Daily Times

There is a hundred per cent freedom for the media, but only for those, like himself, who have nothing bad to say about the government.

You can’t help be impressed by the enormous talent in the Great Khan’s cabinet. He’s the one who discovered a helicopter could travel for fifty-five kilometres with just a litre of petrol.

There is that lawyer who is now science and technology minister. He’s the one who discovered a helicopter could travel for fifty-five kilometres with just a litre of petrol. Another chap was caught with bottles of whiskey that miraculously turned into honey before examination by experts. And how could we ever forget the genius who was able to clear three papers in just thirty minutes to get a university degree? I’ve asked all those I know to immediately hire applicants who have a degree from the said university, even if said applicants don’t know anything about the job they have applied for. There’s also that lady advisor for information or disinformation who should really be the health minister as she is a medically qualified doctor.

We also have a very able and dashingly popular foreign minister. Only the other day, he stunned his audience of mostly super-natural invisible beings with his claim that there remained absolute freedom of the media in Pakistan. In a way, he’s right. Of course, there is a hundred per cent freedom for the media, but only for those, like himself, who have nothing bad to say about the government.

The water minister also knows everything about petrol; claiming the people of Pakistan are rich enough to pay twice the price they are paying right now. If things go according to schedule, we’ll soon have to pay much more, with the government increasing taxes on almost everything under the sun

This brings me to perhaps the one who tops them all; the chap who has somehow managed to solve the water problem in my city. Until recently, it used to be very difficult to get water tankers, but now. I have water all the time; paying the water mafia thrice the amount I used to pay them last year. The tanker man says it’s due to the increased cost of labour and fuel, but he doesn’t know anything about it. He’s probably a graduate of that same university I just mentioned.

The water minister also knows everything about petrol; claiming the people of Pakistan are rich enough to pay twice the price they are paying right now. If things go according to schedule, we’ll soon have to pay much more, with the government increasing taxes on almost everything under the sun. And if war breaks out in the neighbourhood, we can kiss goodbye to 112 rupees per litre of petrol; it could become a rare commodity and we’d be forced to abandon our vehicles and walk miles every day. Come to think of it, that won’t be so bad. All my corpulent friends, relatives and neighbours would shed all their excessive poundage without undergoing those expensive abdominal surgeries and liposuctions.

To top everything, the water minister has the perfect solution to completely transform the face of the country: killing five thousand people. He says it is the only thing that can be done to turn the country into an economic superpower. “If we hung 5000 people right now – if it was in our hands – the fate of millions of people would change.”

Now, this is sheer genius. How did he arrive at that exact figure of five thousand, despite the fact that millions had to be liquidated in China and Russia before their leaders were able to change the destinies of their countries? One must also wonder who those lucky five thousand would be; sacrificing their precious lives for the nation? Perhaps, this is how those ten million jobs that the PTI once promised could be provided. The ten million would be asked to go around the country; selecting the people to be hanged, you know. Just like what we all would have to do next month as we choose cows, goats and camels for sacrifice.

It would solve the unemployment problem to a great extent (particularly among those who voted for PTI).

The writer is an engineer, a former visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College, an industrialist, and has been associated with the petroleum, chemical industries for many years