Bonnie & Clyde –Part 2

MAY 1999 - Why doesn’t Ms Bhutto give up this pretense of ‘serving’ the people and give us all a well-deserved break ? Of course chances of that happening are roughly the same as Pakistanis forming queues, but there is little harm in hoping. I mean my heart bleeds for her, sandwiched as she is between lecture tours in the US and the hostile desert sands of the UAE. There she is, marooned and unhappy, like Ruth amid the alien corn, longing to be back amongst her beloved subjects, but cruel fate keeps her apart from the only thing she has ever cared for; her people. (Small break as I weep profusely).

While she was away on yet another foreign lecture tour (what does she tell them that keeps her coming back ?), the scoundrels back home (remember them ?) struck and threw about a zillion charges in her direction. How they got all that dope on her and why are the Swiss singing like canaries, I don’t know, but as sure as there were polo ponies and jam tarts for elevenses, there was a charge sheet longer than Mr.Leghari’s pool about the scams she and chubby-hubby had been pulling off. Of course the whole thing is a evil and diabolical plot aimed at sabotaging that silly bird called democracy we keep locked up. But then that’s always been the thin story line which we all buy every few years from whoever is selling from the pawnshop in Islamabad. So with nothing to test the willing suspension of disbelief, democracy as seen from the other side, took another tumble and the crowds looked at the heavens and asked, ‘What next Lord ?’ Predictably, the Lord chose to pass that one. Some things have no answers.

I don’t know who are her advisors. One thing is certain. Ms Bhutto is not getting good advice. The only Muslim woman ever to be elected twice to the highest office and get booted out twice as well, Ms Bhutto may like to consider hanging up her batting gloves (or whatever it is that feudals of her lineage wear) and chuck the whole thing out of the nearest French window where she may be living a life of great deprivation. Look at the advantages. No more shoving and pushing by the great unwashed. No more precarious rides on rickety trucks with a thousand, sweaty, swarthy and uncouth workers who while high on passion may well be low on the deodorant factor. Those of us who have seen that lot perched on truck tops, bodies packed together like overweight sardines, know for a fact that they would be the last guys you’d like to spend a hot summer afternoon with. Why Ms Bhutto chose to travel from airports to city centres in their company, taking a week to do so, I can only guess. Most sensible people I know would take their chances with a genuine skunk from them deep and dark woods. However, it seemed Ms Bhutto got a high simply sniffing the B.O and M.O that wafted in that charged atmosphere around her. She can certainly kiss that lot goodbye, but then will she ?

There is no further need to attend those terminally insane and killer meetings where one boring and ponderous idiot is replaced only by another boring and ponderous idiot. Since there can be no meeting of any kind without four thousand speakers each reading out the same script, one can only imagine the kind of nerves you’d need simply to sit through that drudgery. Yet Ms Bhutto was constantly beaming smiles at the morons who either occupied the stage or continued to arrive and depart ad nauseum. She can also save the Urdu language from further beating by never getting near a mike. That alone might earn her a place in literature, because the lady, bless her, has raped the language end to end every blessed day. While the throat lozenges industry will surely file for bankruptcy were she to quit shouting into every mike she could lay her hands on, there is no doubt that the WWF will breathe a sigh of relief (sigh !) knowing that with madam off stage, chances of the entire populace of the country going deaf, will register a dramatic improvement.

There are so many plus points in calling the whole thing off but then who can ever be sure what she will do next. Agreed that life without Al Capone will be dullsville, but what the hell ? He can always get out earlier for good behaviour in jail (like keeping the volume of his TV down and using the AC with a low thermostat setting to do his bit for conserving electricity for the motherland) and hey he could always start all over again selling camels. In the meantime back at the ranch – there is a real one in this story, Ms Bhutto will be pretty busy hopping from property to property and farm to farm. Repairs here, maintenance there, keep the luxury cars ticking over, take the yacht out for a sail, lie back on the sands of the French Riveria and look up at the handsome frontage of the luxury villa there, check out the farm produce, pat the polo ponies, talk to the finance managers of sixty six banks to see if the interest columns are swelling nicely and continue telling whoever is willing to listen out there in the big world what sacrifice is all about. Of course she will simply have to keep up a brave front knowing that without her, Pakistan is tottering on the edge of destruction and the people are simply devastated she is not serving them and making their lives richer by the minute.