Very, very dirty linen

NOVEMBER 1996 - While we all watch and wait as the nation’s very soiled linen is tossed about from hand to hand, it may not be a bad idea to reflect on (yet) another national characteristic that seems so integral to the general mayhem around us.

If you are thinking that this is a broad hint about who should actually be held accountable for what and by whom, banish the thought. Those, with halos round their heads now, were till recently, seen in black rogue masks with blood dripping from deadly fangs. Similarly those with guilt written in bold type across their brazen faces, were till yesterday the living embodiment of virtue. You can shut down the VIP lounges, cancel the Gulfstream order, send the 737 back to the national airline which limps more often than flies, but it won’t change a thing. Like the tiger that tastes blood and is hooked for life, our body politic is corrupt to the bones and this austerity drive is going to run out of steam long before the bank defaulters return their ill-gotten loot and those who have mercilessly (but with great skill) plundered this country have returned the first of the many rupees they have gobbled up. It’s refreshing to see Malik Mairaj Khalid trundling up and down on a 1300 cc, conditioned as we are to seeing our lords swishing about in those regal Mercs, but one PM caretaker variety will not change a large bulk of exploiters who may be lying low right now, but who will be back before you know it and then it will be business as usual and to hell with the rules. The mess of our national life seems to me much in the fashion of the mountains of garbage that now choke every town and city across the land. As the pollution mounts and people wheeze and cough and with decreasing success negotiate broken streets, and pools of stagnant water, it is not at all reassuring to hear the words of accountability that ring nicely and loudly in Islamabad but have no credibility beyond that city’s municipal limits.

In all this, there is that strange phenomenon, Shahid Afridi, far removed from the bouncer war that is now in full flow between supporters of Mr. Leghari and the high priestess of gobbledygook Ms. Bhutto of the twice-sacked fame. Selected as a spinner of sorts, he is sent (amazing decision) to open the innings against the Lankans and proceeds to clobber them all over East Africa. I have nothing against anyone hitting Sanath Jayasuriya for 100 sixes, but what’s this nonsense about Mr. Afridi being four years old or something equally insane? As long as I can remember we have had this macabre desire to break the weirdest records in the world. All we seem to have achieved is to have cast even more aspersions on our legitimate claims. Firstly, I have never seen a more developed 16 year old than Mr. Afridi. It is now established, thanks to a very learned letter that appeared in one of the national dailies, that even the wrist bone test is not conclusive, that Mr. Afridi is well above 19 if not more. The question is why must we broadcast to the whole world a claim that can only make our credibility sink even further down ? If we blooded a babe into test cricket, so what ? And why is it that the world’s baby boys all belong to just one country ? It is a bizarre way of gaining fame and recognition and in the end merely sends out the kind of signals we can ill afford. If Shahid Afridi is wearing diapers under his kit, takes a soother to bed every night and relies on gripe water for those awful cramps, must we climb every house top and yell this news to all four corners of the globe ?

False certificates, bogus degrees, fake papers, fraudulent passports, counterfeit currencies, we are past masters at all these. Anyone who can knock out all those beefy wrestlers of Royal Rumble by merely falling on them, cannot be 15 years, 240 days and eleven hours old. In any case, I have a feeling Shahid Afridi is a novice who knows apparently one cricketing lesson -- put your left leg out and hoist it over the boundary, over the wall, over the road, over the city limits and into outer space. Great formula, except it doesn’t work most of the time. The Lankans learnt it the hard way and then never pitched the ball up. They, thus, took the sting out of our child prodigy. It took Sunny Gavaskar just a minute to figure out Afridi’s discomfort against the short pitched delivery and even the Kiwis, mediocre as they are, got the better of the 15 : 240 : 11 child wonder. As for the rest of the cricketing world, sniggers greet Pakistan’s latest goof up.

But does it surprise anyone that a country where lying is a virtue and truth a luxury, where the most corrupt roll their eyes in innocence and the country’s worst offenders play its defending saints, mature men try and pass off as teenagers ? It doesn’t surprise me and I am sure it doesn’t surprise you.