Jinnah’s Ustaadi

re: roohi # 85

…as someone said, drool inducing indeed….hey anNy, looks like you’ve been given a run for your money…

Reply Veeresh #97

``If you want to listen to classic rock in Delhi then please head for the MEZZ at Friend`s Colony (Jamia side) and ask Nikhil or any other DJ there kee Veeresh ne bhejaa hai, and wait for the Hendrix.``

* * MEZZ rocks!! Have a friend who lives at New Friends and religiously takes every visitor to Delhi at least once to Mezz. The music is truly good. But then, since this IS about being parochial and narrow minded, Mumbai has Club IX (till about 11.30, when the teeny brigade troops in) and Toto`s (lately he`s got stuck into an 80`s pop groove which is kinda annoying, but still preferably to Britney/ Jennifer/ Westlife/ whatever).... and of COURSE The Tavern, with it`s pioneering Pink Floyd LaserDs on the large screen TV.... but theek hai yaar... MEZZ is good :)))

``There are very few roundabouts left now, most have become flyovers or stations for the underground Metro``

* * Hmmmm....have to admit last trip pe, Metro signs were a bit of a shock..... will knock off my strongest argument about Mumbai`s superiority through public transport systems.... well, theek hai....you guys are miles away from DTC AC buses....heehee

``My children (f/20 and m/15) listen to my old music and are discovering Uriah Heep, amongst others.``

* * MAY their tribe increase..... my biggest kick in life till now has been to play ``Woman in Black`` in concert to an audience that actually appreciated it.... so what if it was made up mostly of adoring classmates....we loved em for it :)))

``She came to me one morning.... one lonely Sunday morning.... her long hair flowing.... in the mid-winter wind``

Sigh!

OK all you great delhiites especially Zafar since you talk about Bhogal BHOGAL . . . Subroto, Stuka, Roohi . . .

a) If you want to listen to classic rock in Delhi then please head for the MEZZ at Friend`s Colony (Jamia side) and ask Nikhil or any other DJ there kee Veeresh ne bhejaa hai, and wait for the Hendrix.

b) There are very few roundabouts left now, most have become flyovers or stations for the underground Metro (90% of stage 1 complete from Shahdara through Seelampuri onto Tiz Hazari).

c) My children (f/20 and m/15) listen to my old music and are discovering Uriah Heep, amongst others.

d) And finally, please wait for my forthcoming opus on Jinnah, dredged out of old records from the Dawn/Daryangaj records (now TOI Training School) and help from Golden Temple sources. Here is a hint:- Jinnah believed that freedom of the press was guaranteed as long as he owned the press.

+++

Does anybody from Karachi have any info on the fundas of Bennett Coleman & Co. and the relationship that company may still have with remnants of the Dalmias/Goenkas still in Pakistan, or linkages with Okara Sutlej Mills?

Ah-ha!!!

Reply Stuka

“…You are a true Delhitie, unlike Zafar, whose culinary experiences began at the Oberoi and ended at the Hyatt. :)”

Abbe Stuka! Tell me what a Hema Malini from Bhogul is – then you can talk.

(Hamare zamane mein Hyatt Shyatt illa…youth of today has no concept of struggle…beta, life isn’t all g-jams at BM, understand?)

``Back to the future

By Ayaz Amir

Even in a land renowned for silly edicts, the most recent addition to the statute book, Chief Executive`s Order No 15, takes the prize for silliness.

Even as separate electorates have been abolished and a single or joint electorate restored, this Order makes provision for mentioning voters belonging to the Ahmedi sect in a separate column.

Anyone suspected or accused of being an Ahmedi can be called upon within the next few days by the concerned returning officer to sign a form affirming the finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (upon whom be peace). Should the person so required refuse, he or she will be counted as a non-Muslim voter.(Dawn)

Pakistani Islam is the weirdest of all Islams in the world -- and Musharraf is one of its weirdest followers.

The man professes to be building Pakistan as a progressive united Muslim country -- FREE OF SECTARIANISM and ethnic and religious infighting and bigotry -- then turns around and PERSONALLY issues this -- utterly childish, monumentally stupid, poisonously divisive, DEGRADINGLY demeaning -- AND -- one hundred percent -- SECTARIAN Ordinance.

