January 4, 2004

Some day, say a millennium down the line, the events of 2003 will be part of pre-history, when people will discuss our lives just as dispassionately as we discuss the dinosaurs

THE all-conquering exploits of Alexander, the cerebral excellence of Socrates, Plato, Ibn Khaldun and others of the kind, the events leading upto the French, Bolshevik and other revolutions, they are all history now. Some day, for sure, what is happening today will be history as well. Generation X will analyze us and our lives much the same way as we do regarding Generation X, the generation that lived on the planet a millennium ago.

On a purely hypothetical trip, let us make use of the time machine and see how people a millennium away will look back at us, when the modern world of today will be nothing but pre-history. Here we go ... whooosh!

This is year 3003, and these are excerpts from a front-page of a Sunday Magazine that is trying to recollect what happened a thousand year ago, the events of the year 2003AD of the pre-historic era of humans or humanoids (term for ancient humans). To recap a little, prehistoric era is characterized by feuding, clash of civilizations, massacre of the innocent, testing of destructive bombs, election of mentally retarded humanoids as presidents of superpowers, greedy invasions and so on.

It was also an era when only women bore children, humans required oxygen to breathe, animals did not know English grammar, time travel was deemed a fantasy, pop singers transformed into child molesters after a certain age, and our ancestors used primitive means to cool off their bodies by sleeping.

The above year was a vital period in human pre-history. Humdrum on the face of it, it marked the beginning of the end of pre-history. Man fought his last war in this year. After that year, war fatigue gradually took hold of the minds of the public and the soldiers alike. Victors of wars, even after capturing their prized enemy could not stretch their joy to more than a few days. They realized that waging wars, capturing former rulers (Saddam of Iraq, for instance) and humiliating them were futile exercises which did nothing to make world a safer place. On the contrary, these acts exacerbated terror, not mitigated it.

The anti-war seed was firmly sown in this year. In later years, no ruler — the armchair warrior — ever mentioned war and risked public wrath. Public could no longer be duped since lies laid bare for every one to see.

In that year, a tyrant superpower was denied an outright success in its relentless charge to destabilize the world. Had it won a quick war that it initiated in that year, ancient civilization would have been wiped out much earlier as there would have been no stopping the onslaught. It would have been back to square one for mankind. Humans would not have progressed from the Electronic Age to the Telepathic Age today when people anywhere can communicate through mind cable network, or MCN.

In that year, killing and maiming human beings was considered an acceptable form of human behaviour if the subjects belonged to some other race or religion. Muslims stood out as the only people who considered killing fellow Muslims also an act of great nobility. The rulers of the extinct races of Americans and Israelis were hostility-loving butchers who ran a slaughterhouse in a place called Palestine. Red was the Americans’ favourite colour.

In 2003, this nation embarked upon its last battle in a country called Iraq. The strategy was to start a chain reaction of wars, devouring one weak country after another so that its soft drinks, diapers and fast food could sell even more. But, above all, the reason was oil. Iraq was rich in unexploited resources with second largest reserves of the then useful source known as oil.

Americans were slimy in nature and liked greasy things. Their rulers had fantasized about oil since time immemorial. Their vision of heaven included landscapes filled with flowing streams of oil. They could smell oil from a distance of thousands of miles. Their expedition to moon was also based on the expectation that craters visible on the moon’s surface were actually oil reserves. Without oil, they would have lost their will to live. Of course, water replaced oil as energy source several centuries ago.

George Bush was at the helm in America in that year. Ancient drawings and engravings show Bush cozying up with a poodle, which showed that he was fond of pets. Some scriptures mention the poodle’s name as Tony, while others have named it Blair. However, there is a consensus amongst the historians that these are names of a loyal English dog only. Myth has it that the poodle was human once, but was punished by God for worshipping Bush.

Bush and Tony were perfect soul-mates. When Bush felt dirty from the inside and needed soul-cleansing, it was Tony who rushed to the toilet. An anthropologist has even written a paper to prove that well-preserved fossils show that even Bush was an ass, but majority of writers give Bush the benefit of doubt and the theory remains a matter of archeological conjecture. The Muslims in later centuries placed Bush’s statue at the holy place in Saudi Arabia where they used to throw stones at the Satan. So Satan was, indeed, personified and it gave the stone-throwers a sense of direction. In those days, public deception was an art and was propagated through some kind of junk box called Television recovered by the millions in excavations the world over. Just like toothpastes or washing powder, wars were sold to public through lies and deceptions via TV. The majority bought it since, like insurance, it created fear first and then provided security against it. Moreover, anything that was perceived real/live on TV developed mass audience.

As was usually the case with ancient wars, this war’s buildup was longer than the war itself, and similar to a buildup of a sport’s world cup. Interviews, articles, talk shows in special war studios and documentaries were the order of the day.

The war itself appeared to be over within days. However, the dust it threw up on the deserts of Iraq did not settle easily. A few days after official victory was declared by the aggressors, American soldiers started being killed. On an average, two troops were killed in a given day (consisting of 12 hours in those times as against the present 960 today).

