It was my original intention to continue this week discussing the nature of ‘Reality’, and why mathematics appears to be so wonderfully suited for the task. For, I happen to be still wholly absorbed in a personal mental struggle with Penrose’s magnificent book, ‘The Road to Reality’. That it is tough reading, even for one with some knowledge of the subject, makes me even more determined not to skim through the more abstruse parts of the book.
But that concluding column will have to wait another week. For, in that characteristically careless, casual, and somnambulant manner that treats every day as just another day, I had failed to notice (no new year celebrations for me, for certain reasons) that another year had sneakily slipped past the event horizon, to be forever entombed in that black hole of oblivion we euphemistically call ‘the past’ (interesting question: does the ‘past’ have ‘a physical reality’?). Now the end of the year has, traditionally for me, called for a suitable farewell, in the shape of a column that pays homage to the year’s inanities by remembering them one last time. So that must take precedence.
For 2007, the dreaded ‘foot in mouth’ award (in recognition of the peerless example of outstanding gobbledygook) was bagged by former England football manager, Steve McClaren, fighting off the usual tough challenge from perennial contender GWB. The winning entry had McClaren saying the following about his star young player, Wayne Rooney: “He is inexperienced, but he is experienced in terms of what he has been through.”
Quite frankly, I am appalled at the choice. It confirms my belief that the international community is inherently biased against us, refusing to ever give us what is our rightful due. I ask the officials responsible for this award: how could you morons ignore our President’s speech imposing the emergency? Come to think of it, even the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th prizes should rightfully have been bagged by him for some of his other memorable utterances during last year.
Religion, in its various inimitable but incomprehensible guises, continued in 2007 to demonstrate its primitive hold over many minds. Here, yet another blasphemy case proved to be fabricated. The accused was, eventually, set free by the higher judiciary (but not before first being automatically found guilty and sentenced by the lower courts). But does anyone care about the unnecessary and traumatic suffering the man was put through as a result of being jailed for a couple of years? Why none of those fashionable suo moto actions in such cases?
But we are far from alone when it comes to such nonsense. That some of our brethren across the border too indulge themselves similarly, was spotlighted by the plight of the Indian painter, MF Hussain. His properties are now subject to confiscation because he failed to answer a summons in a suit alleging ‘a hurt to religious sentiments’, caused allegedly by a painting depicting a Hindu Goddess in the nude.
The message that Pakistanis should nevertheless be thankful for small mercies was forcefully underlined by some news from the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was reported that, up until May of 2007, the airport police in Tehran had issued over 17,000 warnings to women boarding flights, over the Islamic dress code. Of this number, 850 were forced to make written pledges to conform in future, while the cases of 135 were forwarded to the judicial authorities.
As if to reinforce the perception that the self appointed guardians of public morality seem obsessed with vice and sin rather than crime, the head of Iranian State TV decreed that all drama programmes must henceforth feature scenes showing the characters (including the baddies) praying. What exactly that will achieve defeats my puny mind.
For those that do not know, one can add that satellite TV is banned in Iran. Is there a hint there in all these Iranian examples of what a Hasba Bill might have entailed for the NWFP?
So, what exactly is the difference between ‘a religion’ and ‘a religious cult’? This question posed itself upon reading in November last that 50 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave, to await the end of the world in May 2008. Their leader, incidentally, sleeps every night in a coffin.
Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities revealed that an unbelievable 94 percent of their banknotes carried traces of cocaine (for the uninitiated, a crisp banknote, rolled into a tube, is the implement of choice for snorting the stuff). Across the Atlantic, a respectable private US study found that unofficially grown marijuana is now America’s largest cash crop. At an astounding $36 billion, it easily outstrips corn ($23 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion). Puts the Afghan drug trade in perspective, does it not?
For Pakistani civil society, 2007 will be remembered for the wholly unexpected challenge by the legal fraternity —enthusiastically welcomed, because it was long overdue — to the authoritarian mindset that has long characterised our government functionaries and political leaders. But, as usual, our seemingly inherent inability to understand what those three words ‘restraint’, ‘finesse’, and ‘subtlety’ mean, saw much happen as a result that would normally be considered comic were it not in fact tragic.
The President’s convoluted logic has already had a mention. Judicial activism was the other side of the coin. For example, some utterly harmless lyrics of an Abrar-ul Haq song, Karachi traffic chaos, and price inflation of foodstuffs in Islamabad were deemed sufficiently worthy of substantive legal implications to attract suo moto action on the part of the superior judiciary.
But let us take heart, for no one is ever really alone in whatever they do. It was reported that an Israeli judge has decreed that the prison authorities must pay a prisoner $1000 as compensation for having to share his cell with cockroaches.
Farewell, my dummy.
The writer is a businessman