AMIDST the prevailing environment of doom and gloom, with much on the home front seemingly going rather awry, the best way to start this New Year is to try and raise some flippancy in our dour lives. Here goes — so for the killjoys, I suggest they stop reading.

We must firstly congratulate President General Pervez Musharraf. By the law of average, coupled with Pascal’s Law of Probability, his time should be up. But thanks to colourful Colonel Ghaffar Mehdi who was one of those responsible for getting the SGS going, the commando training imparted to our general has prevented him from panicking and clamping down on a rampant press and electronic media that lambast him and his government day in and day out. It all flows over the top of his glossy head.

On Christmas Day, on which day is also celebrated the birthday of our Founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the general’s portrait appeared on one PTV channel with a commentator droning away in funereal mode. On a second PTV channel we were shown an unnatural unshaukat-like Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz sermonizing. A third national channel had a hirsute gentleman of the Book giving us his monotonous viewpoint of the auspicious occasion. Luckily, we have some 70 other channels which are not home based, so we were not entirely deprived of Christmas cheer.

The local channels have now run out of actors for their interminable ‘talk shows’. I, for just one of the tedious regulars, receive a call a week from one channel or another asking me to reappear on one of these deadly programmes where the man in charge, our version of a compere, inevitably makes an attempt to emulate BBC’s Tim Sebastian of Hard Talk and makes a thorough hash of it.

Adding to our local entertainment we now have various glossy coffee table-type magazines which cater to the tastes of the ‘elite’ of our three big cities and carry interviews and photographs of the few socialites who apparently ‘matter’. The editors of these glossies are often very pretty young women (slightly on the dumb side). How does one seriously reply to the question : “How do you describe yourself?” One fantasizes about being Professor Henry Higgins, faced with Eliza Doolittle, played so beautifully by Audrey Hepburn, with her wonderful bone structure and chiselled collar bones, in ‘My Fair Lady’, the musical made in 1957 based on George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, his most popular play first performed in Vienna in 1915. But that is a far cry from reality.

GBS was a remarkable man. Jawaharlal Nehru of India once called on him, bearing a gift wrapped box of Alphonso mangoes which he presented with aplomb to the playwright, saying with great dignity, “From India to Ireland.” GBS, somewhat taken aback, did some quick thinking. He picked up two watercress sandwiches from the tea table, placed them on a plate, and with equal aplomb and dignity presented the plate to Nehru saying, “From Ireland to India.” They don’t make them in this fine mould any more.

Over to Israel, with which country Pakistan has moved somewhat closer in international relations thanks to the foresight and perseverance of our president, former general of the Israeli army and now prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been having health problems. He had a minor stroke and while he was in hospital the doctors found he had a congenital heart defect, a small hole in his heart wall, which can be repaired by surgery. However, 77-year-old Sharon’s weight is a problem — all 260 lbs of it. Before the operation can take place, his doctors have told him that he must shed a minimum of 75 lbs. Despite his protestations as to the impossibility of doing so, and knowing that the alternative would be sudden death, in one week he managed to lose six pounds after forsaking pastries, doughnuts, and potato pancakes.

Another great soldier statesman of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, at the age of sixty, was well on the way to eating himself to death. He weighed in at 280 lbs. Over the next eight years, his obesity brought on a myriad diseases that read like a medical dictionary : neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, migraine, gall-stones, varicose veins, shingles, piles, constipation and cramps — you name it and he had it. It was decided that he needed a new doctor. His wife called in a somewhat raffish disreputable character who had been struck off the medical register for sexual offence against Hippocratic proprieties but who had built himself up a fashionable unofficial practice in Berlin.

At his first meeting with doctor Ernst Schweninger, the great Chancellor was put firmly in his place. A doctor has to question his patient, but Schweninger was told brusquely “I don’t like being asked questions.” “Fine,” said the young doctor, “Then get yourself a vet. He doesn’t question his patients.” Bismarck was put on a slimming diet consisting exclusively of herrings and slowly but surely within a year he lost 56 lbs and was a new man.

Back to the present and to our president, who loves romping around the world at our expense. He is shortly off again. This time he goes to harass Norway, where at the end of this month he will ‘hold talks’ with the king and the prime minister (presumably on matters of mutual interest) and cause a security nightmare for his hosts. The Norwegians will apparently have to mount the biggest security operation in their history to safeguard Musharraf’s life and limb. Good luck to the general — and of course happy shopping and skiing to the hefty entourage he will undoubtedly take with him, again at our expense.

Meanwhile, another Scandinavian country, Denmark, has a problem with Pakistan and the safety of its diplomats and citizens who happen to be there. The Danish press published a cartoon caricaturing the Founder of Islam — a very foolish thing to do in any event and particularly under the present circumstances. The Danes fear a backlash and are worried about Danes in Pakistan — they are also worried about the safety of the nitwit of a cartoonist as some equally nitwitish Islamic religious organization has offered a half a million rupee award for the murder of the man.

If this new year somehow manages to be worse than the old one, then we and the world are in for a very rough ride.