credit for the picture above - Banksy

nothing rings truer today than the proverb “AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM“ 

a bloody friggin elephant in the room….

**********************************

a letter to Ardeshir Cowasjee…

Dated: September 17, 2007

Dear Sir, 

I would love to have started the email by saying I sift through the papers searching for your editorial, but alas the times are of electronic communication, and I surrender. Not only do I sift through electronic pages of DAWN for your words, I have also now turned to communicating with you on email. The latter of course is because I find no postal address under your writings. My mother, who is a lover of words, laments over this loss of ink blots on paper and fingers alike – yet she too composes her books, writings, poetry and other scribbles on her desktop computer, so that she can fit in as many words a day as she can to soothe many of her pains. 

I feel a sycophantic sentence forming and I guess I’ll let it. I’m a great admirer of your writings and I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times plus more. But I find inspiration in your writings. I used to write when I used to get angry about anything. Now I’m usually occupied with being angry with my people and my nation. Your editorial today was a spot on analysis of all that is a blatant mockery of political principles, civil rights, life and existence in Pakistan that is just living but not breathing. 

I was always politically aware and tried many times to spark up a debate with people at school and college. No one wanted to talk, or had enough ammo to fire up the conversation with. The rest just thought I was naïve, which was something I had heard from many since I was a little child. Now I’m not that much older or wiser but having entered the first-quarter of a century in my life cycle I feel entitled to abuse the ‘-century’ addition to my age. I work at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan – and I feel more desperate than ever. Knowing and seeing and reading all that is wrong and all that is being let to happen is so much more frustrating.  

I wish more and more people could get moved by words – so that I could believe that words had the power to do so not very long ago and that it could happen again; so I could believe that mere poetry could rouse sleeping souls and honest slogans could jar even the most oblivious ones. I wish I could lead a rebellion but all I can do is talk and paint and gesture wildly.   

A relatively new but faithful Reader, 

Saira ******

So the badly written but immensely interesting farce continues. The little pigs continue their game of dodging the enemy or trying a hand at a ‘deal’ with each other or getting kicked back into exile. And since we call ourselves a pig-free nation I think all the pigs should follow suit and just leave. In this case I think the three little pigs (nawaz sharif, benazir, musharraf) and the wolf (being a general enemy of all things sane and normal) should settle in with the treacherous king pig altaf in London and stay there. Since Britain seems to be keen on giving refuge to idiotic, retarded and sometimes vicious politicians I think they wouldn’t mind taking in some more. The more the merrier for them I say!

STAR WARS PAKISTAN…

Return of the Jedi?

Nawaz Sharif sent packing to Jeddah 

The Empire Strikes Back?

THE ECONOMIST

Shove off Sharif – An undeclared state of emergency - From Economist.com Sep 10th 2007

(Excerpt) 

With an election approaching, General Musharraf wants a fresh term of presidential office and another supportive—or craven—government elected beneath him. Yet he is facing an invigorated opposition, centred on the Supreme Court. Its judges are likely to be asked to appraise the constitutionality of any extension to General Musharraf’s rule, even as unprecedented feelings of power and separation beat in their hearts. 

The court’s ruling that Mr Sharif could return to Pakistan, although General Musharraf had said that he could not, was an example of this. In banishing him nonetheless, the general has told the custodians of Pakistan’s constitution to go hang. In effect, the country is now in an undeclared state of emergency. 

How it will respond is more complicated. Mr Sharif’s arrest sparked a few protests in Rawalpindi but was more notable for the failure of his Pakistan Muslim League-N party to organise almost any gathering in Punjab, the country’s most populous province and the party’s stronghold. It did not help that General Musharraf’s agents had arrested most of the party’s leaders and, reportedly, 2,000 of its activists in recent days.

Nonetheless, Mr Sharif has not yet raised enough of a clamour to trouble a military dictator. If not he, then who? One candidate is the country’s lawyers. Their recent demonstrations in support of the Supreme Court’s top judge, Iftikhar Chaudhry, have emboldened the judges as a whole. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Pakistanis joined the lawyers to cheer for Mr Chaudhry—and he was reinstated. Now that General Musharraf has treated the court’s ruling on Mr Sharif’s right to return with such contempt, the lawyers may protest again. The Supreme Court is expected to hear petitions against Mr Sharif’s rough treatment on Tuesday. 

The only other obvious champion for the opposition would be Mr Sharif’s great rival, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Benazir Bhutto. But in recent months Ms Bhutto has not sought to confront General Musharraf, rather she has tried to coddle him. In exchange for freedom from a fistful of corruption charges against her, and other concessions, she has provisionally offered to support General Musharraf’s bid for presidential re-election. While still interested in maintaining a scrap of democratic cover, General Musharraf seemed keen on this co-operation. But it has looked unlikely in recent days, especially after Mr Sharif’s rude ejection. Dallying with a dictator is a risky strategy for Ms Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan’s most liberal party. Attaching herself to one could leave her already fraying creditability in tatters. 

