nahin nahin. not naz pan masala. that would be too bloody obvious. and i was never the naz type anyway. shahi deluxe was more my style until i decided to singlehandedly make the guy who owns wrigley’s a multibillionaire. plus why anyone would want to eat something like sonf after coating in it the thing they use to coat the brufen 400 tablets they gave you when you had killer headaches is way beyond me. unless of course that too is an israeli conspiracy like that polio drops thing to spread infertility among the women of the region. of course it won’t work because as hazrat allama iqbal rehmatullah alih said, zara nam ho to yeh mittee baree zarkhaiz hai saqi… you have to admire his farsightedness though,  i mean just twenty years after modern day pakistan’s most quoted poet, habib jalib famously referred to his compatriots as dus crore gadhay, 160 million has become a conservative estimate of the national population figures. truly, zara nam ho to yeh mittee baree zarkhaiz hai saqi. assuming, you’ve been reading this thus far, and assuming you’re not blessed with the intellect of einstein - face it, if you’re a regular visitor, both assumptions hold true - you’re probably wondering where i’m going with this train of thought, poetry, pop culture or simply pakistan.

fact is, i haven’t decided yet. so while i go ahead and decide ponder over the words of anwar masood which i suppose are often the subject of debate during the late night deliberations between the sharifs and chaudhry nisar ali kahn and ishaq dar and the other idiots who willingly associate themselves with a party that proudly carries the moniker of “nawaz group”:

bunyan lainay jaanday ho
bunyan le ke aunday ho
paanday oh tay paindee nahin
pai jaye tay laindee nahin
lai jay tay doojee waree pan jogee reahndi nahin
bunyan mein dayaanga
pao gay to pay jaye, lao gaye to lay jaye, lay jaye tay dojee waree pan jogee reh jaye
bunyan meree waddiya, bunyan meri top dee
waddiyan noo pooree aaway nikkayan day naap dee
cheez huway asli tay moonhon pey hee boldee
top naalon goree lagay rassee otay dol dee
jinnay waray chaho tusee ais noo haundalo
phir pawaein bachayan noo jhangian banalo

yep. the guy who offered that probably assured himself of the textiles ministry or something given the way these dudes seem to operate.

but politics and poetry don’t mix unless its faiz doing the poetry and not-yet-disillusioned-but-think-they-are teens doing the politics. i would’ve mentioned jalib again but i never really thought of him as a poet (or a politician for that matter) - just another spin doctor who got popular because he said the right thing at the right time. before you black coat lovers crucify me please tell me how a guy who said shehar mein hoo ka alam tha, jin tha ya referendum tha and repeated it twice as if he was saying something as beautifully crafted as a meer-ian couplet can truly be called a poet. if you said yes, you are no longer welcome on this blog. please go drown in egg yolk.

but i’m no expert on poetry myself so i’ll keep away from the topic unless of course we’re discussing the collected works of chirkeen or imam deen, both of whom, admittedly, are more my style than ghalib or meer.

of course (yes i say that a lot, thank you for pointing it out) the news is dreary and boring. the incredibly irrational way the media has decided to bash whatever is going on without in true godfatherly wisdom measuring long term losses against short term gains is proabably as pathetic as government sponsored propoganda a`la khabarnama style where the current head of state is nothing less than god’s representative on earth and as such must be sanctified and canonised and worshipped and so on so forth ad nauseum. but the fact of the matter is that there was one amazing thing about the khabarnama that the free media never really adopted and that was their ridiculous choice of sponsors. the khabarnama was never complete without some sort of mention of sona ublaye gee zameen jub dalay ga sona urea or the irritatingly catch tune of ciba-geigy ki politan-C. and who can forget tapal tezdam chai lagay tha ker kay, chha jo mazo ruby dust jo mazo and the classic laado ke lashkaray jug mug kapray saaray. but there was nothing more ironically pakistani than royals filter, janbaazon ka intikhab  and k2 ka pakistan (for some inexplicable reason there was a bunch of sheedis dancing on k2 in the ad) being followed by my favourite ad of all time - wasim bhai aap thaktay nahin?

i found the ad on you tube. is it just me or does the guy who asks the question really look like a young whatshisname hashmi, faiz ahmed faiz’s grandson better known as loosy of teen bata teen fame?

doesnt the ad remind you of that shehzad roy song only sabizak and me seem to remember, active raho gay to tumhein skating bhi aye gee active raho gay to tumhein acting bhi aye gee… i’d say more about the song but then i have a cousin who debuted with fakhrealam singing goree zara hil ke dekhana.

boy oh boy, did jalib amake an understatement or did he make an understatement. gadhay it is. gadhay we are.

be careful what you wish for. it might just…

millions of years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the ice age meant there was a market for gas heaters in sibi and jacobabad; the tectonic plates had not shifted all that much and punjab was still a part of mongolia. the region was socially far more progressive than the rets of the world and the dinosaurs over there established the first democracy known in our galaxy. they elected, time and again, the same species to rule them - parasitic beings known as the sharifosaurus rex, the species ruled over their part of mongolia with iron fists and bald heads and the wierd habit of rolling to and fro from one side to another similar to the earthen utensil the dinosaurs used to store water, the lotasaurus. their rule was characterized by the increasing enrichment of themselves and all who pandered to and claimed to worship the sharifosauruses. a typical dinosaur in their government would talk on and on about how beautiful the hair on the sahrifosauruses bald heads was, how slim their paunches looked, how wise they were in their oppositon to the wellbeing of any region other than their own but most of all about how brave they were to oppose the largely benign militarosauruses who once usurped their power by way of a bloodless coup.

scientists today often try to unlock the magical dna of those times and unravel the mysteries of why the dinosaurs really died. they don’t realise that they didn’t. they evolved into members of the punjab provincial assembly. dawn reported the other day on the crap that goes on in that hallowed hall of democracy.

and you guys ask me why i support dictatorships.

