Something is going on in Karachi. I won’t go into the forensics of their deaths, except to say that they died in Karachi. Both were found dead in their Karachi flats, their bodies in an advanced stage of decomposition. Both were actresses, and both were not supported by their families.
Ayesha Khan’s body was found in June, after neighbours noticed the smell of decomposition. She was 76. She was not being visited by her family. She had probably been dead for about a week.
Her death was tragic enough, but that of Humaira Asghar Ali was even more so, for her body was discovered this month. She was only 32, and incredible as it seems, indications are that she had died in October. Her body was only found when the landlord and a police party broke into her flat to evict her for non-payment of rent.
Both seemed to have been more or less abandoned by their families. Ayesha Khan at least had a son who collected her corpse. Humaira Asghar Ali’s family refused to collect her corpse, saying they had cut off relations with her.
Both were educated women. Aisha Khan had been to Karachi University, where she began acting. I don’t have any idea of what her subject was, but she must have been a master’s student. Humaira was an NCA grad, and she also did a diploma from the Punjab University Fine Arts Department.
It was said about Chicago originally that it was the City That Never Sleeps, and this was testified in a 1953 film of that name, but it could also be said of Karachi, or indeed any city of appropriate size. Well, two of its citizens have gone to their eternal sleep nonetheless. Humaira’s death was definitely premature. Aisha’s was not really, though the circumstances are such as to cause horror.
It is only to be hoped that there are no further deaths that will cast a pall over that city. Someone almost as old as Ayesha Khan, Altaf Hussain himself, who has been in the UK for more than 40 years now, had to be hospitalized. However, his acolyte Mustafa Azizabadi, who had first issued a call for prayers for his health, has now announced that Bhai is better.
We should realize that Bhai is now 72, having been born in 1953. Incidentally, Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari and Imran Khan were all born in that year. And as Imran has shown us all, age is just a number. You can be a septuagenarian and still get the youth vote. Of course, that idea had not occurred to the late Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, who reached his 50s looking like he had when bringing down the Ayub Martial Law, wearing an achkan and fez, and having a hookah carried around. I wonder what he would have made of the present dispensation.
Speaking of Imran, what of the 26 PTI MPAs have been suspended from the House for rowdyism, and against whom Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad has sent a reference for disqualification. Speaker Manzoor Wattoo, who was thrice presiding officer of the Punjab Assembly, once said that a Speaker had enormous powers against any member who disobeyed the chair, but if he used those powers, it was his failure.
Speaker Watoo was the sort of speaker who would criticize a member for an unparliamentary attitude if he murdered another but would not let the police into the Assembly precincts. Speaker Muhammad Ahmad, it seems, would let in the police and have the sergeant-at-Arms hand over the offending member to them.
The problem seems to be that the PTI members have been disrespectful of the chief minister. Would the Speaker’s attitude have been different if the CM had been a man? Would the PTI members have behaved differently for a male CM? It shouldn’t have been, but still, permanent expulsion from the House seems an over-strong punishment for sexism.
I wonder if their issue will be decided by August 26, when a new PTI movement is to be launched.? It would be a turn-up for the books if the government agreed to let Imran go, but insisted on the members staying out of the House.
I’m not sure the Speaker can insist on members obeying the Constitution. That, presumably, is for the members’ constituents to decide at election time. And who knows? They might like having a bantam cock for a member?
