Basically Nothing

JUNE 2000 - Whatever else you may do, don’t ever attempt to write a coherent document at six in the morning, a silly exercise that I am attempting now. Unfortunately meeting your weekly deadline becomes something of an obsession, not a magnificent one, but still a strong and demanding one and with the week more or less sown up, this morning is the only time I have, unless I wish to lug a laptop all across the country.

This is not to say that were the column not to appear, readers (that’s largely me and my dog) would be shattered, losing their grip on the pulse of the nation (is it still there?) and finding themselves hopelessly lost. The fact is, that however seriously columnists may take themselves – and there is a large brigade of this species in the country who think no end of themselves, it finally doesn’t really matter what they have to say or don’t say. I cannot think that the great solutions to this country’s great problems will be led by the great words of wisdom that will flow from a pen – or a computer, and which will suddenly put everything in its right perspective. I remember suggesting to Lady Naipaul, then Nadira of the’Letter from Bahawalpur’ short-lived fame, to change her column’s title. I said that since she no longer resided in that city, she might as well call it ‘Letter from Lahore’ or since she had a yen for the other city, ‘Letter from Bahawalpur written in Lahore,’ but she dismissed this suggestion by a wave of her hand and the line, ‘my readers won’t let me.’ Readers ? I didn’t know she had a dog too. However, I said nothing more. Some years later, another columnist who had a few words from his learned treatise, on a subject that he thought was fundamentally important for the future of the country, deleted by an erring editor, decided not to write any more. Perhaps the feeling was that when the column wouldn’t appear on its appointed day, the telephone exchange of the newspaper would generally keel over under the pressure of distraught readers. Of course no such thing happened and life rolls on. There are others who believe that every day, their day that is, the world awaits for more words of wisdom, and there are Urdu columnists (always sounds embarrassingly close to communists) who quote themselves to themselves and I suppose follow that up with a smile bordering dangerously close to a smirk. Too many of us who write take ourselves far too seriously. And that’s bad.

It is in this context that I am forced to agree with a letter written to the newspaper the other day, where a genuine fan of Ayaz Amir (and in that hallowed gallery I count myself too), has complained that ever since the army took over, all Ayaz has done is berate them. In fact the reader says that he has written the same column, more or less since that fateful evening when a dozen men clumsily hoisted themselves over a TV Station gate and sealed the fate of the heavy mandate. I think Ayaz writes brilliantly, each word and line carefully crafted and the labour of love very much in evidence, but the reader from Karachi has a point. While Ayaz has a biting and satirical style which can demolish mercilessly, he has also many other sides to his personality and perhaps it is time to give the khakis a break and move on to other more enduring things of life, like Brahms or Mozart or Russian tigresses. In any case, after 36 columns on the khakis, they are still sitting pretty and life is rolling along. This is not to suggest that arms should be dropped or the silly actions of silly leaders not exposed, but I think a break does everyone good. This is, God forbid, no advice, just a friendly suggestion from another fan of Ayaz’s.

I suppose all those who have the privilege to write for a newspaper, have their own pet peeves. I know that I have been fixated on the good Dr. Akbar S. Ahmed who plummets from disgrace to disgrace as only he knows how and who seems to be the perfect nightmare for a country which has little or no standing anywhere, as it is. His ouster from the Foreign Office would demolish most people, but the good professor (is he?) will be bouncing back having discovered a culturally significant relationship between dates grown in Sindh and the rise of Islam in the 12th century in the sub-continent. Who knows?

What we all need to learn and practice is the ability to come out of the morass that surrounds us and look at things in their right perspective, which is that most leaders, most issues and most opinions floating about, are ridiculous and deserve to be treated so. In Pakistan’s case, this usually means that most things look strange if viewed for any length of time. However, so buffeted are the writers, like the rest, that they too are swept along with the tide (in a few months substitute with floods) and are no longer able to struggle, get to one side and tell everyone that we are all being taken for a ride or another trip to the land of promises where nothing ever gets delivered. Those who write, may be able to understand this, even comprehend it, but are, by and large, unable to rise above it and make fun of those responsible for our national predicament. What eventually happens is that we all end up issuing sermon after sermon to people who are already reeling under a barrage of ‘don’t do this’ and ‘don’t do that’. The poor readers who escape the bleak forecasts on page 1, the gory page three murders and the equally gory sports page (are third umpires on the take?), find no solace when they are set upon by a holier-than-thou columnist on the editorial page or thereabouts. They are then lectured and told the difference between a pin and a toothpick and its implications in the Islamic Republic to which (I think), we belong. I agree that humour is unlikely to solve Pakistan’s problems, in fact the good news is that nothing can or will, but it is one defence against the odds that are so unfairly loaded against most of us. Understandably, this attitude may be the hardest to adopt let alone comprehend, but at the end of another hot and dusty day, it is the only viable, non-cardiac arrest device I can think of if one has to survive the Republic and the comings and goings of its many ‘servants’. All these gifted men and women have served Pakistan and I regret I cannot repeat the joke about the cannibal chief who only wished to serve humanity. So where does that leave us ? As Ronnie Corbett said in one of his funny sketches, ‘really nowhere!’ This isn’t much to go on, but then when was it any different? Or perhaps this might give you a smile and see you through another bad day. A card I saw which said, ‘Don’t take life too seriously or you may never come out of it alive.’