For his part, if there are no serious protests in next few days, General Musharraf might think he does not need Ms Bhutto. His supporters can muster the simple majority in Parliament that he needs to get himself re-elected president, while also retaining his job as army chief. If he is happy to defy the orders of the Supreme Court—which would probably take exception to this action—he would not need to rewrite the constitution in his favour, a step requiring a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Then he would not need the support that Ms Bhutto has all but promised. 

In the short term, this draconian drift might just put a lid on Pakistan’s latest troubles. After all, Pakistanis are accustomed to the bit and bridle of military rule. But a solution that sustains an army dictatorship by smashing faltering institutions and democratic politicians, in a country where supremely undemocratic Islamist forces are seething, does not augur much stability.

The Phantom Menace

VIEW: Triangles —Farrukh Saleem

Come June 2005, Iftikhar Chaudhry was made the Chief Justice of Pakistan. He sat and invalidated Pakistan Steel’s privatisation, invalidated the Hasba Bill and demanded answers from invisible forces. Then came March 9 followed by July 20. The military regime’s first vertex is compliant no more… click on title to read the whole article

Attack of the Clones? Revenge of the Sith? Whateverrr 

A New Hope?

A White House statement defending, “War on Terror” followed the video, “We are fighting violent extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so that we do not have to fight them on American soil.” “These extremists want to overthrow rising democracies, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilise the Middle East, and strike America and other free nations,” the statement added. Snow added, “It is the responsibility of this government in protecting the American people to pursue terrorists wherever we find them.”

We will get Bin Laden: White House

W E ’ R E    K I C K I N G    A S S

sometimes i really really reaaallly dont know if George W Bush is real or a very long reigning joke played on the world.

Here, my lovelies, you’ll find the latest Bushism:

Bush on Iraq: ‘We’re kicking ass’

please don’t forget to read the comments below. some of them are pretty hilarious and depressing at the same time.

TRANSFORMERS 

I loved the movie and would kill to own this baby! the balance, the transformation both ways and the stable walk are fun but awesome physics at work.

most of the stuff available is really kiddish and im sure i cant get my hands on one of these…so..

i’ll just sit and admire this great ‘toy’ in the video above.

Karachi Bridge is falling down…

…and so is Islamabad

ever heard the teeny bopper song which goes something like “you gotta be cruel to be kind“.

i think the collapsed bridge in Karachi is just another is a series of acts that shows how the powerful extend the love to the people.

its absolutely sickening how all the politicans, engineers, consultants and the rest of the riff-raff are pointing fingers at each other.

while the three little pigs – musharraf, nawaz sharif and benazir bhutto -  build their little thrones and forts, and argue over who gets to be the naked duke of Pakistan, the army loses about 300 men who apparently went to mend the Taliban dumpties who fell of the wall.

sad sad sad. i never did like  nursery rhymes.

******************************************

May 12 report released by HRCP titled ‘”Carnage in Karachi – A city under Siege” and an editorial by Cowasjee. This report will soon be available on the HRCP website.

Through countless misconducts, harassments, cheats, pinchers, liars, corrupt people, I have found that my love for the soil has remained fervent, whereas my love for the people continues to diminish. I seem to find more and more events that slap me in the face and say ‘ the cause is right, the people might not be’. 

.

I landed yesterday on the crack of dawn at the Karachi airport. Complaining about the 2 hour customs line at the foreign passport counter that I was standing in (the other line moved just fine – damn the green grass on the other side), the bored and lazy airport staff that seemed to be on morphine, and the general chaotic situations seems futile and something which is to be expected with travelling and I tried ingesting it. I was extremely tired and annoyed with the constant delays of my connecting flights because apparently Pakistanis find it highly amusing to get their boarding passes and then get lost at the Dubai duty free and subject us retards, who make the flight on time, of 2 hours of waiting in the suffocating plane and unbelievable passenger farts. It also wasn’t enjoyable being devoured by the lecherous eyes and gestures of the men who were going to board with me, and apparently thought I was part of the free meal. Now in Karachi, I was on the verge of missing my connecting flight to Lahore due to the events that followed. I’m not complaining about standard airport drivel but it sure was helping fill my cup to the brim.

.