What a twofaced hypocrite -- no wonder nobody respects him around the world any more.

And -- What a pathological obsession with Prophet`s sanctity -- they even hang and shoot people in jail -- to quench their blood thirsty paranoia.

they had already MINORITIZED a highly educated, most productive, law abiding, civilized MUSLIM community -- into THIRD class citizens.

NOW this Pakistani caricature of an ATATURK -- has practically ARMINIANIZED the hapless Ahmedis -- by issuing this horrible Ordinance -- declaring an open season on them.

Sign your RECONVERSION -- OR BE DAMNED FOR EVER.

These crazy people are almost -- WORSHIPPING MUHAMMAD -- instead of God -- over there -- and Musharraf is the craziest one -- for personally leading their prayers.

hasan

Lajwanti: I think I will not join the kafir khan fan club. My reason being as follows: He holds the Pandits (Brahmans, I assume, but I like the name Panda better) for the following : ``ritual, thugee, exploitation, slavery, child abuse, evil, injustice, violence, ridicule, Brahmanism, castism, role of Raja and inequality.``

The above are no doubt the source of much evil (by Brahmanism, I assume he means the caste system). And no doubt many Pandits are guilty of some or all of the above. BUT, that is true for humanity at large, and these evils are not the exclusive domain of the pandits. Any club that condemns any community of people for evils that are committed by individuals in ALL communities is not a club I would join.

Incidentally, I find it fascinating that a couple of chowk posters (not you, you are one of the most wonderful posters on chowk) who routinely write insulting posts about Pakistanis switch just as easily to write insulting posts about Indian Pandits. Do I see a pattern????

RE Veeresh # 88

``(Peter Gabriel hotaa to baat thee)``

O kee kahriye ho Unkal jee, ae Peter Gabriel to saddde zamana da banda hai, ae nahi chalega. Ab to aM-TV da zamana haga jee. Apna ek yaar Dilli vich DJ da kaam karta ha - so this time when I was in India I was able to hear teen`s choice - and very sorry to say sirjee but it was not Peter Gabriel. Actually your kids would be able to give you an update on whats ``in`` these days, i.e if they are not already doing that ;-)

Roohi # 85 Very yummy post indeed.

RSridhar # 83 We found that difference pretty soon for when we asked the servant to get 1 kg of meat from the market he ended up with a kilo of salt, cos salt in Marathi is ``Meeth``.

Subroto

Stuka,

thanks and no i didn`t live in south delhi - but in the Cantt (Dhaula Kuan and Pratap Chowk) but being an old dilli wali family we had regular trips to the big old (crumbling) family home on rohtak road in Karol Bagh (behind Ajmal Khan Park) and lived there after my Dad retired from the army. Of course by now all my cousins have moved to South Delhi :-). I went to APS, Sophia (in Meerut, where my Mum is from, in hostel) DPS (mathrua rd)and Miranda House and worked at NIIT before leaving 10 years ago.

delhi must look lovely right now with the roundells full of flowers - i`d love to beam back just for the Surajkund Mela - so all you people there who do go to it have a Lassi for me !

re aamir

``Naipaul who was given Nobel for being Brown British a cuddly pet dog sort of ...``

The Nobel is given by the Norwegians and Swedes, not the British. Your language about eminent personalities bespeaks volumes about canine features.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Roohi:

Excellent post. You are a true Delhitie, unlike Zafar, whose culinary experiences began at the Oberoi and ended at the Hyatt. :) Too upperclass he is.

So, first time I have seen you on Chowk...details on your Delhi experiences are needed...what part of Delhi are you from?? I would bet South Delhi..

anNy #82 . . . ok so that was a coooooool Valentine`s Day do in Karachi . . . what I wonder about is the U2 selection . . . do they sing ``Sunday Bloddy Sunday`` as Friday in Pakistan and Tuesday in India and Saturday in Israel etcetc?

Wondering.

(Takes another bow)

Your sunflowers are better than ours? Have you seen our ganna, our kinoo and most of all have you seen our tarboooz? And you want to compare sunflowers?

