The raids by NAB for Mian Shehbaz Sharif were unsuccessful, and there was only the consolation of Imran Nazir fainting. It must have been a bad moment for the head of the police party. Here was a completely unrelated person suddenly experiencing a medical emergency, and he wasn’t even in police custody! The man that cops wanted was haring across the city, and knocking at the doors of the Lahore High Court, which gave him bail before arrest.
He was forgiven not wearing the court uniform of black dhoti, yellow and blue polka dots on a qameez going below his knees, and a fright wig all over dove-grey pumps worn without benefit of socks. After all, it was an interim bail. The charge, obtaining assets beyond income, was a little unfamiliar to the police, which would have been more comfortable with a charge of cattle theft, or harbouring stolen cattle. But Mian Shehbaz shouldn’t worry; those charges will be added too.
The deep dark secret is that the government is not going after him because it has suddenly discovered his iniquities, but Imran wants his elder brother’s cap. Yes, the perfectly foul thing he was wearing when photographed in a London restaurant during his first appearance in public after the coronavirus lockdown there. You might wonder why Imran Khan did not shoot off an instant diagnosis as he did the last time Mian Nawaz was photographed in a restaurant. Well, it’s because of that cap.
Not only did it obscure the back of Mian Nawaz’s head (which is all Imran needs to make a diagnosis), but it also made Imran envious. Imran didn’t like Mian Shahbaz’s snappy-brimmed black hat, which he likes to pair with an ice-cream white suit. I suspect that suit of causing the comparison with Don Corleone. The flat cap and the hat have succeeded the flat Jinnah cap Mian Nawaz wore at his first two oaths as PM, and which Mian Shehbaz wore for his own first oath as CM. It looked like the Jinnah cap favoured by Field Marshal Ayub Khan when he was President, which was to the original Karakuli what pencil moustaches were to handlebars.
Why Mian Shehbaz? Well, that Jinnah cap was not the first thing he sneaked out of his brother’s cupboard. There was the red muffler both favoured at the end of the 1980s. Did Mian Nawaz get his own flat cap, or did he borrow his from Asif Zardari? He too had one, which he wore on top of an overcoat and a muffler (an ordinary olive-green) wrapped over his ears.
Of course, I doubt if either has the raw courage Imran does. I mean, who else would respond to the rising pandemic death toll by easing the lockdown? Or does Imran want the culling of the herd? It’s an attractive concept, so long as you’re not part of the herd. The herd seems to extend even to MNAs, one having died, and others having tested positive.
A Sindh minister, Nasir Ali Baloch, has also passed away, MPAs have died in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh, leaving only the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly and the Senate unaffected. So maybe Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry is right to try not to attend Parliament. He is pushing for the House to meet virtually. I assume he’s got an app up his sleeve that would allow this, and which is as successful as his moonsighting app which irritated Mufti Muneeb so much.
Well, the Supreme Court, hearing the Sindh government appeal against the acquittal of the killers of Daniel Pearl, has asked for proof that he was kidnapped. H’mmm… It never got to trial, but I wonder how any court would have reacted to the argument that there was no proof Benazir Bhutto was murdered, there being no post mortem report. Anyhow, that is an old story, and the Sindh government will have to prove that Daniel Pearl was kidnapped.
I wonder whether the Sindh government can plead its case in the midst of the lockdown. But then we have a smart lockdown, which seems to mean no lockdown. I wonder what will happen if a leader gets the virus. Will supporters rally in his favour against the coronavirus? How do you demonstrate against a virus?
They’re trying in the USA. They’re calling the killing of George Floyd by cops in Minneapolis a manifestation of the virus of racism. So racism is a virus? You can get rid of it by taking a pill? A pity it isn’t that easy. There is no known cure for the coronavirus, just a few palliatives.
On a slightly more cheerful note, I got a phonecall from a gentleman I know, Ali Asghar Kausar Warraich, just to tell me that he had completed 100 ghazals during the lockdown, which was just enough to make up a diwan. I wonder how many of us have done any writing during this lockdown? Apart from these notes, and a weekly piece for this paper, and other ancillary work for it, not me. I’ve been busy reading stuff. Detective novels and other trash. Stuff I was forbidden to read as a boy. I look forward to the end of the lockdown, as I hope to see those ghazals.
The federal government is not in as good shape. To fight the Qazi Isa case, it had to make the Law Minister resign and put on his black coat.