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now i am no stanger to flattery myself. not because i have somehow been set as default choice for chief minister by the voting public of cheechookimallian - yes, thats a name of a punjabi constituency as are changa manga and toba tek singh, and no they have nothing on some of the more colourful karachi place names like chacha chachi park, unda morh and do-minute chowrangi - and definitely not because i have a born again scalpful of hair but because i’m supposedly some sort of comic relief in the dreary soap opera that is the pakistani blogosphere.  and yes that was an unncessarily long sentence. so sue me. anyways, i have been begged (ok i’m getting carried away by the bored “update already” messages i occasionally receive) often enough to write more regularly but the fact that really amuses me is that people often tell me i should write a novel. thats like asking the mayonnaise-ladling-guy at mickey d’s to cook a seven course meal because he occasionally causes (probably accidentally) the creation of a half decent burger.

but if i could write, and indeed if i had fifteen computers fitted in my body (ten in my fingers, two each in eyes and ears and one in my tongue) - not to mention the “uncountable” - interesting choice of words from the pakistan’s largest selling english daily, shouldn’t it have been “countless”? i mean this is a translation right? - ones in my mind; i would definitely consider writing a novel. it would be like becoming chief minister of the blogosphere or at least railways minister.

but therein lies the problem. not the computer bit, i’ve got that covered; i’m talking about the topic. if i really were to write a novel, given my supremely senseless rambling style, what would i write about? the case can be made for an autobiography, after all, the world swoons at my feet and is just dying to know more about the man behind the megahunk, about how i rose to greatness from whatever i used to be, the “streetlights ke neechay baith ker parhta tha” routine and all that jazz, but i somehow feel i’m too young to write my memoirs just yet - not because nothing’s happened yet but because there’s so much left to happen.

i could also write some great art mystery involving sadequain’s calligraphic ceiling at frere hall and an albino tableeghi type and a great conspiracy stretching to the higher echelons of the leadership at jamia hafsa - but someones ripped off that idea already and adapted it to a western market paradigm. or maybe, i could write about this kid who goes to a cadet college in hyderabad, learns magic and reinvents himself as an i-really-care-for-my-country type after earning the ten percent nickname using help from his graduating class of witches and wizards. or i could do a legal thriller - one about an unimportant judge being summarily removed and a movement that results in a two year long standstill of already overloaded dockets while innocent people await trial in jails and how the economy can only be set right if a now-totally-polarised judge gets back his seat as head of the “sanctify me i got you back” courts in islamabad. or maybe i could write a clancy type thriller about a siege in parachinar where  militants surround a locality and a sectarian war wages while the zia-ist military operatives stand by watching hoping for an outcome that favours their particular religious beliefs. or i could write a khalid hussaini type drama about a woman who was gangraped beacause her 12 year old brother allegedly seduced a 21 year old woman and how the government thinks she’s using her personal tragedy as a marketing tool simply becuase she fought back. or maybe…

ho hum. lots of possibilities for a pakistani writer, eh?

the only reason i don’t write that much any more is that i only know how to write humour. and trust me, life sure ain’t funny.

it is no less than a sacrilege that in the same theatre where i was the only one watching a screening of el laberinto del fauno, a masterpiece of cinematic creativity, there was a fullhouse for three days running when they put up something as ridiculously idiotic as tashan. then again, no one can say that tashan wasn’t creative - unless, of course, you don’t think that sultan rahi was asia’s reply to anthony quinn - in which case, maybe a guy who leaps over buildings and slays four thousand policemen without having a weapon, martial arts skills or any sort of claim to superheroism; is maybe pretty damn believable to you.

but, or butt, depending on whether you’re from kashmir or not; maulay noo maula na maray tay maula nahinyo marda - or something to that effect.

of course, that’s not why it can’t be tooba siddiqui.

since this patch in the purple patch of my very purple life is actually a lavenderishly pale lilac - and also because i am gradually transmorphing into a procrastinating workaholic, if there is such a thing  - i have been contributing less to the cyber equivalent of the completed works of, well, omar sharif than i normally did in the past.

[ok i know this way off topic, but do you realise that venezuela has only 0.4 % of the world's population but 9.6% of the former miss worlds? - small wonder then that bush has designs on venezuela, he did succeed clinton after all. tharkee...]

but of course that has nothing to do with tooba siddiqui either. and neither does the narrative i am about to relate. i just thought it’d be cooler to start a post with a  reference to tooba siddiqui. somehow, i get the feeling that i’ve got the name of the supermodel right but i may very well be wrong. but that has hardly fazed me before.

back when i was a kid, kids had it pretty good. there was no social pressure to conform with all that is cool in the world, like ipods, iphones, beemers and tooba siddiqui type girlfriends. the ipod equivalents were huge boomboxes which skinny teens with dreadlocks used to place on their funky ‘82 corollas and breakdance to on the footpaths. iphones were calling cards to be used in phonebooths, beemers were for yuppies and if you had a girlfriend like tooba siddiqui you’d be a perverted pedophile ‘coz she wes still in preschool. so nice were those days, that a guy could walk into a funeral or a wedding in the same clothes - and if you’re not a desi you will never understand the significance of that last statement. unfortunately, even though the clock does stop at 12, thats actually a different 12 from the one it set out from. and so as time has passed us by, boomboxes have become a distinctly makrani concept, ‘82 corollas have been relegated to jamshoro and breakdancing to jamaica. phonebooth is the name of an old colin farrell movie and tooba siddiqui is probably the only damn thing thats improved a bit.

bottom line: if you were a kid in the eighties, you better not be wearing the same outfit to weddings that you do to funerals.

no sir. now you get invitations to office dinners which have themes and dress codes and very serious invitations to bring spouse(s) and/or partner(s). stuff like “oscar theme” and “black tie only”. if i hadn’t been ubercool and sophisticated, the first thing that would have come to your mind would be jan rambo in raju ban gaya gentleman. but of course, me being me, you’re probably imagining a dashing ryan philippe type in a tuxedo. and therein lies the problem. the tux. as i tried to explain, “behnji, i am being a pakistani. in my muluk waiters are wearing tuxedos. and if i am wearing narmal blake suit with lang tiee i am being look like ali ahmed kurd. i not know which worse.” unfortunately you can’t explain that to anyone. so you reconcile yourself to wearing a combination that would either get you beaten up in karachi or give you an opportunity to beat up sher afgan in mianwali (and they say all pakistanis are the same. sheesh.). the other problem is a tad harder to solve.

in almost 27 years of existence, i have not been able to secure one spouse, let alone spouse(s) and lets not even go near and/or partner(s). so how precisely does one make an impact at a party like this. does one rent a hummer limo and two russian escorts (one for each arm) or does one play the astaghfirullah card and go in loudly proclaiming la haula.. every time someone offers a drink? the horns of a dileema have never been such a battleground before. while we’re on that note, has anyone ever seen a dilemma? is it a fourlegged creature or a two legged one? is it like an antelope or a horned toad? and how many horns are there anyway? sometimes english terms are so bloody obscure.

