Mr. Ahmed

Re: # 51
Although this is rather late in the day I couldn`t let it pass by. Bhattacharya = bhatta (as in the North Indian/Gujarati Bhatts, the Kashmiri Butts - of course, they`re mainly Muslim now) + acharya. Bhattacharya is a title (not a surname) usually given to a priestly family - not all Bengali Brahmins being professional priests - so that a priest - purohit - is often called Bhattacharya Mahashai, even though his surname may be Mukherjee/Banerjee/Chatterjee/Ganguly/whatever (as long as it is a Brahmin one! Of course, for the sake of convenience I`m using the anglicized versions of the names.) And not all Bhattacharyas come from Bhatpara. Bhatpara is no doubt the place that Bengalis always associate with very conservative Brahmins, but there are plenty of Bandopadhyayas, Mukhopadhyayas, etc., from there. Incidentally, Bhatpara is in West Bengal, but most of the Bhattacharyas I know personally are originally from East Bengal or Assam. Sorry for being so pedantic - I know this is not really relevant to the issue!
Bengali Brahmins don`t often have the same surname as North Indian Brahmins - wonder why? Apart from the above surnames, they can be Sharmas, Mishras, even Pandeys and Shukuls, but never, as far as I know, Trivedi, Dwivedi, Tripathi. etc (except by domicile!).
Although things were very different about a century ago, today the educated Bengali middle-class person is much less caste-conscious than North Indians. Again, I wonder why?
But Dhruva`s story was so real. I`ve met so many people like his Afghan, and not only Muslims.

I am sorry I couldn’t get back to you guys before. But I was very much tied up with a family-related issue.

A number of questions have been raised about this article. I shall try to answer a couple of them:

Q. Was this a true story?

In essence, yes. The garnishings were made up.

Q. What did I mean by the sentence – “He has no idea what he’s dealing with”.

Precisely that. That if we, with our origins in the Indian subcontinent, could be fooled by Mr. Ahmed’s educated exterior, then the U.S. president might not have a complete understanding about the true nature of many of these people.

However, this was a human reaction on our part, no doubt coloured by similar experiences we had previously.

This does not imply that the efforts at spreading democracy will not succeed. What I tried to say is that it is an impediment the U.S. President might not be aware of.

We hope democracy spreads everywhere.

We hope this “us” and “them” attitude disappears with time.

Here’s hoping that mankind will succeed in realizing the words of the English poet John Donne:

“No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee. ”


Thank you for reading my story and commenting on it.

I liked this short story.

Very true reflection indeed.

Re: #8 by Urstruly

[Re: # 7

au contraire I don`t think that writer is being literal here; but anyway the point is that pathans are quite vhement about their assertion in this regard.]


Check out this link: http://www.geocities.com/pak_history/pashtuns.html

The following paragraphs appear towards the end and summarizes the article:

“Western scholars, therefore, maintain that an overwhelming majority of the Afghan/Pathan tribes are positively descended from the Sakas, Kushans, Huns and Gujjars. Some of the scholars point out the possibility of the word Abdali being another form of Epthalite by which name the White Huns (the ancestors of Rajputs) were known. Grierson finds a form of Paithan in use in the East Gangetic Valley to denote a Muslim Rajput. Bellew, one of the greatest authorities on Pathans, notes that several characteristics are common to both the Rajputs and Afghans and suggests that Sarban, one of the ancestors of the Afghans, was a corruption of the word Suryabans (solar race) from which many Rajputs claim descent (Bellew: Races of Afghanistan). The great Muslim historian Masudi writes that Qandahar was a separate kingdom with a non-Muslim ruler and states that `it is a country of Rajputs`. It would be pertinent to mention here that at the time of Masudi most of the Afghans were concentrated in Qandahar and adjacent areas and had not expanded to the north. Therefore, it is highly significant that Masudi should call Qandahar a Rajput country.