As for the guys being better than ours, no lady, no, you are indeed sadly ill-informed . . . any guys who dance to U2 (Imagine, I will Follow YOu?) . . . oh nahee jee nahee.

(Peter Gabriel hotaa to baat thee)

ylh:

Yo, man! Here is something for you to chew on. Now you can quote VS Naipaul, with all the authority that the Nobel Prize bestows on him, on Gandhi. Thank me, Yasser, thank me.

Christianity Didn`t Damage India Like Islam

Widely regarded as the world`s greatest living writer in English, Trinidad-born Sir Vidiadhar talks to Tarun J. Tejpal in what he claims is his ``last`` interview on India



India has a fractured past and a fissured present. What do you think is India`s future? Is it a civilisation in decay?

``Fractured past``is too polite a way to describe India`s calamitous millennium. The millennium began with the Muslim invasions and the grinding down of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of the north. This is such a big and bad event that people still have to find polite, destiny-defying ways of speaking about it. In art books and history books, people write of the Muslims ``arriving`` in India, as though the Muslims came on a tourist bus and went away again.

The Muslim view of their conquest of India is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of the faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the carting away of the local people as slaves, so cheap and numerous that they were being sold for a few rupees. The architectural evidence-the absence of Hindu monuments in the north-is convincing enough. This conquest was unlike any other that had gone before. There are no Hindu records of this period. Defeated people never write their history. The victors write the history. The victors were Muslims. For people on the other side it is a period of darkness. Indian history is written about as a matter of rulers and kingdoms shifting and changing. This is why it all seems petty and boring to read and hard to remember. But there is a larger and more tragic and more illuminating theme. That theme is the grinding down of Hindu India. Let us consider two late dates. In 1565, the year after the birth of Shakespeare, Vijayanagar in the south is destroyed and its great capital city laid waste. In 1592, the terrible Akbar ravages Orissa in the east. This means that while a country like England is preparing for greatness under its great queen, old India, in its sixth century of retreat, is still being reduced to nonentity.

The wealth and creativity, the artisans and architects of the kingdoms of Vijayanagar and Orissa would have been destroyed, their light put out. Those regions are still now among the poorest in India. The theme of the last two or three centuries of the millennium-with the Sikhs, the Maharashtrians, and, above all, the British-has been one of slow recovery. This is of course looking at it from the Hindu side. The Muslims see it as a period of decay. Your three books on India summed up three separate aspects of India-An Area of Darkness, A Wounded Civilisation and A Million Mutinies Now. In a sense these are the negatives. What are the positives that help India hang together?

We are not born with full knowledge and people of my background were granted very little of it at school. Writing is a process of learning. The writer writes himself into an understanding of his world and it has taken me many years and much writing to arrive at the understanding which I now have. Somerset Maugham said something like that about his time as a playwright. He said he felt he should apologise to the public for practising on them. My Indian books were written over a period of 27 years. An Area of Darkness is a personal book. A book of shock and concern. A Wounded Civilisation deals with the beginnings of my understandings of the effects of the invasions. A Million Mutinies Now is about a country more than ever like India at present: a country in revolt at many levels, a country, in fact, beginning to deal with its bad past. I don`t think of it as a negative book.

You reckon that India`s civilisational wholeness was shattered by the incursions of Islam and then Christianity. What do you make of the school of thought that asserts these invasions, and later influences, actually enriched Indian culture and life?

Here again I find in the question an element of political politeness. Christianity did not damage India the way Islam had. There are two sides to Christianity in India. There is the fine source of the New Learning that came with the British. There is another, more petty Christianity that came as the personal faith of the rulers and then the missionaries.

When you talk of Islam`s enriching of Indian culture, you are thinking of things like the food and the music and the poetry. But there is a profounder thing to be said. The two great revealed religions, Islam and Christianity, have altered the world forever, and we all, whatever our faith, walk in their light. Over and above their theology, these religions gave the world social ideas-brotherhood, charity, the feeling of man for man-which we now all take for granted. They are the basis of our political ideas and our ideas of morality. Those ideas didn`t exist before, not in the classical world, not in Hinduism or Buddhism.It may be that these two revealed religions have done their work and have little more to offer. But that`s another matter.

