Call in the parrot

SEPTEMBER 2000 - Judging by all accounts and sadly this does not include what the government’s mouthpieces have to say, things are getting from bad to worse and from worse to worst and from worst to – and here the language runs out of steam. We have fallen from the frying pan into another frying pan and that’s giving the nation a rather hard time, not to mention third degrees burns you know where. Clearly, there is no solution in sight and having waited till Friday to obtain one from friend Ayaz Amir, holed up in Chakwal, I am now forced to admit that even he has no solution that will begin to work – begin, because nothing will really ever work.

We are isolated, we are friendless, we are victimised, we are misunderstood, we are everything but what the world says we are, and if this line of light-headed thinking is hard to follow, ask Dr. Israr to help you out on a Friday afternoon. The good doctor knows a thing or two about the state of being light-headed. The General’s last visit to the USA was not a happy one. I thought the aborted flight and return to the Big Apple from Boston, was the last straw in the whole disaster. JJ who has managed to sell many bad products by pure glib, showmanship and flair, will find that there are no USPs anywhere and any SWOT analysis is going to throw up such bad vibes that he will be unable to write a good headline or half persuasive copy to sell the flawed goods. Of course all this does not mean that JJ will throw in the towel – or whatever it is that they throw in these days in Islamabad - I hear towels are no longer affordable.

No, things aren’t very good and neither are Hussain Haqqani or Mushahid Hussain around to bail the General out. Not that they were very effective when they were around, but given the fact that the two had a way of getting around people without getting clobbered by the issues, might have given the General breathing space, that particular item being quite useful when surrounded by obnoxious fumes. So with the IMF riding our tails and raining fire bombs on our backsides, what choices do we have ? Not much as anyone will tell you, but then when was the last time we had any choices ? All we have ever had, were ultimatums. However, there is no reason to lose hope. We may be making a mess in Afghanistan, neither coming or going or for that matter standing still there and we may be up the creek without a paddle where our Kashmir thing is concerned – can’t call it a policy, please and we may have the Chinese grinding their teeth in anguish as we send flame-throwing Islamic fundos to convert the province of Xiang and the Iranians wrenching their beards at our latest shenanigans – all this may be true but there is hope even for the hopeless, a list where we have reigned supreme for the last many years.

Since this is now an established fact that successive governments comprising perfectly sensible men and women get stoned as soon as they have spent a week in Islamabad – this the direct result of inhaling too much from the abundant marijuana that grows freely on every street and open plot in the capital, external help is required to inject some sense into the powers that be. Therefore the only way forward is to get rid of all the advisers, ministers and other factotums, who have merely succeeded in making a clear, straight-forward army General into a confused, one step forward, two steps back and three steps sideways, man. Some, like JJ may actually put this down as an achievement laying claim to their performance on the basis that anyone who can convince an army man of anything must have brains, but the times require a bold decision. Enter the parrot.

What has a parrot got to do with steering our country out of the woods ? This in itself is a slight lie because we are not in the woods having burnt and cut all that we had, but I use the expression in its most symbolic sense. Well for one thing, given the general IQ that is calling the shots in Islamabad right now, I’d happily place my bets on the first parrot I spot. More importantly, my parrot has neither served in the armed forces, advertising, civil service or private enterprise which makes him a genius of sorts. The parrot I have in mind – or what is also referred to the narrow area between my eyes, is the kind you see performing fabulous tricks on sidewalks in most towns of the country. A parrot who can identify number 7 from a deck of upturned cards can create a revolution in Islamabad, where I have it on good authority, no one has managed to count beyond five. The armed forces boys are not much help since all they can remember is ‘left right, left right’. That might have helped when communism was fashionable, but I am afraid is not much use when dealing with those Jews from the IMF. My suggestion for the good General is to get rid of all the various busy bodies hanging around him and engage the parrot on a full time basis. It will pay dividends in no time at all and we might even get the parrot to come up with a foreign policy that makes sense, something clearly beyond the Foreign Office. A Rawalpindi parrot-keeper said his parrot can also fire a cannon all by himself, something most of the army can’t for some reason or the other.

However, I can understand that the army might have reservations about the parrot, in which case we have our rich history to fall back on – something we do regularly which may explain why ours is so badly dented, twisted and warped. BB had a soothsayer on permanent basis and was so much under the sage’s influence that she even consulted him before buying toilet paper. The man had extraordinary powers, some even more than Asif Zardari. In case you might have forgotten, Zardari was the man who lived in a portion of the Prime Minister’s house and was sometimes seen at the PM’s Secretariat. It is now believed that the sage was not available the week the Light of the East fused, having had too much Sajji the previous evening. Had he not had a cosmic-scale attack of big time burps, he might have warned the Princess of the toiling masses to take a hike after packing the PM House silverware (as keepsakes you understand). That was not to be and now she is cast for eternity on the lecture circuit, city to city, country to country, continent to continent.

When Mian arrived, heralded by loud burps and breaking of wind over Islamabad airspace, so did another sage who took up residence at the PM House where he was as solidly seated as Akbar S. Ahmed was at the Iqbal Chair in Cambridge – the good doctor has decided to reveal the name of the magic glue in his next book, ‘Sticking to Islamic Anthropology’. The Mian’s guru decided what was to be served for what people called meals but in effect was a non-stop banquet that went on till almost dinner time on 12th October, when it was rudely interrupted. Mian Sahib is still not sure who removed him and is said to be working hard these days finding that out. The guru told Mian to have nothing khaki in the PM House but Mian ignored the advice and relied on a PIA flight only to suffer the consequences. He should have asked us, the revenue paying passengers.

The General is facing a rough time. He should send for the parrot.