Media Watch: Guess who didn’t get an interview with Imran Khan?

Our man Wajahat S Khan — Waj Bro to those close to him — is angry. Angry and he can’t take it anymore.

Now one doesn’t know what actually happened, but, if we were to put two and two together, it would appear that Waj wanted an audience with the PTI chairman and the latter declined. Not knowing how else to get his beloved’s attention, our man decides to make a public video to him.

He starts his diatribe from in front of a garbage dump in Karachi, which was a good mise-en-scène, as the French cinematographers call it, because it brought out some trash.

Our boy started out with a look-what-you-made-me-do. I had no other choice but to address you, Imran Khan, in this manner, because you don’t give out interviews. What happened to you in Lodhran (yes, twist that knife) was bound to happen, he said. The writing was on the wall, he said, but you still didn’t get it, did you?

Instead of preparing for the elections, he said, you are preparing for the Olympics, with your intense workout routine. The other side, meanwhile, knows what it is doing.

You have surrounded yourself with “red tape” and your life revolves around “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Sheru, jogging, tasbeeh and rumours of your marriage (again, twisting the knife).”

“What is WRONG with you,” the man screams, pointing out to the aforementioned garbage dump, “You’ve let Karachi go.”

Karachi’s biggest party has been destroyed in the past 72 hours, he said, and you are nowhere to be seen.

He then went on to run Khan’s team to the ground, saying he won’t take any names but “you know who I’m talking about.”

This “Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge” crowd that you have kept needs to be whipped into action. [An interesting aside: the fellow himself keeps saying he went to Harvard and used to write it on his social media bio descriptions.

Whenever someone who had actually been to Harvard used to ask him the specifics, he used to reveal it was one of those short diplomas he went to attend. This lot is always made fun of by the degree programme students at these universities because upon reaching the campus on day one, they immediately make a beeline towards the campus shop to get and promptly wear enough paraphernalia (shirt, cap, pants, keychain, mobile cover, underwear) to make one think Harvard has thrown up on them.]

You give embedded journalism opportunities to Times of London writers (and not me) and you saw what sort of a profile you get from that. One doesn’t know if Wajahat means that had he gotten the opportunity, he would have written an out-and-out puff piece?

You have surrounded yourself with people only interested in knowing who is going to get to sit next to you in a jalsa, said the journalist, who really wanted to sit next to Imran Khan.

You are out of touch, your party is weaker than what it was in ‘13 and your guys desperately need *clears throat* a media plan.

In the end, the fellow takes off the shades he had on throughout the video, presumably to emphasise the line that was coming next. That line, since the target audience of one is a simple jock, not given to picking up no metaphors: take off your shades, Khan Saab!

His final word: “Be a Khan!” And then he follows it up with a whispered repetition, Bollywood-style: “Be a Khan!”

One hopes this wasn’t meant to be a one-Khan-to-another. Not an ounce of Pashto between him and Imran Khan.

Much like the aforementioned short course guys at Harvard, this insecure lot wears “Pashtun” paraphernalia like guns and ammo belts a lot. While the actual Pashtuns dream of safety, education and livelihood.