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‘Khush-hali’, Fatherland style
By Kamran Shafi
WE have been regaled by expensive television advertisements for months now telling us what wonders the Punjab government has wrought: first in aid of the Commando’s election for another five-year term in the presidency (which leads one to ask why billions, I kid you not, were spent on the ads when he himself is on record as saying, ‘I will be elected at any cost!’?)
And now for the elevation of the younger scion of the House of Zahoor, Pervaiz Elahi, to prime minister, heaven have mercy (which leads one to ask why billions are being spent when the Commando himself has announced that the next PM will be from the King’s Party?)
Well, I have just returned from a short trip to the once great city of Lahore. Where I did what I always do: walk in the Lawrence Gardens with my young friend Ati; visit Zahid who makes the best puri-bhaji-halva in the world at his lean-to on Beadon Road; and pick up harisa, again the best in the world, from Shafiq ‘Puppa’ who plies his trade as did his grandfather Baba Sadr Din Butt and father Mohammad Ramzan, at ‘Ganda Engine’ in Gawal Mandi.
‘Ganda Engine’, means literally ‘Dirty Engine’, Lahore city’s first and only incinerator built by the Brits but now out of use for 50 years and more. Which is not to say that the area is any the cleaner; you just have to go there to see the state of the inner city.
But before we see Lahore itself, getting there tells you just how much khush-hali stalks the land. The approaches to and off the motorway hit you where it hurts, first off. Whilst we are located in Wah and use either the Brahma-Bahtar or the Burhan interchanges you could be anywhere and have the same experience.
Both our interchanges are approached via the GT Road which, on either side, has been under construction for three years now — all 15 kilometres of it, I kid you not!
The approach road to Bahma-Bahtar was destroyed by rains in February and work has started on its repair only a month ago, forcing us to negotiate potholes the size of our car on the school run to Islamabad the Beautiful five days a week. And this in Attock District, the equivalent if you will, of the Royal County of Berkshire, for our District Nazim may the good Lord bless him, belongs to the Chaudhry clan, Punjab’s present royalty.
But this is Attock — go to Lahore indeed, of which the ‘pride’ is none other than Moonis Elahi s/o Pervaiz Elahi his-self, soon to be elected with heavy mandate to the National Assembly and the Punjab provincial assembly. Get off the motorway and there it is, the ubiquitous pothole and the broken road: Canal Bank; Wahdat Road; the Main Boulevard; the Cantonment; The Mall, you name it and the roads are in a shambles.
A little tour: from the Lawrence Gardens you go to Gawal Mandi via the Montgomery Road where the country’s largest motor-car spare parts market is located and where business and trade worth many hundreds of millions of rupees is conducted every single day. I’ll bet a hundred rupees there is not a dirtier, filthier, uglier sight anywhere in this universe.
From household rubbish in leaking and torn plastic bags, to empty cartons to discarded spare parts to smashed windshields, these last just thrown on to the road to be crushed under the wheels of passing vehicles, you name it and your choice of garbage is there. Prompting you to ask what in heaven’s name is wrong with us? Mark reader, this is Lahore, the capital of the Mother of All Provinces we speak about … what then about the rest of the Punjab? Some khush-hali!
I have already introduced the idea to my readers that ours is a truly unique country; our people a truly unique lot in many more ways than ninety-nine. On Friday last, I went to my bank in Rawalpindi to cash a cheque, and stood waiting my turn at number six in line.
I was number three from the head of the queue when a young lady in her very early twenties sailed right past me and stood next to the second person in line. I cleared my throat deliberately loudly hoping she would notice a man more than her father’s age standing waiting his turn and back off.
No way; she ignored me completely and moved a bit closer to the counter. Just then she was joined by another young woman. Being in a hurry, and having stood in line for nearly 25 minutes, I decided to intervene and asked the teller if it was bank policy to allow women to advance to the head of the queue regardless of how long men had been standing in line?
He mumbled something to the effect that ‘they’ had instructed that women should be served first. ‘Why doesn’t the bank then have a women’s counter?’ I asked. The poor chap had no answer so I let it go. Another five minutes later I finally made it to the head.
As I was counter-signing my cheque I noticed a hand sneak past my right elbow and offer a cheque to the teller. ‘Mein havildar (I did not catch the name) hoon; General Sahib, garhi mein baithay hain,’ said a voice. I turned around and saw a man obviously an army-driver, wearing the namazi topi Ziaul Haq put army soldiers into instead of the smart and elegant karakul cap which was part of the Jawan’s mufti in the good old days.
The long and the short of it is that the havildar was lying, there was no ‘General Sahib’ outside, and when he was told this he smirked: ‘Ghar peh baithay hain.’
The car was a green Mercedes Benz, 90-ish model, registration number RIZ 605. It is now up to the Adjutant General/Provost Marshal to find out whose car it was and take cognisance of the matter in the proper manner.
Bushism of the week: ‘As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.’ — President George W. Bush, New York, Sept 26, 2007
P.S. My friend Ati suggests the blurb about khush hali enunciated by Pervaiz Elahi in every ad henceforth be: ‘Har kadam khush hali ki janab – apni!’