What in your opinion is the most debilitating thing about the Hindu way of life?

The philosophical idea of the beauty of surrender, made much worse by the centuries of defeat, and expressed today in the widespread feeling that men should not get above themselves, that men should not make too many demands.

And what is the most enriching?

I feel nailed to the mast of your questions. I have to think about this one. But it isn`t the way my mind works.

Do you think the Gandhian prescription, harking back to an ascetic and pure past, has proven a mistake? Do you think Gandhi, and all he stood for, has resulted in a schizophrenic India, trapped in hypocrisies?

Gandhi shouldn`t be considered as laying down a prescription for anything. He was uneducated and never a thinker. He is an historical figure. He came at a particular moment; he turned all his drawbacks into religion; and he used religion to awaken the country in a way that none of the educated leaders could have done. He has absolutely no message today. People talk too much about Gandhi and study him too little. His first book, Hind Swaraj, written at white heat in two weeks in 1909, is so nonsensical it would curl the hair of even the most devoted admirer. I don`t know Indians who actually read Gandhi. They take from him some vague idea of a great redeeming holiness and they are free ignore the practical side-Gandhi the hater of dirt, the hater of public defecation. That last is still very much an Indian sport. In fact, the Gandhian idea of piety and a very holy poverty is used now to excuse the dirt of the cities, the shoddiness of the architecture. By some inversion, Indians have used the very idea of Gandhi to turn dirt and backwardness into much-loved deities.

At the same time, would you agree that were it not for a modern cosmopolitan leader like Nehru, India would have had trouble establishing itself as a secular democracy?

It is India`s luck that-unlike, say, revolutionary Iran-Gandhi never was responsible for the running of the country. Full tribute has to be paid to Nehru and the others for establishing and extending in independence the British-given liberal institutions.

What do you make of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty? Providing continuity and stability or enfeebling the democratic process and the Congress?

We mustn`t waste too much time talking about that. The position of India in 1947 was roughly like the position of the Spanish South American countries after the withdrawal of Spain in about 1810. The big question for many people at that time-the question leading very often to a civil war, which still in some places goes on-the big question was: ``Who among the local people is now going to rule us?``The Nehru dynasty provided this assurance for India for a long time.

India was lucky to have them but now that democratic institutions have to some extent taken root India no longer needs them. A liberal dynasty like that in a country like Yugoslavia would have greatly helped that unhappy country.

Of all Indian prime ministers, Indira Gandhi remains the greatest enigma. What is your judgement on her: a tough purposeful leader or a wrecker of all national institutions?

To some extent she was created by Indian need.

Though you grew up in faraway Trinidad, two generations removed from India, you carry a lot of India around in you. Where in your personality do you think is it most apparent?

A writer should never review himself. It is really for other people to say. Also, how has your being Indian shaped you as a man and a writer, particularly the latter? It has been fundamental. I was born in 1932. So I was always concerned about the independence movement. I was very soon aware that our small Indian community in Trinidad had very little political protection. The easy way out would have been to complain about British imperialism. I preferred to look inwards, to find out why a country like India had been so helpless and so indifferent to its people. That was where my writing began. That was my quest. Even my Islamic books have been part of that same quest.

What do you think of the Hindu resurgence that has been taking place in India over the last decade? Do you think it`s a dangerous militancy that will eventually destroy India`s secular character?

You have asked a loaded question. You say that India has a secular character, which is historically unsound. You say that Hindu militancy is dangerous. Dangerous or not, it is a necessary corrective to the history I have been talking about. It is a creative force and it will prove to be so.

Do you think an unpartitioned India would have worked? Why?

No. As soon as the poet Iqbal, the convert, had made his speech calling for a separate state, that state more or less became inevitable. And considering the Islamic movements of the last 30 years, nearly all the energy of an unpartitioned India would have fruitlessly gone into holding itself together.

Why is it that Pakistan so easily slips into martial/dictatorial ways, while democracy is never threatened in India?

