"We were busy cutting mango trees at the orchard when a plane appeared on the horizon from nowhere. It swirled in the air before falling to the ground with a bang," says Chiragh Din, a local contractor who was clearing the area in Suraj Miani near Multan for a housing colony on the afternoon of July 10.

He says that on its way down, the Lahore-bound Fokker plane first hit high voltage electric wires and then smashed into a wall. There was a huge fireball followed by a big explosion. It was one terrible fall for the tree-fellers. They were still benumbed a day after the crash. Asked to recall the events, they did it like horrified souls inextricably caught in a long unending nightmare.

For those on-board, those must have been the longest moments of their lives. The last journey of the Fokker turned out to be its briefest one, lasting less than three minutes. The incident made as little sense to those observing it from a distance. Everyone longed in desperation for the impossible: someone for once salvaging the situation that was beyond repair.

On July 12, the federal cabinet ordered grounding of the Fokker planes which had until now been an integral part of the Pakistan International Airline’s fleet — in the true local tradition of delays, a few days behind schedule, the dear ones of the 46 men and women who lost their lives in the tragic crash of July 10 would say. The victims included 45 people on board and a woman working in the field who was hit by debris falling from the plane.

The roll read like a who’s who of Pakistani professionals groomed over years to take up top positions in their fields . Among the deceased were Brigadier Farhat Aftab, Brigadier Aftab Ahmed, Deputy Attorney General Suhail Akhtar, Doctor Iftikhar Raja, Bahauddin Zakariya University Vice Chancellor Doctor Muhammad Naseer Khan and Justice Nazir Siddiqui and Justice Nawaz Bhatti of the Lahore High Court (Multan Bench), to name but only a few.

The PIA was bombarded with criticism for persisting with the ageing Fokker planes. Strangely, in the wake of the crash, the PIA management sought to dispel the impression that there was any plan to ground Fokkers, as it went about the usual but sad business of asking the relatives of the deceased to file claims for compensation. PIA promised to pay Rs 200,000 to the heirs of each crash victim. The government added another Rs 400,000 to the compensation amount. Chief Minister Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi announced Rs 2.5 million in compensation to each of the two judges killed in the crash.

There were immediate calls for reviewing and revamping the airline’s existing fleet. The counter argument warned against panicking. PIA had after all been praised over the years for maintaining excellent professional standards. It was learnt that the ill-fated Fokker plane had been repaired twice and had come under scrutiny last year. The PIA’s airworthiness section had approved the plane for flight licence.

The plea for patience and clarity was lost amidst various theories bandied about to explain the accident. For starters, the PIA Engineering Wing Senior Vice President Air Vice Marshal Iftikhar Gul said the probe report will be compiled within a week whereas in the opinion of CAA Director General Air Marshal Pervez Akhtar Nawaz (retd), the investigation could take as long as four months.

Similarly, until the cabinet had the last word on the matter, there existed a difference of opinion between PIA Chairman Tariq Kirmani and the Federal Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal on whether or not to ground the Fokker planes in the PIA’s fleet. The PIA chairman announced that there were no plans to ground Fokkers as they were "fit and air-worthy". On the other hand, the defence minister was convinced that the ageing aircraft should be discarded. He also claimed to be the ‘first person’ to have raised his voice in the Parliament against retaining the old Fokker planes.

What had happened, however, could not be undone. The investigators hoped the black box could provide them with a clue to solve the mystery. Yet, some of them were reported as having expressed a suspicion that the fall may have been caused by the extra load heaped on the plan: mango crates once again. The PIA cargo officials told TNS the investigators had taken the cargo record in their custody and barred them from giving any statement to the press.

Was it the extra load, or was it a combination of many factors that weighed the plane down? Technical experts in Multan who would rather stay unnamed said the crash may have been caused by an unfortunate mix of weather, heavy load and indeed a weak engine — given the reports that some engine parts that had fallen off from the plane as soon as it took off were later found from the runway of the Multan airport.

The final line remains inconclusive. One definite version is awaited. As always, the investigation continues.

Amongst current operators of Fokker F-27 are Aerocaribe (Mexico), Air Algerie, Argentinian Air Force, Bolivian Air Force, CATA (Argentina), Channel Express (UK), Germany, Finnish Air Force, Ghana Air Force, Indonesian Air Force, Iranian Air Force, Libyan Arab Airlines, Lloyd Aereo Boliviano (Bolivia), Merpati Nusantara Airlines (Indonesia), Myanma Airways, NEPC Airlines (India), Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Navy, Philippines Air Force, Senegambia Air Force, TAAG (Angola) and WDL (Germany). It must be mentioned that not all of these operators may be using Fokker-F-27 for passenger transportation.