i have decided to not go in for the russian escorts. not because russians aren’t nice but i don’t like the name natasha (which is why natasha hussain has never featured on my blog) and if there are going to be two six foot tall russians you can bet your bmw that one of them is going to be called natasha. either that or boris. but i don’t swing that way and showing up with boris and olaf isn’t exactly the statement i’d like to make. so its not russians, iman ali’s got other commitments and for some worrying reason, giselle’s not answering the phone. which leaves me short of a date. ki karaan?  the silver lining on this cloud is obviously that i won’t be in a position where i might have to end up dancing. not that i’ve got any worries on that front - after all i learnt from the same guy who taught michael jackson, prabhu deva and hasan jehangir - ok from the guy who taught hasan jehangir - but i don’t want to show up the other guys in front of their spouse(s) and/or partner(s).

and so, as a sacrifice for the manly pride of the many many men who’ll be there, i’m going alone. just me and myself and no freaking irene. so sorry tooba, some other time.

sometimes i think i’m going insane. and then i think, yeah? so freaking what?

as embarassing performances go, this would have taken the cake - not to mention the samosas, chaat and pani puri - had it not been for the fact that my companions managed to make as big if not bigger fools of themselves over the beer. there is also the fact that when paki pride is at stake i can smilingly swallow sweet meat - and no, i’m not talking about sweetmeats. understand the difference.

i haven’t been in a mood to blog since my normally razor sharp wit turned out to be blue 2 rather than mach 3 and lost its edge - a gilette-ian reference my male paki readers will no doubt understand -  but this lunch just had to be blogged about.

over the course of cinematic history, loads of people have watched jackie chan performing. some call him the greatest action-comedian ever while others call him an idiot and yet others call him jai kishan, probably out of some misplaced sense of apnapan after watching the malika sherawat-starring, two-hour waste of projection film. few, if any, have ever referred to him as oscar winning material. but few critics who count have seen both jackie chan performing in the old kung fu movies days and a bunch of chinks drunk at lunch after putting down one too many of foster’s finest brews, which, if they had seen the two things, would definitely lead them to nominate dear ol’ jackie for the lifetime achievment little gold statue.

 chinese people are already interesting enough sober but when drunk, a chinese guy becomes a roller coaster of entertainment. the already incomprehensible accent gets so thick and slurred you cant tell if the poor bloke is talking about the collected works of proust or singing the chatanooga choo choo. the good thing is that unlike their close communist friends, the russian bears, the chinese are cheerful drunks. a russian guy will get more and more serious the more he drinks. a chinese on the other hand gets merrier and merrier the higher he gets. watch and you’ll realise why the british won the opium wars. the poor chinks probably died laughing.

and so no one noticed when i ladled maple syrup on to the roast lamb assuming it was some sort of hot sauce.

_______________________________________________

there was a time, a few years ago, when me and weight were two things so far apart, they weren’t even mentionable in the same sentence unless  it was one of those made-famous-by-borat “naawwt” jokes. and when, during discussions about washed out, incompetent, unmusical musicians it popped out that nadeem jafri is a second cousin, people would burst out laughing because of the discrepancy in size. it was as if kipling had presented kaa the python as colonel hathi’s cousin.

and then fast food happened.

fast forward a few years and suddenly it seems that if a discussion about washed out, incompetent, unmusical musicians were to take place once more and if somehow i were to divulge that embarassing piece of family history again, all i would get would be those oh-so-irritating “i already knew” looks. not that i would ever admit to being a short fat dark balding guy. nopes, no sir. i’m a dashingly dimunitive, opulently corpulent, melanin endowed, follically conservative person. unfortunately, in most people’s books that still reads as little else than nadeem bhai’s wannabe shakespearean cousin.

so when i grudgingly told the good looking dude in the mirror that its time we did something to fit in (vehicles other than humvees which we cannot afford), despite the heartache at the world’s refusal to appreciate all that is gorgeous in good faith; he agreed.

of course when i told the weighter, i mean waiter, that i wanted a diet coke he gave me a look dripping so much sarcasm you could have irrigated the whole of balochistan if it had been water. saala. so what if i had asked for the extra cheese meal to be followed by a double chocolate fantasy?

and then i looked around. and i looked. and i smiled. i am in the land of the naturally obese man and the naturally slim chick. why the hell am i even trying to lose weight? granted, no one wants to look like the cousin of a guy who had a song that went goree zara hil ke dikhana but then by default, i also look like the cousin of one luciano pavarotti, esq. and that is certianly not a bad thing. plus short, balding and fat has a rather churchillian effect to it which my dunhill lights do not quite keep up with but i can’t for the life of me figure out cigars. plus, wasim bhai cigar nahin peetay. 

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speaking of wasim bhai, another fast bowler just made the statement of the millenium.

“the movement for my restoration is the biggest after the chief justice.”

shoaib akhtar

 i think sheikh rasheed can safely retire now. we have a suitable rawalpindian replacement for him.

think for a little while and you realise why there aren’t any expat germans anywhere in the world in the livestock business. i mean, what would they put down as “profession” in their visa applications if they took care of sheep?

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when quiz shows like who wants to be a millionaire will go bust and bust shows by millionaires will be quizzed about - in fact i bet ms. parton’s assets have already been the subject matter of some edition of the damn show - and no, i don’t know or care what the answer is - our quest for finding the ultimate genius shall spawn a new type of tv show. it will be a spelling bee - in german.

germany is probably the only country in the world where clearing your throat can be poetry. or where pushto could be described as a musical language. they say einstein had speech difficulties as a kid and trust me, its not hard to see why. they communicate in grunts and snorts of varying lengths and speed and when they tell you their names you’re convinced they’re swearing at you. its no wonder then that their greatest musical exponent was a guy who was deaf.

and if you think i’m racist, gurke essen gehen.

in my part of the world, preservation of silver resources was the top national priority for the most part of the past three centuries. at least that’s the reason i give when people question me about the table manners of desis or lack thereof. and this is where i turn the conversation to matters relating to resource conservation and global warming and why guatemala is singularly responsible for sponsoring all pickpockets in switzerland. but while this does normally confuse the person i’m talking to it doesn’t take away from the fact that i have no qualms about using the steak knife to apply butter or the ice cream spoon to drink my soup. and thats why i normally avoid dining out with european clients - that and the fact that they tend to opt for the crappiest joints on earth for lunch.

but sometimes you have to.

and so it happened that i sat down over manakeesh and zaatar with a german guy who was trying to eat the damn stuff with a fork. as if the world didn’t have enough problems already. on the plus side, the guy wasn’t chinese and didn’t ask for chopsticks. do you remember the annoying little brat back in seventh grade who really bugged you because he was such a dumbass but somehow managed to say the right thing whenever the teacher asked him a question? well he took lessons from this dude on dumbassery. so here we are, discussing the militancy in pakistan and after hearing a load of crap about how pakistanis are just naturally violent, i informed him that this thing is not even a pakistani problem.