West Pakistan was not particularly well educated. It had almost no political thinkers. It had had only about 90 years of British rule and institutions. It was easy for those institutions to be brushed aside. Jinnah was in many ways an attractive, secular man, but the snare of the Islamic movement he unleashed was like the snare of the Islamic movement in Iran. It assumed that out of a perfect Islam everything would flow: good institutions, good laws and a model citizenry. There was no need to think further; everything would come with the faith.

They were also converts and therefore fanatical. Among Arabs, there can be people like the Syrian poet Adonis for whom Islam is only an aspect of his Mediterranean identity. The convert doesn`t have that kind of security. It is also worth remembering that Islamic societies are not democratic in the modern way. They reflect to an amazing degree the state created by the Prophet. Islamic societies need the Quran, the Law and a severe ruler.

How do you see Islam working out a reconciliation with other religions and faiths on the subcontinent?

There can be no reconciliation. Islam is a religion of fixed laws. This goes contrary to everything in modern India. Also, the convert`s deepest impulse is the rejection of his origins.

Do you think India would be better off Balkanising into smaller, more manageable units?

This will be very foolish. People have not been free for very long and they can get carried away by various kinds of populism. The larger association enables these people to be saved from themselves. The people of Bihar and Tamil Nadu have constantly to be saved from themselves. Going further afield, the people of Iran might have been glad of some mechanism that enabled them to be saved from themselves, two or three years after their revolution.

Indians do brilliantly abroad but remain mediocre at home. What is the particular Indian neurosis that accounts for this?

People do well in Europe and in the US because the societies there require excellence. India as yet does not require excellence and people shrink accordingly.

You visit India often. What about it repels you the most?

The old deity of dirt and the modern deity of very brown motor smoke on the streets.

Is it true that by the end of every trip to India, you`re exhausted of the country and eager to return to England, your home? What tires you?

That brown smoke.

Did we make a mistake by going nuclear? What should India`s position be vis-a-vis the rest of the world?

It is important for India to operate at the limit of technology. India must never again fall behind. I actually think that the subcontinent is safer now.

Do you think over time the great Indian aesthetic-architecture, art, music-too has suffered? That India is no longer original in its artistic impulses?

This is actually a very important question. This is where we come face to face with the Indian calamity. When places like Vijayanagar and Orissa were laid low, all the creative talent would also have been destroyed. The current was broken. We have no means of knowing what architecture existed in the north before the Muslims. We can only be certain that there would have been splendours like Konarak and Kancheepuram. Since the current has been broken, there can be no revival. I am thinking principally of course of architecture. The Mughal buildings are foreign buildings. They are a carry-over from the architecture of Isfahan. In India they speak of the desert. They cover enormous spaces and they make me think of everything that was flattened to enable them to come up. Humayun`s tomb is, I suppose, the chastest and the best. The Taj is so wasteful, so decadent and in the end so cruel that it is painful to be there for very long. This is an extravagance that speaks of the blood of the people. And it is much worse if you think of the nation-building that was going on in Europe at the same time.But, in a way, to have no past is for an architect in India also a kind of liberation. He can`t do a Lutyens: a little Indian or Mughal motif here and there. The architect, having no past, is free to make the best buildings he can at this time. And that`s very hard to do.

So far as painting goes, it depends on patrons. If we have out Ajanta and places like that, painting came with the Mughals. They were patrons, the Rajput princes were patrons, the British for a short time up to 1820 were also patrons. So there is now no tradition of painting, no continuation of a particular sensibility. Painting as a result is all over the place in India. But there are patrons now; for the first time, art is a public affair and not something done in palaces; and the situation may right itself.

Who`d be your nominees for the three most significant Indians of this century? And why?

The first two are inescapable: Gandhi for awakening a country that had been torpid for centuries, Nehru for being a democrat and a humane man who did not abuse his power. I cannot think of a third figure of this stature and I would like instead in a spirit of mischief to nominate two buffoon figures who might stand as a warning to India of the dangers of mimicry. There is the half-witted Vinoba Bhave, the mimic mahatma. And there is Mr Basu in Calcutta, the mimic Marxist. I suppose when he goes his followers might want to embalm him like Lenin and put him on show in the Maidan.

Reply Veeresh, Aakar

Aakar: ``actually jai bandra. don`t care so much about the rest of maharashtra.``

Poor Ghatkopat. So far from God, so close to the airport...

