Daily Times

Mr Pawn is reading a newspaper while sitting in an easy chair languidly on the porch of his house; he undertakes to read the entire newspaper as a project that meets the fate of BRT, Peshawar on a daily basis. Mr. Prism arrives. Pawn stands up to greet the friend and both sit in the chairs maintaining social distancing and other precautionary measures against coronavirus in earnest as both are averse to the idea of kicking the bucket.

Prism: (Looking at the paper opened at the editorial page). “Reading op-eds, why sir? Op-eds nowadays are all about subjects/issues that were once found in publications brought out by scientific societies, guilds or other professional organizations meant for a limited number of their fraternity. Public intellectuals and thinkers have lost ground to research fellows, policy experts and retired bureaucrats-turned-reformists.”

Pawn: “I wonder how is it that all these bureaucrats find out panacea for every malady plaguing the government only after retirement and not during service spanning decades”.

Prism: “There is time and place for everything. The big cheese, during the service, are too engrossed in championing the cause of institutional inertia by resisting the reforms they advocate with evangelical zeal after retirement. Every reform meant for public good involves curbs on powers and privileges of state functionaries. Nothing is more distasteful to the mandarins than slightest abridgement of powers. Hence postponement of reformist agenda to retirement”.

Pawn: “Don’t be so cynical. There may be a genuine change of heart on the part of retired officers to speak publically the truths which circumstances didn’t allow them to do during service”.

Prism: “There is no use speaking ex post facto truths. If you cannot call a spade a spade before your high ups when it matters, there is no point in showing wisdom after the event. Age of Chalcas 1 who would speak “invidious truths” to “instruct a monarch where his error lies”2 is long over”

Pawn: “In fact I was reading an editorial”.

Prism: “Editorials nowadays are too prescriptive and politically correct to produce any effect. That is why in British English an editorial is called ‘leader’- that leads you nowhere”.

Pawn: “But where the incumbents are leading us by causing confusion and chaos and downplaying the pandemic that poses existential threat to the entire humankind”?

Prism: “Right “behind the eternal cloud” with impunity, of course. Yet it will be unfair to blame the incumbents for confusion and chaos when they have been crystal clear in their minds about their policy, if any, to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The Prime Minister has led from the front since the very outset, and to be fair, took the bull by horns in his address to the nation by making it clear emphatically that the pandemic was “like a flu from which 97% recover completely; 90% show mild symptoms; it is only 4-5% people/patients who need hospitalization”. Just name a single ruler under the sun who approached the deadly virus with such chivalry and gallantry”.

Editorials nowadays are too prescriptive and politically correct to produce any effect. That is why in British English an editorial is called ‘leader’- that leads you nowhere

Pawn: “No. The trouble started when the PM downplayed the danger posed by the virus, especially his pathological aversion to strict lockdown was incomprehensible”.

Prism: “The PM saw with the naked eye which scientists and doctors world over could not see with microscopes i.e the “negligibly” low percentage of critical patients/deaths. Hence, refusal to lockdown. The government, in fact, realized quite early that the world had lost the plot on corona pandemic by pressing into service the wrong sciences like epidemiology, pharmacology and medicine etc. instead of statistics and calculus”.

Pawn: “You seem to have taken a leave of your senses. Statistics and calculus are branches of mathematics that deal with variable quantities and information expressed in numbers, respectively. How can we fight COVID-19 with mathematics”?

Prism: “Manipulation of statistics and variables is the only face saving left to the governments good at making a bad situation worse. What you, like many others in this country consider confusion and chaos is nothing but a communication gap. The PM and his ministers and advisors are highly educated and professional people who explain their policy by employing “logic” and “complex” analogies that are beyond normal human beings/ordinary people”.

Pawn: “Elaborate”.

Prism: “For instance, when Asad Umar “enlightened” the nation by pointing out that “Around 4,000 people die in road accidents in the country every month but we still allow cars on road, because their necessity is greater than danger of those accidents” to draw analogy between deaths from the coronavirus pandemic and road accidents, the public failed to make sense of the analogy which could only be understood by having skill to decode a black box that was never found after the crash.

Pawn: After all, what is the government doing to deal with the worsening situation”?

Prism: “The PM has announced a “Tiger Force” that runs into millions on paper. The tigers only need to be fitted with microscopic lenses on their eyes to spot and kill trillions and trillions of the tiny pathogens in a jiffy”.

Pawn: “What do you think will become of the so-called “smart lockdown”?

Prism: “The “smart lockdown” is not as smart as it is being made out to be; it is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”.

1: Chalcas was the most famous soothsayer among the Greeks at the time of Trojan war.

2: ILIAD BY HOMER, Book 1

The writer is lawyer in Lahore