Case: Minor girl raped and killed.
Evidence: CCTV, statements, autopsy, DNA, everything.
Result: Bail.
Case: 444 encounters by a police officer.
Evidence: Statements, witnesses, autopsies, everything.
Result: Case dismissed without arrest.
Case: Sahiwal massacre by CTD.
Evidence: CCTV, witnesses, statements, autopsies, DNA, everything.
Result: Transfer of murderers.
Case: 144 school children killed in broad daylight.
Evidence: CCTVs, witnesses, statements, autopsies, intelligence, everything.
Result: Mastermind got primetime on TV. Escaped.
Case: A woman’s slogan against terrorism in the country.
Evidence: Not applicable.
Result: Terrorism charges. Bail denied. Prisoned.
Case: A wealthy son killed a young man.
Evidence: CCTV, witnesses, statements, admission of crime.
Result: Luxury jail. Freed.
Case: A judge’s wife brutally tortured a minor maid.
Evidence: Witnesses, medical, statements, everything.
Result: Nothing.
Case: A man asked for peace whose 17 family members got killed.
Evidence: Not applicable.
Result: Jailed.
Case: A foreigner killed 2 people.
Evidence: Witnesses, medical, autopsies, statements, admission of crime, everything.
Result: Escorted honorably to the US.
Case: A blind girl was raped.
Evidence: None. Medical not allowed.
Result: Blind girl jailed for fornication.
Case: A man killed by Rangers in broad daylight.
Evidence: CCTV, video footage, witnesses, everything.
Result: Not applicable.
Case: Missing people.
Evidence: Missing people.
Result: Missing people.
Case: A woman was gang raped.
Evidence: Witnesses, medical, DNA, everything.
Result: “Women get raped to settle abroad.” Said the one who was settled abroad. Died abroad. Buried here.
Month: August 2023
Taxing Perfection
Still, the doubling of cigarette prices hurt the most. Rs.500 per pack. That was too personal.
By the way, you must have purchased expensive shoes with some fault. Some fine linen with issues. An expensive perfume with a milliliter less in it. A branded phone with error on unpacking. A broken screen of a gadget on delivery. Expired products and eatables.
Something. Anything.
But you will never find a pack of 20 cigarettes short of 1 or 2. You will never find a pack with a damaged cigarette. There is no error. Never. The packaging is clean as a whistle.
You can have a problem with a person for whom you purchased cigarettes, but not the cigarettes themselves. The choice of a person can be wrong. Tobacco, never.
Even then they had to tax the art of perfection. It’s like taxing Lionel Messi for playing football.
The General Problem & Mohsin Naqvi
There are two ways:
1. Invest millions. Campaign day and night. Speak a lot. Bicker. Argue. Work hard. Hold the right testes in left hand. Win elections. Become a CM.
2. Fraud with taxes. Make business. Earn a name. Make a fortune. Sit with the wrong people in the right positions. No need of elections. Hold the right testes in left hand. Become a caretaker CM. Violate the constitution and stay a non-caretaker CM with as much power.
These are the two ways.
Mohsin Naqvi is Way 2 go in Punjab. For now. So good with holding. The chair.
The only difference is the stability. One has to hold. With fear, care, love, and affection without an iota of disgust for the disgusting.
Now over to duffers:
A little face-saving – of the constitution – could have been possible by changing the caretaker setup with another caretaker setup after every 90 days. But no. Constitution doesn’t matter. Face-saving doesn’t matter either. The only thing that matters is: they have the power, and they know how to demonstrate it.
With that, India is over the moon. Pakistan is still struggling with the ‘general’ problem.
The Cycle
If His Highness could relate to anyone, that would be Bahadur Shah Zafar. The last Mughal Emperor. Had Delhi Sultanate. Metaphorically. Was robbed of that too. Exiled. And died in Burma in 1862. Couldn’t even pay Ghalib enough.
But then, if Ghalib would have been paid enough, we wouldn’t have Deevan-e-Ghalib. His letters were all about pain, grief, poverty, and passing life on a day-to-day basis. With alcohol. Not without.
This reminds me of an actor who once said that you must become filthy rich before becoming a philosopher. That could be categorized as the most idiotic utterance of words. Socrates, Nietzsche Rousseau, Marx, and His Highness would be very offended.
Anyway. Deviation is an art.
