Jamali’s jam

Karachi is full of all kinds of civic problems, of which a major one is the flow of traffic. The problem is compounded whenever a dignitary from Islamabad decides to bless the city with his presence. Roads are closed and traffic diverted to other routes causing unnerving jams.

When, the other day, a colleague reached the NIPA chowrangi bus stop in the morning to take a rickshaw to work, she found the area was invaded by the traffic and regular police. There were no rickshaws in sight. The traffic constables would not allow the buses to stop at the appointed points telling the people waiting for the bus to move ahead and clear the road.

Buses would hardly stop for a few seconds to let the people hop off and on. A little distance ahead the buses were being diverted from the main road into the sidelanes, which are in a pathetic state anyway, and least equipped to handle rush-hour traffic.

At the end of the roller coaster ride for more than a kilometre in the bylanes, when the buses finally emerged from the lanes they were made to ply on the service road and not the main road. Only private cars were allowed the luxury to take the main road. And this continued all the way to the National Stadium, where the buses were again made to divert to the lanes behind the stadium to reach the Karsaz intersection.

Trying to act smart the next day, the colleague decided to change her route and take the Rashid Minhas Road to the Sharae Faisal. This turned out to be a bigger ordeal taking her an hour to cover a distance worth 10 minutes up to the drive-in cinema roundabout. The road ahead was closed for repair.

There was only one constable to manage the traffic, which obviously was inadequate given the fact that more vehicles were diverted this way from the NIPA roundabout — the reason: the prime minister was in town. The rest of the city, particularly the old District South, the Cantonment, Clifton and Saddar areas, were even worse hit by day-long traffic jams. Imagine a patient trying to reach a hospital under these conditions.

For Karachiites traffic diversions and long jams are nothing new. They have been braving these for years. It is time the new government did something to ease the traffic congestion instead of adding to it.

A cable company that claims to be the largest in Karachi has set the standard for lousy customer service and technical incompetence. Even though the said company advertises itself as being better than the “lead-wallas”, the claim is exposed when we see the actual circus it has created at the customers’ expense. A friend who lives in DHA narrates his daily ordeal.

‘They try to offer 50 channels, many of which are pure rubbish, in languages we cannot understand simply because these channels are available for free from the satellites. The ones worth watching, like the ShowTime Network (TV-Land, Comedy Channel, Discovery, etc.) cannot be seen for days because they use nearly spent, second-hand decoder cards bought from the black market, which expire every few weeks.

‘Instead of keeping a ready supply of decoder-cards, the cable company in question routinely tries to find a khepia from Dubai, who might sell it a half-spent card or two. And while all this is happening, the customers are not getting what they paid for. These days, nine of the most popular channels watched in Karachi, have gone missing with messages like “please insert smart card” displaying on the screen.’

This, the friend says, has been going on for three weeks. And when he called up the head office of the cable company in question demanding an explanation, here is what he got: ‘the person authorized to release and insert cards into the decoders has gone for Umra. And the person who is to take over from him, has yet to turn up.’

Waiting forever for the traffic light to turn green, jostling for a small space for your mini-of-a-car amid huge fish-laden trucks and oil tankers coming from the old Submarine roundabout or the Mai Kolachi, the Schon Circle is perhaps the most aggravating bottle neck of all this side of the bridge.

Once a well-maintained intersection with manicured green islands adorned with shaped stones placed in a certain fashion, the circle has now taken on quite an ugly veneer. It is as if like an orphaned child, it has been cruelly thrown out on the street by the civic authorities.

Waiting in a traffic jam at the Schon Circle with fishy smell laced with diesel wafting around you is not easy. And then the many eyesores around the place don’t make things simpler. The four triangles with their shaped stones look quite a sorry sight with posters pasted on them — one October election contestant still manages to peep through the various adverts of the tuition centres, etc.

A graffiti artist has added to the ungainly sight. The little bit of greenery these islands one boasted with the kanghi palms has long died an unsung death. The circle in the middle fares no better. Its hideousness is however covered these days by banners put up by a beauty parlour advertising a free facial.

And that’s not all. If you have enough time to observe the surroundings — and that you will — you can count around three dozen billboards — without exaggeration. There are meal deals, up-size deals, giant faces of the models peering at you enticing you to have a certain blue-eyed cell phone, which is already an old model, or tea, ice-cream, chicken, cookies, even lingerie, flat screen TVs and mobile oil!

