The X Rated Caper

JANUARY 2001 - You can only praise the national commitment of the Corps Commander who recently spearheaded a brilliant operation led by a serving Lt.Col. whose team of sleuths, armed with mobiles, walkie-talkies, and weapons and supported by the swooping eagles of the civil forces, laid siege to four cinema houses in Rawalpindi allegedly running X rated films. Following this daring and high-risk operation, the good Lt.Col. then went on record and informed some stragglers, namely newsmen of the details of the hit and its strategic importance to the nation. There is hope and all is not lost, countrymen – the countrywomen don’t matter much as we all know.

This great and sadly, largely unnoticed action, deserves nationwide praise because it proves, for one thing that the army is not without brains and the current criticism that it has no idea what it is supposed to be doing, is absurd. No organization which can plan, organize and execute such a high profile and crucial operation can do so unless it is motivated and focused in its thinking. We have all known for at least thirty odd years that the nation’s sad decline in all matters was directly co-related to the amount of X rated films that were doing the rounds and which had permeated into the very fabric of society. Those who know these things, that our fabric - although we are the world’s fourth largest cotton producers, was never in very good shape, understood it. The fabric in question was allegedly tattered and frayed in the process as various saviours tried it out in the national interest. It was thus clear that Pakistan’s multiple problems such as debt servicing, absence of continuity in the democratic process, law and order, et al could all be resolved in minutes if only we could get to grips with this X rated business. Now, the New Year, although it is not ours, brings hope that all is well and we are moving in the right direction. 4 cinemas out of possibly 650 is, admittedly, a modest start but Pizza Hut began in a garage as did Hewlett-Packard and look where they are now.

There is a section of the country, usually the press who are generally – and one uses the term loosely, a nuisance. This is unfortunate because having given them ballpoint pens, which actually work, the government has in turn expected them to do a good job, namely report positively on all that they are busy achieving. The late lamented Gen. Zia ul Haq died praying for positive criticism. All that he got for so much good work that he did in 11 short years, was negative criticism and the good general never was able to comprehend why he couldn’t get such a small thing in return for all that he was doing. The present rulers face the same ungrateful nation and the various wonderful things they are doing are not getting the recognition and the thanks they deserve. This is very unfortunate.

For instance while the press has wasted no time in informing us, bored and indifferent as we are, to the Bush-Gore saga, it has given little importance to the cleaning of gutters and water channels that has been carried out in many towns, of which Karachi happens to be one of the lucky ones. Why have we not been informed of what can only be termed as a turning point in our short, but happy history? Why was the nation deliberately kept in the dark about this? Was this part of a larger conspiracy? Gutters, which have not been cleaned for so long, were cleaned in no time at all. This should have been front-page news. Perhaps the gutter press has something to do with this. Who knows?

Similarly, news about the ghost schools never quite received the applause and attention that it deserved. Although this was an operation in the regions of the paranormal – and paratroopers were considered at one time, but wisely dropped (no, not from the sky), in the end crack teams of specially trained army personnel were deployed to detect ghost schools. As any red blooded Pakistani would tell you, ghost schools are a pretty dicey proposition since they are by their very nature, hard to detect. Normally not discernable to the naked – this naked business must also receive some attention, human eye, they were unable to withstand the probing and clever eyes of the teams. So many ghost schools materialised that many wondered if Pakistan was a ghost country. The teams that found the schools and instantly apprehended them using specially designed ghost handcuffs might have had a TV series developed after their adventures, like the X Files. Instead, their achievements were treated with disdain. This is obviously part of a larger plot – at least 8 kanals if not more. Other equally inspiring achievements have been either ignored or made fun of. Monitoring traffic for example. Agreed that there is another traffic that needs looking into – traffic of the heroin variety that largely explains the twice as large black economy (should now be officially termed white) which runs the republic, but the impact of banning pillion riding has had a profound impact on the country’s fortunes. Our place in what is happily called, ‘the comity of nations’ has been secured and foreign loan advancing sharks, sorry agencies, have been amazed at the purposeful and focused approach of Pakistan’s officials. When questioned, these agencies said that the officials had changed overnight following a ban on pillion ride, such being the majestic sweep of this long-awaited reform. Other epoch-making developments like tax survey forms and desilting of canals and high-powered negotiations with Bara smugglers – sorry Afghan freedom fighters have received scant recognition from the press. No wonder, the present rulers have run out of patience – along with oil, money, wheat, onions, sugar and morale since no one except for members of the NSC appreciate their work.

Against this unhappy background, the vision and fortitude of the Corps Commander and the good Lt.Col. who was the happy choice for conducting the lightening raid on the four offending cinemas, deserve national praise. There are another 646 cinemas to take care of after which the VCR owners have to be targeted. It is estimated that only a quarter of the urban population watches videos while perhaps a quarter go to the movies once a year.

This unfortunately is not a huge number. Of course before a Grand Slam level operation is mounted, it might be a good idea to ensure that there is power supply available at the time in the offending den. Large cities like Karachi and Lahore seem to have developed a strange viral infection by which they lose power at all times of the day and night. Likewise it is known that very few VCR users are armed with remotes which they are frequently employing, as indeed large dust bins to throw up in should by mistake they wander into one of PTV’s channels. It will be a national loss of grave proportions were a crack unit to air drop into Gulshan-e-Ravi only to find that the criminal party have quickly zapped the channel of offensive material and are happily watching the religious channel. One merely hints at this because often when driven by such national crusades as improving the morals of the people, the planners can overlook small items like remotes. The national exchequer which is bulging with bounced cheques, would in such a case, have more cheques of the bouncy kind and that is not in our interest – which last item we understand is in any case, unIslamic. Let’s look after the X rated films and everything else will fall into place. Remind me to tell you where the place is.