Unprotected Legacy:

The arts, culture and crafts of the East have always fascinated all and sundry throughout the world. It has been our rich culture and our arts that have promoted us throughout. Our heritage has been for long our identity especially in times when our subcontinent was enslaved.

Since our identity has been such it is our moral duty to protect our culture and arts and to promote them with much gusto and thrive on it as much as we can and as much as possible. In doing so we must also keep in mind those who have spent their lives enriching our souls with their gift of arts.

So, it was sad for me to read in Images the downfall of major singers and artistes of our country who we seem to forget when their performance tends to change or the music quality is not maintained for a while or when the music scene goes out of their reach. Major artists that were at the pinnacle of the industry during the nineties and eighties such as Rangeela, Sohail Rana, and Waheed Murad are now no longer revered as they should be after they retire.

In the West and also in our neighboring country of India when someone meets their retirement they are still given much honor and presented with much life time achievement awards at various functions. They are written about in various show magazines and are invited as chief guests at different occasions yet our artists are living improvished. They are barely being able to maintain their basic amenities of life and those who are sick live in even worse conditions. Others choose to settle abroad and now it is us who call them unpatriotic. Example of such is Sohail Rana. He settled abroad rather than face appalling conditions.

Today in our country we do not have major media personalities. We live a parasitic life of culture feeding off our neighboring country and the west. To survive in today’s cultural world we should produce more of good artists and also learn to promote our old gifted maestros. Today when Amitabh Bachan is admitted in the hospital millions of us yearn and pray for his recovery, but before today did anyone of you know that Alamgir is fighting for his life on dialysis? Or that the last concert of Mehdi Hasan was sponsored by Jawed Akhter from India?

For us it remains a moment of shame.