Friday, February 24, 2012

The Bhai files II...

Daku Bhaijaan
We have been tail-less for a while (actually, quite a while) and it is disappointing not to have any one stare at us or follow us around this sleepy city anymore.

Its been ages since we saw pock-faced Daku Bhaijaan's lanky figure in his trademark colourless shalwar kameezes dangling his bike keys or discussed if Look-London-Talk-Tokyo Bhaijaan was really sent to mind us and not our neighbour.

We are told Bhaijaans are busy romancing the Americans and we have ceased to occupy the Biwi No.1 slot. Whichever way it is not exactly great for our self-esteem to be Bhaijaan-less. Time to work on our self-worth!

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Bond of Teetar...

A beautiful wimmens walking Major's goat
I have no clue who this “well travelled, highly ejjucated, critical thinker” is on Teetar, but I am majorly addicted to his teets and miss the profoundness on his timeline when he decides to take-off to burn “NATO trucks”. Like now (OUTRAGE!)

Since majorlyprofound teets like no one else, he does appear to be far more ejjucated than other beepuls oph Teetar. His popularity has grown manifold in the past two years or so leaving many wondering who Major really is. Most believe that Major is not stationed in Pakistan and hence doesn’t need to play safe; others have a hunch that our diyar Major is a writer-type (hint: hint: sharam: sharam:).

A sample of his tweets for the uninitiated:  
Annoyed that when Pakistan army was menshuned in the artecal, the customary "Professional and disciplined" was not included.

China is Saudi Barbaria of Atheist dictators. Bious flee to Saudi Barbaria, Atheist to China. Atheists pretending to be bious, flee to UK.

Pakistan to brotest violashun of Sovirginity!! (at ground-level only)

Someone should invent technawlaji to go and burn websites. Why can I burn only NATO trucks, phlags, photus and effigies?

Yindian legislators watching porn!! Who watches porn on mobile phone in Barliament?! Idiots! Screen is too small, use a tablet or a laptop!!

Major collected 100 signatures phrom Lahore Bar Associashun to ban Lahore Bar Associashun coz Lahore founded by Yindoos http://bit.ly/z4EyzR

"Jamaatud Dawa free to collect Eid donations"http://bit.ly/uVXDrJ Their Ban status, like Veena Malik’s age, is ambiguous & contradictory.

At the last Karachi Literature Festival Major had fun scaring other writer-types. He tweeted  that delegates had called for quick prosecution and exemplary punishment for Mustafa Qadri, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer's killer.
Heh heh…started rumor and now waiting phor “defiant librul literature intellectuals” to ijje denials as fast as my AK can phyrr bullets. 

KLF fell for the trap asking people to ignore Major's tweets.
No such statement about blasphemy or Mustafa Qadri is being issued by ANY delegates of KLF.

My personal favourites, however, are tweets on Major's imaginary trip to India following Marvi Memon’s visit last year.
For someone who boycotted Indian music due to principles, "sheila ki jawani" sounds pretty okay.#YindiaVisit

Irregularity filled, corruption ridden land distribution to poor. No army like efficiency for allotting plots.#YindiaVisit

Wrenching poverty causes women to get into degrading professions. Saw song of one "munni" who became badnaam.#YindiaVisit

Yindian youth brainwashed that Pakistan created only in 1947!! Pakistan was formed 4.5 Billion years ago with the rest of earth#YindiaVisit

Major also has a plog where he posts his bearls oph wisdom: To save time and effort for everyone, I present for your gentle consideration: The 'Pakistan is a moderate country' column generator!! The formula itself is very simple: Riveting opening sentence, intriguing provocation of thought, religious mumbo jumbo, meaningless statistics, blame Zia, guilt out the west, demand money, Cashmere or both.

His take on the Thorough brosecution of Mumbai attackers in Pakistan is highly recommended. So are How to borrow money phrom your unkil and How to make your own Ejaz Haider at home

Since Major is also an exbert on wimmens he likes to say “hello” to his diyar wimmens all the time. He was last seen tweeting Valentine’s Day messages with loads of “sharam: sharam: hint: hint”.

Then there are those wimmens on Teetar who want Major to notice them -- at least on their birthdays! Much like a celeb, Major obliged a young lady when she requested him to wish her a happy birthday:  “Diyar @PunamKadam Joo look younger and beautiphul todin. What is the occasion?”

Monday, February 13, 2012

Withering Shobhaa...


Indian writer-socialite Shobhaa De was showcased as a “superstar author” at the just-concluded third Karachi Literature Festival. Obviously literature wasn't the only thing on her mind ("Inshallah meet Imran Khan").

De pontificated on Karachi – which is “so, so like Mumbai” (very original) -- and full of “hotties” and “cuties” (very creative). At a dinner hosted by Oxford University Press, she told the local media that Indians are curious about how Pakistani women put their outfits together (profound) and also that Pakistanis were a far more beautiful breed (very profound).

She also kept her priorities on track. She shopped for “lawn” (Pakistan’s best known fabric) with her "designer friend", a day ahead of the festival and seemed quite focused on the next item on her shopping list: Multani blue pottery.