There are signboards all around you that get bigger by the day. And lest you forget, in the night, they come alive with spotlights highlighting the myriad of messages. Huddled between a truck and a tanker, and if you try to look heavenward for help it’s these darn boards that make you feel claustrophobic.

But we, Karachiites, are survivors. My daughter has come up with a board game to be played in the car. It’s not those board games which you play sitting on the floor to while away the time, it’s a game in which you look for alphabets from the advertisements. She finds the Schon Circle the best area for her game.

‘Way to go,’ I tell her while still angry at the mindless invasion by the marketers which has contributed to the ungainliness of the Schon Circle. Would you be surprised to know that the word ‘schon’, spelt ‘schoen’ in German, means ‘pretty’?

Shakil Farooqi of Karachi University gave a long discourse on what speech-making is all about. He asked a young girl not to close one eye while speaking, and another to adjust the microphone before starting the speech. Yet another was asked not to gesticulate too much and that it was good she was not wearing rings in her fingers, so on and so forth.

What he said was not wrong, but the occasion was. He was speaking as the chief judge at the 12th All-Pakistan Inter-School Declamation Contest in Urdu and English at a public school recently — the only one in the city to do so for the past eleven years on the trot. It was an occasion to encourage the 30 young participants for taking part

in what he himself described as “a dying art.”

But then Farooqi could not forget that he was a teacher as he went about heaping accolades on his own accomplishments and those of his old teachers’. This was hardly surprising because this was the day for a lot of self-aggrandisement. The principal had the two ‘ghost’ announcers heaping praise on him and all the glorious work he has done for the institution for ‘almost ten years’. Later they did the same to the chief guest, the veteran adman S.H. Hashmi, saying ‘if one were to narrate all the achievements of Mr. Hashmi’s it would take up all the time of the contest.’

There was some drama, rather a waiting game of sorts. The chief guest made a disappearing act after the fifth speaker to re-appear at 2pm after the declamation and the lunch were over. As a result, the function, which was to end at 12.30pm actually ended two-and-a-half hours later.

To make amends, the chief guest announced handsome ‘cash’ awards for the first three position holders among Urdu and English speakers on behalf of his company, though some one later suggested that it would be a more graceful gesture if the presentations were in the form of books — in English for the winners in Urdu declamation and in Urdu for the English declamation winners.— By Karachian

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com

Mere tut-tut would not do: KARACHI FILE

ACCORDING to quarters that claim and are generally believed to be well- informed about the causes of cancer, the incidence of this deadly disease in Pakistan is in any number in the range of 100,000 to 200,000. Barely half of such threatened lives are saved. This is indeed horrifying, considering the pathetic inadequacy of facilities for treatment available in the country. Only these two points should make all of sit up.

Not the least disappointing is the remarkable imprecision about the statistics about the incidence of cancer. We are well into the 21st century, are we not? There is so much of talk about Information Technology and computerization. Guessing between 100,000 and its double seems to make this set of statistics betray an attitude to this danger to life that is casual, putting it mildly.

The first question that calls for an answer from some responsible quarter (if we really have any) in this context is why we know so little about so implacable a killer as cancer undeniably is? Groping between statistics so far apart only proclaims we are not serious about tackling such a terrible danger to life. Unless we settle down to think seriously, serious action would be unthinkable.

Though our knowledge about the causes of cancer is still not quite complete or comprehensive, it is more than sufficient to guide us in the field of prevention. Prevention, the wise have said, is infinitely better than cure - even when there is sure cure. But that is not the case with us in respect of cancer. Prevention becomes so much the more imperative.

Among the causes about which there is now almost no doubt, the highest risk is associated with use of tobacco - chewing as well as smoking. Medical opinion is particularly strong against tobacco smoking. There are, though, specialists who argue that chewing passes on the danger from tobacco straight to blood, while smoking danger would take a while longer to become lethal.

This debate between smoking and chewing tobacco is too academic and esoteric for the lay person. It should be sufficient for all concerned to heed the warning against the dangers in imbibing tobacco — whether chewing or smoking - to be persuaded to wean away from this habit, or addiction. Here is a vast deal more than enough for the wise people in our public health services to be doing more than playing with loosely compiled statistics.