May 20, 1965: A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Boeing 707 crashes on its inaugural flight while attempting to land at Cairo airport, killing 124 people.

November 26, 1979: A PIA Boeing 707 bringing home Pakistani Hajj pilgrims from Saudi Arabia crashes shortly after take-off from Jeddah airport, killing 156 people.

August 17, 1988: A US-made Hercules C-130 military aircraft crashes near Bahawalpur, killing military ruler General Mohammad Zia ul Haq and 30 others including top Pakistani generals and the US ambassador.

In August 1989, another PIA Fokker, with 54 people onboard, went down in northern Pakistan on a domestic flight. The plane’s wreckage was never found.

In September 1992, a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a mountain in Nepal, killing all 167 people on board. Investigators found the plane was flying 1,500 feet lower than it reported as it approached the Kathmandu airport.

February 19, 2003: An air force Fokker F27 turboprop aircraft crashes in fog-shrouded mountains near Kohat, killing air force chief Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, his wife and 15 others.

February 24, 2003: A chartered Cessna 402-B carrying Afghan Mines and Industries Minister Juma Mohammad Mohammadi, four Afghan officials, a Chinese mining executive and two Pakistani crew crashes into the Arabian Sea near Karachi.

July 10, 2006: A PIA Fokker F27 bound for Lahore crashes into a field and bursts into flames shortly after takeoff from the central city of Multan. Officials say 41 passengers and four crew were killed.

The Fokker F-27 began life as a 1950 design study known as the P275, a 32 seater powered by two RollsRoyce Dart turboprops. With the aid of Dutch government funding, the P275 evolved into the F-27, which first flew on November 24 1955. This original prototype was powered by Dart 507s and would have seated 28, by the time the second prototype had flown (in January 1957) the fuselage length grew to allow seating for 32.

By this stage Fokker had signed an agreement that would see Fairchild build Friendships in the USA. The first aircraft to enter service was in fact a Fairchild built F-27, in September 1958.

Fairchild F-27s differed from the initial Fokker F-27 Mk 100s in having basic seating for 40, a lengthened nose capable of housing a weather radar, and additional fuel capacity.

Developments included the Mk 200/F-27A with more powerful engines, Mk 300/F-27B and primarily military Mk 400 Combi versions, the Mk 500 with a 1.50m (4ft 11in) fuselage stretch taking seating to 52, and Mk 600 quick change freight/pax aircraft.

Fairchild independently developed the stretched FH-227, which appeared almost two years earlier than the Mk 500. The FH-227 featured a 1.83m (6ft) stretch over standard length F-27/F-27s, taking standard seating to 52.

The Indian caste system obliged everyone, from Brahmin to Untouchable, to have his own utensils.In order to maintain the purity of the castes, these were destroyed after being used once. Disposable crockery may have originated here. According to Kripal Singh Shekhawat, the Rajasthani master painter, it was with the arrival of Muslims in the subcontinent that keeping pots for a longer period became the custom, and clay pottery came into business. In an earlier time people preferred to use leaves and hollowed halves of vegetables as food plates, which can be discarded after the meal. This custom, inherent in the concept of caste, is a hygienic practice, besides being a means of recycling natural substances.

The link between vegetables and manmade pottery is not only functional, but also has formal dimensions. Ceramic pieces and vegetables (and/or fruits) share a common feature: roundness of form. Whether elongated, squat, flattish or tilted, a piece of pottery — like a plant — normally has soft edges, not hard corners and angles such as triangular and cubic forms do.

Besides function and form, another aspect that connects ceramics with fruit and vegetables is the texture of surface. One can experience the smoothness of plants by touching them, or enjoy their subtle shades of colour by looking at the combinations of dots and lines that cover their outer layers. Similarly, ceramic pieces are prepared with glazes that add a polished surface and a pattern of various small marks and hues. Often the specific shade of a ceramic piece is managed by firing various coats of glazes.

All these links between the manmade pottery and natural forms were visible in the work of Peter Wilson, a ceramicist from Australia (where he teaches the subject at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst). Peter had visited Pakistan in 1998, held a workshop at NCA and showed his work in Lahore. Recently the same sequence was repeated, but with a slight change. Now he displayed his ceramic pieces at the Alhamra Art Gallery after conducting a one-day workshop with students and teachers from various art schools in Lahore. The workshop consisted of demonstrations of his craft, his comments upon the work of other participants and images of his work and life in Australia.