“see,” i said, “most of these guys aren’t even pakistani. they’re mainly afghans and uzbeks.”

he mulled over this for a couple of minutes and then came up with the most irritatingly appropriate comeback in what was either totally deadpan or genuine seriousness.

“ja. like hitler. he austrian.”

____________

tip of the century: hire a german to make your car but never ever let him drive it, schumacher notwithstanding.

… on fm radio.

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there is, in abu dhabi, a harley davidson dealership which seems to sell more jackets than choppers. there is one hell of a good restaurant that claims to have the original “americana” variety of that very pakistani dish, chicken tikka, and a laloo laundry run by - you guessed it - not laloo. things are not always as they seem, in abu dhabi.

having said that, i don’t really look like james mcavoy even though i have a second cousin with the same hairstyle. not that that digression seems to have a logical connection, but then, neither do second cousins.

the only type of people anyone can understand less than his or her own second cousins is the class of humanity known as filipino telephone operators. if filipinos were sindhis, i’d be a respected member of the community known popularly “as aa bahoo saein”. i would have a quaint little haveli outside manila or vanilla or whatever they call their capital and get elected unopposed to a provincial assembly seat whenever someone held an election. life would be good, i’d have a bunch of bonded labourers, kill my secretary for karo kari, and have great mangoes to eat. unfortunately, filipinos are not sindhi and sindhis are not filipinos so i am simply mispronounced by one and accused of being a racist by the other. it is a sad, sad world we live in.

i get irritated every time they call me aa bahoo saein but then i think of that advertisement for a real estate thing they used to air constantly on ptv in the early nineties with the fat practically mustachioed lady going, “hum to chaley maneeela centre” and i realise they’re just getting back at us. never mind. wasim bhai aap thaktay nahin? nahin, mein cigarette nahin peeta.

waise, speaking of mispronunciations, one lebanese guy very kindly pointed out to me that if i don’t stress the syllables of my name the way he does it, it doesn’t make a difference if they call me aa bahoo saein or chin fuo lee because i’m as guilty as they are. with an arabic name one can hardly argue with that kind of logic but then i’m a pakistani and i have seen wasim bhai and whenever i am faced with that kind of predicament i can safely say “nahin, mein cigarette nahin peeta“.

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in case you were wondering why i’m not missing home as much as i ought to, its because the taxi drivers here in dhabi’s dad are every bit as insanely irrational as those in khi-town. and they’re just as pukhtoonily pathan. also the fact that hemlock’s nimco is rotting on top of my tv. not that her nimco rots on my tv back at home but you get the point.

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eid al muhibba came and went, and i was left thinking if i could somehow get a patent on roses so that every rose sold would result in royalties to me, william richard gates would be shining my shoes. i have never understood why any idiot would presume a chick would like him more just because he gave her a pink teddy bear. but thats what chicks are like nowadays. me, i’d rather give a blue flyswatter as a token of my undying love. they convey so much depth, these blue flyswatters. i mean when its hot and you’re sweaty and the flies are bugging you what would you rather have? a pink teddy bear? of course not.

but girls are just too dumb to understand these things. back in pakistan, we know just how to treat women. consider the following picture from a restaurant at home.

yes. the door really does lead to the desert. so much for progress.

yes i know no one ever claimed that pecos bill made it to to the persian gulf.

but since the song holds him responsible for virtually everything that ever happened, i’m willing to lay the last pack of extra chewing gum on the line - and yes i value chewing gum very highly - that he’s the reason why them there girlies are wearing them there boots.

where i come from the only times you ever hear someone talk about boots is when they’re talking about the pharmaceutical company or discussing pir pagara’s ridiculous predictions. and if you so much as suggested to ms. so-and-so that she might like a pair of boots she’d either think you were insane or some sort of latex fetishist or both. and frankly, that’s not what most guys want the ms. so-and-sos of this world to be thinking. but because i am no longer where i come from - though i did come from here when i went to where i come from and, as far as other people were concerned, i came from where i come from before i got to where i came from when i got to where i come from  (yes my life really is that confusing, i’m always the person who’s not where he comes from) - i must now try to think like the people of where i’ve come to. and here they either like to wear boots or they get paid to do so.

short, tall, fat, skinny, fair, dark or anyother generic description you might choose to employ for them, they’re almost all gorgeous and almost all wearing boots. the arab woman is an interesting sub-species of the human race. as incomprehensible as the women from papua new guinea, peru or pak colony in karachi, these ladies have a distinct air of well, distinctiveness about them normally highlighted in the supreme clash of cultures in the way some of them dress. it is not unusual to see someone in a miniskirt without one square milimetre of skin on their legs visible. that may be hard to visualise but i think someone has started selling woolen spandex if there could possibly be such a thing.

and of course there are the boots. why women who can’t even manage stilletto strap-ons would even want to attempt stilletto cowboy boots - i’m sure i’ll run into one with riding spurs one of these days - is way beyond me. but don’t get me wrong, i don’t mind. it gives a people watcher like me a great new show to watch. and it is kind of relieving to know that its not as easy to get out of, pick, aim and throw a ten kilo arabian girly boot as it is to bombard with pakistani girly sandals. thank god for small mercies. plus, lets face it, the average arab hijaabed and flowing-skirted bebe is twenty times more gorgeous than the average pakistani traffic stopping billo.

apart from that all a guy can do is marvel at the irony that there are actually pakistanis who can so snobbishly refer to the middle east as a dead end when what they call a sattelite is what an arab calls his car.

and yet, i miss everything. from street crime and loadshedding and diesel smoke to aloo bharay parathay and proper urdu and the smell of the raat ki rani wafting in from my bedroom window. i was asked today by a palestinian hottie about what my country is like. and i tried to tell her. about how it looks like at sunsets when the angels dance at saif ul mulook. about how it looks like at sunrise when life wakes up yawning in nathiagali. about how at nights in dadu you can hear your two angels sharing a joke. about how you can’t hear your own shouts when gale force winds lash cape monze. i tried to tell her how no desert safari can match a simple train ride through cholistan or how no shifting dune compares to the 400 year old stillness of trees in ziarat.

