LAHORE: Who said there was no one to read the Hindu classics in Pakistan? It almost seems as if the Mahabharata was being re-enacted in Chiniot, not the great war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, the episode when the eldest of the Pandavas, Yudisthira, lost Draupadi, their wife in common, while gambling. This was at the root of the war between the two sides.
However, in Chiniot, we have a twist. The wife, presumably because she wasn’t a good Hindu, refused to go with those who had won her. So the husband beat her, thus going one-up on Yudisthira, but showing also that he had a serious gambling problem. I don’t know if Yudisthira was drunk when he staked Draupadi, but our Chiniot friend was. Well, he had to be drunk to stake his wife, and even drunker to beat her when she refused to behave.
I’m surprised that neither Yudisthira nor the luminary from Chiniot thought of doing what Asma Aziz’s husband did when she refused to dance for his friend, shave her head. Her husband has been sent to jail, and yes, the court awaits the medical report before it accepts that there was a head-shaving. Does anyone remember that the last straw for that woman was being asked by the police to pay up for the medical examination?
Another person in difficulty with the law is Hamza Shehbaz, whose house was raided to arrest him. Did the raid make any recoveries? At least a couple of stolen buffaloes. No? A roomful of ill-gotten cash? Hamza should get measured for a long black kurta like the ones his father and uncle presumably have. When they wear it (on top of a coloured dhoti and dove-grey pumps, without benefit of socks), they probably boast to family members that they need bail in a murder charge. Relatives are lost when they mention white collar crime.
They seem as lost as PPP workers. The PTI wanted to rename the Benazir Income Support Programme, which had the PPP up in arms. I remember, many years ago, a strike at FC College, when they renamed all the hostels after Islamic heroes instead of American college principals. The strike leader ran out of names when it came to renaming the Ewing Memorial Library. Someone from the crowd suggested the name of the then Principal. Of course, it was rejected. You couldn’t name a Memorial Library after a living person. Maybe that is what saved the BISP being renamed.
I assume Imran is not so focused on name changes, not after the resignation of Algerian leader Abdel Aziz Bouteflika. I mean, there are no corruption charges against him, are there? So what if he’s in hospital. Bouteflika may be in hospital, but Punjab CM Usman Buzdar’s father, Sardar Fateh Muhammad, has passed on. The last CM whose father died while the son was in office was Manzoor Wattoo. Mian Shehbaz Sharif’s father passed on when his boys were in exile. To date, he remains the only father of two chief ministers.
Well, at least Facebook is not worried by all this. However, it does seem to be worried by the ISPR, which has had pages pulled down, accounts closed and groups shut down. Well, ISPR seems in good company. The same has happened to the BJP. It seems Indian PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Facebook headquarters, where he was careful to get his picture taken with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, didn’t work.
Well, it seems that Muhammad Fayyaz, the Pakpattan man whose plane was taken away by the local police, has finally got his plane back. I wonder if he’s the next Jehangir Tareen, who’s said to have impressed Imran with his honesty by giving him free rides on his own plane. Fayyaz doesn’t just have a plane, but actually made it.
Jahangir Tareen might not be the best person to attend Cabinet, if Shah Mehmood Qureshi is to be believed. Tareen’s plane did not impress the Supreme Court, which disqualified him from the National Assembly, and this made him have to give up the General Secretaryship of the PTI. Well, maybe Tareen would like to recommend Qureshi to give the briefing on the National Action Plan that the Opposition is waiting for, while Tareen consults Mian Shehbaz about the ECP members. Anything to save Imran from having to deal with such corrupt elements.
Imran is trying to avoid the corrupt elements by carrying out the needed consultation with them by letter. I’m not sure it’s possible. I don’t think any Leader of the Opposition would like to put in writing all the salacious details that would make him object to an individual. I’m not sure obscure references to the Mahabharata would do the trick, not even in an age when the BJP seems to be riding high.
