KNOWING full well the kinds of things that send me through the roof, a friend gave me a video tape. He said it was the best travel documentary he had ever seen on TV and wanted me to also benefit from it.

Unfortunately, said he, it was some ways through before he could begin to tape it. From the smile he couldn’t suppress, I knew something was not right.

Nevertheless, I stuck it in the old VCR and saw these two fat morons at Shandur. With nothing to say about Shandur they were expending using words, words, words to say it. Their inane tripe about the cool wind and the clear rills interspersed with buffoonery went on and on. I could watch only three minutes of this twaddle before hitting the roof. My friend had an almighty laugh when I called him cussing.

The two fat idiots, the best this private TV channel could do, are not alone in this heavily populated League of Morons that pretends to be presenters. Nor too are private TV channels (that should never have been permitted) the only ones guilty of spreading buffoonery. PTV does hardly any better. I have the honour of watching a young good-looking man on a jaunt around Mardan and taking us, his viewers, up the little hill of Takht Bahi with its Buddhist monastery.

The last thing I heard this man say was, ‘Right, let’s see what the chowkidar has to tell us of the history of this wonderful place!’ So now we are in such intellectual straits that our history teachers are those who never made it to high school. And then there is my good friend who I won’t name for fear of offending him who did a travel show through Pakistan. The highlight of this show were the bimbos who took turns travelling with him.

Two gems from this show: passing a hill, he flips a hand to it and nonchalantly tells us, ‘I hear there is a fort up there.’ End of story. And then again at a Chaukundi style tomb in Sindh he says to his companion, ‘Bimbo, do you know anything about this tomb?’ Bimbo, obviously blissfully oblivious or she would not be a bimbo, says, ‘No, I don’t.’ Says my friend, the presenter of the show, ‘What a coincidence, neither do I!’ And they move on to the next site.

The trouble with these people is that they have never read anything in their lives. They are ignorant a thousand times over. The morons on Shandur, the idiot at Takht Bahi and my friend with the bimbo have never ever read a worthwhile thing since the primer in the first grade at school. And because we as a nation suffer from that disease that prevents us from conceding we are out of our depth doing this or that, these people get on TV to present drivel to viewers who know no better.

In 1994, I was asked to do a travel show for PTV by none other than the deputy managing director himself. But the Lahore general manager had other ideas. Terrified of the DMD and unable to say no to him but to ensure that the show never happened, GM assigned me to a ‘producer’ who shared my last name. We got off with a bang.

The man was horrified that I harboured notions about a 25-minute documentary. No, no, a documentary can never be longer than five minutes, he tried to show me the light. My silly head was full of ideas because I had only shortly before seen and much enjoyed a four-part, 50-minute each, BBC documentary titled Ancient Lives. This fabulous show was about lives in ancient Egypt pieced together from various artefacts, even graffiti at a spot where a waterfall once flowed and where Egyptians picnicked. And 30 years before, as children we had been held in thrall by Jacob Bronowski and his Ascent of Man. I thought I knew what documentaries were.

But my namesake producer was actually dismayed and even revolted by the idea of a documentary any longer than five minutes. We had been discussing a programme on Deosai Plateau and he kept asking again and again what I expected to show the audience for 25 minutes. He thought a documentary was only a few shots of the running water, the flowers and maybe the hills (a la Morons on Shandur) and you were done. To enlighten me on what a documentary was all about he said, ‘Phul da laang shaat, phul da BCU; paani da laang shaat, paani da BCU. Dakoo-mentry khatm!’

What else, he demanded to know, could I have to show after this. The meeting was not without its educational aspect, however: I learned that a BCU was Big Close-Up and that in all camera work you had a long shot and then zoomed in for the BCU. It was beyond this producer’s comprehension that you could actually tell stories about places and not just show a few long and short shots. I feebly tried to tell him about Ancient Lives and even though I am not half as funny as Michael Palin I tried to hide behind his Pole to Pole as well. Producer Rashid did not know of them and he did not care. Thereafter we talked of the weather and I took my leave.

My generation was fortunate to have been captive to PTV and PTV alone. We did not only benefit from Bronowski, in the late ’60s we had the everlasting pleasure of watching a show titled Sailani ke saath. Produced and presented by that one and only paragon of documentary-making in Pakistan, the doyen Obaidullah Baig, this was a weekly show that kept me glued to the box for the half hour it ran. OB to us who are his friends knew everything, so it seemed, there was to know about the country, its history, culture, wildlife and flora.

Whether he took us to Sri Mata Hinglaj or to Lahut Valley in Balochistan, to Rannikot in Sindh or Derawar in Cholistan or to some wild and desolate valley of Dir or up in the Kohistan region, OB had a yarn to spin. And what flair and elegance he spun it with. His clear baritone voice, the square, handsome and bespectacled face topped with a full head of neatly parted dark hair of a much younger OB and the grey safari suit (we only had black and white then) are etched on my mind. And so are his tales that were told in chaste Urdu. Yes, chaste in block capitals. Not the bastardised rubbish that presenters today speak.

But be assured that you who have been denied OB will never know what you missed. You who do not know the difference between good and rotten will continue to be fed the tripe trotted out by Morons at Shandur and bimbos and assorted idiots. Happy viewing.

The writer is the author of several travel books.

odysseus@link.net.pk

Last week, in more serene surroundings at the Sheraton Park Lane opposite Buckingham Palace in London, Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, met executives from Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total and dozens of other foreign oil companies.

On the table were eight contracts to develop Iraq’s eight largest oil fields, which Baghdad hopes will almost double the country’s production to 4.5 million barrels of oil per day (bpd).

Last month, Shell agreed to invest up to $4bn to form a joint venture to produce gas in the south. It has also become the first oil major to open a permanent office in Baghdad, though most foreign oil executives remain reluctant to visit the capital because of safety fears, despite pressure from the Iraqi oil ministry to attend meetings there. Five years after the US-led invasion of the country, the long-awaited — and controversial — foreign-led development of Iraq’s vast oil resources looks set to begin in earnest.

But as security improves and Baghdad starts to draw up contracts, many questions remain. Addax Petroleum, a Swiss oil company, is already operating in Iraq. There has been no production at the field since July because the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which governs the semi-autonomous region, has not extended the company’s licence.

No pipeline runs from the field, so trucks have to carry the oil, selling it to the local market, usually at a discount to going rates. Addax says that only a maximum of 60,000 bpd can be moved this way. Herish Muharam Muhamad, chairman of the regional board of investment, was adamant that the KRG should have control over the region’s oil. ‘When we talk about oil and natural resources, we are talking about our constitutional rights,’ he said.

The oil majors are also anxiously watching the tortuous negotiations, which continued last week. The eight contracts outlined in London on Monday last offer attractive terms, but the worry is that the new oil legislation — whenever it is passed — could change the terms retrospectively.

Despite the problems, Iraq remains hugely attractive. It holds an estimated 112 billion barrels of reserves, the second largest in the world. Much of the country remains unexplored and production costs are among the lowest in the world. With resource nationalism limiting the opportunities for oil majors to boost their production, Iraq is a valuable prize.

But foreign oil companies have to tread warily in a country often suspicious of their motives. Baghdad has refused to offer production-sharing agreements — preferred by companies as they allow them to book a share of a country’s reserves — because Iraq wants to retain sovereignty over its oil.

— The Guardian, London