Since the modern state of Afghanistan and the N.W.F.P. province of Pakistan were the main regions through which Central Asian tribes passed and in which they settled down, it is impossible that these areas should have remained uncolonised and the blood of their inhabitants unsullied. Therefore, it can be safely concluded that the present day Afghans/Pathans are mostly, notwithstanding their claims, the descendants of Central Asian tribes of Sakas, Kushans, Huns and Gujjars. It need hardly be pointed out that from them are also descended the major tribes of the Kashmir, Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan.

Just as the present-day Greeks are Slavs and not of the same race as Alexander and Aristotle, so also is the case with the present day Afghans and Pathans. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the theory of the Jewish descent of Afghans is of later origin and may be traced back to Maghzan-e-Afghani compiled for Khan-e-Jehan Lodhi in the reign of Mughal Emperor Jehangir and does not seem to have been recorded before the end of the 16th century A.D. Prior to this period no other book mentions that Afghans are descended from Jewish tribes. The Jewish books also dont mention anywhere that Saul`s son Jeremia had a son named Afghan from whom Afghans claim descent.

Similarly, the story of Qais Abdur Rashid having gone from Afghanistan to Arabia to meet the Prophet and after returning to his country having converted the Afghans to Islam also does not stand the scrutiny of history. Muslim historians Ibn Haukal, Utbi and Alberuni are unanimous in the view that uptill the time of Mahmud Ghaznavi i.e. almost four hundred years after the death of the Prophet, most of the Afghans were still non-Muslims. Mahmud Ghaznavi `had to fight against the infidel Afghans in the Sulaiman mountains.` Even 200 years later in the encounter between Mohammad Ghori and Prithviraj in 1192 A.D., according to Farishta, Hindu/Buddhist/Animist/Pagan/Shamanist/Zoroastrian Afghans were fighting on the side of the Rajput Chief. The fact that the Afghans should have joined the Rajput confederacy of Prithviraj may also indicate some sort of kinship between them. “

Re: #169 by dost-mittar

[Guru Gobind Singh suggested a painless alternative to the one you suggested. He did use a kirpan with which he stirred water and sugar whle reading some verses and, after someone tasted that amrit, the fear was all gone. And while you guys are satisfied with a ratio of ten to one, he was more ambitious and vowed ``sava laakh se ek ladaoon``, and the ``sava laakh`` he had in mind were those without the ``missing millimetres``. :-)]


Huh?

And the point being?

I went to sea a 35 foot shark that had washed ashore on the Haji Ali seaface area in Mumbai.They were already cutting it up by the time we got there.I think the shark must have been surfing the net, stumbled on this site and this board and decided to give it up!!!.This ``echoboom`` character has the hots for ``hamidm2``.It happens.

Guru Gobind must have known the druid ``Getafix`.That`s where he must have learnt the secret ingredients of the `magic potion` , a drink that makes one invincible.If it`s just sugar and water then we indians should be invincible, as we consume copious amounts of sugar and water daily, in one form or another.I will not say more.

echoboom #153 to hamidm: ``It is simply a humble token and acknowledgemnt of appreciation for your own contributions to keep me in stititches--otherwise I would have been running wild & naked here. ( some think I already do--they can see through me) ``

A double - no, triple, counting the one in parenthesis!! - entendre. (stitches as in LOL, stitches as in clothes, and ``see through me`` as in no clothes). balay! balay!! janaab echoboom now I am convinced that you are an evil genius.

p.s to #170
This is the link to download the fonts from.
http://www.abhivyakti-hindi.org/abhi/hindi_shusha_fonts_dl_help.htm

This is a link which lists many Hindi satirists. This is in devnagri, though.
Another one of my favorites, K P Saxena, is listed here.
http://www.abhivyakti-hindi.org/vyangya/index.htm

echoboom:

``Dost-Mittar:
Please wipe his tears. He is truly scared.``

Guru Gobind Singh suggested a painless alternative to the one you suggested. He did use a kirpan with which he stirred water and sugar whle reading some verses and, after someone tasted that amrit, the fear was all gone. And while you guys are satisfied with a ratio of ten to one, he was more ambitious and vowed ``sava laakh se ek ladaoon``, and the ``sava laakh`` he had in mind were those without the ``missing millimetres``. :-)

On the topic of comedians, I am surprised no one has yet mentioned Kaka Haasrasi. And there are a couple of good Punjabi comedians I have seen recently. There is also a Johnny Carson type comic I saw on the Indian TV whose name I do not remember (Suman something?).