This should remind us of the maxim that there are statistics, and statistics and lies. This may sound a touch harsh in the present reference to cancer. But there is no denying that even as lip service, dishing out imprecise statistics would fall awfully short of what needs to be done. It is also short of what we can do even within our admittedly meagre resources.

There is no quarrel with cancer specialists over their by now unshakable conviction that tobacco is a very big cause for cancer. Let it be conceded straightaway that there are more tobacco smokers in Karachi than anywhere in this country. This is not simply because there are more people here. It is because here we have a great deal more of tobacco smoking per thousand of people.

Now is about time people in Karachi gave more attention to tobacco chewing as also one of the major causes of cancer. If on an average we have more tobacco smokers in Karachi than elsewhere, the percentage of people addicted to tobacco chewing would be very much higher n this city. It is only casually that this point is mentioned. Then everybody forgets all about it.

Having identified and convicted tobacco as a killer beyond any defence or appeal, let us think of the danger in smoke emitted by machines burning hydrocarbon fuels - especially diesel and petrol. Karachi has more buses, taxies, trucks, tankers and rickshaws than anywhere in this country. It can be said that a very large number of these machines, notably automobiles, pump more exhaust than normally should because their engines are not tuned well enough.

Only once in a while one hears some somnolent NGO making a mention of the risk of cancer that resides in fuel exhaust with which the air in Karachi is by now just about saturated. It is agreed on all hands that the air we breathe in Karachi is the most polluted in Pakistan, despite the blessing of a constant sea breeze. Fuel exhaust is not the only pollutant but unquestionably the heaviest and most lethal to health.

Imagine the hypocrisy that surrounds all this talk about use of tobacco as laden with the deadly danger of causing cancer. No doubt the advertisements carry the government warning that smoking is 'injurious' to health. In the first place, it is not 'injurious,' it is proved to be deadly, lethal. Why this euphemism about some addiction that is now in epidemic dimensions?

The government is casual, be it federal, provincial or local. One should expect the local governing administrations to think of their responsibility in a matter that demands instant attention and sustained remedial action. Arguably, the worst culprit in this context is the television in Pakistan. There should be public outcry against tobacco advertisements on television screen that is now in the bedroom.

It is about time such hypocrisy about what is a proven risk to human life was abandoned - in the interest of human life. Advertising a killer drug with the fig-leaf of a mere warning is playing with life.

Pakistan First: VIEW FROM MARGALLA

Continuity is being sought by the present day wielders of real power by appealing to the sense of patriotism of Pakistanis at large. Pakistan First. Pakistan above everything else. Yes, of course, everybody loves his/her country. Nobody wants to see his/her country come to any harm. Every one would like to die for the glory of his/her country. To make it a great country to live in. To make it safe and prosperous for their children and their children’s children. In its true sense of the meaning patriotism is a great idea. Many great nations have emerged out of this great idea. But patriotism is also said to be the last resort of you-know-who. In the case of today’s Pakistan the idea appears to have been adopted by the establishment for providing the facade of respectability to its raga of continuity and through this raga to brainwash the nation into accepting the LFO, the NSC, an unelected uniformed president and the forward blocs as the true ingredients of patriotism. And those opposed to these four elements are being projected by default as unpatriotic.

Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, otherwise an honourable man, seems to have taken the bait, hook line and sinker. He has started parroting the establishment’s raga of Pakistan First, believing, perhaps, that by repeating without analysing what the establishment is saying, he is only doing his patriotic duty. Despite the fact that Maulana Fazlur Rehman in his very first speech in the National Assembly had blown to pieces the argument of vote of conscious by calling it General Zamir ka vote, the PM continues to defend the outrage by falling back on this trite, empty and unconvincing argument. It is, indeed, an outrage because the law of floor crossing has been held in abeyance by a man who is legally not empowered to do it. Possibly the argument of vote of conscious is being used day in and day out in the hope, perhaps, of making a falsehood sound like the truth itself by repeating it infinitum. But the Pakistani establishment has perhaps forgotten that even the master of this art Mr Goebles had failed to make this technique yield the desired result for his master beyond a point. However, the president seems to have come to believe in the fiction that the establishment has concocted for him about the current horse trading scandals because now he is not avoiding its mention in public but is acknowledging it for the benefit of the whole world as something the political class in this country should be proud of. So emboldened has he become on this score that he used the vote of conscious gimmick the other day with the women members of the parliament when addressing them on the occasion of national conference on “Women’s Political Participation”. He called upon them to vote according to their conscience in the parliament on issues that impinged on their rights. Alas, how low can you stoop to win universal acceptance for an illegality!. Yes, you simply cannot hide behind the illogical argument that since you have held the relevant law in abeyance in collusion with the judiciary which has taken oath to defend and protect you, you can place yourself above this law made by the collective wisdom of an elected parliament!!