In her rush to take in Pakistani society, she forgot to check if Urdu was a regional language in Pakistan. So what if that upset a few literary types.

Pakistanis, too, were very focused on her saris and the 64-year-old's glam quotient. Her saris, and not once her 17-best selling books, were described by the media by way of introduction.

However, the real surprise came from Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie who thought that De would “bring a touch of glamour to the proceedings” at the festival!

At the Q&A session she was asked bizarre questions: “Do you really hate Deepika Padukone?” De chose to answer them all: "I have nothing against them. Deepika and Sonam are non-entities..." She also spent time telling the audience why she wore a tattoo and the audience clapped away. Some others tweeted how glamorous she looked in her sari.

As for De, she enjoyed her one hour solo session thoroughly and thought the questions from the audience were "lively and informed". She was also pleased with the "fantastic" press interviews.

"...I attended a fabulous sangeet and mehendi evening...I had dragged Vikram Seth with me, and quite a few Suitable Boys came up to get introduced, along with sexily clad Suitable Girls.Vikram is adorable!" she posted on her blog.

"Shall go in search of Multani plates at the Itwar Market tomorrow. And Inshallah meet Imran Khan who's in town to attend a shaadi," she added.

Don't know if De was halal for Khan; just glad I missed the fest.

Postscript: Loved this take on last year's Karachi litfest by my favourite Pakistani Twitterer: http://majorlyprofound.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/scared-people-attend-book-party-dont-really-defy-the-taliban/

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Visa blues...

This innocuous looking building is the one government office in Islamabad that I dread visiting. No, it isn’t the headquarters of some all-powerful intelligence agency or some super-secret department.
It’s the passport and immigration office that I have to go to periodically to renew the visas for my wife and me. And my experiences at this office have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. More of the latter, actually.
If you thought the bureaucracy in India was all wrapped up in red tape and cumbersome, they have some healthy and stiff competition from their Pakistani counterparts. At the best of times, renewing our visas is a cumbersome procedure involving various levels of officialdom. At the worst of times, banging your head against a steel wall would seem to be a pleasant experience.
The process for renewing the visas begins a month or more before they expire with the filling in of several forms in triplicate and handing them over to the Information Ministry. The visa applications, however, are processed and cleared by the Interior Ministry after vetting by sundry “agencies”.
Why then does one have to apply to the Information Ministry? Because this is the ministry that is supposed to handle all matters related to Indian journalists, who cannot be allowed to come in contact with the secretive Interior Ministry.
Once the forms are submitted, they go from the Information Ministry to the Interior Ministry, where the folks seem to take their own sweet time clearing them. Invariably, the clearance from the Interior Ministry comes a month or two after our visas have expired and we’ve been surviving on a letter from the Information Ministry that lets everyone know our applications are being processed.
Even after the clearance, it’s no cakewalk as one then has to make the trip to passport and immigration office to get the visas stamped. That’s where things can get hairy.
Take the case of Mr Majid, who was once assigned to the desk handling Indian nationals (not that there are very many of them) at the passport office. Though all the paperwork had been completed and I had the precious letter from the Interior Ministry saying our visas should be extended, Mr Majid ploughed through all the documents, gave me a blank look and said, “I don’t understand your case.”
I left as the office was about to close for the day and returned the following day, only to be told by Mr Majid that he still did not understand my case. It was only when I barged into the office of Mr Majid’s superior and complained against him that our visas were stamped in the passports.
And I would be lying if I said I took no pleasure in learning some time later that Mr Majid was transferred from the passport office, partly due to my complaint against him.
By the way, the problems don’t end there. For the past few years, my wife and I have paid thousands of rupees as an “overstay charge” even though we apply for the extension of our visas well before they expire. We have been told we have to pay up because the extensions are done after our visas have expired.
Of course, no one seems to notice that the visas invariably expire because the Interior Ministry hasn’t cleared the extension in time.
Oh, did I mention that getting the challans from the State Bank of Pakistan to pay the visa fees and the overstay charges usually takes half a day as the queue at the bank is usually half a kilometre long? But after all the bureaucratese, it seems like a picnic.
The queue outside the visa counter at the bank.
In the four years that my wife and I have spent in Pakistan, our problems with our visas have been unending. We once lived without visas for six months, with no official giving us any explanation as to why they were not being extended. One day, as I completed an interview with Asif Ali Zardari, who was then yet to be elected President, he asked if I had any problems. I mentioned the visas and within three days, everything was cleared.
On one occasion, the valuable “Exempted from Police Reporting” stamp (which we are both entitled to) wasn’t affixed, leading to my wife and I being perpetually harassed for a year at airports. On another occasion, the official at the passport office arbitrarily reduced the term of our visas by 10 days. When I pointed it out to him, his response was: “It’s just 10 days it doesn’t matter.”
We have always had visas for Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. At the last extension, the visa was arbitrarily limited to just Islamabad and Lahore. End result? We couldn’t attend the Karachi Literature Festival, to which I was formally invited and which we both looking forward to.
And as I write this, I just realised that I have to begin the process for renewing our visas. Again.