but of course i couldn’t. you can’t just describe what goes on in the throbbing of your pulse. so all i said was, “primitive. but beautiful”. and strangely, she seemed to understand.

for all of you who think i’m being melodramatically sentimental, try growing up with a raat ki rani bush just outside your window.

and yes, she was wearing boots too. knee high, brown, probably buckskin.

you meet and get to know around 769,334 people during your lifetime. thats the tragedy of globalisation. the good thing about globalisation is that there are still around 5,998,651,277 people whom you do not meet. this was not possible when the world was flat and “flatalisation” was the buzzword among the corporate types who ran the east india company and the spanish armada and abacus factories. of course, that was largely because there weren’t 5,998,651,277 people around at the time - they kept falling off the edges - and because even the greatest visionaries of the time could not come up with a way to form a social networking system called facebook. or face-sheaves-of-parchment. whatever.

i have a bunch of people on my facebook list who, by character are lemmings at best and laxatives at worst. these are the people who add every application they come across and then very kindly include me in the twenty or so people they need to include to find out how many socks they should wear or if they should stop breathing when they die. they wish me not only on birthdays and new years and eids but on the bar mitzvahs of their uncle’s neighbour’s kids and also send me a video clipping to boot. occasionaly they will also congratulate me on someone’s funeral and ask me to join the group “my newspaper deliveryboy died yesterday” and to add the free wreath application. electronic diarrhea.

with friends like these, who needs enemas? i mean enemies. or do i?

speaking of which, i realise that the title of this post has got nothing to do with the post so far - and ordinarily this would make no difference to me whatsoever, but since its been a nice weekend (no sign of sheikh rasheed on any news channel) - so i’ll get back on topic. there was once, and probably still is, an idiot named hameed something-or-the-other who set up a shop in the electronics market on abdullah haroon road in karachi. that wasn’t the idiotic part. neither was getting visiting cards printed. nor was distributing them to every poor sap who bought something from him. what was idiotic was getting his cell number on the card wrong. so lets say his actual number is 0300-5551234. he gets it printed as 0300-5551243. that happens to be my friend, the stud’s cell number (have you noticed how every one in a hollywood flick always has a number that starts with 555? is there some sort of law on this?).

now you can only say ji is number per koi hameed bhai nahin hotay around seven thousand four hundred and thirty nine times without getting irritated. after that it is not humanly possible unless you are sheikh rasheed’s mother and have put up with something more irritating than wrong numbers all your life. so you hand over the phone to someone else and tell them to talk to hameed bhai’s caller. for some reason or the other, this is usually me. that the thing went on for over seven years bears testimony to the fact that when hameed bhai got his cards printed he sure made the card-printer’s day.

over the years i have promised new refrigerators, airconditioners and washing machines to dozens of people. i have claimed that the business has been shut down, gone bankrupt, burned to the ground, raided by bustoms agents and exchanged for a chaat shop in new challi. i have at various times been hameed bhai’s father, son, brother, boss, servant, mugger, ambulance driver and murderer. hameed bhai has been murdered, shot at, electrocuted, suffocated inside a deep freezer and stoned to death for karo-kari. i have also given directions to the shop, other shops, no shops at all and several times to what is known as a public latrine in pakiland. i have even told a guy claiming to be his father in law that i am the cousin of his secret third wife and am using his mobile while err… the marriage is being consummated. the stud, whose cell it is, has obviously done much worse.

of course, this stuff always irritates those calling hameed bhai and not hameed bhai himself who probably remains blissfully unaware of this most of the time. however, when i told his supplier that i wasn’t going to pay him one red cent and that if he ever tried to collect he had better make sure he was well guarded because there was a gunnybag with his name on it in a particular sector office of a particular party, i suppose something not so nice happened to hameed bhai. the calls slowly fizzled out and eventually stopped altogether.

recently, another friend came across an old visiting card that had the stud’s number on it and passed it on. this reminded us of the fun we had fooling people who called for hameed bhai and while passing through saddar we went to see if the shop was still open and if hameed bhai was still alive. so we entered the shop and went through the motions of choosing a bunch of things for the dowry of an imaginary sister and then sat down to negotiate rates with hameed bhai. during the process, we told him that a friend had given his reference and we tried calling but the number was apparently a wrong one as the guy on the phone said that hameed bhai was in jail.

this got the guy all excited and you could literally see him go red as he started cursing the “phone wala” and told us how the #$$^&@@%  had nearly runied his business and family life by spreading lies about him. he said he had tried to get the number blocked by mobilink or at least finding out the owner but they hadn’t complied (at this point we both silently thanked the being upstairs - hameed bhai may be old but he is 6′2″ and at least 400 pounds) otherwise the person would have been sorry. we left, after telling him we were bringing our pickup round to the front, and ten minutes later called him from the same number and told him that three split air conditioners he had sold two days ago were all faulty and that he had better send over his repairman immediately or replace the acs. i had, of course, swiped a carbon copy of the receipt from his desk.

three hours later he called nine times but we never answered. we could feel the increased blood pressure with every ring.

i have a feeling that no one from his family will ever issue a misprinted card again.

if they do, we’ll add them on facebook.

… taqreeb kuch to behr-e-mulaqaat chahiye”

mirza ghalib (a pretty long time ago)

considering that you lot have awesomely short memories, a symptom of mental retardation - you are after all reading this blog - i’ll be nice and remind you of the last time we discussed the work of nida waqas nee` aqeel. it was here. the savants among you recognized it as a great piece (or maybe you didn’t but you jumped on the bandwagon to sound all cool and knowledgeable and fashionable, etc etc) while the pure morons didn’t even manage to pull that off.

so now that i have ridiculed the whole boiling lot of you, lets get serious.  that painting is now up for your legitimate rating or voting whatever you choose to call it. so, since being a conossieuer (however its spelt) is in, and you all claim to have good taste anyway, and thirty seven other reasons that i can’t recall right now, but most of all because she’s a great artist and deserves it, vote away. here. and hurry up. only 3 days of voting left.

also, if you want to look at more of her work, she’s put it up on her myartprofile. enjoy.

 but first, vote.

not every thing that should happen should happen.