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The wages of sin
The wages of sin
By Kamran Shafi
SO then, the American-brokered Mother of All Deals, or MAD, has spawned the first of its many malformed babies. Upwards of 570 poor souls were injured, some of them horribly mutilated; and more than 140 met their undeserved and tragic end.
A festival of dancing and joy by innocent political workers who had gathered in their tens of thousands to welcome their leader back to the country was in a mad instant turned into blood-soaked tragedy.
I went to sleep at 11:30 pm on the night that Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and woke at my customary hour of 6 the next morning.
I was making my way to the TV to see the rally’s progress when the telephone rang. It was my old friend Prapa from Bangkok inquiring how I was. ‘Fine, Prapa, why do you ask?’ I said. There was a pause. ‘The bomb attacks,’ Prapa said, ‘on Benazir’s rally. I thought you were there.’
‘What!’ I yelled, and lunged for the TV. There it was, in living colour; at the exact moment that I put on the TV, the station was running an old clip which graphically showed bloodied bodies lying about, some writhing in agony, and a man screaming and hopping around on one foot, the other one missing, blown away.
I burst into tears right then, readers, at what has been made of my country and yours: where the ineptness and asinine policies of an army dictator, lord and master of all he surveyed while he held it by the throat for eight long years, has brought it to its present pass; where the obscurantist merchants of death and destruction, their daddies and granddaddies in the establishment looking on benignly, can turn our happiness into abject sadness in the flash of an eye.
Where life, be it that of a man or woman or child, is nowhere near being sacrosanct. Where cruelty and hard-heartedness have taken the place of kindness and compassion.
To add insult to injury, the federal and Sindh governments have fallen over themselves in muddying the waters with instantaneous diagnoses of what exactly happened, including announcing assuredly the exact weight of the explosive used by the suicide bomber.
Newspapers friendly to MAD on the very next day of the carnage have also apportioned blame.
But how in God’s name can the Sindh government be so cocksure that the explosions targeting Benazir Bhutto and her rally were caused by a suicide bomber?
And is it not too early in the day, especially in a country where police investigations are not of the highest standard, for the authorities to definitely say X amount of Y explosive was used?
I have some little experience of explosives (no, I did not learn how to make time bombs at FC College like our Commando did!) from my days in the army and know that it would be near impossible for a suicide bomber to cause the kind of damage — anyone notice the mangled car? —or the number of casualties.
The possibility that it was a remote-controlled bomb planted in the car simply cannot be ruled out at this early stage of investigations.
Which would lead us elsewhere: while it would still be possible for Al Qaeda to have carried out the bombings due to its effective tentacles in virtually every urban centre in Pakistan, particularly Karachi, the blame could as easily be that of the extremists nurtured and used when needed by the ‘agencies’.
To tell the truth, the bombs in Karachi came as a veritable blessing for the junta at this fraught time for it, made even more fraught by the arrival in the country of the leader of Pakistan’s largest political party as demonstrated by the crowds that welcomed her.
Just see how immediately afterwards Shujaat Hussain, whose king’s party could never manage to gather even one-sixth as many people in all of the six years that it has played second fiddle to the dictatorship, suggested to Shaukat Aziz that political rallies be banned across the country.
One can imagine the size of the cat let loose in
the Gujrat dovecote by the quite nonsensical statements coming out of Pervaiz Elahi too.
Be which as it may, and no matter how opposed one was/is to Benazir even talking to an army dictator and thereby giving the army a further inch, she is back and bully for her.
This leads me to say that all who believe in the supremacy of civil society and rule of law and Constitution must stand up and tell the junta and its hangers-on that we have had enough of mudslinging on opposition politicians alone.
That whilst we are aware that there are serious allegations of corruption against politicians opposed to the junta, there are equally serious allegations of corruption against those in the king’s party too. And that the top generals (‘Pakistan’s billionaire generals’, according to The Guardian) are not known for being pure as the driven snow either.
If you don’t believe me, go visit Chak Shehzad, Islamabad the Beautiful, and see the humongous mansions being so lovingly built there.
So then, what next for Ms Bhutto? She must now insist that Nawaz Sharif and his brother be allowed to come back to their country and lead their party in the coming elections.
The political parties must get together on one platform and take immediate steps that would forever consign the army to its barracks and training areas.
Benazir should then address our tribal brothers and sisters and say she is here to put salve on their wounds, inflicted by an unthinking and inept and cruel dispensation too often acting the part of Tonto to the US government’s The Lone Ranger.
Ms Bhutto should say that it is her fervent desire that peace
return to the tribal areas, and that henceforth, judiciousness rather than gun-slinging will determine the government’s policies of applying the state’s writ in Fata.
Incidentally, I agree absolutely that foreign terrorism and forensics experts be called in to investigate the Karachi bombings. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you see the faces that exercise will unmask!
P.S. In honour of President George W. Bush’s great intellect, we shall be regaled by his pearls of wisdom every week. Enjoy!