No, what really pissed me off was that when I made it to the conveyor belt to get my luggage. I saw a whole commotion going on with the Dubai-return mazdoors (labourers) standing on (yes ON) the conveyor belt fighting, hitting each other, and tearing open bags and boxes and ‘claiming’ things that they said the other mazdoors had stolen. Amidst the chaos I found my luggage. Now I had to find the beautiful easel that I had bought in Germany, which I paid for by borrowing money from friends because I couldn’t afford it. It had been marked in Hamburg with a red sticker saying FRAGILE (F.R.A.G.I.L.E. for dyslexic people). I found it – the box torn open and the pieces lying scattered all over the terminal floor. Apparently it had arrived from the plane like that and apparently it was just flung all over the floor just because.  As I crouched on my knees and collected the various pieces I didn’t know what to do with my anger and frustration. It was like the airport staff was dumb and most definitely deaf because they couldn’t hear me when I asked them about who’s damn responsibility this was. No they didn’t hear a word and walked on, probably trying to look for their hearing aids or maybe their brains.  

.

Fuming and tired and hungry and frustrated, I maintained some sort of decorum and made my way to Emirates mishandled-luggage office where I was subjected to humiliation and told it was my fault (?) and the packing was rubbish, and that I didn’t work in an airlines so I couldn’t comment about procedures (really, do you have to work at Emirates to know that destroying luggage, especially that marked fragile, is not really a smart idea), and that I should basically shut up and leave. The stingy, mean cheap ass didn’t sign any form for claim, didn’t give me the right information and to my comment that the Germans are efficient enough to know what luggage is safe for travelling or not, implied in not so many words that I had a white-man’s slave mentality. 

.

It may seem like I’m over-reacting and that it’s only broken baggage. But it’s always been just that. Broken baggage. For every step that we take our baggage gets broken and then we are made to feel like it’s our fault. For every time we try to make sure we’re secure, and we do the right thing and safeguard our interests with little red stickers, someone comes and walks all over us and lets us deal with it. Because we all always deal with it. And we are wrong for accepting and moving on. 

.

This is not about a snotty, patronizing girl who’s complaining about airport problems while people are worrying about their next meal. This is about the attitude. We don’t respect ourselves and we don’t feel the need to extend this respect to the person next to us. At the airport, in public transport, on the streets, in the police stations, in the parliaments, in the courtrooms – there is no respect.  

.

This then was my welcome home to a country I defend with every breath I take. And it makes me wonder, do I fight for the soil alone, because I’m repulsed by the actions of the people that walk it.

i’m pissed off…at the world, the people and the foolish citizens of Pakistan. foolish.

where is it all heading?what is our future?what is the use of making pirs out fake-mullahs of the blood-mosque? why drag religion, politics, personal lives and media into a hot pot and sprinkle it with blood?why blame everyone that comes in sight?why make false claims?

impending civil war doesn’t sound so farsighted anymore. i can’t believe how even after so many years of him being blown up, ‘General’ Zia still continues to destroy everything in this country. hateful man – hateful legacy.

for me denouncing the mullahs doesn’t put my religious beliefs on a pedestal for everyone to judge.

high-strung tripping

‘LAHOL VILLA‘ – my smart family’s term contribution to the Lal Masjid Fiasco!

….

Like my mamu aptly put it “Snow white has just appeared wearing a burka and beard. The dwarves are in Adiala jail.”  

i was in the brazilian embassy at the time of the first attack. not cocooned in the diplomatic enclave like the american embassy and such, my embassy is very conveniently placed on attaturk avenue – a few miles down and left from lal masjid. as one woman came running in and announced ‘the lal masjid has been attacked by the government’ the most that my semi-corpulent vice-chancellor could manage to say was really, do we need to leave? to which they both did some mental calculation in their wise little big heads and decided it really wasn’t worth moving their behinds at all!  

now if i had been in the royal court of the grand USA embassy maybe the story mightve been different! 

p.s. im happy the damn ‘zanani-maulvi‘ got caught the way he did..we pakistanis find a moment of humor in the wierdest of things.

prettytrippy

Daily Times had this picture today in the news photos of an eunuch bathing in the canal. i loved the way they had titled it – almost lovingly- ‘nymph’. i found it extremely…exuberant!

Of the many arguments i’ve had with many people over maaany topics, the averse reactions to eunuchs distrub me the most. Stuck in a vicious cycle with barely any means of getting out, the way they manage to live should hardly be questioned.

Infact, those who give away their ‘kharaab’ children should be brought out and shamed.

i don’t expect you to agree with me.

tripping saira

So i have just convinced the ‘upper tier’ at work of the amazing things Blogs can do…i told them about its superpowers and how we can take over the world..aaaa!

ok on a much calmer note i will be launching a blog for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan titled the HRCPBlog right her at wordpress! Hope it works out!

Tripping-in-the-crazy-heat saira