Shaming Maya: Two wrongs don’t make a right
The Book of Love is full of charts, and facts and figures, and instructions for dancing, at least according to The Magnetic Fields, later confirmed by Peter Gabriel. Both the indie band and the legendary former Genesis lead singer also agree that they love it when someone reads to them from it. Unfortunately, it seems that nobody ever read to Maya Khan from it. That can be the only reason she takes so much offence to young love. Now, I’m probably wrong on both counts, given the amount of pictures and video of her indulging in extra-mehram-al relations with men, ...
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Restoring the ISI’s tarnished reputation
An intelligence agency is at the frontlines of every war, especially against terrorism. Terror and terror networks can only be contained, dismantled or destroyed with effective intelligence gathering. But if the reputation of the intelligence agency is tarnished and its every action is questioned, no war can be effectively won and no strategy can be properly executed. It is unfortunate that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) is caught up with—and in some cases, rightly accused—for many domestic and international incidents involving terrorism and other transnational crimes. At the same time, it has also become a scapegoat for those who have ...
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Do journalists have the licence to transgress?
A press card can come in really handy. It doesn’t matter how dumb your picture is on that piece of plastic, you can wear it around your neck and ease your way into concerts or talk your way out of traffic predicaments. You can use it to flaunt your power at the policeman who has parked his metal contraption in a narrow lane, blocking a series of helpless vehicles that are forced to reverse and go all the way around. It would have been fuel for another series of ‘our police is so corrupt’ conversations were it not for the ...
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Scandalous Islamabad: Facebook’s gossip vultures
On an idle Sunday afternoon spent eating pizza and chatting with my sisters-in-law, I was introduced to ‘Scandalous Islamabad’. In case you don’t know what it is, ‘Scandalous Islamabad’ is a Facebook group inspired by American TV show Gossip Girl (remember the mysterious “And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. You know you love me xoxo Gossip Girl?”) Currently, this Facebook group has a following of almost 5,000 people. The grapevine is active The group that was created in January this year keeps disappearing and reappearing. Apparently, this is because they got hacked. There is a post on their ...
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Gluttonous reporters: As far as food is concerned
Journalists or ‘media walay’ – as they are locally labelled – are a branded bunch. There are enough clichés about people from the news industry to fill a (rather wordy) book. But my favourite cliché is that if you want to see a lot of reporters at an event, make sure that there’s lots of food and that they know about it! So the story goes: I was sitting at the office of a rather suave business executive, busy jotting down his responses to my inquisitions, when he mentioned that his company was about to organise a very elaborate award ...
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Islamabad Etcetera: Have I got a story for you
Where at a time professions used to be identified by certain distinguishing marks, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the universal sign of the labourer with the flat cap, the police with their badges and so on, these emblems also come with an assumed reputation. The flat cap was as depressed as the masses and wearing one immediately identified you as a proletariat. The ‘shield’, the policemen’s badge, appeared at once imposing and formidable. So too then by this measure does one see that by merely carrying a press card or announcing ones association with the fourth estate, a certain ...
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Listen to the customer!
Gone are the days when you needed to lodge a complaint about a problem in your telephone connection or electricity metre and nobody was available to even listen to your voice. Now, the scene has changed. Companies have started to focus more on customer service due to increasing competition in the marketplace. Many companies that didn’t even know about customer services now have state of the art call centers and customer touch points. Here they are not only listening to customer complaints but also resolving these on an immediate basis. However, there is still a place where customers are complaining ...
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The mockery of education
Pakistan is a country of 170 million people with an average literacy rate of 57 per cent only. The education sector has always been treated like an illegitimate child when it comes to annual budget allocations. A great chunk of the federal budget goes to military and defense. It has been the same old story this year. The defense budget was raised by 17 per cent in the annual federal budget under the pretext of ongoing war against militants while the spending on education is less than 3 per cent. According to a recent report by Sharmila Farooqui, advisor to ...
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Eyewash, hogwash, brainwash
Obsessive, manic, crazed, nutty, deranged, louche — writers have worked hard to cultivate a reputation for themselves. And most people expect of them pretty much what they do of all other kinds of freaks: visions, pipe dreams, fantasies and yes — deep, deep thoughts. Writers even tend to agree with this view of themselves. Consider Mr William Faulkner’s thoughts on the subject. “An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.” Readers utterly love this kind of thing. After my last column, some readers wrote to me advising me ...
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