Blowing in the Wind

APRIL 2000 - Walking in Regent’s Park on a sharp and sparkling April day with bright sunlight and thousands of flowers in bloom, we came across a newspaper that the wind had blown in our direction. We had just entered the Park and as this solitary paper came floating towards us, Haroon, my friend currently at the LSE, had just pointed to the far distance and said, ‘Over there are the flats owned by the Mians.’ ‘And denied by the Mians,’ I added. He laughed, bent down and picked up the newspaper. It was a part of The Observer and it carried a large picture of Mian Nawaz Sharif getting out of a police jeep in Karachi. This was the morning of his sentencing in the hijacking case. The Observer seemed to have specifically picked up the only two Pakistanis in the Park. The meaning of this was not lost on us. Haroon bent down and reverently picked up the paper, walked two steps and threw it in the rubbish bin. “That’s where he belongs,” he added .

Having left our former leader in the rubbish bin (where most of our leaders reside after they are gone and deserve to reside while they are in power), we sauntered on, watching Londoners take a break in the sweeping open Park, the more inspired ones, jogging around with great determination (the London Marathon was a few weeks away). We talked about the sad decline of our country, a common enough topic wherever two Pakistanis meet and lamented our fate to be robbed again and again by the same set of people. Haroon who had been severely victimised in the dying days of Mian’s wild circus, on charges never substantiated, finally got the green light merely days before he was due to reach the LSE. He had run after all the big boys for weeks trying to get his name off the ECL, but who could reach those power barons in those heady days ? They were far too busy doing far too many things to bother about a tiresome and petty matter. In the end, I think they simply got irritated with his pleadings of innocence and the Governor of the State Bank (who put the bank in a state it will take a long time to recover from), finally deleted him from the list. LSE happened. Haroon revels in the spirit of free enquiry and debate that exists at LSE and had a great number of stories to tell about Mandela’s visit and our lady of the toiling masses spirited defence of her government’s innocence and clean hands (she had no answer when accosted with the fact that lacs had been handed over to hubby at the PM’s Secretariat) and managed to successfully lie her way through that awkward bit of turbulence.

Back home, there is a startling picture of Lady Kulsoom Nawaz praying with pudgy hands lifted in supplication. It must be a new way of living to shuttle between Malir and Attock Fort, meeting half her family now languishing in jails all over the land. Undoubtedly she has the stamina to battle on. She comes from a family of great wrestlers and is learning to wrestle with some tiresome facts. The odds are against her. She has a political party which resembles more a party of clowns, advisers who look like bad actors in a cheap production and other do-gooders and fair weather pundits who on a good day will find it hard to recognize a tree if they saw one. The only supporters she has are the khakis who are determined to make her a leader before too long. While Lady K prays for deliverance, head covered devoutly, no make up, no nail polish, it’s her fingers that have me going round the bend. No diamond expert, she has just about as much on three fingers as most of us have in fifty five lives. The diamonds are huge and must cost a fortune (whose fortune is of course another matter). But this is it in a nutshell. Well actually it’s not a nutshell, but just a picture, but it speaks volumes. I had read earlier that she had admitted about the London flats, which given the family’s legendary grasp of things was indeed a miracle. She had been hurt by what she termed ‘vicious propaganda’ and a disinformation campaign spread about her family’s fortunes and had at that time categorically stated that the Mians never owned 4 flats in London as had been falsely claimed. They were just three. Well that’s a relief and will bring a smile to the fevered brow of the country’s rare breed of tax payers (the fools) whose money has been happily used by everyone on the block. In fact Lady K had gone on to say that the very notion of buying the flats or leasing them - the Mians were never sure about this irksome detail, was her chance trip to London (undoubtedly the result of having saved and saved, rupee by rupee) where she discovered her sons were surrounded by bad Western girls who had no morals and who were in various stages of undress and inebriation when Lady K walked in one day. To protect her innocent babes, who had been brought up on a strict diet of self-denial, she coerced the PM to obtain the flats so that the boys could lead lives in the light of Islamic teachings, away from the evil influence of decadent witches that abound in and around Park Lane. Sounds a perfectly legitimate thing to me. I would have done the same thing myself.

She had also said in an interview that the only reason they had carpeted their Model Town home was to cover the embarrassing floors which were a cause of shame and mortification to all and sundry, but mainly sundry. This too makes eminent sense. As for the nasty rumours about the eating binges the family is legendary for, she set the record straight when she declared that in their household, it was either Dal with Chapati or to add variety to the evening, Dal with plain rice. Stories about Gujranwala ‘chirras’ - sparrows to the uninitiated, cauldrons of flaming nihari and tales of the PM putting the finishing touches to a delicately cooked ‘degh’ of ‘shabdegh’ are apparently concocted by a nation which has a great deal of spare time and a wild imagination. Apparently Lady K is on record as saying that they have never served anything but Dal with rice or chapati ( take your pick). I find this perfectly believable and would like to have this included in the Pakistan Studies paper.

Of course, Ms Bhutto is in the same league. Quite recently she was moaning about not having enough finances to pay school fees for her children’s education in Dubai. To the best of my knowledge, the party didn’t rally round and pass the hat. I suppose they don’t have a hat any more than they have a roti, kapra or makan. It doesn’t surprise the people any longer that our leaders are generally (dangerous word that) impoverished. I suppose it’s something to do with the obscene amounts of income tax they have to pay all their lives. So between Lady K’s flats, diamonds and Ms Bhutto’s wails of innocence, we can all look forward to a great year ahead.