Monday, April 04, 2005
Arooj has a point when she says that when I be serious on gorpy henceforth, people won't take it in its true spirit because there will be a cape wala Grover on its head. This sounds like it can be true, but I'm sure Grover, like I, gets very annoyed when people don't take him seriously just because he is blue, furry and has a voice that sounds like a squeaky rubber horn-honk. Luckily I don't have the blue fur and the voice but you know what I mean.The Pope died. He was the first non-Italian pope, being Polish. Inna lillah etc (don't want to mis-type it on the blog and lead millions astray, gasp)...acha hua, he was very ill and doddering ka maqaam aagaya tha. Every time I think of pope I think of the Borgias and the pots of scandal with them, khekheke...what a funny. What a farce. But at least Catholics have one central authority khalifa guy. We don't and we could do with one, methinks. Someone to crack a whip when needed. I was reading a nerve-wracking extract by Ian McEwen and it had a sentence about how democracy is useless in piffy situations. Quite right, anyone who's ever worked in a group should know. Which links to the things whizzing about in my head since yesterday's conference session....how Pakistan needs someone to take its reins and danda-fy everyone into shape. Ironically, who better than a military dictator to do so? But no, the military dictator is a scaredy-cat that leans every which where like a reed in a storm, quite content to twiddle his thumbs and chat with Hamid Karzai at the 23 March parade instead of focus on the slapping into shape of this country that he said he came to do. Talk is cheap, Mush. Sooli pe charhna hota hai, to bring change- which means yes, you could be hung, and the only person who came close to anything of the kind (other than really being hung) was Zulfiqar Bhutto. But you could also be the saviour of your country. Heroes have it hard, but what a hero leaves behind is bigger than anything you or I could put together. They leave behind hope, an example, the spirit of revolution...and a new sky from whence to go forth into that good night, fighting all the way. Quaid-e-Azam is still revered, and he gave up so much to bring this country to light. Never mind who did what, whether it was supopsed to happen or not, whether Congress cornered him into it. Whatever the reason, he saw it through, despite a personal life falling apart, despite tuberculosis. He's a hero. It doesn't matter if he was a liberal, if he couldn't speak a word of Urdu, if he drank or ate pork. He made something happen, and that is a phenomenon that will always be larger than life. The 'system' is irretrievable, decayed beyond re-construction. What we really need is someone to kick out the remains and put in its place a new way of doing things, which really makes me think that maybe this Communist wave will do Pakistan some good. After all, there's nowhere to go from here but up :)
Mina at 10:51 AM