Veeresh:``(For those of you from Delhi, it took me three hours to drive from Rohini to DefCol. Last night. After midnight. Two hours to clear the stretch from Zakhira to Dhaula Kuan.)``

Unkilji, if you had properly spent Valentine`s day offering prayers and engaged in family oriented pursuits aise kabhi nahin hotha. Please ask Aakar Bhai to send you a copy of Samna where all these things are clearly explained. NAMASTE! Zafar

Delhite A-Z with emphasis on khana that as a desi stuck in america i`ve been missing even more after reading about jee jams (g-jams) in the last A-Z someone wrote here ...

A ¡V amrood, aloo tikki and aampapad

B ¡V bhutta (roasted), biryani and ber picked off the bush on ridge road

C ¡V chola bhatura from K-Nags

D ¡V dahi bhalle and dal fry in a dhaba ¡V the real one, or the one in Claridges

E ¡V ek plate of aloo tikki, chola bhatoora or dahi bhalle in a dhaba :-)

F ¡V falooda with my kulfi (what is that famous place in K Bagh ¡K?)

G ¡V ganne ka ras, g-jams, golgappas and gajar ka halwa

H ¡V hare channe or holle eaten right off the plant

I ¡V ice cream at india gate ¡K predates even nirulas

J ¡V jamun eaten right after they fall off the trees at india gate

K ¡V kulchas, kababs, *kakdi * with nimboo & namak and kulhad (the only way to have chai in a train)

L ¡V laddos and lassi

M ¡V matter ki chaat and makke ki roti both things bombayites seem unaware of

N ¡V nimbo pani at PG women¡¦s hostel in DU

O ¡V oh to be eating this stuff ƒ¼

P ¡V paronthas as puppies (punjabi yuppies) would say from pranthe wali gali in chandini chowk ¡V we usually consumed stacks of these after trousseau shopping for my various cousins and sisters weddings at RCKC (ram chandra krishan chandra ka sari shop) in chandini chowk

Q ¡V qilas ¡V purana, lal and all the others

R ¡V rumali rotis, rajma chawal, rasgolla from bengali market and roohafza

S ¡V sarson ka saag, shakarkandi ki chaat and that place in Sunder Nagar where if you are a dipsite you would surely have eaten stacks of stuff

T ¡V tikkas even better than the tikkis

U ¡V u-specials to DU stuck in traffic on roshanara road

V ¡V vadas in vasant vihar

W ¡V wot are you saying yaar !

Y ¡V Yaar ¡V the way delhites like to end all comments

Z ¡V zeera as in jal zeera

St. Valentine move over. Basant is here..


From The News International (Jang Group) Sunday


The people`s festival

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and a
well-known journalist

masood_news@hotmail.com

Every time someone wants to have some fun in Pakistan, frowning eyes materialise out of the depressing gloom and eyebrows climb into the skies. Ever since Terry Thomas and his motley crew descended from the barracks and decided to force morality down every one`s throat and up every one`s you-know-what, there has been no shortage of moralisers and preachers who have ranted and raved at the people. The poor people, who are whipped with bad news faster than Mian Nawaz Sharif can belch after camel stew, hold their heads in bewilderment as more morality and repentance rents the air and sinners are reminded of the punishments that await their arrival in hell.

There is not much to celebrate in Pakistan given the country`s natural abundance of bad news. It seems even the elements are constantly conspiring to undo us. If it rains, it rains and rains and rains till we have rainwater gushing out of our ears. If it doesn`t rain, it just doesn`t rain. Day after day the sun beats down with the same single-minded purpose as Benazir demonstrated when the word money was mentioned within three miles of her ears. The earth is scorched, the grass turns to sand and the rivers, which at most times of the year bear striking resemblance to their poor relations, the gutters, simply shrink into dirty, murky streams that cannot even move. Either there is no water or there is too much of it. Either there is an invasion of every living variety known to mankind, of bugs that defy death and lay waste entire fields or there is a bumper crop that nobody wants to buy. When oil prices plummet worldwide, they make a striking recovery in Pakistan and climb higher. Every single tremor in the world hits giga time on the lowly scales of the country and if the dollar wobbles, stock exchanges close down and everyone thinks of ten easy ways to commit suicide. Double-dealing is a refined and finely honed craft that is practiced by every Pakistani who is able to walk straight and the presence of well-maintained luxuriant beards or the tell-tale piety branding in the middle of the forehead simply imply that the sting operation is being played at a very high level. Whoever can manage it, manages to cheat whomever they can. It is not dog eat dog -- it is worse and it is nationally available all the year round.

