CITY NOTES
There were many blows to the world of show business in the last week, but none due to the coronavirus. In fact, all it managed in Pakistan was a Gilgit-Baltistan minister, as if to show that there was still an epidemic on. Of course it has taken 3,381 other lives by Saturday night.
The really strange thing was that all of those departing were because of their age alone, at heightened risk of death by the coronavirus. I mean, Sabiha Khanum was 84, as was Tariq Aziz. Sabiha had been a leading lady, then prominent in mother’s roles, before finally retiring even from those roles to settle in the USA. Tariq Aziz remained here, and was once an MNA, famous for his leading role in the 1997 attack on the Supreme Court, but his greatest fame was as the host of Pakistan’s first game show, Neelam Ghar. For Pakistani game-show hosts, he still represents the gold standard of hosting.
But perhaps the most grievous loss was suffered by the UK, where Vera Lynn died, at the age of 103. She was the model on which we based Noor Jehan, for during World War II her songs were inspirational. The young Indian Army officers who were Pakistan’s top commanders in 1965 probably had her in mind when Noor Jehan did her songs. He is credited with the performance of 1965, though I’ve never heard Vera Lynn credited with winning World War II. Still, I won’t rule out the Noor Jehan factor, for she wasn’t around in 1971, which Pakistan lost.
Speaking of 1971, we also lost one of the fighter pilots of 1965, Group Captain (retd) Saiful Islam, who died in Dhaka at 80. While he had been commissioned into the PAF, it was from the BAF that he retired. I wonder if the SJ he won in 1965 was ever held against him in Bangladesh. The great M.M. Alam was also an Eat Pakistani, but remained in Pakistan, retiring as an Air Commodore. It seems something got into those young Bengalis when they got in the air.
If we lost one of the heroes of 1965, the USA lost a former ambassador to Eire, though Jean Kennedy Smith is better remembered as the last surviving sibling of resident John F. Kennedy to die, at 92. Still, that was perhaps not as serious a loss as that of Ian Holm, who played Bilbo Baggins not just in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but also in The Hobbit trilogy. And he had more of a role to play in the second.
And none of these deaths were because of the coronavirus. However, in Burundi, it did take the life of its President. Pierre Nkurunziza died at 55, after having been in power since 2005. A former French colony, Burundi has only 104 covid-19 cases and Nkurunziza has been so far the only death. His wife got it first, and as any married man knows, he had to put up or shut up. Well, he’s shut up permanently. Of course, one of the problems is that there is only one ventilator in the whole of Burundi. Of course, one may argue that it’s a small African country; but it has a population about the size of Lahore (12 million). Imagine the kerfuffle if Lahore had only one ventilator… And then someone like the CM got coid-19… As for its bring an African country, don’t Black Lives Matter?
There were two suicides of American blacks in California, which were suspected by some of being lynchings. Well, Sushant Singh Rajput, was found hanging from a fan in Mumbai. There were some half-hearted cried of “Murder”, but how the murderer got him to hang from the fan, I can’t imagine.
And maybe the suicide fitted in with the suicide of his ex-manager, a woman, just days before. Now there are three main motives for suicide: failure in exams, economic worry, being unlucky in love. Rajput was beyond the exam stage, and there is no lucklessness in love (and it couldn’t have been the lady manager, or they would have made a pact of it), but he did have money problems, having paid off his staff before offing himself. Or is anyone saying he was lynched by irate fans?
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, a court decided that MQM supremo AltafHussain was a conspirator in the murder of Dr Imran Farooq, the party’s first National Assembly party leader back in 1988. That was the trial court. There will lie appeals to the High Court and then the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court cancelled the reference against Mr Justice Qazi Faez Isa, ruling that the FBR had to first hound his wife and children before he could be hounded. It might be remembered that Mr Justice Isa got a notice from the Supreme Judicial Council after he authored the judgement in the Faizabad dharna case which made some remarks about a certain institution.
