Pound for pound
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“MY reputation, Iago, my reputation!” Cried the Moor in one of the most evocative scenes of Shakespeare’s Othello.
To give a very pedestrian example, whenever a crime occurs in a neighbourhood, the precinct police, following protocol, go after the usual suspects. It is easier, as it gets the higher authorities off the local police officials’ backs, and their performance in terms of arrests goes up; whether justice is done or not is a different story. Considering this predicament, what can the usual suspects do? Improve their reputation or leave the hood.
Countries are like people; they exist in clusters, have neighbours, fences and borders, but unlike humans, they cannot physically move out; all they can do is improve their reputation and image to get off the list of usual suspects.
The more your reputation solidifies, right or wrong, the more the onus of proving your innocence rests on your shoulders, and the easier the job of the accuser becomes to drag you to court. In the case of countries with a reputation for being rogue, they first face the court of international opinion, and the jury consists of billions; the accuser, in more than one sense, is the judge, jury and executioner, for your reputation is dragged through mud and left for the world to tut-tut.
Let us focus on nurturing Einsteins.
To continue the rather plebeian example, when a child runs amok in a neighbourhood, ringing doorbells, climbing up neighbours’ trees, and getting into scuffles with fellow ruffians, the neighbourhood first approaches the family and asks that the youngster be disciplined. Only the egregious ones’ elders are warned, ‘Straighten ’em up yourselves or we’ll do it for you’. The boys and their elders, better heed, for there always are real toughies running the rackets in the neighbourhood, from dope dealing, bookmaking, shakedowns. Too much naughtiness can invite anything from mild slapping around to proper kneecapping. Even at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, we must remember that international affairs are run more or less along the same lines.
Characters like Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed need to be brought to justice. Each time an ill-wisher — we collect them like postal stamps — conducts a ‘false flag operation’, you know who would be hauled up by the world community — the usual suspect. Cry foul, plead innocence, demand incriminating evidence, even establish an alibi, your reputation will put you through the wringer each time.
Because of the Indian government and media’s overkill in the war of narratives after the Pahalgam atrocity, the world is having a brief moment of suspended belief in popular tropes characterising the Pakistani deep state. We must capitalise on this momentary pause and take decisive action to redeem our reputation before a character like Tahawwur Rana, extradited to India from the US in April this year in the Mumbai terror attack case, is presented to the world with who knows what type of evidence and claims.
Reputation, countrymen, our reputation. First off, can we at last rid ourselves of the cartridges — spent and live — and decommission their manufacturers? Let us flush the ‘damn’ squibs down the drain and let the courts decide the fate of those who keep attracting trouble instead of putting them out to pasture in seminaries. Let us focus on nurturing Einsteins instead of Frankensteins or, given our obsession with history, at least produce Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Sina instead of characters like Fazlullah and his ilk. The image must be a true reflection of character, not some overly clever attempt at fourth-class propaganda.
Having said all of this, one must add that, of late, we may not have done as badly as the opponent, or in other words, they just outdid us in idiocy and communalism. I mean, attacking a bakery in Hyderabad, Telangana, because it is named after Karachi, the city that some godi media houses wanted decimated, is the epitome of stooping low.
Hyderabad, Sindh, on the other hand, continued to queue up outside its Bombay Bakery, a century-old icon, to get their hands on its famous coffee cake made by the equally famous and loved Thadani family.
In this vein, one hopes that we don’t let the recent conflagration spark another race to pile up more TNT poundage and acquire missiles with longer ranges. It has just been proven that a war between two countries with a billion and a half people or more is never going to be a cakewalk. Pound-for-pound, Bombay and Karachi bakeries have done much better than the jingoistic hordes from both sides.
The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2025
