Brilliant umpiring and horse tranquilizers

One of the most question-events took place recently, when a police constable and a veterinarian were arrested in Kasur for transporting drugs from Multan. Now it appears the vet was not in the business because of any speciality. He just found dealing drugs beat a veterinary practice. So no one is being injected with, or otherwise ingesting, horse tranquilizers.

Even if one wanted those, as the late Michael Jackson did, one would have a doctor, not a vet, on hand.

Something seems to be up in South Punjab. First we had the claim that the drug dealer Pinky had made Vehari a centre, something very vehemently denied by the local police. And now we have a claim that drugs were being moved from Multan to Kasur. And by the way, the drugs were not for use in Kasur, but were to be marketed in Lahore’s educational institutions.

Now, as anyone educated in this frustrating and fabulous city will tell you, drugs are not sold as a matter of fact in canteens, along with dubious shamis, and dodgy (and rock-hard) samosas. If  a particular waiter got involved in dealing drugs, then the canteen would also supply the substance, but only for so long as he was there. However, hostels were a centre of the drug business. Not every hostelite was a junkie, but a lot were. I wonder if the vet had been a hostelite in his college career. If so, it would give him an entree into a murky underworld.

A lucrative underworld too. College students usually have more money to spare than the denizens of the other two main sources of drugs, rickshaw stands and graveyards. A tip: if you’re a full-fledged junkie, and find yourself in a strange town without your supply, then go to either of these places, and you’ll find what you want.

I wonder whether the drugs that came from Multan were the good old hash and heroin, or the new-fangled stuff favoured by Pinky’s customers. As far as I know, while you can get cocaine in hostels, I think the dealers at rickshaw stands and graveyards are upholding the old ways and sticking to the old-fashioned combination of hash and heroin. What to speak of fentanyl or other opioids, they look down on cocaine. How opposed is that to the vision of former PM Imran Khan, who wanted to bring Pakistan into the bright light of modernity, leading by example.

Speaking of Imran. I see that Zealand has squared the series against England, and Joe Root, captaining as a substitute for the injured Ben Stokes, top-scored in the second innings. Still, he hasn’t equalled Shan Masood’s feat of scoring a century and then going down by an innings.

Meanwhile, the US-Iran peace deal irresistibly reminded me of the sports reporter of a previous paper, that gem of a man and boon companion, S.A. Bokhari, who had been a hockey man, and had one toured with Pakistan as an umpire. I can still remember him coming in and excitedly telling us that he had umpired in a match, and was now going to report it. I suggested that he lead off with “Brilliant umpiring  by SA Bokhari was the highlight of the hockey matc h between X and Y.” He didn’t take my suggestion, but that was the spirit in which Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif signed the deal. Pakistan probably wanted the declaration to read: “Brilliant mediation was the highlight of the US-Iran ceasefire agreement.”

Well, that didn’t happen, just as SA, Bokhari didn’t take my suggestion all those decades ago. But the whole signing process gave me an inkling why Americans are so ignorant about the outside world. It usually doesn’t affect them. I mean, the Hormuz Strait only registered on American consciousness because oil prices went up. The other thing is that all other places are so far, especially if you’re in the Midwest. From there your country’s neighbours are over a thousand miles away. Just compare: we’ve got four neighbours, and we’re not a particularly vast country. The USA only has two.