Those who survive these and many other equally deadly virus attacks of life in the land of the pure are robbed at will by anyone who has no time for doing things the right way. The people are cheated day in and day out by anyone who has figured out that two and two makes four and better still if half of that is ill gotten and not yours in the first place. Servants steal anything they can steal. They steal food, sugar, salt, tea, spices, oil, detergents, soap, and fruit -- the list stretches to Texas where Bush flourishes. When they are not stealing the above, they are pilfering knives, forks, spoons, plates, pots, pans, cups, saucers and anything that is mute and cannot raise an alarm when snitched. Drivers, if you have the variety, cheat on gasoline, service charges, cleaning cloth -- anything that the vehicle could possibly require. If checked and a barrier placed between them and the spirit of free enterprise that they seemingly relish, they wear faces that are a few feet long and perpetually in sulk mode. The wonderful thing is that not only are the robbers quite happy robbing you, but are actually piqued should you question their career calling. Although the phrase about suckers being born every minute is pretty old, it is rather startling to realise that it has universal application here and given the sensational birth rate that we have achieved in such a short time, the number of suckers has to be an all time record, likely to remain intact till the cows come home -- provided someone doesn`t hijack them enroute -- a possibility that is eternally likely. Therefore, with so many practitioners of the refined arts floating about, the chances of being cheated, mugged, robbed, murdered or all four thing simultaneously are brighter than Mian Shahbaz Sharif dome on a bright June day.

Against such a cheery backdrop, the Pakis venture out daily, having tossed their garbage happily into their neighbour`s drive. They are mentally prepared to be done in before they have taken ten steps and in a sense, they are quite ready for it -- a kind of inner stoicism sets in faster than rigor mortis in the city morgue -- no it is not the hospitals as some believe them to be. In this depressing gloom, add the holier-than -thou pundits, who break every rule in bestiality and other things equally abominable yet never tire of invoking the wrath of the Lord on those who sin and don`t fall in a heap and repent. The high dosages of this convenient morality take heavy toll of ordinary people who simply wish to lead their lives the way they feel they should and can. Because being happy is a state of sin, anything that the people might remotely enjoy, is frowned and censured. The festival of Basant might have been hijacked by the multinationals and dressed up to look more like a starlet than what it used to be before the megabucks rolled in, but in essence it is a season of high spirits and bonhomie and the people of this land -- and all those who find their way to Lahore, deserve more than we all understand. It might send prices of everything skyrocketing and getting a hotel room would be just as difficult as finding an honest cop, and the power cuts can even send Russian fridges into convulsions, but at the end of it, the noise, the fireworks, the raucous music, the sirens, the hooters and the yelling is all welcome. One can happily applaud the men and women who simply dress up simply to see and be seen; and it doesn`t matter if the women look startlingly like cheap extras out to make it to stardom and the men having spent hours manicuring and fine tuning their exteriors, because all they are desperately trying is to have a good time where good times are taboo.

So while the authorities cloak Basant every year with various kinds of decent garb and make many efforts to take away the `Hindu` colour out of this festival, so that the moral censorship is not allowed to rob the people of some of the few things they can still claim as their own, the Lahoris more or less give a damn and simply go ahead. Every year, the moral ostriches moan and groan and exhort the Good Lord to rain thunderbolts on the merrymakers and every year, Basant happens. It is a festival of the people and it crosses all frontiers -- including the one of noise. It is one of the few occasions in our chequered public life where the poor have just as much fun as the rich and while we who never venture into the squalid streets of the old city find it trendy to be there, right inside, the locals, while wearing half-amused looks, still open their hearts and make it the one special day in the year. Wish we could Basantise Eid one of these days!