that I did not get a chance to visit in Bhit Shah.Suffi sahib and I visited a couple of bookshops afterwards. I had heard the terrible news that Ferozson’s Book Store had burned down in an electrical fire. Thankfully, they have a small shop in part of their original shop, which is an institution. It looks like they are rebuilding the damaged portion and I hope to see it all come back some day. Part of each trip here is spent scouring for interesting books on art, literature etc at all these different publishers’ book stores.
Next we head to Gulberg for a THAAP event. There were some really cool paper dolls on the way in, from Multan. The event was focused on a group of people here in Punjab, referred to as Jhanglis. It was an interesting talk with a lot of people who are heavily involved in writing and preserving culture, including Mubarak Ali of whom I have several books, Mushtaq Soofi of Sachal Orchestra fame and many more. I enjoyed the talk by Dr. Saeed Bhutta and the discussion that followed. I got a bit of help in asking about regarding traditional puppets, and was given several possible leads. I really appreciate Suffi sahib going to such lengths to try and bring me to places he can think of where I might find leads to puppeteers.