so yes, i, who have long since bemoaned the incomprehensible loyalty of the masses to one of the most corrupt, cruel and often criminal leaders in pakistani history - and we’ve had several, mind you - am now reduced to feeling an overwhelming sense of loss, even grief, at the tragic death of the same leader, undoubtedly the most popular politician in the country, daughter of the east, queen of sindh, princess of pakistan, one ms. benazir bhutto. and yes, i, who have been a constant detractor of the oxymoronically dynastic tendencies of democracy in pakistan suddenly realise what the helmsman who loses control of the rudder must feel like. that it takes one inconsequential man with a tube of iron to derail the democratic process in a nation of 160 million speaks volumes about how trivial a human life really is. that 160 million people can be shaken to the cores of their inner beings at the loss of one paltry citizen speaks volumes about how great the legacy of a human life can be.

this post was not supposed to be a eulogy. it was meant to commemorate not the death of benazir bhutto but the lives of all the unknown people who died in the backlash of emotion following her death. the people who innocently tried to make their respective ways home to their families. i wanted to talk of my own journey home, through burning tyres and cars and a stampede and gunshots and scenes from what looked like a spielberg war film. i wanted to talk about the suffering of women who walked miles with their children in their arms through the cold and violence. about the suffering of people who still haven’t made it home and wait hungry and thirsty for a lull in the looting and arson and fighting to try continue their journey. about the suffering people waiting for their family members to come home. about the people who will never make it home. for these are the people who count. the people who made benazir and all others like her what they are. the people benazir claimed to represent. but as their suffering, this widespread confusion, this mess, is just a reflection of what this great nation will now go through, any eulogy inscribed on her tombstone will speak as much about every pakistani as it will about her. ironic as it might be, in her death we see the ultimate democracy.

so the bhutto legacy continues. hanged, poisoned or shot, they all seem to go with a statement. and while the primary objective of terrorism - spreading terror - might seemingly have been achieved, terrorism has lost. because the fallout is not fuelled by fear its fuelled by rage. rage is good. al qaeda or the taliban or whoever it is that runs the extremist militant business in pakistan have just turned the war aginst terror into a vendetta. its no longer just business. for millions of people it is now very personal. and i feel the recruiters from the human resource division of the extremist business will probably be the first to highlight this.

what happens next is a very big question. one that everyone hopes will be answered sooner rather than later. but for now, let me ponder the irony of myself, a diehard supporter of military intervention in pakistani government, being reminded of the unforgettable party slogan the instant i heard of her death.

yeh baazi khoon ki baazi hai
yeh baazi tum hi haaro gay
har ghar se bhutto niklay ga
tum kitnay bhutto maaro gay?

contrary to popular belief, there are only two subsets of the human race. people and irritating people. and try as they will to convince you otherwise, wannabes of every shape, size and colour always fall into the latter category. no exceptions, and probably no disagreement. of course desi variants of wannabe wodehouses like myself don’t qualify for the last statement because they are ubercool and the world swoons at their feet.

just thought i’d let you know.

this post is not about wannabes though. this is about another type of irritating person. this category of idiot is suffering from delusions of proficiency in its chosen ‘cool’ language, english. for purposes of ease (and also because i don’t particularly like the name), let’s give the unfortunate group the ven more unfortunate name of subuktagin. having gone through maybe three vocabulary books of the type morons use to cram for sats and university admission tests, subuktagin feels the world can now be conquered by spouting ridiculously out of context words and phrases till you begin to wonder if maybe the guy had a dictionary for lunch. subuktagin does not talk to you. he perorates. and even though you couldn’t care less if he swallowed his tongue (actually that would be kinda nice) other people do appreciate him and his diction (though he would say that they shower him with encomiums and panegyrics). subuktagins are almost always management trainees in the consumer goods or corporate banking industries. that that speaks volumes about the packaging policy of our business schools as opposed to content is something we will not dwell on considering that a significant portion of the retarded readership of this blog has either graduated from or is currently wasting time at the aforesaid institutes of higher learning (wow, phrased in absolute bullcrap. subuktagin would be proud). anyone who has lived and worked in the pakistani corporate environment knows or has met a subuktagin. unfortunately, being paki, most of us tend to ignore these viruses and find other things to hate. like sheikh rasheed or badar muneer or the way omar sharif says “government”. 

and that, probably, is why the jerk who i was sitting next to at the dholki has not yet been lynched by a mob.

dholkis are, apart from being the settings for possible run-ins with subuktagins, pretty nice things to attend. especially considering the fact that the closest thing to a dhol at a modern day dholki is what i affectionately refer to as my thirty-six pack and other people crudely call my square barrel. the only musical instrument is the dj. there’s booty aplenty and boy can the ladies shake it well. there are few nice things i have to say about dance tracks picturised on akshay kumar and sunil shetty but dekha jo tujhe yaar dil mein bajee guitar…

needless to say the view was perfect until someone managed to drag me on the dance floor. gorillas on crack have danced better with a splinter in one foot and gangrene in the other than i have ever managed with only a mirror to watch let alone a capacity crowd. like i explained later, there should be something a guy’s not good at. and i’m not frigging 16 anymore. it would have been ok if subuktagin hadn’t turned out to be a pocket version of a male shakira but as luck would have it, not only can he quote messrs. merriam and webster at will but he can also do some wicked footwork with the supremely idiotic lyrics of dard-e-disco blaring out from the speakers. how i hate him.

jub beetay barson se cho guna wazan honay lagay
behtar hai manjh se taaluq ghaibana reh jaye
nachana hi ho to humein nachao tum usee waqt
dainay ko daad jub faqat shamiana reh jaye

who ever said only the greater poets found inspiration in adversity?

fortunately though the hottest of the hotties on display - and mind you it was like i’d found my 70 virgins - managed to end up on the seat next to mine and i pretended to chat her up much to the awe, shock and envy of subuktagin. that i extracted nothing other than the fact that she was the wife of one of the muscle bound bores smoking in the dark recesses of the tent is totally irrelevant. as i left i shook his hand, smiled and said that meeting him had made me positively virulent. of course, he didn’t understand and smiled back and told me that the pleasure was all his.

the meek may inherit the earth but i; i shall con them out of it.

yes i know the wind won’t blow in an english nanny with an umbrella. it’s not the done thing and hasn’t been heard of since the 1930s and the wind in karachi is among the most fashionable in the world. this post isn’t about the pussycat dolls and busta rhymes and their dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? video either, though if you somehow managed to reach that conclusion you have definitely grasped the inner meaning of the bemaina. i salute you.

