KARACHI:
Reading ‘Rang o Noor’, a letter by Haroon Rashid Siddiqi published in these columns on September 23 leaves the impression of briefly entering a world where memory, music and culture dissolve the distance between past and present.
What touches a reader most is not merely the description of a performance, but the larger truth it evokes: art often reaches places within us that ordinary language cannot. A melody, a verse, the rhythm of Kathak or the familiar cadence of Urdu can suddenly recover an entire emotional landscape thought to have disappeared with time. One does not need to have shared the writer’s personal memories to understand the feeling. Almost everyone carries within them certain sounds, streets, seasons and voices that remain quietly preserved somewhere beyond conscious recall.
This is what gives the piece its wider resonance. Time moves forward in a straight line; memory does not. It can collapse decades in a moment. A person may be sitting thousands of miles away from the place of childhood, yet a song can return an old courtyard, a forgotten conversation, or the warmth of an evening that no longer exists. Art, in such moments, becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a bridge between what we are and what we once were.
The letter also offers a gentle reminder that culture survives not only in museums, books and archives, but in living expression. It survives when poetry is recited, when music is heard again, when inherited rhythms find new performers, and when younger generations give fresh life to older traditions.
Perhaps that is the lasting impression of ‘Rang o Noor’. Performances end, lights dim and audiences disperse, but some experiences continue long afterwards. They linger as a line of poetry, a half-remembered tune, or an unexpected ache of recognition. The finest art does not merely show us something beautiful; sometimes it quietly returns to us a part of ourselves.
Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi
