Daily Times

One of the great mysteries baffling America these days is: Where have the honey bees gone? And an equally baffling mystery has Pakistan in its grip. Where has the King’s party gone? In a few days, who knows, we may all be wondering: Where has the King gone? But that bridge need not be crossed yet, since it has not been reached.
According to those who know about bees and kings, the disappearance of the bees is called Colony Collapse Disorder. The disappearance of the King’s party can be termed Bulbous Baloon Deflation.
In America, the foundation of pollination services in agriculture, a tri-national coalition dedicated to promoting the health of all pollinators, is teaming up with a bee-friendly, natural personal care company called Burt’s Bees to address this agricultural and environmental disaster. Five teams of scientists are collectively researching issues surrounding honey bee health. The chief of Burt’s Bees says, “As a bee-friendly company, we know the critical role bees play in our ecosystem. We are proud to support this task force and believe these projects will take the appropriate steps to improve the quality and lives of bees.”
The mysterious disappearance of the King’s party on the night of Feb 18-19 has the nation in a tizzy. While the secretary general of the party, sometimes called the Laughing Buddha, has been sighted, the sprawling offices of the party on Islamabad’s Marghalla Road might be declared “evacuee property” by the Capital Development Authority.
The president of the party, wearing an extra dark pair of glasses, has been seen on at least one satellite channel but there are as many versions of what he said as there are people who watched him say it. One theory is that through a hard-to-explain process of osmosis, he was speaking in bee language.
Colony Collapse Disorder, scientists are beginning to think, not only applies to bees but to Pakistan also. The theory stands to reason, otherwise how does one explain the complete disappearance of the King’s party. The queen bee of the King’s party, who was all set to fly out and occupy the big hive in that house on the hill in that city which is a hundred thousand miles from Pakistan, though it can be found on its map, has not been seen since. Experienced bee spotters thought at one point that they had the queen bee’s trail but before they could say Charlie’s Aunt, the trail had gone cold. Search parties sent out to “Parha Likha Punjab” have returned empty-handed. There has just been no sign of the queen bee. When last seen, the queen bee was claiming in Maula Jat style that the Feb 18 elections had been rigged against the King’s party.
I compare this most distressing situation to what happened in 1969 when the old Field Marshal was sent home by YK-I I was in Lahore then, working for the Pakistan Times. The King’s party of the time, also called the Pakistan Muslim League, vanished from view overnight. Being the caring citizen I was, I wrote a column called PML Oh! PML, from which I seek the reader’s indulgence to reproduce a few excerpts.
So here goes: “Recently, some public-spirited citizens organised a search party for the purpose of verifying the present whereabouts of the Pakistan Muslim League. In the biggest operation of its kind, the searchers combed hills, valleys and plains for some trace of the party that was. They found nothing. It was like looking for El Dorado. There was absolutely no clue. The search party even went to Swat, only to come back a few days later with smuggled nylon socks and Japanese transistors, but no PML. The PML was the greatest party that ever was. During the great PML days, prosperity was so high that we did not know what to do with it. Consequently, it was decided to smuggle some of this excess prosperity to neighbouring countries. The press was so free that the Ministry of Information found itself out of work. To keep it busy, its officers were advised to learn figure skating during working hours. Radio and TV loved the government just as much as the press. Consequently, a rivalry grew between them for the fair hand of Islamabad. The incidence of crime was so low that the Police department sought the government’s permission to have some crime committed off and on. The government agreed in the public interest, otherwise it would have had to disband the department altogether. The intelligence services found that all their reports were becoming repetitive, as they were ending with the line: ‘The people love the PML government.’ Consequently, they got a standard report cyclostyled which was signed, dated and sent to the government with clockwork regularity.”
“On March 25, 1969, for reasons which the people to this day have not been able to understand, the PML government announced that it was going out of office. And while the whole nation is going berserk with worry as to the PML’s welfare and present whereabouts, I write these lines: ‘Dear PML, If you read this, please come back. No one will scold you. Even your little piggy bank of Rs. 3 crore (lots of loot in those days, believe me) is safe with the nation. You can come back and take it and with this money in your pocket you can buy as many lollypops as you like’.”
Moral of the story: The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net