In my younger days, there were three Hindu owned urdu newspapers from Delhi, Partap, Milap and Tej. They all had a humourist and they were all good: Fikr (Tej) was one, ``Nepali`` was another and I forget the third one who wrote a column titled ``Pyaaz ke chhilke``.

Dhruva, ee article ta KHOOB bhalo!!!

But I don’t buy the ending where you make the incredible jump from the rigid view of one individual to ALL of the middle east! Let’s be serious, life is not that simple!

But I enjoyed the writing. I could not agree with you more that the best time for shopping is when a Football game is on. (One can even get some customer service.) I personally know some Afghan friends who are extremely good salespersons. However, none of them is anywhere as rigid in his/her religious views as Mr. Ahmed appears to be. In fact, some of them are highly liberal.

Notes:
[It was difficult to envisage Mr. Ahmed kicking back and enjoying some frivolous dance number or some cliché-ed romantic scene where some muscular love-hound would be cooing over his petite love-interest.]
Please give Hindi movies a break. They are not ALL bad!

[… very soon he had my wife interested in a couple of antique-looking couches that I would never touch with a ten-foot pole.]
Not much in the nature of a decision-making role for you, is there? My sympathies!

[But if there was, Mr. Ahmed was surely part of the collateral damage – a highly educated, progressive representative of a part of the world that had fallen behind of late. I couldn’t help wonder about the injustice of it all.]
Yes it is that, perhaps (I am sure Mr. Ahmed’s orthodox views did not help him), but probably mainly from the market realities of the capitalistic system itself!

[Because sane, rational individuals like you are the desperate need of the hour.]
Of ANY hour, in fact!

[With all the subtlety I could muster, I veered the conversation back to the couch at hand.]
Wise move!

[“He has no idea what he’s dealing with” she said absently. “No idea”, I thought gloomily, “he has absolutely no clue”.]
It has been said that democracy is a very lousy system, except it is better than anything else! So what else is there to try?

Other interactors:
#42, nhk
I could not agree with you more!

#56, hamidm2
Has anyone ever told you that you are HILARIOUS!

166 interacts?????........On this , er, article???....A lot of lonely young and old men on this site.........Since most of you are in north america, ever tried visiting strip clubs instead??....i guess you have to spend money......which brings me to assume that many of you are too senile, or just plain cheap, or constrained married men, eking out an existence in your plywood and cardboard(er, sheetrock) palaces,mortgaged to your eyeballs, or `code coolies` as you contemptously call yourselves in third person, living three to a dingy apartment, saving all the dollars you can, getting rid of your angst and frustration by beating each other up over topics that , atleast in urban india, hold no relevance or interest .This last week we urban indians in mumbai were talking about lakme india fashion week, a new trendy lounge bar that opened in Worli, Sania missing the Fed. cup tennis matches, the new movies to hit the multiplexes, will the price of petrol rise and other mundane trivia.Feel sorry for you guys.

#165

Keshto Mukherjee made his name by playing a stereotypical `sharabi`, when in reality he was a teetotaller, IIRC.

Jaspal Bhatti is an Indian giant in the difficult art of satire. He addressed a variety of social ills in his various movies/serials.

echoboom:

Hindu Comedians: Keshto Mukherjee, Rajinder Nath et al.

Sikh Comedians: Jaspal Bhatti, Jaswinder Bhalla.

Re: # 161
I will try . I will ask someone to bring a copy from India .And no, I dont think they are available in nastaliq.

Re: #162 by echoboom

[I can claim only 20% credit there ( 1000 years) if you concede. ]

Okay. Thanks for praising my society.

You should not have mentioned the 5000 years and the Muslim Rule together in that context.

It`s your English that is to blame, not me.