This venture, though arranged only for a day, can serve to boost the art of ceramics in our midst. Ceramics is still considered a craft by many practitioners, users and viewers, a method of making utilitarian items which are slightly different from your usual crockery because, unlike the plastic or bone china cups and saucers from a factory, they are fabricated as unique pieces and can be identified as the creation of a certain individual — the artist.

Yet, in spite of these two factors, the handmade studio ceramic is not the easiest genre in today’s art. The dual demands of the practical and the aesthetic have made it difficult for many artists to pursue this course or be inventive in this field. Certainly the work of the late Salahuddin Mian presented the finest example of harmony between form and function in this genre. And, to some extent, one can find this balance in the works of artists such as Kaif Ghaznavi, Salman Ikram and Shazia Mirza, who belong to a younger generation.

In fact the workshop at Alhmara was an occasion for the participating artists to view their works as art forms and analyse these in technical as well as aesthetic terms. But the culminating point of the workshop was the exhibition of Peter Wilson’s works, held from 6th to 8th July at the same venue. He showed vases, bowls, a teapot and a small round object. The work reflected his skill in shaping delicate forms and his command of the technique of high temperature glazes.

The most obvious feature of his work was the presence of vegetable-like pots in the exhibition. A number of pieces looked like pumpkins, other resembled apples. Wilson treated the lids of these pieces as if they were the upper portions of fruit and vegetable with a bit of stem in the centre. That part, slightly tilted to one direction, performed the mundane function of a handle besides serving to bring the pot closer to organic forms. Peter has extended this association further by finishing the surface as a combination of spots and drops of various hues. The carefully chosen shades — greens and browns — helped in enhancing the illusion of an organic element in these pieces. At a first glance the colour seemed to be applied randomly, but a second one revealed a methodical application. In a majority of these pieces the dark shades merged into lighter tones, and often marks of different colour — but of singular intensity — were deployed sensuously.

Along with the visual pleasure it occasioned, an important aspect of Wilson’s work was its size. Every ceramic piece was made in proportion to and for human hands, so one could grasp, feel and lift a piece easily. This matter of scale, which may appear insignificant, is an essential key to comprehending the attitude of several practising ceramicists, especially those who aim to build ambitious pieces which cannot be handled by hand. For these ceramicists their creations — like paintings or drawings — are objects that can be enjoyed through the eyes only. Thus their works lie beyond the traditional uses and category of ceramics. The work of Peter Wilson on the other hand, with its dimensions and silky surfaces, seemed to invite the hands of the viewers. It affirmed that simplicity of form, elementary colour schemes and basic techniques can sometimes be poetic, though it is not simple to achieve this poetry.

Cholistan is one of the most economically backward areas of the country, but culturally the case is different. This was partly demonstrated by the Festival of Cholistan organised by the Cholistan Development Council of Pakistan at the Alhamra in Lahore.

Such festivals are usually held in bigger cities or in the capital to expose the urbanites to the culture and way of life which very few of them have experienced directly, and have only read about or seen in the media. In the festival folk musicians sang the pristine music of the desert, puppeteers put up their show of traditional string puppets, while a play with dances was presented highlighting some of the socio-economic issues that need urgent attention.

Cholistan is home to Uch, one of the rare places in the Punjab which are rich in architecture and where shrines of some of the most important soofia are located. It is particularly significant because Uch’s architecture embodies styles and motifs which link it to the splendid structures of Central Asia and Iran. This Sultanate period style also represents the transition that was then taking place in architecture, and it becomes easier to establish a connection with the later grand structures of Northern India, which now also includes Pakistan.

Cholistan has got a peculiar architecture of its own as well, exemplified in the Derawar Fort, the ancestral graveyard of the Nawabs of Bahawalpur, and the adjacent mosque. And its vastness resonates with the poetry of Khawaja Ghulam Fareed. If there was ever a representative poet of an area it is Fareed, who employed the imagery of the desert landscape to create poetry which brings the entire local ethos to life. One of the leading poets of Punjabi, Ghulam Fareed, is sung and rendered in vast areas of Northern India, in many cases by performers who have had little contact with the soil, but also by the likes of Pathaney Khan who gave the poetry of Khawaja Fareed the musical soul that it yearned for.

