Notes in Anguish

For years now we’ve known that our leaders were an acquisitive lot, and many were not beyond thievery, double dealing, daylight holdups, or outright thuggery. And a few hundred of them were directly responsible for much of the misery that grips our people, or for the stolen hopes of our children. In our annals of… →

Zilleh Shah was a mentally and emotionally disturbed person. On that account he never grew out of his childhood. Such people in common parlance are called, ” Darwesh; Allah Log; or Masoom”. They are capable of intense devotion, but are free of all traces of ill will. And they are no threat to anyone. But… →

The first murder of election season 2023 has been committed, and the deceased has been lowered into the ground. The person chosen as the recipient of this barbarity was Zille Shah. He was an emotionally and mentally disturbed young man who had yet to grow out of childhood. He was what they call, a “special… →

With great assurance Gen Bajwa informed us in Apr 2022, that the regime change which ousted the PTI government, came of its own with “democratic” accord. This lie was born dead. And much that Bajwa and his cohorts did to resuscitate it, their efforts remained unavailing. The new lies pumped into the old one to… →

On 7 May 1954 Gen Giap handed a comprehensive defeat to the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. And into the vacuum thus created the U.S was keen to feed its army. There was a history of the white man’s genocidal killings of the brown inhabitants of the Americas. They cleansed up south and… →

This arrest has left me shaken. But I am not shaken enough not to remember that congratulations are in order for the high command, and for the exhibition of high intelligence on their part, which must have driven this action. For a good decade now, Gen Amjad has spoken on his show on the TV.… →

Pervasive immorality, the central component of which is absence of integrity, will bring down social order. And when there is no order left, society will melt into chaos. And at that point it will cease to be society. It will become an unregulated mass of chaos and anarchy. Morality, at the level of society, is… →

As I have written earlier, in my view Gen Bajwa’s sellout of Pakistan’s higher interests, as brazen and as treacherous as it was, was triggered off by two compulsions: And so, when Gen Asim Munir took over, hope, no matter how timid, chose to reassert its right to show up again. In those early days… →

This is the “reform season” in Pakistan which periodically descends on us. At present there is a lot of debate on the need to reform the army, because this time the army has gone too far and pushed its toe where it is causing great inconvenience to the greatest number, with the exception of the… →

I had not heard about Botox till I read that some Arabs, never short of money or imagination, had decided to use this on their she-camels which they had entered for the “Miss UAE” Competition for She-Camels. The article went on to suggest that some of the camels, optimally treated with this substance, may also… →

Pakistan is unusually gifted by visits of catastrophes every few years. Many years ago, terrible floods paid us a visit and a friend remarked in Punjabi, “hun bahutan di chandi ho jai gi.” From my puzzled expression he gathered that he needed to explain. He said that aid would now flow in, and much of… →

Colonialism or Imperialism, as is normally understood, is an enterprise in which a power subjugates a people to extract and export wealth from the land of those subjugated. This began with the birth of European capitalism, and has mostly been accomplished when the invader was assisted by a faction among those who were invaded. Betrayal… →