this post is about enlightened moderation. and moderated enlightenment. and all the things that lie in between. the views of people who don’t matter on issues that do. the reason for why national consensus will be developed only after doomsday or the day the south africans win a cricket world cup, whichever comes later. at least doomsday is a certainty.

a relative who’s pretty active on the lahore social scene, let’s call her manahil (mainly because her own name sounds nothing like that but also because “nehal” means honeybee in arabic and “manahil” has no meaning in any language that i can trace and let’s face it, a socialite is very like a honeybee), was lamenting about the fast spreading wave of “talibanisation” in her city the last time i visited her. “here?” i asked, incredulous -  i had, after all, just been with her to a place where my teeshirt had longer sleeves than any of the women present - only to recieve the explanation that “every fifth or sixth girl has started wearing a scarf”.

okaaayy.

another relative who’s pretty active on the karachi social scene, lets call her lihanam (mainly because thats the name manahil in reverse and yes it still doesn’t mean anything) can also often be heard lamenting about the talibanisation of her own social contacts. she, however, is referring to the almost enforced donning of naqabs and burqas and refusal of permission to well, do anything “social” during the socializing if you follow my drift.

as you have no doubt not been able to grasp from the preceding
paragraphs, enlightened moderation is all about manahil and lihanam worrying about their interpretations of talibanisation which is something they define as women being forced to do something they don’t want to. like asking an 18 year old girl who normally wears a tee and jeans to don a shuttlecock. or asking an eighteen year old who normally wears a shuttlecock to don levis and a tube top. moderated enlightenment is the fallout that comes with relative media freedom. this is the bit where idiots of all shapes and sizes with nothing in common apart from their uncanny ability to not be classified as a representative sample of the average pakilander are brought on to (beleive it or not) news channels to expound on their limited understanding of social issues in front of as many people the world is willing to field in front of the millions of tvs that inahabit the earth. yes dawn news, i AM talking about your open frequency thing. never has a tv show needed to be ditched more than that open frequency thing you guys pretend captures the popular opinion. i, and by definition, other like me, would prefer to see half an hour of federal cabinet members swatting flies.

or actually flies swatting federal cabinet members. now that would be something.

____________

in other earth shaking news, i am shortening my sideburns.

“ kaali kaali bakreean, oon hai kya?”

well the translator/lyricist/rip-off-artist puts it as

“jee haan, jee haan, teen thaileean.”

the more likely riposte from any self respecting black sheep, however, would be,

‘uloo ke pathay, “sheep” ko kehtay hain “dumba”.’

the point being that where there’s a smart aleck who thinks he did a good job translating something, there is a pile of figurative bullshit. which is why most pakistanis wish veena malik would stick to urdu or punjabi.

i can’t see any logical connection here (but then who ever comes to this blog for logic?) but this brings us to the question that everyone is asking. and no, i’m not referring to the date of the next victoria’s secret fashion show. no i’m talking about where osama is. yes, osama bin laden. the guy who made bush the most famous non-human primate on the face of the earth. contrary to popular belief, osama is not in in a cave or tunnel in north waziristan. no sir, no way. he’s much more comfortably shacked up in banaras colony, karachi, and operating under the guise of a pathan rickshaw driver with the words da bajaur gulona (flower of bajaur) painted in a merry cherry red on the back of his vehicle. and no, his insurance policy against arrest is not a suicide jacket. its a quaint pukhtoon custom called pannah warkawel (offering asylum), which is an integral part of the sacred honour code known as pashtunwali.

the pashtun race is supposedly the world’s biggest segementary lineage ethnic group. it is definitely the largest ethnic group in the pakistani transportation business. a distant second is the donkey. though both of them share the top slot in the “stubborn” department. it has been said that when one pathan says to another, “quit being an ass”, any donkey within earshot will be seen to be grinning from ear to ear. its like an honour for them. but i digress. pashtunwali, to put in a nutshell, is the collective expectation for behaviour, conduct and attitude that any one pathan or a whole group have for one another. as such it is sacrosanct and even though you saw the traitor in the rambo movie you have to understand that no pathan will ever hand over someone seeking asylum. and asylum has been sought. so osama is here to stay. had he been from anywhere else, the spy sattelites would easily have caught him taking a leak benind a bunker facing a wall on which was transcribed “yeh kutta paishab kar raha hai” but fate has determined that an arab terrorist can easily pass for a pathan fruit vendor and vice versa and bin laden is no exception. so when you’re zooming down from that high above, it’s not that easy to differentiate between aimen al zawahiri and gulsher khan achakzai.

and its not just the visuals either. arabs and pathans are similar on so many different levels its actually unnerving. they both talk in harsh guttural tones which to speakers of the more naturally melodic urdu sound awfully like someone clearing their throat. they both favour headgear, suppress women and rarely need spectacles. they even share the same basic credo in life, translated so aptly by burton in the thousand nights and a night as, “women for breeding, boys for pleasure and melons for sheer delight”. now imagine osama sitting in a seedy cinema hall in orangi town watching a mussarat shaheen/badar muneer oldie and it will click. there’s the woman for breeding (sort of), the boy for pleasure (if you conede that any beardless male is a boy), and a pair of melons jiggling obscenely despite all the posturing of the censor board. ab aur kia chahiye is se behtar? waves. naam hi kaafi hai.

so if bush’s dear condi is reading this, please please stop trying to find the man. he’ll die of natural causes before you do anyway. concentrate on trying to find weapons of mass destruction in mongolia. i hear they’re planning an attack on israel in the not too distant future. something about recovering tel aviv for its rightful owners…

_________________

note to self: do not drink grape juice on an empty stomach. it does not do your mind any good.

_________________

and blame hemlock for this post. she begged me to update. so there. i’m updated. and up and dated. soon i’ll be up and dating giselle. you wait and see. just wait….

_________________

today i went to the mehndi of a guy younger than me.

he’s already looking older.

yay.

while the province braces for another spate of drama, emotion, violence, rage, lies, deceit and corruption - no i’m not talking about a new star plus serial; benazir’s going to larkana - deep in the interior of the mysterious 140,000 square kilometres known as sindh, there is, even as you read this, a bunch of kids playing what they call wanjh watti.