Now here. From earning enough to managing life abroad easily to trying random restaurants randomly to driving around the city for hours without a reason to here. Now. Not day-to-day but month-to-month. By the end of each, its counting of days. To repeat the same.
Now imagine your whole life like that. Your 20s and 30s being spent that way, where you enjoy the first 10 days of the month to moaning in the last 10. Passing 10 out of 30 days in an upper middle to poor class in a loop. Now calculate this. Its around 7 years out of 20 spent in waiting for the cycle to end.
There is another cycle. For the uncircumcised gender. That too is monthly. You can relate to it through this if you cannot relate to it otherwise.
Now imagine another scenario. You have both. Both cycles each month. Too sad. That would be the most miserable character of the novel that I didn’t write yet. But I did try. Once.
A meeting was called in the dark around the fire. All the words were called. They were taught to assemble. To make a point that was supposed to be delivered in a single sentence. Words couldn’t gather well. New words were invented but it didn’t work either. A single sentence assembled into a fragment and into an essay and into a novella. The meeting lasted for months, yet it produced a disaster. A novella couldn’t deliver a message. Couldn’t make a point.
If it had one reader, the reader would have been more offended than the writer. How dare you write such a crap? Clap! Clap!
That’s the whole point. From day to day, from month to month, from year to year, from word to word; there is no point. There is only the mockery of existence that was bestowed without consent, yet consent was made a rule to be followed for the rest of the existence, yet – another yet – it was not bestowed enough to end the existence at will.
Relax! That wasn’t philosophy. One must become filthy rich before becoming an idiot.
The Conversation – Appointing CPM
Nawaz: I want Dar to be the Caretaker PM.
Zardari: No. We had SS. Now it’s our turn.
Fazlu: Where’s my turn?
Zardari: You are not playing.
Asim: Decide and let me know. So I may reject.
Dar: Make me the CPM. I will stay neutral. I promise.
Zardari: Will you get the surgery done?
Dar: What for?
Nawaz: To become neutral. Like Bajwa. Don’t be an arse Dar.
Dar: I was serious.
Fazlu: So was I.
Asim: You boys are never serious.
Zardari: But you boys are always serious.
Asim: Don’t taunt.
Zardari: Just don’t make me focus on you boys else I can be a cunning…
Asim: Husband?
Zardari: Father.
Nawaz: Guys! Let us decide this. I am always for synergy. Let’s do it together.
Fazlu: So, am I in too now?
Asim: No.
Dar: And me.
Asim: [on intercom] Escort Dar.
PA: Escorts now?
Asim: Not those escorts bloody well! Take this Dar out of the room.
PA: Sir.
Nawaz: So, let’s final. What do you say Zardari.
Zardari: Let it be Jillani.
Nawaz: Done.
Asim: Ok.
— Next Day — Escorts Room —
Asim: [on phone] It can’t be PPP or PMLN. It should be our BAP. Kakar to be the CPM.
PA: Sir.
For non-violence to work, the opponent must have Conscience
Those who condemn violence would have condemned Bhagat Singh too. Like Gandhi. He didn’t approve of the revolutionaries.
Without violence, French Revolution wouldn’t have been possible. That same Revolution gave Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
Napoleon too. But that’s deviation from the topic.
Maximilien Robespierre – known as the incorruptible – was known for his violence. Without his violence, French common people couldn’t have survived.
Che Guevara. Too cool. All his life was based on violent struggle. Apart from his motorcycle diaries.
And the list can go on and on.
Today, people condemn capital punishment. Even for mass murderers and rapists. I don’t. I’m too pro for capital punishment for murderers and rapists. The world is already overpopulated. Let’s get rid of the scums. At least.
A deviation. Again. No apologies.
But such are the scenarios that are too complicated to have an absolute answer. Because there is never an absolute answer.
Today, with social media stuff, and fragile activists with egos and their faces to be known as recipes for clickbait, and podcasts, and noise, and references to the outdated ideas as if they were the holy scriptures… too much…
Much ado about nothing. But their faces and feces that they spit from their mouths. For fame, name and the game.
These ones would have condemned Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, and others. And we would have been deprived of the beautiful history of struggle of mankind that we have. At least something to cherish in the books. And nostalgia. For the places where we haven’t lived.
So, I can’t condemn. Can’t condemn everything. Because sometimes, when fires are flamed and bullets are fired, in the right direction, with the right aim, I love that. And that’s absolute.