Being on the fringe, Cholistan has not been so badly hit by the mainstream development that has changed the urban and semi-urban areas of the Punjab. Its traditional songs and sayings have been treated by the media controlled from the bigger cities, and modernised, so to speak, to make them palatable for city listeners, but it has been observed that such processing takes something essential away. Though Cholistan, too, is on the verge of being sucked into the mainstream, yet to a degree it still is largely untouched.

One solid example of the culture of Cholistan is the existence of a large number of bhagats who sing the kalam of the Soofi poets and a folk repertoire which is a reflection of a syncretic cultural tradition that can be traced back thousands of years. In the festival, too, bhagats like Megha Lal, Sawar Lal Bheel and Bhagat Ram sang poetry that was a mixture of the sufi poetry and the text which is traditionally sung in the temples of the region. Obviously these are roving minstrels who wander through the length and breadth of the deserts with their eiktaras and sing and dance in their colourful attire, their various staging posts being either the shrines of poets, priests or the various melas that occasionally dot the barren stretches of land. Others who sang were Mai Sorari, Hasina, Ashiq Ramzan, Shireen Kanwal, Sabir Mor and Zahoor Hussain.

One such mela is held at Channan Pir. It is said that when Jalaluddin Surkh Bokhari in his travels through Jaisalmer inquired whether there was any kalma go in the area, on receiving an answer in the negative he made a prophecy that the son born to the Raja of Jaisalmer will be a ‘kalma go’. When a son was born to the Rani of Jaisalmer, the Raja ordered him to be put to the sword, but the Rani, enthralled by motherhood, placed the baby in a cradle and dispatched secretly to the site where the present mazar is situated. The baby was very goodlooking, so many started calling him channan, but it is also said that the cradle in which he was made to escape was made of teakwood which in Saraiki is called ‘channan’ He grew up to be a sahib-e-karamaat and often remained in a state of jazb. His fame spread far and wide and when he died his shrine became famous for fulfilling the wish of those wanting a male child. It is a ritual that when a prayer is answered and a son is born, the father dons women’s clothes, the choli/ghaggra, and dances on the shrine for a few days, distributing alms all the while.

If more such melas and festivals are held, the authentic culture of the region and its people can be presented without apologies. In this festival, an issue-oriented play was staged and it all seemed a bit contrived. Without doubting the sincerity of Farooq Ahmed Khan, who wrote and directed the play, and Aalia Riyaz, Adnan amjad, Asma Riyaz, Sigra, Hasan, Ahad Shehzadand Waqr, who were in the cast, it would have been far better if the traditional theatrical forms which are mostly the enactment of a folk tale, with lot of song and dance thrown in, had been staged.

The first anniversary of the London bombings was a sombre but immensely dignified occasion. It was the day that Britain’s capital remembered what had happened in this city exactly one year ago, reflected on it, remembered the victims of the bombings, and celebrated both the bravery of the survivors and the heroism of the rescue and emergency services.

It was a strange sort of atmosphere in the whole city that day — hushed, almost as quiet as it had been on the afternoon after the bombings. Memorial services were held at various sites — near Tavistock Square where the double decker bus was blown up, and outside the various underground stations. It was there that victims’ families came together to remember those they had lost.

A memorial service was held in Regent’s Park as well. Here a memorial flower picture had been created on the grass: a large image of a flower with seven pink-purple petals, made up of flowers placed there by those attending the service. The centre of the flower was made up of yellow gerberas placed by the victims’ families. Afterwards the flowers from this memorial image were to be made into compost and thus continue the cycle of life and growth.

At mid-day we all observed two minutes of silence, thinking of the events and destruction of that day. The whole bustling city came to a halt for those minutes and a sad silence engulfed it.

I had felt proud to be a Londoner last year, after seeing how the city had coped with the bomb attacks. The administration and the people were determined that life should go on, that London should live. No announcement of three or five days of mourning where everything would shut down, but a simple determination that London should carry on. And I felt proud, very proud, to be a Londoner when the anniversary was observed with so much dignity, without pomp or hysteria but simply highlighting the human cost, the stories of courage, the heroism, the unbearable tragedy.

There was a hush in the city that day, a muted tone to its usual buzz. It was the day we remembered, and it was surprising how powerful and affecting that memory was. A colleague of mine had been on her way to work last year when the Tavistock bomb went off very near her. She was fine through the whole year but was surprised at how shaky she found herself on the morning of the seventh. One year later the shock of the experience hit her like a sledghammer and it was an immense effort for her to get out of her house that morning, get on the tube and get to work.

Life goes on, but your life is changed. London goes on, but London, too, is changed.

Best wishes