Such was the expectation and demand for this daily score sheet from its international viewers, that CNN (the then leading news channel) reported killing of troops even when none died, or sent its own reporters on the mission to kill the troops to avoid losing viewers.

Anthropologists believe that American rulers, the neo-cons, belonged to a perverted race who wanted Americans to be hated by the world. That explained their cockiness and subsequent destructiveness. They had developed weapons of mass destruction, but vowed to find them in Iraq where they had supplied themselves some years earlier.

But as the war turned sour and started causing suicide-attacks across the globe, the nation took a conscious decision to avoid being hated in such an expansive manner. Instead of WMDs, they found their own littered national conscience, especially after the capture of this hapless enemy — the ex-king of Iraq. His TV pictures were shown in a manner which was disgusting and below human dignity. This was even too much for the Americans to digest. True democracy was finally knocking at the door of the land of the free, as America was called then.

Archeological sites show little evidence of the race called Muslims as their contribution to the world was so insignificant that hardly any prehistoric artifact and excavated area bore their signature. Their fossilized remains were easily distinguishable because of the growth of uncontrolled facial hair.

However, they were the most mentioned race in the ancient scriptures and writings at that time. They had distorted their beautiful and simple religion to such a level that no two Muslims could sit together and even share a conversation on weather. Each Muslim considered himself more pious than the other, but a more common denominator was loathing for work.

Their activities were to pray, cheat and pray again to wipe out the sins. They thought that sins were washable by the lather of prayers. They did not realize that shunning knowledge was making them irrelevant. They used filthy language, avoided charity, treated everyone else with disdain and still believed that God was on their side. They had visions of after-life grandeur, and the vision differed from cleric to cleric, sect to sect, desire to desire. Since they shunned practical education, this led to their downfall.

In those days, making rich richer was known as progress. For example, in the year 2003, in a country called Pakistan, the affluent was getting richer by the day. Be it equity or real estate prices, foreign exchange reserves or whatever, the rich section of society made money, while the poor were swamped in their penury. These indicators were flaunted by rulers as signs of progress.

The society was divided not by barbed wire, but by a subtle weapon called language. The country was run by a then popular language called English, while the poor were given lectures to love their national language, Urdu. They were not allowed to learn English. It allowed the country to get donations on the strength of the sheer number of poor in the country.

The line dividing the poor and the rich was not visible, but the poor were further sub-categorized by a very deeply drawn poverty line. Various illustrations show that people well below the poverty line were very adventurous and often died by jumping off highrise buildings or flexing their neck muscle by dangling from ceiling fans.

Amongst all prehistoric nations, Pakistan was one country whose people’s psyche was averse to revolutions. It was a humid country since Sun was yet to extinguish, and people’s sweat was real bad. No matter how much humiliation they underwent by the ruling class, their motto was not to come out on the streets under the scorching heat and affect their personal hygiene. The leaders of different opposition parties cried themselves hoarse, but not many of their workers came out. Hence, the rich continued to rule and no ruler was ever guillotined.

Only an asteroid could have corrected the state of affairs, but that visitation, as we now know, was reserved for America. Asteroids are merely large stones hurled by the creator when people let Him down.

The discovered ruins of Pakistan precluded any need to preserve anything since Pakistan had no road or drainage network of any sort. No antiquity or relic of this country worth its name was considered good enough to deserve a place in any museum. However, one unique artifact that was found in most of the excavated sites was an item called lota. Archeologists to this day differ whether it symbolized a community in Pakistan, or was it a decoration piece. The shape became so popular in the following ages that some civilizations even drank juices from it.

In 2003, some in Pakistan wanted the emperor to undress and change his clothes. They wanted the emperor to have new clothes, but the emperor was all too powerful, and kept playing games till at least the year 2003. His vazir did lose a lot of sleep over the issue, but unfortunately no weight. The ancient drawings have been rather impolite and irreverent when depicting his larger-than-life persona. Size does matter, since otherwise history would not have given him even a footnote.

So there in Pakistan it was yet another year of failure as no progress of any sort was made on either political or economic front although rulers professed otherwise. One glimmer of hope was arising in terms of thaw in relations with the neighbour, but there were still miles to go in that respect. There had been false dawns before.

The year 2003 was, indeed, a docile year to live in. But when seen through the prism of time, it changed the world forever. Of course, it does not matter now to reveal that it was our generation that had to do minor alterations like firing laser beams to down US choppers by going back in the year through time travel. Such acts only expedited the inevitable.

We also helped Saddam to play hide and seek for several months to deny US an easy victory. Otherwise, he would have been found in the first week of the war. Finally, we dumped him in a hole when we were sure that the world was no longer in danger of pre-planned series of wars by the US.

While pre-history was drawing to a close on a rather optimistic note, violence in many shapes and forms was still to stay for several decades before it was completely wiped out.

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