Poles against Polls
Even in martial laws, elections were held. Engineered or faked, but couldn’t be ignored. Such was the power of polls. Against poles.
Ayub held elections in 1962. ‘Defeated’ Fatima Jinnah.
Yahya held elections in 1970. Didn’t like the results. Dissected.
Zia held non-party elections in 1985 to bring Junejo. But Junejo proved to be more democrat than democratic civilians.
Musharraf held elections in 2002. Brought PMLQ. Rhymed so well.
Musharraf, again, held elections in 2008. His tombstone.
And here comes 2023. Elections unconstitutionally delayed in two provinces already. Another unconstitutional delay in General Elections on cards. The devolution from engineered and robbed elections has reached ‘no elections’. So well.
For Now…
3-4 years down the road, PMLN would be facing these laws / amendments that they happily passed in recent days. They will soon be crying, like they did in the past, but then they won’t have anymore support for their crocodile tears.
Some of the seniors would be jailed. By the same powers beyond the judiciaryudiciary. They won’t have as much support as they once had when NS named Bajwa and Faiz in Gujranwala in 2020.
They will again shout and make noise for democracy. And votes. And human rights. And freedom of speech. Blah blah.
And they will be eating their vomit. Again. Without a shame.
That’s also the first political maneuvering that Maryam Nawaz has learnt from her father. That is: when in doubt, lick boots.
PPP will never face such a thing. Since BB, they learned never to stand for democracy. Bilawal roars in the parliament from time to time, for civil supremacy, but that’s an act they perform in theaters only.
Wait. Don’t go. His Highness isn’t finished yet.
If IK will get a chance – somehow or someway – he will do exactly the same things he did to empower boys. He will replace SS and no one will feel a change.
Because this is all we have. These three and the second in tiers – like PMLQ, MQM, BAP, etc. – are all from the same origin. Even LeJ, TTP… leave it. You can’t handle the truth.
Remember the extension? Apart from the 21st amendment of 2015, these politicians never stood united. Except for the extension in 2019. And if you look closely, the two were the same things and these kids were ordered to behave united.
Unite them. Pass the rule. The divide and rule. How cool!
Anyway.
Before you shed another tear for the one in jail at the moment, he never shed any for his fellow parliamentarian – Ali Wazir – who remained in jail for over a year in his tenure. He didn’t give rat’s ass for anyone except himself.
Dead bodies blackmailed him. Never listened to the atrocities that happened in the whole western belt. TTP came back in action. All he did was nothing except to stand with the perpetrators, until tragedy started to emerge in the mirror.
Smoke and mirror. Smokescreen. Too bad.
It’s a repeat telecast. It will happen again. Heroes will become villains. Villains will become heroes. However, in reality, there won’t be any heroes. Only villains. To be ruled by the Lucifer.
Faiz said, hum dekhain gay. Wo din. Jiska wa’ada hai. Hum dekhain gay.
But he missed that there is another promise too. A promise that was made with the Lucifer. To rule the world. With evil and power.
We shall see. For sure. It’s a promise. But we shall not see that to be fulfilled here. Not in this world.
All the Prophets stood for the same. Then all the philosophers too. Thinkers too. Marx brainstormed all his life to make an equal society. Writers. With words. Aimed for justice. Activists. Revolutionists. So many. So more.
Yet, here we are. After thousands of years of struggle, the struggle is exactly the same. With the internet, modern devices, mass transit, banking, modern economics, fast food, globalization, space travel, and everything around us; the struggle for the basics is exactly the same.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep going. As incorruptible. As clean. As a person you once read about in a good novel.
That’s all. Till you will be called. To stand up. To turn around. To burn the citadel down.
ProNUNciation
It’s not Cillian as in Sicily. It’s Killian Murphy. As it’s Kylian Mbappe. That’s the pronunciation.
By the way it’s ‘pronounce’ as it is. But when it’s ‘pronunciation’, it’s proNUNciation. Not proNOUNciation. Because it’s not noun. It’s unnoun.
Like in desi ‘fees’ it’s already plural. ‘Feeses’ is not a word. It’s feces. But that’s another world altogether.
That’s the best His Highness could do. Thank goodness he’s not a teacher. Would be His Lowness.
Still want to learn English from the one who doesn’t even know the definitions of adverb and adsense? Or the types of tenses and the tensions they amass?