And how it won’t matter much at all
What House of Sharif signed up for and what they were made subject to is like someone ordering Apple MacBook online and getting farm fresh radish
Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, check. Mian Shahbaz Sharif, check. Hassan and Hussain Nawaz, check. Ishaq Dar, check. Captain Safdar Abbasi, check. Maryam Nawaz, check. Tariq Shafi, check. Couple of others, check.
Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, not checked as of yet. Begum Mian Sharif, not checked as of yet. Late Mian Sharif, not checked since he is beyond reach and jurisdiction.
The above checklist yells out loud that in our beloved Fatherland times are a changin’. We decided to take our King to task, once again. And then we made him, his sons, his daughter to appear before the interrogators and divulge all they knew to escape the hell we’ve been sending our elected leaders since long. Dearest sirs and ma’ams, this ain’t happening for the first time. We held them Bhuttos to account. We brought swift justice to someone fish-eating last, jute-cultivating folks, who first demanded their rights and then decided to cut loose before our 25th birthday.
We have jailed, tortured, assassinated, and hanged our kings. Our knights, well, we have spared them for their invaluable services to the land and its people. It is either that or we lack the spine required to perform the task.
What House of Sharif signed up for and what they were made subject to is like someone ordering Apple MacBook online and getting farm fresh radish. The wide gulf between expectation versus reality couldn’t have been more further apart. A kind reminder, courtesy The Rolling Stones, ‘You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need’. Did they get what they needed? We’ll know soon.
In politics, leaders aim to impress their acolytes and audience through monologues. Hassan, Hussain and Maryam Nawaz Sharif delivered their monologues for the first time. They did a fine job, if given more opportunities for practice, they just might get really, really good at it.
They must have been consoling themselves, questioning themselves, making sense of all that makes round in their heads through soliloquies given in pitch black darkness to an audience of one. How much vengeance, how much angst their soliloquies have is subject to sheer speculation.
The original sin that refuses to go away in our land is mistaking our adversaries for enemies, enemies for well wishers, and allies for opponents. It is the staple plot of sob story called ‘Democracy in Pakistan’. Them camouflage-donning folks have it slightly easier. They come, they stay till they no longer can and they either die or live a retired life playing golf, dancing at weddings, giving lectures, grabbing consultancies, chairing think tanks or braving an obscure life till they kick the bucket.
Seeing and gauging future through the prism of past has one serious drawback. Things that have never happened before, happen one fine morning. Or as they say, it doesn’t happen until it does. The catch is, you win some or you win many, all is good, all is well. The moment you lose one, you lose one too many. You are done for all times to come. Done and relegated to abysses.
Some abysses are deeper, darker, grimmer than others. What chasm awaits our latest protagonists and antagonists, we’ll know soon as outfoxing one quandary, dearest sirs and ma’ams, does not mean that one can or will outmaneuver every quagmire, outwit every riddle, outsmart every man jack and outlive the consequences of every blunder one has ever committed.
Once push comes to shove, by this I mean when it really, totally, absolutely, unmistakably comes to shove, the only unpardonable sin at that moment is known as indecision. Tony Soprano, a fictional character from an American drama series ‘The Sopranos’, knows it better than any real, factual man of blood and flesh. ‘A wrong decision is better than indecision,’ Tony spoke to anyone who cared to listen. Also, ‘The Sopranos’ is a show about a mafia boss and his struggle to manage his various personas.
‘Who’ll have the last hurrah?’ I asked the sage-cum-seer. ‘It’ll be of the masses. The poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten, they’ll have the last hurrah,’ the sage declared
If you are reading this column on the very day it is published, then tomorrow is 10 July 2017, the day when the much anticipated, much speculated report by Joint Investigation Team is to be submitted before mighty Lordships of Big Marble Palace. And you’ll know for sure, who survives and who perishes.
‘Who’ll have the last hurrah?’ I asked the sage-cum-seer. ‘It’ll be of the masses. The poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten, they’ll have the last hurrah,’ the sage declared.
‘And till then?’
‘Hear the cacophony masquerading as slogans of salvation,’ thus spoke the seer. And while we wait for the last hurrah, three cheers for House of Sharif, four cheers for PTI, five cheers for their Lordships and half a dozen cheers for everybody else.
PS: Who’ll have the last laugh, the jury is out on this one as well.
