A Rainbow Shines Over India and other Fairy Tales.

It has been a very tumultuous week. First up, I would like to say that I have no words to elaborate on how I feel about the King of Pop’s death. The sister has written a very moving piece on her blog, so you can just read that.

Secondly, I am extremely happy about the Delhi (I’ve always wondered, does one say Delhi or Dilli?) High Court verdict on homosexuality in India. Kudos to the DHC for ensuring homosexuals have equal rights, this is really a remarkable achievement for gay rights’ activists in India. Fingers crossed that India’s colourful political parties accept the verdict with dignity.

And while its unfair to compare the two countries’ judicial systems, a recent ruling in one of our courts has left me seeing red all day.

Via Dawn:

Three suspects in the child marriage case were on Wednesday granted bail by a judicial magistrate (south) against a surety bond of Rs5,000 each.

Eight-year-old Zahida was married to 17-year-old Dilshad in Azam Basti in the jurisdiction of the Mehmoodaad police station on June 25. Later, acting on information provided by some neighbours, the police arrested the girl’s father, Abdul Rasool, the bridegroom, Dilshad, and the Qazi, Qari Naqib Ali Shah, under Section 151 of the criminal procedure code.

Rs.5000 is set as bail and they’re free. The would-be bride is EIGHT years old! The father, qari and the boy’s father should be publicly hanged, along with rapists and child molesters. Maybe that would make them stop suggesting that eight is a suitable age to be married.

This week also saw the publication of a report suggesting that the profits from smuggled cigarettes go into the pockets of the Pakistani Taliban. So the next time you’re at the pan wala, think twice before you ask for the ‘Farsi wala Malboro.’

Then there was today: I spent about six hours at the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi while covering an assignment and have had several realisations hit me at the speed of lightning:

1. People still come to the airport to see the sights.

2. There are WAY too many Chinese-looking people who come to Karachi. What are they all doing here!?

3. It is extremely easy to spread a rumour in Karachi. After being asked, for what must have been the 1000th time, what our camera crew was doing there, we joking replied: “Waiting for Shahrukh Khan to come.” That rumour could have gotten way out of hand had we actually kept a straight face when saying it. I do hope there aren’t people at the airport right now holding up placards saying “SRK I <3 U."

4. Karachi's airport shop has no decent food. Except the packet of Lays' I had there was definitely more fresher than what you get in most stores in the city.

5. Wannabe designer/male model should not wear bright green sneakers to match his t-shirt. It reminds one of puke, not grass. And carrying an LV bag (which looked suspiciously like a handbag) does not maketh a model.

6. Sitting on a luggage trolley is not good for the bones.

I'm sure there were more realisations, but I'm ready to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of the dead. Unless the cat gets to my pillow first, in which case it will be yet another battle of "Move Your Butt Smoky Cat." Stay tuned.

P.S. Fat monkeys in a zoo in Japan are being put on a diet according to a report in The Telegraph. I’m a little scared after seeing the accompanying photo.

Pakistan Zindabad!

I don’t know what my favourite moment of the T20 Final is; the Sri Lankan batting order falling apart so quick that I thought I was hallucinating, Afridi’s sensible turn at the bat coupled with the sixers and boundaries in the last few overs, Dil Dil Pakistan playing at Lord’s, the intelligent cricket played by the Pakistani team…all in all, I’m over the moon, what an incredible game this final has been. Seventeen years and one day after we won the World Cup in 1992, Pakistani cricketers have given its countrymen an indescribable sense of elation. Pakistan Zindabad!

[Images courtesy Reuters]

20 hours later.

Would have live blogged this, but alas, KESC is the weakest link.

7:00 PM: Get call from sister saying the electricity is off. Have faith in KESC and feel it will come back in an hour. Go home.
8:30 PM: Electricity still not back. V hungry. Oooh, Nihari!
8:45 PM: DHA KESC office phones are constantly busy. Hmm, maybe something’s wrong.
9:00 PM: The News’ website reveals all of Karachi doesnt have electricity. Call office. Assignment editor laughs when I ask him when the electricity is coming back. Oh dear.
10:00 PM: Constant prodding by sister to go to Espresso and charge phones and benefit from airconditioning. Nihari-induced coma coming on.
10:15 PM: Severely low levels of battery power on mobile phone. Start panicking.
10:20 PM: Sleep and electricity deprived zombies on the streets. Karachi looks like something out of 28 Days Later.
10:30 PM: At Espresso in my pyjamas. Other people at the cafe look at me weirdly. My pink pajamas with cows on them are very upset at their condescending stares.
11:30 PM: Overhear random conversations at Espresso. One boy has gone through a bad breakup. Other boy says smoke combined with perfume is a very alluring smell.
12:00 AM: Night has been saved! Friend with industrial-size generator invites me to come spend night at her house.
1:00 AM: Oooh, Scotch! Feel remorse for sister, father and cat stuck at home with no bijli, which is quickly washed down with more amber-coloured liquid.
2:00 AM: Am lying in bed surrounded by stuffed toys and barbies. Friend has not updated decor in decades I fear.
8:45 AM: A/C feels so good. Don’t want to go to no-electricity home.
9:15 AM: At no-electricity home. Find sister crouching in terrace door trying to catch breeze.
10:00 AM: Work! Wait, why is no one here?
10:15 AM: Barely no one has showed up to the office. Reporter with KESC beat has been in office for nearly 20 hours. He is thriving on ‘lets bash the KESC’ induced adrenaline.
10:45 AM: At Civil Hospital. Shalwar has magically unhooked itself. Holding on to shalwar for dear life. Hide in Emergency ward and hook it again.
11:00 AM: Still at Civil Hospital. Patients look ready to pass out. Blood bank has no electricity.
11:30 AM: Run into Chand Nawab. Hear him do first line of PTC..’bijli ke bohran…’. Happinesss. Also, feel like a true celebrity, Chand Nawab came and said hello to yours truly. Muahaha.
12:00 PM: Office. Oooh, cute boy online. Happy streak continues.
12:30 PM: Go for lunch at sister’s office. Friend walks in who looks at A/C with a look of love that one reserves for new born babies, puppies, kittens and bars of Toblerone.
2:00 PM: Hear arrogant, good-for-nothing reporter refusing to go to cover a press conference. Fight back urge to smack her.
2:30 PM: Electricity has apparently returned at home. Wonder if cat is doing dance of happiness in her room.
2:45 PM: People are comparing electricity failure stories like people comparing war wounds.
3:00 PM: Run into scumbag. Ugh. Desperately want exorcism to purge self of bad vibes. Think will go hide under table now. Or maybe do some work. Till the next rant then…

The Swat Odyssey

Political parties in Sindh have been crying themselves hoarse over the past few weeks, as I previously wrote about, over the IDPs that have been arriving in Karachi. I recently had the misfortune to sit through a two hour session of Qadir Magsi [head of the Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party] outlining why the IDPs should not be allowed in Sindh; his reasons include: Sindhis will become a minority in their own province. The Sindh government has sought to appease the regional parties’ and the MQM’s opposition to the IDPs move to Karachi by settling the influx in a camp on the outskirts of Karachi.

Unfortunately for the IDPs, the government seems to have forgotten about them.

I visited the camp today, which currently houses around 130 people. The lack of facilities is appalling to say the least; the IDPs have no access to running water, fans, electricity, separate toilets for men and women, medical facilities, etc. The only NGO I saw working there was Jamaat-e-Islami’s charitable organisation, Al-Khidmat, which provides them meals three times a day; a water tanker comes to provide them with water that is stored in plastic tanks, which is funded by private donors. The only thing that the government has provided is tents.

For the former residents of Swat, the tent makes no difference. They’ve come from pleasant weather to a climate so harsh that they’ve been falling sick. With no fans at the very least, living in Karachi is akin to visiting Hell. The IDPs are unsure of when they’ll be able to return home and have received no confirmation as to where their relatives are, if they managed to escape from the Valley or not. As one Swat resident told me today, “iss tarah zinda rehne se tau marr jana behtar hai.”

[Translation: It is better to die than live like this]

On journalism, reading aloud and decoding women.

Its a Saturday, I’m at work (ugh!) and I know Twitter has taken over the sister’s and my life when I was chatting with her on Google Talk:

Me: “I’ve had a terrible day. This happened, that happened and then to top it off, this happened”
Saba: #lifefail

And since Twitter combined with overactive A/Cs that leave your fingers resembling icicles and writing deadlines has sapped my ability to blog for now, I’m going to be utterly lazy and just post my favorite bits and pieces culled from the Web.

The Independent: Robert Fisk’s World: A glimpse of Obama in a Cairo emptied of its people and its poor:

Go into the average newspaper office and you’ll find the reporters staring at Sky News or the BBC or Al-Jazeera International.

But visit the studios of Sky News, the BBC or Al-Jazeera International, and you’ll discover that all the journalists there are reading newspapers. Its an odd form of osmosis which – being an old-fashioned reporter – I’m not very happy about. I still believe, along with an encouraging number of young Arab and Israeli reporters, that we’ve got to be out on the streets, just as I was when I started in journalism in the Blyth office of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. So Fisk was prowling the streets of Cairo this week, hunting for Obama and Lady Hilary.

From the Guardian Blog: Is anything gained from reading aloud?

What all literary festivals are about, as well as meeting the authors and rummaging through the bookshops (and basking in the sun this year – hooray!) is being read to. Some people can’t hear the written word enough, perhaps because it invokes memories of our earliest literary experience, that of the parent reading to us at bedtime, filling our sleepy heads with Gothic castles and death-defying escapes and Moomins that then swirled about in there after the light went out. Others, though, resent it, possibly for much the same reason, that it seems to return you to a helpless, infantile state where you couldn’t just read books for yourself.

Via the sister, from What A Woman Means When She Says…:

Marriott Blast Victims = Bad Muslims?!

Via Dawn:

Mr Dogar contended that victims of the Islamabad Marriott blast were bad Muslims who consumed alcohol.

So judging by what Mr. Dogar has to say, the 200-odd people who were injured and the 50 or so who died in the Marriott Hotel blast were all bad Muslims, including the security guards who refused to let the truck driver entry into the hotel, the hotel staff, and many of the people inside who were having Iftaar after fasting all day. As far as I know, A.K Dogar’s a lawyer, not an expert on what constitutes a good Muslim. But then again, the self-appointed guardians of our faith never fail to amaze, shock or induce nausea.