***dramatic pause with some desi ripoff of the fifth symphony in the background***

a convoluted mix of rugby, tag, kabaddi and what can only be called the bitch slap, wanjh watti has its own complex system of rules and to be good at it you have to have the shiftiness of dickens’ artful dodger and the superb slapping ability of a jailhouse dyke. the rules are simple. you basically cross over into enemy territory (which is like their half of the football field) and they try to stop you by slapping you across the face. quite interesting. it is at any rate better than gillee danda, oonch neech and what the pml-q guys refer to as bibi babu da khel. i bet you don’t need an explanation for that one. anyways, any three year old kid will be able to tell you that the people who make most money out of any game are the guys who bring it to your computer screen. thats right. the electronic version. so get prepared for the computer game of the century. move over ea sports, xill-e-ilahi’s wanjh watti superbowl is just about ready for the playstation 3.

i bring this up merely because traffic makes clifton seem as far away from my side of karachi as any goth in tharparkar. and because you never heard of wanjh watti and this makes me sound like i’m getting really involved in sindhi culture and national politics. and because that impresses all of the farangi-types who actually read my blog. you poor, poor people. and also because it is at any rate more interesting than the fact that alicia keys has got a new single out as my real player kindly informs me.

there is also the small matter of being too busy to come online - that and the fact that my friendly telephone company is playing dead - a favourite game for most of the utility companies in pakistan. the game i’d like to play with them though, is wanjh watti. with brass knuckles on. there could be few things more satisfying to watch than bloodied, beaten up pak telecom linemen.

and now that you have profitably utilised one minute and twenty seven seconds of your
useless time, i must take your leave. i would also happily take your money but you’re too cheap to pay up, the whole boiling lot of you. don’t hold your breath till the next post - the last time someone called the telecommunication repair people efficient around these parts was before 1857.

as a future leader of pakistan, i just have to close this with the most ridiculous closing line ever invented in political spin doctoring history. har qadam, khush halee ki janib.

***fade out, with the sound of crazy cackling laughter in the background***

when chicken licken ran to henny penny screaming, “the sky is falling down! the sky is falling down!” it triggered a chain of insignificant events, a rabble of idiotic birds running around in circles shouting doomsday prohecies and spreading panic - and then history forgot them (it was after all only a lousy acorn) and they’re only ever mentioned in old ladybird classics first graders don’t even read any more. the moral of the story being, when something which can be classified as “the same old crap” happens, all the losers in town go crazy.

in case you missed the point, the world’s worst dressed woman is coming back to town.

my first memories of benazir go back to ‘88 when as a seven year old who’d just found out that the president and his entourage had blown up in a plane, the only sentiment i could register coming from the elders around me was “thank god the bastard’s dead”. i was an isolated kid -  i didn’t call pakistan home at the time, it was just where went for the summers - and yet everywhere you turned, you could hear the murmurs of people mentioning benazir. it was worse than the race riots of ‘86. at least then people kept quiet in front of children and in any case, the really bad part happened in winter when i was safe and sound in my kindergarten class in abu dhabi. and benazir had that appeal, that charisma, that attraction for even a seven year old kid. she looked like a leader. she walked like a leader. there was more of “leader” in her than there was in liono of the thundercats. and even though the only tv channel in those days was the government propoganda machine, nothing could hide the fact that she was destined to rule.

daughter of one “martyr”, sister of another, torture victim, political prisoner, freedom fighter and a face that people magazine listed as one the fifty most beautiful that year. she had everything.  compare that with the guy who blew up - zia’s eyes were the things children’s nightmares are made of - and you can imagine why a seven year old child was even more excited than his parents when she became prime minister.

as time passed, the bhutto saga continued to enthrall me. i read her autobiography dozens of times and in my early teens i fell in love with her father’s failed socialist mandate. every book on the bhuttos seemed to make you think that here, finally, were the people to rid your motherland of its misery. you saw the famous speech at the u.n. general assembly by her father, you thought of the heroic glory of dying without surrendering, you felt the powerful throbbing pulse of the party slogan roti, kapra, makaan and subconscious royalist that you are, you recognized their right to rule. and thats because the immature, even when alone, displays the same misguided sentimentality that is the trademark of the masses. the mob reaction.

eight years, two aborted terms, billions of dollars, hundreds of extra judicial killings, thousands of tortured prisoners, grand scale abuse of power and a failed economy later, few people could have been more satisfied at her ouster.

in 1996, i felt that maybe we had seen the last of the bhuttos. i’ve never really felt that murtaza’s kids have the benefit of the bhutto legacy after his fall out with benazir and sassi (shahnawaz’s daughter) is definitely not slated for an entry into pakistani politics. when the general had the 2002 act passed in parliament - the one restricting prime ministership to a maximum of two terms - i became sure that the door had been finally closed. and then somebody miscalcuclated something and suddenly benazir has become the last great hope.

what bothers me is not that the cases have been withdrawn or that the deal has been made or that musharraf might even field her as the prime ministerial candidate. thats politics and as machiavelli told us hundreds of years ago, if low blows win you the match, you hit below the belt. what hurts is the unbelivably short memory of the people. i can understand it when a dusty daily wager dances in the streets yelling benazir aye gee rozgaar laye gee but when the tv screen shows you an obviously educated woman talking about how good things were in her two terms you just shake your head in wonder. and then when you see the deluded supporters of the mqm unquestioningly supporting their party’s decision to welcome her home you just shake it in disgust. i remember the night sky in karachi with the tracer fire overhead. i remember finding bullets on my roof. i remember reading of a minimum of twenty innocent bystanders dying every week in the newspapers during the operation. how the hell did these people forget? and i don’t even support their party. they’re the ones who lost their “workers” (read gunmen) to her “police” (read executioners). and now they’re buddies? i shudder to imagine a national assembly in which waseem akhter (yes that same thug from lines area who the ig of police now reports to) sits next to naseerullah babar (yes the same army general who authorised the killing of similar thugs while he wasn’t organising the taliban) and they smile and they cheer as a woman in an outfit designed by a drunk, colourblind, welsh gardener addresses them in her idiolexicological brand of urdu after having had regained control of the heretofore frozen swiss account with allegedly 740 million pounds sterling parked inside.

i mean i can live with that outfit. its the rest of the stuff that bothers me. and yet, even as i type this, there are thousands of people assembled outside bilawal house dancing to the tune of that famous lyari anthem jiye bhutto benazir. is it just me or has she really lost the charm for other 26 year olds that she had at seven?

i get the worrying feeling that it is only me.

and i thought shaikh rasheed and durrani were bad, imagine what’ll happen when sherry rahman becomes information minister. don’t say i didn’t warn you.