Of course, you have to break an egg to make an omelet. Or, if you are a pragmatist which our President General Pervez Musharraf believes he is, you do have the right to use any means to justify your end. But what is the end that you are seeking? Is the omelet that you are trying to make by breaking the major political parties of Pakistan after the election is what the people of Pakistan want in the first place? If you go by the pattern of voting in the last general elections or by the way the nation responded to the April referendum, it is clear that the majority of this nation is against the very end that the pragmatists are seeking — the acceptance of LFO, the NSC, an unelected president in uniform and the forward blocs. And only those who have no idea about what the Quaid-i-Azam wanted to make of this country would doubt the patriotism of the majority which voted against such crass violation of the laws of the land for promoting the idea of continuity and for reinforcing the disingenuous argument that in order to keep the Army out you have to bring it in.

When custodial killings were taking place in Karachi during the second Benazir government with the then prime minister defending to the hilt in private and public the slaying of unarmed prisoners and liquidation of unwanted elements in fake police encounters, some of us told her that the very people who are making her commit such unlawful actions would use them against her when they would decide to send her home. And this is exactly what had happened after the 1996 dismissal of Benazir government. Custodial killings in Karachi was listed as one of the reasons for her removal by the then President, Farooq Leghari, who was equally involved in the decision-making process that had led to the officially-sponsored Karachi carnage in which even the brother of the then sitting Prime Minister lost his life. This has been recalled here for the benefit of all the elected members of the new houses, both the national and the provincial and to warn them that all the unlawful things that the establishment is doing in order, ostensibly, to facilitate the formation of the new governments at the Centre and the provinces and for preserving and protecting continuity, would be used against them when Musharraf would in his own time decide to send them home. As it is an impression by association is already being attempted to be created among the masses that the horse trading, which in fact was being managed and promoted by Tariq Aziz and Gen Zamir, was being indulged in by the politicians themselves on their own to meet their own nefarious ends. The break up of the PML(N) was also blamed by association on the politicians rather than on the coercive methods used by the establishment to float the King’s party. But why would Musharraf send Jamali home? Jamali himself has said by way of reassurance on more than one occasion that he would never become a Junejo. So, true enough, the question of his ending up like Junejo does not arise. But the fact of the matter is that it was not Junejo who became on his own the Junejo of 1988. It was Ziaul Haq who made him that. And it would be Musharraf himself who would turn Jamali into a Junejo when like Zia the General would start feeling politically insecure despite his military uniform. Military rulers do suffer from such paranoia, after a few months of the installation of elected parliaments!!—Onlooker

‘A song for the Bathroom’

FRIEND Fakhar Zaman, the PPP intellectual, has sent me the following letter:

“Peter Curman is a renowned Swedish poet who is internationally recognized as well. He has been the president of prestigious Swedish Writer’s Association for over 10 years.

“Curman has written the following poem and emailed it to close friends. I am sure the readers of your paper would like to share his sentiments”.

The poem, titled A song for the Bathroom, begins:

If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.

If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.

If the terrorists are Saudi

And the bank takes back your Audi

And the TV shows are bawdy,

Bomb Iraq.

If the corporate scandals growin’, bomb Iraq.

And your ties to them are showin’, bomb Iraq.

If the smoking gun ain’t smokin’

We don’t care, and we’re not jokin’.

That Saddam will soon be croakin’.

Bomb Iraq.

Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.

From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.

So to hell with the inspections;

Let’s look tough for the elections,

Close your mind and take directions,

Bomb Iraq.

While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.

Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.

If the ozone hole is growing,

Some things we prefer not knowing.

(Though our ignorance is showing),

Bomb Iraq.

So here’s one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq.

From his favourite little laddy, bomb Iraq.

Saying no would look like treason.

It’s the Hussein hunting season.

Even if we have no reason,

Bomb Iraq.

