Frankly I do not give an ‘athlete’s foot’ about ‘Memogate’, my only quibble with the darn thing is that it should not be pronounced ‘Meemogate’. But I am entirely perturbed about the news that close to 150 goats were stolen in one night in the Faisalabad area. One hundred and fifty goats! Just imagine the logistics of it. At maybe around 20 or 30 kilos per goat, that is a lot of goat to haul away without serious planning and much help. Just imagine dear readers: having to walk away with one goat, bleating endlessly and possibly struggling valiantly and multiply that by 150. There is of course the possibility that it was not really theft but a conspiracy hatched by the ubiquitous ‘establishment’.
Why the establishment, you ask? Well, there is nobody else in Pakistan that is sufficiently organised and has enough well trained people in its employ to pull off a major operation of this nature. But then who exactly is the establishment? Anybody as far as I am concerned who can do whatever it wants and gets away with it. Quite possibly the actual perpetrators were the so-called proxies of the establishment aka the jihadists. I suppose the US’s decision to cut off aid to the establishment just might be having a downstream effect leading people who once benefitted from the largesse of the establishment now being forced to forage for themselves. After all, what self-respecting jihadi would ever consume anything except for genuine goat curry? Desperate times, desperate measures.
There is, however, one other possibility that must be considered. Perhaps the goats finally had enough of servitude and decided to make a dash for it; how they managed to tie up their owners is of course a matter of some concern. Could this be the beginning of the revolution that everybody and his/her aunt are talking about these days? Well, the revolution has to start some place and by somebody and why not goats destined to be slaughtered to provide culinary enjoyment for the rich and the powerful? But all that sounded a bit too fantastical to believe so I kept wondering about the real story behind it. One thing I am however convinced of is that the ‘establishment’ is definitely involved.
And then came enlightenment or at least a plausible reason. Soon after reading about the missing goats, I ran into a news report about a statement made by our new revolutionary leader, Mr Imran Khan about ‘sheep and goats sitting in parliament’. As we all know Mr Khan is never wrong and of course would not indulge in metaphorical statements that might be misconstrued, especially by the throngs of ‘educated’ Pakistanis who follow his every word and accept every statement he makes as gospel truth. I am sure you are wondering what Khan sahib’s statement has to do with the missing goats in Faisalabad but bear with me, I am getting there and I promise you it is a doozy, far deeper in conspiratorial imagination than almost anything else around.
Now, Khan sahib stated that sheep and goats are sitting in parliament so his ‘truly believing’ supporters expect that soon when they see a picture of our parliament in session, they will actually see sheep and goats in there. Here comes in the role of the ‘establishment’. We all know that Khan sahib is the ‘The Man’ as far as the establishment is concerned and clearly the establishment wants to prove him right in almost all things, especially when it comes to their joint opinion about the present elected representatives of the people and parliament they inhabit. So, my interpretation of the missing goats combined with Khan sahib’s statement about sheep and goats sitting in parliament is that at an appropriate time the people of Pakistan will wake up to the sight of goats actually sitting in parliament, most likely during a joint session addressed by the president.
Enquiring minds will of course wonder why the goats were procured at this time when the president’s address to a joint session is still a while away. The answer is obvious. The goats have to be trained, properly groomed and brainwashed into acting like the parliamentarians. Frankly, the establishment has accomplished similar feats in the past. But this can take time, which is obviously the real reason why President Zardari is being forced by the establishment to delay his return to Pakistan. Also, the establishment has to make sure that enough of the humanoid members of parliament are made to boycott the aforementioned joint session and allow their seats to be occupied by goats made up to look like them. Once all these preparations are complete, I am sure that the president will be allowed to return to Pakistan and address a joint session of parliament.
Here, as my ever conspiratorial mind wandered further afield, I realised that the ‘Memogate’ conspiracy could indeed also really be about replacing the present ‘political dispensation’ with a ‘goatacracy’. After all, considering the present state of governance, most independent and objective analysts of the Pakistani scene are convinced that if goats ruled Pakistan instead of the present lot, Pakistan will definitely not be worse off but indeed might do a lot better. Goats, as we all know, have no interest in living in big houses, driving bulletproof sedans worth millions of rupees and having Swiss bank accounts running into billions of rupees. And goats have absolutely no interest in setting up rental power plants either.
All that I need to do now is to try and square all this with the ‘nude shoot’ of Veena Malik with ‘ISI’ painted on her arm and her subsequent disappearance and rumours that she has returned to Pakistan hiding in a shuttlecock ‘burqa’. It is all connected; of that I am convinced, but how and that I promise you dear readers I will soon figure out.
The writer has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at [email protected]