The Lok Virsa Museum, Islamabad

Photograph Courtesy: Google Images

The people of Pakistan work with devotion and dedication to preserve their rich historical culture. There are numerous museums throughout the country which present the nation's culture. The people consider the Lok Virsa museum to be the finest cultural heritage museum among these. The museum is located in Islamabad, close to the Shakarparian Hills. The museum showcases the unique culture, lifestyle and history of the people of every province of the country.

     The museum houses a collection of over thirty-two thousand books and journals. these are mostly on the subjects of Pakistani folklore, cultural anthropology, ethnology, art history and craft. The vast literary collection serves researchers, students, scholars, historians, writers and lecturers till today.

Sculptures of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
Begum Rana Liaqat Ali Khan and Fatimah Jinnah.

The museum also houses works of traditional arts such as metalwork, woodwork, bonework, embroidered costumes, block printing and ivory art. There are also sculptures of significant historical figures and cultural icons. Sculptures of local animals such as bullocks, camels and buffalos are also present on display.
Other than the immense literary collection, the museum holds more a recent collection of digital audio, which contains cultural folk music. Other audio includes around three thousand hours of cultural audio recordings and fifty-one documentaries. The archives also hold more DVDs containing hundreds of hours of film, including videographed festivals, cultural rituals, cultural dances and artisans at work. The museum has several mobile teams always ready to film any cultural activity.

Sculptures representing cultural romantic stories,
left: Heer & Ranjha, Right: Sassi & Punnu.

   Another department of the museum is the Research Centre. The VIRSA RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS CENTER is tasked with conducting field surveys and studies. The staff goes to villages and cities and try to record the visible culture on film, audio or in writing. They conduct studies on even the most trivial elements of the Pakistani culture such as cildrens' games, nursery rhymes, folktales, oral traditions. Books are produced in series such as cultural romances, Sufi poetry and epics. They often involve schools, colleges and other institutions to assist them in their surveys at a regional level. This helps them sidestep the problem of not having branches in various regions and also helps them in their goal to bring the youth of Pakistan closer to their national culture.

      The Lok Virsa museum lists five official objectives of it's mission.

"

1. Systematic inclusion of youth and their engagement in exposure to progressive, creative and pluralistic traditional culture, through making our folklore relevant to them.
2. Inculcate a deeper understanding of our identity and pluralistic past, entailing layers of cultures over centuries, amalgamating into a sense of robust present.
3. Accentuate the diversity of folk cultures __ lifestyles, songs, music, languages, foods, geographical links and perspectives, intertwined in Pakistan’s folklore.
4. Using internet, social media, as well as mainstream radio and television, as new grounds for Lok Virsa to disseminate its message.
5. Making Lok Virsa a vibrant hub of expression, discussion, performances and coming together of ethnic communities, folklorists, performing artist, students and scholars, who would develop a high level of ownership of this platform and use it for collaborative programs."

Sculptures showing the uniqueness of lifestyles from all
 the provinces.

 The survival of the nation's vast cultural heritage almost totally depends on the future efforts of the Lok Virsa museum so it is the duty of every Pakistani to support the museum and hope that it shall not fail in even one of it's goals.  

Patriata: The High Greens

Just 15 kilometres Southeast of Murree hills, there is a hill station known widely as 'Patriata'. It is one of the most well-known tourist destinations in Pakistan. According to a number of locals, the location got it's name as a result of a curious incident. In the early twentieth century, a foreign tourist came to the place and enquired about the place's name from a local elderly woman. She was carrying a sack of flour and presumed that the man was asking what she was carrying. She responded: "Son, (its) flour." ("Puttar, Atta.", in the local Punjabi language.). The foreigner assumed that it was her answer to his question.
       Today, Patriata attracts millions of visitors every year. The hill station itself is situated on an altitude of 7500 feet from sea level. Many people come to enjoy the long chair lift and cable car ride to the top of the hill. So did I. I never once regretted my choice. When I got there,  I saw that the place's atmosphere remained calm despite the crowds of tourists. After paying the modest fee, I mounted one of the iconic chair lifts of the resort. It was my first time on a chair lift, and I felt a wave of nervousness. As the chair lift ascended, the fear evaporated as I observed the green forest beneath the cable.

While I was on the chair lift, the cable suddenly halted. The chair lift jerked forward and then jerked back and forth for a small while. A man yelled to the people: "It's a power outage! Please wait calmly until we get the backup generators running.". I was worried and outraged at the same time, but the system was back in flow soon enough. The ride to the hilltop took about fifteen minutes. 
        On the top, many tourists were enjoying filming, snapping photographs, sipping coffee and tea and playing in the snow. The ride back on the chair lift was fortunately unhindered. Local Pashtun vendor was selling handicraft items such as shawls, baskets, umbrellas, sweaters and toys. I caught the bus back to the motel in Murree.
       I believe that every aspiring tourist has a duty and obligation and, of course, a right to visit Patriata and feast his eyes on the magnificent, blessed and almost heavenly scenes of the hills.
   So, apart from the power outage, everything was perfectly acceptable and I felt very good about my experience.