I revert now to Jane Austen. As you know, she is a “partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian” we begin today with Queen Mary. Austen continues;

MARY: This woman had the good luck of being advanced to the throne of England, inspite of the superior pretensions, Merit, and Beauty of her cousins Mary Queen of Scotland and Jane Grey. Nor can I pity the kingdom for the misfortunes they experienced during her reign, since they fully deserved them for having allowed her to succeed her brother —- which was a double piece of folly, since they might have foreseen that, as she died without children, she would be succeeded by that disgrace to humanity, that pest of society, Elizabeth. Many were people who fell martyrs to the protestant religion during her reign; I suppose not fewer than a dozen. She married Philip King of Spain who in her sister’s reign was famous for building armadas. She died without issue and then the dreadful moment came in which the destroyer of all comfort, the deceitful betrayer of trust reposed in her, and the murderess of her cousin succeeded to the throne.

ELIZABETH: It was the peculiar misfortune of this woman to have bad ministers —- since wicked as she herself was, she could not have committed such extensive mischief had not these vile and abandoned men connived at and encouraged her in her crimes. I know that it has by many people been asserted and believed that Lord Burleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the rest of those who filled the chief offices of state were deserving, experienced, and able ministers. But oh! how blinded such writers and such readers must be to true merit, to merit despised, neglected and defamed. If they can persist in such opinions when they reflect that these men, these boasted men were such scandals to their country and their sex as to allow and assist their Queen in confining for the space of nineteen years a woman who if the claims of relationship and merit were of no avail, yet as a Queen and as one who condescended to place confidence in her, had every reason to expect assistance and protection; at length in allowing Elizabeth to bring this amiable woman to an untimely, unmerited, and scandalous death. Can any one if he reflects but for a moment on this blot, this everlasting blot upon their understanding and their character, allow any praise to Lord Burleigh or Sir Francis Walsingham? oh! what must this bewitching princess whose only friend was then the Duke of Norfolk, and whose only ones are now Mr Whitaker, Mrs Lefroy, Mrs Knight and myself. Who was abandoned by her son, confined by her cousin, abused, reproached and vilified by all, what must not her most noble mind have suffered when informed that Elizabeth had given order for her death! yet she bore it with a most unshaken fortitude; firm in her mind; constant in her religion; and prepared herself to meet the cruel fate to which she was doomed with a magnanimity that could alone proceed from conscious innocence. And yet could you reader have believed it possible that some hardened and zealous protestants have even abused her for that steadfastness in the catholic religion which reflected on her so much credit? But this is striking proof of their narrow souls and prejudiced judgments who accuse her. She was executed in the Great Hall at Fortheringay Castle (sacred place!) on Wednesday the 8th of February 1586 —- to the everlasting reproach of Elizabeth, her ministers, and of England in general. It may not be unnecessary before I entirely conclude my account of this ill-fated Queen to observe that she had been accused of several crimes during the time of her reigning in Scotland. Of which I now most seriously do assure my reader that she was entirely innocent; having never been guilty of anything more than imprudencies into which she was betrayed by the openness of her heart, her youth, and her education. Having I trust by this assurance entirely done away with every suspicion and every doubt which might have arisen in the reader’s mind, from what other historians have written of her. I shall proceed to mention the remaining events that marked Elizabeth’s reign. It was about this time that Sir Francis Drake the first English navigator who sailed round the world lived, to be the ornament of his country and his profession. Yet great as he was, and justly celebrated as a sailor, I cannot help foreseeing that he will be equalled in this or the next century by one who tho’ now but young already promises to answer all the ardent and sanginne expectations of his relations and friends, amongst whom I may class the amiable lady to whom this work is dedicated and my no less amiable self.

Though of a different profession, and shinning in a different sphere of life, yet equally conspicuous in the character of an Earl, as a Drake was in that of a sailor, was Robert Devereux Lord Essex. This unfortunate young man was not unlike in character to that equally unfortunate one Frederic Delamere.

The simile may be carried still farther, and Elizabeth the torment of Essex may be compared to the Emmeline of Delamere. He would be endless to recount the misfortunes of this noble and gallant Earl. It is sufficient to say that he was beheaded on the 25th of Febry, after having been Lord Leuitentant of Ireland, after having clapped his hand on his sword and after performing many other services to his country. Elizabeth did not long survive his loss, and died so miserable that were it not an injury to the memory of Mary I should pity her.

It now remains for me to conclude this brief history which I will do next week.