Bushism of the Week: ‘I feel strongly that there ought to be fair justice.’ — President George W. Bush; Washington DC, Sept 20, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
SO then, the American-brokered Mother of All Deals, or MAD, has spawned the first of its many malformed babies. Upwards of 570 poor souls were injured, some of them horribly mutilated; and more than 140 met their undeserved and tragic end.
A festival of dancing and joy by innocent political workers who had gathered in their tens of thousands to welcome their leader back to the country was in a mad instant turned into blood-soaked tragedy.
I went to sleep at 11:30 pm on the night that Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and woke at my customary hour of 6 the next morning.
I was making my way to the TV to see the rally’s progress when the telephone rang. It was my old friend Prapa from Bangkok inquiring how I was. ‘Fine, Prapa, why do you ask?’ I said. There was a pause. ‘The bomb attacks,’ Prapa said, ‘on Benazir’s rally. I thought you were there.’
‘What!’ I yelled, and lunged for the TV. There it was, in living colour; at the exact moment that I put on the TV, the station was running an old clip which graphically showed bloodied bodies lying about, some writhing in agony, and a man screaming and hopping around on one foot, the other one missing, blown away.
I burst into tears right then, readers, at what has been made of my country and yours: where the ineptness and asinine policies of an army dictator, lord and master of all he surveyed while he held it by the throat for eight long years, has brought it to its present pass; where the obscurantist merchants of death and destruction, their daddies and granddaddies in the establishment looking on benignly, can turn our happiness into abject sadness in the flash of an eye.
Where life, be it that of a man or woman or child, is nowhere near being sacrosanct. Where cruelty and hard-heartedness have taken the place of kindness and compassion.
To add insult to injury, the federal and Sindh governments have fallen over themselves in muddying the waters with instantaneous diagnoses of what exactly happened, including announcing assuredly the exact weight of the explosive used by the suicide bomber.
Newspapers friendly to MAD on the very next day of the carnage have also apportioned blame.
But how in God’s name can the Sindh government be so cocksure that the explosions targeting Benazir Bhutto and her rally were caused by a suicide bomber?
And is it not too early in the day, especially in a country where police investigations are not of the highest standard, for the authorities to definitely say X amount of Y explosive was used?
I have some little experience of explosives (no, I did not learn how to make time bombs at FC College like our Commando did!) from my days in the army and know that it would be near impossible for a suicide bomber to cause the kind of damage — anyone notice the mangled car? —or the number of casualties.
The possibility that it was a remote-controlled bomb planted in the car simply cannot be ruled out at this early stage of investigations.
Which would lead us elsewhere: while it would still be possible for Al Qaeda to have carried out the bombings due to its effective tentacles in virtually every urban centre in Pakistan, particularly Karachi, the blame could as easily be that of the extremists nurtured and used when needed by the ‘agencies’.
To tell the truth, the bombs in Karachi came as a veritable blessing for the junta at this fraught time for it, made even more fraught by the arrival in the country of the leader of Pakistan’s largest political party as demonstrated by the crowds that welcomed her.
Just see how immediately afterwards Shujaat Hussain, whose king’s party could never manage to gather even one-sixth as many people in all of the six years that it has played second fiddle to the dictatorship, suggested to Shaukat Aziz that political rallies be banned across the country.
One can imagine the size of the cat let loose in
the Gujrat dovecote by the quite nonsensical statements coming out of Pervaiz Elahi too.
Be which as it may, and no matter how opposed one was/is to Benazir even talking to an army dictator and thereby giving the army a further inch, she is back and bully for her.
This leads me to say that all who believe in the supremacy of civil society and rule of law and Constitution must stand up and tell the junta and its hangers-on that we have had enough of mudslinging on opposition politicians alone.
That whilst we are aware that there are serious allegations of corruption against politicians opposed to the junta, there are equally serious allegations of corruption against those in the king’s party too. And that the top generals (‘Pakistan’s billionaire generals’, according to The Guardian) are not known for being pure as the driven snow either.
If you don’t believe me, go visit Chak Shehzad, Islamabad the Beautiful, and see the humongous mansions being so lovingly built there.
So then, what next for Ms Bhutto? She must now insist that Nawaz Sharif and his brother be allowed to come back to their country and lead their party in the coming elections.
The political parties must get together on one platform and take immediate steps that would forever consign the army to its barracks and training areas.
Benazir should then address our tribal brothers and sisters and say she is here to put salve on their wounds, inflicted by an unthinking and inept and cruel dispensation too often acting the part of Tonto to the US government’s The Lone Ranger.
Ms Bhutto should say that it is her fervent desire that peace
return to the tribal areas, and that henceforth, judiciousness rather than gun-slinging will determine the government’s policies of applying the state’s writ in Fata.
Incidentally, I agree absolutely that foreign terrorism and forensics experts be called in to investigate the Karachi bombings. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you see the faces that exercise will unmask!
P.S. In honour of President George W. Bush’s great intellect, we shall be regaled by his pearls of wisdom every week. Enjoy!
Bushism of the Week: ‘I feel strongly that there ought to be fair justice.’ — President George W. Bush; Washington DC, Sept 20, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
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