Daily Times

I try to keep my mouth shut at most desi social gatherings. I try to act like a clueless and detached person and try very hard not to engage in political conversations. Honestly, I try very hard. You gather a few expatriate Pakistanis around a dinner table and they just repeat the usual lines — mostly what their favourite anchor has told them on the idiot box. You rarely find these people questioning any of the statements that they hear so often over the air waves and repeat with so much conviction.
This underlying sense of reliance stems from the naïve notion that the guy sitting on that chair in a three-piece suit and designer tie must, after all, be saying all this after proper verification but that is the rub. The people on the nightly idiot box say what they have to, because after all they have to make a living as well. Even those star anchors and analysts know that their brand sells and gathers the average Joes to the tube. The tube uses that as a carrot for its advertisers. That is how this business goes.
Anyway, at a recent gathering, when my fellow countrymen started doing the usual inane comparison between their home and adopted country, I kept quiet. When they threw the Supremo of a political party who engages with his followers live from London under the bus, I held my tongue. When they berated every politico on the scene today, I opened my mouth a little bit. My argument was that politicos are easy targets and everyone takes a swipe at them every minute of the day because it has become fashionable to do so. It somehow demonstrates your prowess in current affairs and impresses your target audience. We take pains to ridicule and demonise these folks.
When I rendered my personal opinion about the extra pressure around Bhai being a ploy, a few patriots at the table were offended. To them, I sounded like a typical migrant defending his leader. I enjoy pretending in front of strangers and acquaintances that I am a typical Urdu-speaking person from Karachi. It is interesting how people judge you based on your diction, your accent and your city of origin back home. I pass all those test as a typical Urdu-speaking individual because by the grace of the almighty, I have a reasonable command over our national language. Some are misled when I use ancient and authentic words that most people do not use in their normal exchanges. When the same people find me speaking my mother tongue, Punjabi, in its typical dialect, it is a turn off for them. But that is just the way it goes.
Getting back to the original discussion, I started raising questions about who elevates and then denigrates Bhai so rapidly and why. Why has a so-called traitor, allegedly conspiring with the spy agency of Pakistan’s age-old enemy getting noticed after so many decades? Why is a TV channel being labelled as a traitor and harassed endlessly? A couple of months later, the same channel was on the air like never before. Why was a politico labelled as the beneficiary of his own wife’s murder, while he was behind bars? Innuendos and silly inferences were drawn to create speculation that he had something to do with it.
The real crime happened when the tin-pot dictator still held the reigns and forensic evidence was washed off within hours of the tragedy. Yet, the widower is somehow found to be mysteriously involved in the crime of the decade. Had the dictator, who came to rid this land of all the corrupt and inept politicos, used that evidence to enlighten the somewhat confused public, things would have been better for him. He would have gotten a nod to be the saviour for another decade. Why did the commander let this golden opportunity slide? Why is it that a conspiracy of the so-called saviours to overthrow an elected government is not considered treason and no one cares?
The people at the dinner party stare at me like I am a strange person telling them some bizarre and unbelievable stuff. A couple of people nod and look puzzled about how to answer these questions. The questions are not so complicated but they make you think. Some stutter, some are shocked and some are downright ticked off but all of these reactions are normal. Ordinary people cannot think beyond what the tube or print media inject into their brains nonstop. The answers to these questions are not so hard to decipher. The problem is that an average person is incapable and often unwilling to accept the obvious but cruel realities.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar