Oh, what fun.
Ali Zafar plays a reporter in this upcoming Indian film who produces a fake OBL tape. My only regret is that ‘TV reporter Iqbal’ and Chand Nawab will not be part of this production.
AND – Maila Times has a true winner with this rickshaw post.
One of these days, I will post up all my ‘Overheard in a Rickshaw’ quotes but this was a gem I heard last week: “Karachi mai jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya!” This was hours after there had been two bomb blasts in Karachi.
With apologies to Stevie Wonder.
No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No Baitullah Mehsud to scare, he’s been droned away
No end to stereotyping
No songs for Musharraf to sing
In fact here’s just another ordinary day
No one is sane
No peace looms
No weddings can run till the next day’s noon
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
I know you’ll retweet that too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
No summer’s high
No electricity in July
No NRO left on which to write
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for drones to fly in Quetta’s skies
No Younis Khan
No sanity
No giving thanks to all the rants Blackwater brings
But what it is, though old so new
That TTP scares you like no three letters could ever do
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
If you’d like to sing along, here’s the original, saccharine Stevie Wonder song:
So I saw a (fake) Christmas tree in a store window today and was trying to think of what I was doing at this time last year. Or the year before. Since I had to look it up on my blog, clearly I should accept that I am growing old but also, revel in genius of having blogged every mundane detail of my life for posterity!
But yes, Christmas. The end of the year, the end of the decade, all that. I’ve already tried reliving the past decade on Twitter through the #youtubedistractionday tweets (which have all magically disappeared from the website, oh no!). But while I do not foresee hours and days of free time in the next two weeks to blog ‘the best of 2009/the decade/etc etc’ lists, this is how I feel this year. I know its a year old – and was rather widely circulated last year (how many of those people had ever heard of Pearls Before Swine before? = .02%) – but here it goes anyway.
This also explains why I have turned to buying comfort food. I will only be concerned for my mental health once I start searching for Nice biscuits and drinking doodhsevenup*.
*(yes, milk mixed with 7up. yes, you read that right. yes, you must try it. no, i am not a crazy person.)
Inspired by Asif Akhtar’s comment on the previous post, last night was all about rocking on!! (credit: rocking on – Guardian/The National, !! – from the film Rock On!!) with the #SummerofTaliban posts on Twitter. I had originally planned to dig out some of the best ones but it would take me hours, so you should just go ahead and read the whole thing. It was more New York than Pakistan really.
In the spirit of cliches and stereotypes, it would have also totally qualified to be picked up as a “soft story” with the headline ‘Twitter Pakistanis turn to humour to defy the Taliban” (There, I’ve even written the headline! I should be PAID to do this) but sadly no foreign publication has been in touch yet.
Once again, can’t thank Asif enough for the idea. Everyone else, did you have nothing better to do? In a #SummerofTaliban violence, I’m glad to know your lives are as sad as mine.
First, a little heads-up on my current state of mind, brought to life by this Pearls Before Swine comic
Moving on to this week’s must-reads:
Lights Off, Diyas On Huma Imtiaz writes for Newsline about Diwali celebrations in Karachi amidst loadshedding
The curious case of Rehman Malik Rabia at the Grand Trunk Road blog wrote the best sentence ever on Rehman Malik – and points out the most disturbing part of the IIU students protesting when the much-loved (/end sarcasm) minister visited the campus after it had been attacked by two suicide bombers.
You see, in a way Rehman Malik is the perfect symbol of the Pakistani civilian government – bumbling, inept, hated by all, and a distraction from the deeper dysfunction that you have to listen a bit harder to hear
Take a Chance on Me? Faiza S. Khan points out how not attending Mamma Mia! (which was being staged in Karachi) has become such a debatable topic
سب کی چھٹی Mohammed Hanif takes a look at what’s being discussed while educational institutions in the country are closed
اور اگر آپ کو تاریخ میں دلچسپی نہیں ہے تو آپ سابقہ کشمیری مجاہد اور تحریک طالبان کے موجودہ روح رواں الیاس کشمیری کے حالات زندگی پڑھ سکتے ہیں۔ کشمیری صاحب سے پوچھا گیا کہ جب کشمیر اور افغانستان فتح ہو جائے گا تو کیا جہاد ختم ہو جائے گا۔ انہوں نے فرمایا نہیں اس کے بعد ہندوستان سے حیدرآباد اور جوناگڑھ واپس لینے کے لیے جہاد ہوگا۔ اور اس کے بعد؟ ان کا کہنا تھا کہ دنیا میں کسی نہ کسی جگہ تو جہاد کی ضرورت ہوگی پھر ہم وہاں جہاد کریں گے۔
A tale of two Pakistans Hanif again, pointing out the differences of life in and out of the culture bubble
Held by the Taliban The David Rohde series in the New York Times was one of the first things I read in the morning all this week. The five part series details Rohde’s kidnapping in Afghanistan, being shifted to Waziristan and his eventual escape seven months later.
Bashar al Assad believes in Syria. (Photograph taken April 2008 in Damascus)
This is the kind of article I dream to someday write. As Syria News Wire put it, Shadowland – which the blog calls the best article on Syria in a decade – “should be compulsory reading for every journalist flying into Damascus International Airport.”
Amen to that.
I can’t believe its taken me this long to blog about it, but I’ve been busy watching The Office on repeat and blogging here.
Anyhoo, this is by far, the best moment on any television show this season. The Office referenced the YouTube video that went viral – the JK wedding dance.
I was watching (yes, guilty pleasure) Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahi a few days ago, courtesy the cable TV operator who removed all Indian channels as soon as Ramadan started, leaving us to watch the films of his choice. (That includes Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and other 90s drivel).
Now while Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahi isn’t an original film, I actually do enjoy watching it. In the ’90s, Tiku Talsania was one of my favourite comic actors, who also played the desperate-to-inaugurate-a-jail inspector in the best Indian film ever made, Andaz Apna Apna. His portrayal of a hassled editor is hilarious and Aamir’s desperation to sell him a story for 10,000 rupees is quite a moment.
It left me thinking – (no I don’t spend my time thinking about the film but the cable TV guy reran it thrice and frankly, there’s not much to do these days) – about recent films that have showcased journalists and journalism. Bad, good, pathetic, whatever – they’re all in the mix.
Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 was a fairly decent attempt to showcase the life of a journalist writing about the social scene. Konkona Sen Sharma stars as the Page 3 writer who doesn’t take the scene too seriously until she discovers that behind the glitz lurks a child-abuse scandal. Her attempt to report on the scandal gets shot down by the editor (Boman Irani) but she turns her hand to crime reporting (aided by the underrated Atul Kulkarni, whose film Satta with Raveena Tandon is a must-watch) and that’s the end of her days reporting on the high flyers.
And then there was Nayak, starring Anil Kapoor and the late Amrish Puri. Kapoor plays a TV talk show host who gets challenged by the Chief Minister to run the state instead of harping on as a host. That one day is brilliant (Kapoor manages to deal with almost every civic problem known to mankind) and a friend of mine thinks its probably the film that inspired Punjab CM Shahbaz Sharif’s second run in office. With the amount of criticism talk show hosts in Pakistan dish out, the day they get challenged to just stop whining and take charge of affairs isn’t too far away.
Mission Istaanbul, which undoubtedly was one of the worst films to have been released in 2008, showcases a television channel who has become famous for their links to the Taliban in Afghanistan and their popularity, fuelled by their release of videos by terrorists. The channel then turns out to be an operation that merely produces these videos to keep their ratings up. On paper, it may have been a somewhat plausible story, but the bad acting, unbelievably bad script and the loopholes in the story made it a viewer’s nightmare. Not even worth the pirated CD.
In Guru, Mithun Chakraborty plays a newspaper editor who makes it his mission to cut Abhishek Bachchan down to size. R. Madhavan plays a reporter who makes it his mission to reveal Bachchan’s underhanded tactics.
Apparently there’s a film on NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt in the works, and I’m sure there are a considerable number of films I’ve missed out. Anyone who watches Bollywood films obsessively, please fill in the gaps by commenting.
For the past several weeks, I have been writing, writing, writing. (That’s my standard response now for when someone asks me what I’ve been upto). Hundreds and thousands of words: articles, captions, blog posts later – I am all out. On a Friday evening, with one more day of work to go, and two deadlines looming like one of em pesky drones.
Alright, that’s the end of that bout of whining. For now – here’s what I’ve been writing for the Zeitgeist Politics this week: discrimination and revenge at borders (inspired by Shah Rukh Khan and the hours I’ve spent at embassies, ministries and in visa lines), whether Web 2.0 can bring transparency to Pakistani politics and Pakistan’s latest #securityfail.
Off to look for inspiration in a cup of tea.
Lesson learned this week: Do not read Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization at work. Descriptions of Iraqi children dying as a result of crippling economic sanctions and usage of depleted uranium in the Gulf War do not bode for a work mindset.
And now, to the reads of the week:
Angry Arab took on NYT’s love for Daniyal Muenuddin of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders fame – not once, twice.
A cat’s been taking the bus everyday in the UK – which leads me to wonder about what my own cat does during the day. I know what she’s been reading though.
Egypt Air one-upped Pakistan Airlines with a baby crocodile getting loose on a flight (how did it pass customs is beyond me)
Cafe Pyala presents an all-new tourist guide for Pakistan.
